Gardening as an Art of Design and Taste. 163 



symmetric by art than these plants are by nature ; and finally, 

 all those other endless contrasts of regular and irregular forms, 

 every where each individually increasing its own charms, through 

 their contrast with those of the other ; exhibited in the countries 

 which we consider as the earliest schools where beauty be- 

 came an object of sedulous study. 



But the truth is, that, in our remoter climes, we carry 

 every theory into the extreme. Once, that very symmetry and 

 correspondence of parts, of which a certain proportion ever has, 

 to all refined ages and nations, ancient and modern, appeared a 

 requisite feature of the more dressy and finished parts of the 

 pleasure-garden, prevailed in our English villas with so little 

 selection, and at the same time in such indiscreet profusion, as 

 not only rendered the different parts insipid and monotonous 

 with respect to each other, but the whole mass a most formal 

 unharmonious blotch with regard to the surrounding country. 

 Surfeited at last with symmetry carried to excess, we have 

 suddenly leaped into the other extreme. Dreading the faintest 

 trace of the ancient regularity of outline as much as we dread 

 the phantoms of those we once most loved, we have made our 

 country residences look dropped from the clouds in spots most 

 unfitted to receive them ; and, at the expense, not only of all 

 beauty, but of all comfort, we have made the grounds appear as 

 much out of harmony, viewed in one direction with the mansion, 

 as they formerly were, viewed in the opposite direction with the 

 country at large. Through the total exclusion of all the variety, 

 the relief, the sharpness, which straight, or spherical, or angular, 

 or other determinate lines and forms might have given to un- 

 symmetric and serpentining forms and surfaces, we have, without 

 at all diminishing the appearance of art (which in a garden can 

 never be totally eradicated) only succeeded in rendering that art 

 of the most tame and monotonous description, like that languid 

 and formal blank verse which is equally divested of the force of 

 poetry and the facility of prose. Nature, who, in her larger 

 productions, is content with exhibiting the more vague beauties 

 that derive from mere variety and play of hues and forms. 

 Nature herself, in her smaller and more elaborate, and, if I may 

 so call them, choicer bits of every different reign, superadds those 

 features of regular symmetry of colours and shapes, which not 

 only form a more striking contrast with the more desultory 

 modifications of her huger masses, but intrinsically in a smaller 

 space produce a greater effect than the former can display. 

 Examine the radii of the snow-spangle, the facettes of the 

 crystal, the petals of the flower, the seeds of the capsule; the 

 wings, the antennae, the rings, and the spots of the larva and the 

 butterfly ; nay, even in man and beast, the features of the face, 

 and the configuration of the eye; and we shall find in all these 



