GARDENS AND GARDEN DESIGNERS 5 
spent where necessary. The modern formal garden is 
of quite another stamp, with its flimsily-constructed 
terraces, its ill-designed vases and statuary. There is a 
certain straining after effect noticeable, and a lack of 
dignity displayed, which makes this latter a very feeble 
imitation of its prototype. How can a modern villa be 
expected to act as a suitable foil to a style of garden 
design which is a cheap adaptation of that practised at 
Versailles or Chatsworth ? 
But, leaving the formal garden for a moment, and 
passing to a consideration of that which was the outcome 
of an entirely different set of ideas. The landscape 
school of designers believed that severity and stiffness 
were totally out of place in a garden, and the only way 
to secure artistic and beautiful effects was to go direct 
to Nature for a model. This was right in so far as it 
went; it became ridiculous when carried to extremes. 
If ‘* Capability Brown,” himself the most noted member 
of the new school, and his followers had been content 
to study Nature, gathering thus many valuable lessons, 
and then being content to adapt them to the altered 
conditions which the nature of a garden imposed, much 
good might have resulted. But instead, their great 
ambition was to stifle any ideas they might have on the 
subject, and become slavish imitators, trying to reproduce 
a whole landscape within the small limits of the garden 
boundaries. Brown was hailed as a genius, and his 
advice requisitioned in the remodelling of many of 
England’s best gardens. All traces of formality were 
swept away, the terraces, stately parterres, yew hedges, 
and regular-shaped beds were abolished, and the ground 
laid out on entirely new lines. This consisted in the 
introduction of miniature mountains, streams and torrents, 
the latter crossed by bridges; the remaking of paths, so 
that they wound in serpentine curves, entailing needless 
labour to traverse. At Blenheim, Brown turned a river 
