560 Arboretum Britannicum. 



we have not yet arrived at a comprehensive and satisfactory 

 theory of landscape-gardening, which should at once trace the 

 beauties of both the ancient and modern styles to the same 

 fundamental principles. 



We have said above that the principal effects in modern 

 landscape-gardening, considered as a fine art, depend on the 

 use of foreign trees and shrubs ; and we shall now assign our 

 reasons for being of this opinion. These reasons we have hinted 

 at in various papers, more particularly in reviewing Mr. Gilpin's 

 work (Gard. Mag., viii. 701.), and in our Notes on Bearwood 

 (ix. 679.). They are grounded on the principle that all art, to 

 be acknowledged as such, must be avowed. This is the case in 

 the fine arts : there is no attempt to conceal art in music, poetry, 

 painting, or sculpture ", none in architecture; and none in the 

 geometrical style of landscape-gardening. Why should there 

 be an attempt to conceal art in modern landscape-gardening ? 

 Because, we shall be told, it is an art which imitates nature. 

 But, does not landscape-painting also imitate nature ; and yet, in 

 it, the work produced is acknowledged to be one of art ? Before 

 this point is settled, it is necessary to recur to what is meant by 

 the imitation of nature, and to reflect on the difference between 

 repetition and imitation. In what are called the imitative arts, 

 it will be found that the imitation is always made in such a man- 

 ner as to be a totally distinct work from the thing imitated ; and 

 never, on any account, so like as to be mistaken for it. In land- 

 scape-painting, scenery is represented by colours on a flat sur- 

 face ; in sculpture, forms, which, in nature, are coloured, are 

 represented in colourless stone. The intention of the artist, in 

 both cases, is not to produce a copy which shall be mistaken for 

 the original, but rather to show the original through the medium 

 of a particular description of art, to reflect nature as in a glass. 

 Now, to render landscape-gardening a fine art, some analogous 

 process must be adopted by the landscape-gardener. In the 

 geometrical style he has succeeded perfectly, by arranging 

 ground and trees in artificial surfaces, forms, and lines, so differ- 

 ent from nature as to be recognised at once as works of art. A 

 residence, thus laid out, is clearly distinguished from the woody 

 scenery of the surrounding country; and is satisfactory, because 

 it displays the working of the human mind, and confers distinc- 

 tion on the owner as a man of wealth and taste. A residence 

 laid out in the modern style, with the surface of the ground dis- 

 posed in imitation of the undulations of nature, and the trees 

 scattered over it in groups and masses, neither in straight lines 

 nor cut into artificial shapes, might be mistaken for nature, were 

 not the trees planted chiefly of foreign kinds not to be met with 

 in the natural or general scenery of the country. It is true that 

 there are other circumstances belonging to a country residence 



