22 Xan&scape Hrcbftecture 



Andrew Jackson Downing writes in 1844, in his 

 work on landscape gardening: 



"Brown seems to have been a mannerist with so 

 little true sjrmpathy with nature as to be the jest of 

 every succeeding generation — great and fashionable 

 as the fortune he amassed and the long hst of royal 

 and noble places which he remodelled sufficiently 

 prove him to have been in his day. 'Capability 

 Brown,' as he was nicknamed, saw in every new 

 place great capabilities, but unfortunately his own 

 mind seems to have fturnished but one model — a. 

 round lake, a smooth bare lawn, a clump of trees, and 

 a boundary belt — which he expanded with few varia- 

 tions, to suit the compass of an estate of a thousand 

 acres, or a cottage with a few roods. " 



Loudon says : 



"The places he altered are beyond all reckoning. 

 Improvement was the fashion of the time, and there 

 was scarcely a country gentleman who did not, on 

 some occasion or other, consult the gardening idol 

 of the day. Mason the poet praises this artist and 

 Horace Walpole apologizes for not praising him." 



Here are some wise and sensible remarks fotmd in 

 the writings of Humphrey Repton, about 1797: 



"If it should appear that, instead of displaying 

 new doctrines or furnishing novel ideas, this volume 

 serves rather by a new method to elucidate old 



