160 Gardening as an Art of Design and Taste. 



sculpture, be produced through dint of materials or tools so 

 different from those of which is composed the original imitated, 

 as to evince in the imitator extraordinary ingenuity and powers. 

 But the imitation of a natural landscape, through means of the 

 very ingredients of all natural scenery, namely, air, earth, trees, 

 and vs^ater, (and which imitation will in general offer greater 

 truth in proportion as it is attained through greater neglect,) 

 cannot possess that merit which consists in the overcoming of 

 difficulties and the display of genius, unless indeed it be an 

 imitation of such a species of wild scenery as is totally foreign to 

 the genius of the locality in which it is produced ; unless it con- 

 sists in substituting mountains for plains, waterfalls for puddles, 

 and precipices for flats ; and in that case, on the contrary, the 

 attempt at imitation will become so arduous as to threaten ter- 

 minating in a total failure, by only offering, instead of a sublime 

 and improved resemblance, a most paltry and mean caricature. 

 Since then, in a garden, the imitation of the less'symmetric 

 arrangements of rude nature can afford little or no peculiar 

 gratification to the mind, in their sole capacity as imitations, the 

 question becomes restricted within a very narrow compass ; and 

 all that remains to be enquired into is, whether, in that garden, 

 the exclusive admission of the mere unsymmetric forms of simple 

 nature, or their mixture with a certain proportion of the more 

 symmetric forms of professed art, will give more intense and 

 more varied pleasure to the eye. And, when thus stated, I 

 should think the question would be nearly answered in the same 

 way by every unprejudiced person. I should think it would be 

 denied by none, that, — if, on the one hand, the most irregular 

 habitation, still, through the very nature of its construction and 

 purposes, must ever necessarily remain most obviously sym- 

 metric and formal, if not in its whole, at least in its various 

 details of doors, windows, steps, entablatures, &c. ; and if, on 

 the other hand, as I take it, all beauty consists in that contrast, 

 that variety, that distinctness of each of the different component 

 parts of a whole from the remaining parts, which render each 

 individually a relief to the remainder, combined with that har- 

 mony, that union of each of these different component parts of 

 that whole with the remaining parts, which render each a sup- 

 port to the remainder, and enable the eye and mind to glide over 

 and compass the whole with rapidity and ease, — fewer striking 

 features of beauty will be found in a garden where, from the very 

 threshold of the still ever symmetric mansion, one is launched in 

 the most abrupt manner into a scene wholly composed of the 

 most unsymmetric and desultory forms of mere nature, totally 

 out of character with those of that mansion, and where the 

 same species of irregular and indeterminate forms already pre- 

 vailing at the very centre extend without break or relief to the 



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