BEAUTIES AND PRINCIPLES OF THE ART. 65 



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individuals, or at two different times, as there is nothing 

 indicating unity of mind in its composition. 



In Landscape Gardening, violations of the principle of 

 unity are often to be met with, and they are always indi- 

 cative of the absence of correct taste in art. Looking upon 

 a landscape from the windows of a villa residence, we 

 sometimes see a considerable portion of the view embraced 

 by the eye, laid out in natural groups of trees and shrubs, 

 and upon one side, or perhaps in the middle of the same 

 scene, a formal avenue leading directly up to the house. 

 Such a view can never appear a satisfactory whole, 

 because we experience a confusion of sensations in con- 

 templating it. There is an evident incongruity in bringing 

 two modes of arranging plantations, so totally different, 

 under the eye at one moment, which distracts, rather than 

 pleases the mind. In this example, the avenue, taken by 

 itself, may be a beautiful object, and the groups and con- 

 nected masses may, in themselves, be elegant ; yet if the 

 two portions are seen together, they will not form a whole, 

 because they cannot make a composite idea. For the 

 same reason, there is something unpleasing in the introduc- 

 tion of fruit trees among elegant ornamental trees on a 

 lawn, or even in assembling together, in the same beds, 

 flowering plants and culinary vegetables — one class of 

 vegetation suggesting the useful and homely alone to the 

 mind, and the other, avowedly, only the ornamental. 



In the arrangement of a large extent of surface, where a 



great many objects are necessarily presented to the eye at 



once, the principle of unity will suggest that there should 



be some grand or leading features to which the others 



should be merely subordinate. Thus, in grouping trees, 



there should be some large and striking masses to whidti 



the others appear to belong, however distant, instead of 

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