56 The Art of Landscape Gardening 



into distinct parts or distances, because the eye is never 

 long delighted, unless the imagination has some share 

 in its pleasure : an intricacy and entanglement of parts 

 heighten the satisfaction. The landscape gardener may 

 also class his distances under three distinct characters, 

 but very different from those of the painter. The first 

 includes that part of the scene which is in his power to 

 improve; the second, that which is not in his power 

 to prevent being injured ; and the third, that which 

 is not in the power of himself, or any other, either to 

 injure or improve. The part which the painter calls his 

 middle distance is often that which the landscape gar- 

 dener finds under the control of others; and the fore- 

 ground of the painter can seldom be introduced into 

 the composition of the gardener's landscape, from the 

 whole front of a house, because the best landscapes of 

 Claude will be found to owe their beauty to that kind 

 of foreground which could only be applied to one par- 

 ticular window of a house, and would exclude all view 

 from that adjoining. 



The enthusiasm for picturesque effect seems to have 

 so completely bewildered the author of the poem 

 already mentioned that he not only mistakes the essen- 

 tial difference between the landscape painter and the 

 landscape gardener, but appears even to forget that a 

 dwelling-house is an object of comfort and convenience, 

 for the purposes of habitation, and not merely the 

 frame to a landscape, or the foreground to a rural 

 picture. The want of duly considering the affinity 

 between painting and gardening is the source of those 

 errors and false principles which I find too frequently 

 prevailing in the admirers of or connoisseurs in paint- 

 ing : and I do not hesitate to acknowledge that I once 

 supposed the two arts to be more intimately connected 



