Original Beauty of Lines and Forms. 247 



the Portugal and common laurels may maintain their full vigour, and neither 

 drop nor become pale, as they often do when the trees are allowed to 

 ripen their berries, the flower spikes are cut off as soon as they begin to 

 fade. As the kitchen-garden and hot-houses here were undergoing alter- 

 ation, the place could not be considered as in perfect order ; otherwise, 

 in as far as that order went, Whitmore Lodge was equal to Bromley Hill. 

 To the gardener, Mr. Sharp, we have sent Sweet's Hot-house and Green- 

 house Manual, for his encouragement and improvement. 



Most of the other gardens deserve mentioning for something commend- 

 able ; Mr. Donald's nursery is by far the best kept country nursery we have 

 ever seen, and was literally without a weed ; the flower-gardens at Ampthill 

 and at Hawnes were well stocked and in good order; the gardener at 

 Pains Hill understands his business well ; the kitchen-garden at Claremont 

 we can never like from the incongruous mixture of botany and kitchen 

 crops, though both plants and crops were in vigorous growth ; many parts 

 of Deepdene about the house are exquisite, and Mr. Wood, the gardener, 

 is a man of science, a good practical naturalist, and most assiduous ; but 

 for such a place he would require more hands ; Bury Hill has long been 

 celebrated, the hot-houses were in the first rate order, and though they 

 are placed in the kitchen-garden, and the latter combines botanical plants, 

 yet they are disposed in a manner less offensive to congruity than at 

 Claremont; Rooksnest is kept in very good style, and the gardener, Mr. 

 Squib, from whom we hope to hear on his vines, well deserves commendation ; 

 the gardener at Bickley, Mr. John Wells, had his flower-garden in the very 

 first order, and deserves from his master Arnott's Elements of Natural 

 Philosophy for himself, and The Library of Useful Knowledge for his son ; 

 the pleasure-ground at Sundridge Park is overgrown with trees, chiefly 

 hornbeams, and other vulgar sorts. But, as soon as leisure permits, we 

 shall give some farther notices of these and other gardens and places. 



Art. IX. Original Beauty of Lines and Forms. 



A Lecture " on the beauties contained in the oval, and in the elliptic 

 curves, both simple and combined, generated from the same figure or disk," 

 was some time since delivered in the Royal Institution, by R. R. Reinagle, 

 Esq. R.A., and a very interesting abstract of it is given in the Quarterly 

 Journal of Science for October last. The subject had been before treated, 

 as connected with elegant art, by Hogarth and Donaldson, artists whose 

 theories of serpentine lines and flowing lines are well known. Mr. Reinagle's 

 object is to prove that curved lines are beautiful in an abstract point of 

 view, without reference to the associations which experience may have con- 

 nected with them ; and he has brought forward such evidence as, we think, 

 cannot fail of convincing all who have turned their attention to the subject; 

 unless, perhaps, we except the author of the Essay on Beauty, in the Sup- 

 plement to the Encyclopedia Britannica, who denies that there exists such 

 a thing as original beauty, and maintains that all beauty, of whatever kind, 

 and in every fine art, may be traced to the principle of association. Mr. 

 Reinagle's theory and illustrations have all that superiority over those of Ho- 

 garth, which the more cultivated mind of its author, and the comparatively 

 advanced state of the fine arts, might be supposed to admit. If Mr. 

 Reinagle is not perfectly satisfactory on all points, his illustrations abound 

 with so many undeniable truths, that every artist may profit from their 

 perusal ; and we shall, therefore, take a brief view of such parts of it as may 



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