206 SckeWs Landscape-Gardening. 



" Evitez ces exces. Vos soins infructueux 

 Vainement combatteroient un terrain montueux ; 

 Et dans un sol egal, un humble monticule 

 Veut etre pittoresque, et n'est que ridicule." 



" Avoid such extremes. Your fruitless care will vainly at- 

 tempt a mountain on a level surface, and an humble mound in- 

 tended to be picturesque is only ridiculous." 



When, however, a hill is to be raised on a plain for the sake 

 of interrupting the uniformity, it should not be formed in the 

 middle, but placed on one side ; and it must be made to harmo- 

 nise in height and extent with the plain, and be surrounded with 

 other smaller hills at various distances, and of different heights 

 and forms: by this means the fault just mentioned will be 

 avoided. As we often observe in nature the highest mountains 

 gradually diminishing in height and finally ending in low hills, 

 before the mountainous character is thrown aside, and a transi- 

 tion takes place into an apparently level plain, thus the landscape- 

 gardener, when he has created a hilty country, must not let it 

 subside suddenly into a level plain, without showing here and 

 there distant small eminences, which appear as if torn apart from 

 their neighbours, and yet seem to belong to them. 



4. Hills cannot be formed with the usual garden instruments, 

 viz. shovels, spades, and hoes. * The cleverest artist would en- 

 deavour in vain to communicate to his hills the varied multiplicity 

 of forms which nature impresses on hers, so as to be mistaken 

 for real ones. 



What useless labour would be expended in forming the decli- 

 vity of a hill with tools, so that it should carry on its surface 

 every slight concavity and gentle prominence which are multiplied 

 to infinity, and which strip a mass of earth of this description of 

 its heaviness and uniformity, communicating at the same time the 

 lightness and multiplicity of forms observable in nature. It also 

 happens, that, if a hill can be thus formed artificially to resemble 

 nature with garden tools, this labour cannot be effected by the 

 artist alone; he must necessarily employ common labourers in 

 the work, who have usually not the least idea of the beauties of 

 nature or of her forms. The gently undulating line is quite foreign 

 to this sort of people; and if, notwithstanding this, they are 

 employed to form hills with their tools, then only such forms will 

 be produced as neither belong to nature nor art, as may easily 

 be expected, and of which many English gardens give very ob- 

 vious examples. 



5. But for this construction there is a peculiar process, by 

 which the landscape-gardener can produce hills in his grounds 



* Some hills which were formed with tools, and were not successful, put 

 .we in the way of pursuing this better method. 



