Gardening as an Art of Design and Taste. 159 



open and avowed manner, in contrasting these more indetermi- 

 nate and desultory features of pure nature with some of those 

 more determinate and compassed outlines which, indeed, on a 

 small scale, are already found in many of the spontaneous pro- 

 ductions of Nature herself, but which, on a moi^e extended 

 plan, are only displayed in the works of art. I say, more 

 pleasure to the mind or eye ; for the portion of the garden here 

 alluded to, no less than the one before mentioned, professes itself 

 to be a piece of ground wrested from Nature's dominion by the 

 hand of man, for purposes to which nature alone was inadequate; 

 and thence, contending that there is the least necessity or pro- 

 priety in rendering this district appropriated by art a facsimile of 

 pure nature, independent of any consideration of superior beauty 

 which this imitation may offer to the eye or mind, and merely 

 because to form a garden we use materials supplied by nature, 

 such as air, water, earth, and vegetables, would be absurd in 

 the extreme. As well might we contend that every house built 

 of stone should resemble a cavern, and every coat made of wool 

 a sheepskin. Every production of human industry whatsoever 

 must, if we trace it to its origin, arise out of one or more 

 definite ingredients of pure nature; and unless, therefore, by 

 the same rule, every production of human industry whatsoever 

 be obliged everlastingly to continue wearing the less regular 

 forms of those peculiar objects of nature out of which it is 

 wrought, we cannot with more justice arraign gardens, in their 

 capacity as aggregates of mere natural substances and produc- 

 tions, for assuming the artificial forms of a terrace or a jet-d'eau, 

 an avenue or a quincunx, than we can condemn opera-dancers 

 and figurantes, in their capacity of compounds of natural limbs 

 and features, for exhibiting the artificial movements of the 

 minuet and the gavot, the entrechat and the pas-grave. 



If then the strict resemblance to the desultory forms of 

 rude nature be not indispensably requisite in the artificial scenery 

 of pleasure-grounds, on account of any invariable reasons of 

 propriety or consistency inherent in the very essence of such 

 grounds, this resemblance of studious art to wild nature, in the 

 gardens that adorn our habitations, can only be more eligible 

 on account of some superior pleasure which it gives the eye and 

 mind, either- in consequence of certain general circumstances 

 connected with the very nature of all imitation, or only in con- 

 sequence of certain more restricted effects, solely and exclu- 

 sively produced by this peculiar species of imitation ; namely, 

 of natural landscapes through artificial grounds. 



Now, with regard to the former of these two considerations, 

 I allow that a faithful imitation, even of a deformed original, is 

 capable of affording great intellectual pleasure to the beholder, 

 provided that imitation, like those displayed in painting and 



