254 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



ment. It is, however, a nice question, that would admit of 

 many plausible arguments on both sides." 



Gilpin also doubts the expedience of the alterations Brown 

 was carrying out at Roche Abbey, when he visited that place. 

 Brown, it is said, was himself unable to draw a line, and had 

 had no artistic training or education sufficient to understand 

 the historical interest, or natural beauties of the scenes he 

 tried to improve. It is therefore not to be wondered at that 

 he signally failed, on many occasions, in his endeavours to 

 create a more suitable landscape. " Many modern places," 

 wrote Gilpin, " he has adorned and beautified, but a ruin 

 presented a new idea, which I doubt whether he has sufficiently 

 considered. He has finished one of the valleys which look 

 towards Laughton spire : he has floated it with a lake, and 

 formed it into a very beautiful scene. But I fear it is too- 

 magnificent and too-artificial an appendage to be in unison 

 with the ruins of an Abbey." 1 He levelled all the ground 

 round the old Abbey, leaving the walls and pillars standing in 

 " a neat bowling-green," and he removed all the overgrown 

 pieces of ruin and mounds, which showed the old lines of the 

 building, and even took stones from the Abbey to make the 

 dam in the river, and get the effect of a waterfall. Gilpin 

 most sarcastically remarks : " If Mr. Brown should proceed a 

 step further, pull down the ruin, and build an elegant mansion, 

 everything would then be right." Some of Brown's handiwork 

 about the ruins has of late been removed, and their former 

 conditions, as much as possible, restored. 



The following is the Agreement between Brown and Lord 

 Scarborough made at the time of these alterations : 2 



The Agreement between Lord Scarborough and " Capability 

 Brown," 1774. 



September the 12th, 1774. 

 Then an Agreement made between the Earl of Scarbrough 

 on the one Part, and Lancelot Brown on the other, for the 



1 Gilpin, Observations on Picturesque Beauty, 1776, Particulvrly the 

 Highlands of Scotland. 



2 Copied from the original manuscript at Sandbeck, by the kind 

 permission of the Earl of Scarborough. 



