GARDENS OF VARIOUS NATIONS. 59 1 



verted into an exact copy of a Dutch garden, but everywhere else this 

 style was imitated. But in the following reign Wise and Loudon 

 showed such skill in the planting of a gravel pit in Kensington 

 Gardens, as to gain from Addison the highest praise. 



The style that is essentially English, and which has been copied to 

 a greater or less extent by every other European nation, has been 

 attributed to the writings of Pope and Addison. Not only did they 

 protest against the unseemly stiffness of the gardens which were then 

 in vogue in England, but they both attempted in their country retreats 

 — the one at Twickenham, the other at Bilton near Rugby — that 

 natural picturesqueness which, from its partaking of the "beautiful 

 wildness of nature," is compared by Addison to the Pindaric manner 

 of composition ; and to this class belongs " My Garden." With 

 him, I can say that mine is "a confusion of kitchen and parterre, 

 orchard and flower garden," that is " mixt and interwoven " together. 

 As was his, so is "My Garden," "a natural wilderness," and "my 

 flowers grow up in several parts of the garden in the greatest luxu- 

 riancy and profusion." With Pliny the Elder, I agree that gardens 

 should have their due meed of honour, and that things because they 

 are common are not for that reason to enjoy the less share of our 

 consideration; so that, like Addison, "if I meet with any flower in 

 a field which pleases me, I give it a place in my garden." By this 

 means there are flowers which some of my friends have singled out 

 as some of the greatest beauties of the place, and although they might 

 have been transplanted from under a common hedge, from a field, 

 from a wood, or from a mountain. 



The first great designer—a man of truly poetic temperament— of this 

 picturesque style of landscape gardening, was Kent. In designing the 

 plans for laying out gardens he considered the genius of the place, and 

 endeavoured to improve and not to distort Nature. By him, and by 

 his successors, many of the old formal gardens were remodelled. 



Though the writings of Pope and of Addison, and later of Thom- 

 son, caused such an immediate beneficial effect upon the desigmng of 

 gardens, yet it has been by some doubted whether they were the 



