Theory and Practice i6i 



The history of gardening is very learnedly discussed, 

 in a brief inquiry into the knowledge the ancients pos- 

 sessed of the art, by Dr. Faulkner; and the same sub- 

 ject is more lightly but not less correctly or elegantly 

 treated by my late ingenious friend, Daniel Malthus, 

 Esq., in a preface to his translation of " D'Ermenonville 

 de la Composition des Paysages." 



Every person the least interested in this study must 

 have read the beautiful Poems of Mason, and De 

 Lisle, the "Oriental. Gardening" of Sir William Cham- 

 bers, and the "Observations on Modern Gardening," 

 by Mr. Whately; but, perhaps, few have seen that 

 elaborate performance, in five volumes quarto, published 

 in German and also in French, under the title of" Theorie 

 de I'Art des Jardins," by M. Hirschfeld, a work in 

 which are collected extracts from almost every book, in 

 every European language, that has any reference to the 

 scenery of nature or to the art of landscape gardening. ''^ 



When gardening was conducted by the geometric 

 principles of the school of Le Notre, the perfection of 

 planting was deemed to consist in straight lines of trees, 

 or regular corresponding forms of plantation ; and as 

 the effect of this style of gardening greatly depended on 

 a level surface of ground, we often find that prodigious 

 labour was employed to remove those inequalities 

 which nature opposed to this ill-judging taste. 



At Wimpole the natural shape of the surface seemed 

 to invite this fashion for geometric forms; the ground 

 was covered in every direction with trees in straight 

 lines, circles, squares, triangles, and in almost every 

 mathematical figure. These had acquired the growth of 

 a century when the taste of gardening changed, and as 

 every absurd fashion is apt to run from one extreme to 



