20 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



residences in the country, its principles may be studied 

 ivitii advantage, even by him who has only three trees to 

 plant for ornament; and we hope no one will think his 

 grounds too small, to feel willing to add something to the 

 general amount of beauty in the country. If the possessor 

 of the cottage acre would embellish in accordance with 

 propriety, he must not, as we have sometimes seen, render 

 the whole ridiculous by aiming at ambitious and costly em- 

 bellishments ; but he will rather seek to delight us by the 

 good taste evinced in the tasteful simplicity of the whole 

 arrangement. And if the proprietors of our country villas, 

 in their improvements, are more likely to run into any one 

 error than another, we fear it will be that of too great a 

 desire for display — too many vases, temples, and seats, — 

 and too little purity and simplicity of general effect. 



The inquiring reader will perhaps be glad to have a 

 glance at the history and progress of the art of tasteful 

 gardening ; a recurrence to which, as well as to the history 

 of the fine arts, will afford abundant proof that, in the first 

 stage or infancy of all these arts, while the perception of 

 their ultimate capabilities is yet crude and imperfect, man- 

 kind has, in every instance, been completely satisfied with 

 the mere exhibition of design or art. Thus in Sculpture 

 the first statues were only attempts to imitate rudely the 

 form of a human figure, or in painting, to represent that of 

 a tree : the skill of the artist, in effecting an imitation suc- 

 cessfully, being sufficient to excite the astonishment and 

 admiration of those who had not yet made such advances 

 as to enable them o appreciate the superior beauty of 

 expression. 



Landscape Gardening is, indeed, only a niodeiTi word, 

 first coined, we believe, by Shenstone. 



