PREFACE 



It has seemed to the authors that there is a real 

 need for a book which will sum up, in a compact 

 way, the most definite principles of design as ap- 

 plied to Landscape Gardening. As in aU subjects 

 relating to the fine and applied arts, very definite 

 principles, rather than laws exist, though they are 

 not always as easy of demonstration as the laws of 

 physics and mathematics. 



"I confess that the great object of my ambition 

 is not merely to produce a hook of pictures, but to 

 furnish some hints for establishing the fact, that 

 true taste in landscape gardening, as well as in all 

 the other polite arts, is not an accidental effect, 

 operating on the outward senses, but an appeal to 

 the understanding, which is able to compare, to 

 separate, and to combine, the various external ob- 

 jects, and to trace them to some preexisting causes 

 in the structure of the human mind. ' ' — Humphrey 

 Repton. 



That such principles exist is not a matter of com- 

 mon knowledge or opinion, if one may judge by the 



