LANDSCAPE GARDENING 249 



cedars. There was much rivalry between some of these newly- 

 laid out gardens, each having its own admirers. 



" Some cry up Gunnesbury 



For Sion some declare 

 And some say that with Chiswick 



No villa can compare 

 But ask the beaux of Middlesex 



Who know the country well 

 If Strawberry Hill — if Strawberry Hill 



Don't bear away the bell." 1 * 



Kent began life as an apprentice to a coachbuilder ; with the 

 assistance of friends he went to Italy, and studied painting. 

 He, however, never attained any good results in that art, but 

 succeeded better as an architect, and designed temples and ruins 

 for gardens. By the help of his patron, Lord Burlington, he was 

 noticed by the Queen, and made Architect and then Painter to 

 the Crown. He was looked up to by all the designers who 

 followed as the originator of the idea, and founder of the 

 School of Landscape-Gardening. At one time, his wish to 

 follow Nature carried him so far that he planted dead trees 

 in Kensington Gardens " to give a greater air of truth to the 

 scene." But Walpole says " he was soon laughed out of this 

 excess." Philip Southcote appears to have been one of the 

 first of those in whom Kent's " Elysian scenes excited the idea 

 of improving their own domains," and " the elegance of 

 Wooburn Farm (designed by him) was so conspicuous that 

 even its faults were imposing." 2 Pain's Hill, in Surrey, begun 

 about the same time by Charles Hamilton, was " a perfect 

 example of this mode." 3 It was considered thoroughly typical 

 of the best English taste, and for this reason is described by a 

 foreigner who visited it in 1761, 4 who thus gives his views on 



1 Verse from a ballad by the Earl of Bath, which appears in A Cata- 

 logue of the Classic Contents of Strawberry Hill Collected by Horace 

 Walpole, for sale by auction April, 1842. 



2 George Mason, Essay on Design in Gardening, 1768. Wooburn 

 Farm, near Chertsey, no longer existed when G. W. Johnson wrote his 

 History of English Gardening in 1829. 



3 Walpole. 



4 Diary to England in the Years 1761-62, by Count Frederick Kiel- 

 mansegge, translated by Countess Kielmansegge, 1902. Longman. 



