78 



HISTORY OF GARDENING. 



Part I. 



WQter, which water .uniformly assumed one shape and character, and differed no more 

 in different situations, than did the belt or the clump. So entirely mechanical had the 

 art become, that any one might have guessed what would be the plan given by the pro- 

 fessor before he was called in ; and Price actually gives an instance in which this was 

 done. The activity of tliis false taste was abated in England before our time ; but we 

 have seen in Scotland, between the years 1795 and 1805, we believe, above a hundred 

 of such plans, in part formed by local artists, but chiefly by an English professor, who 

 was in the habit of making annual journeys in the north, taking orders for plans, which 

 he got drawn on his return home, not one of which differed from the rest in any thing 

 but magnitude. These plans were, in general, mounted on linen, which he regularly 

 purchased in pieces of some hundreds of yards at a time, from a celebrated bleachfield 

 adjoining Perth. 



345. The monotonous jyroduclions of this mechanical style soon brought it into disrepute ; 

 and proprietors were ridiculed for expending immense sums in destroying old avenues 

 and woods, and planting in their room young clumps, for no other reason than that it 

 was the fashion to do so. 



The first symptoms of disappi-obation that were ventured to be uttered against the degradation of the new 

 taste, appear to be contained in an epistolary novel, entitled Village Memoirs, published in 1775, in 

 which the professors of gardening are satirised under the name of Layout. A better taste, however, than 

 that of Layout is acknowledged to exist, which the author states, " Shenstone and nature to have brought 

 us acquainted with." Most of the large gardens are said to be laid out by some general undertaker, " who 

 introduces the same objects at the same distances in alL" (p. 143.) The translation of Girardin Dela Com- 

 position des Paysages, ou des Moyens d'embellir la Nature autour des Habitations, en joignant Vagreable i 

 I'utile, See. accompanied with an excellent historical preface by Daniel Malthus, Esq. in 1783, must have 

 had considerable influence in purifj'ing the taste of its readers. A poem in Dodsley's collection, entitled. 

 Some Thoughts on Building and Planting, addressed to Sir James Lowther, Bart published in the same 

 year, and in which the poet recommends, that 



•* Fashion wiU not the works direct. 

 But reason be the architect." 



must have had some effect. But the Essay on Prints, and the various picturesque tours of Gilpin, pub- 

 lished at different intervals from 1768 to 1790, had the principal influence on persons of taste. The beauties 

 of light and shade, outline, grouping, and other ingredients of picturesque beauty, were never before ex- 

 hibited to the English public in popular writings. These works were eagerly read, and brought about 

 that general study of drawing and sketching landscape among the then rising generation, which has ever 

 since prevailed ; and will do more, perhaps, than any other class of studies, towards forming a taste for the 

 harmony and connection of natural scenery, the only secure antidote to the revival of the distinctness and 

 monotony which characterise that which we have been condemning. 



346. The monotonous style has been ably exposed by Price and Knight. The Essays on 

 the Picturesque, of the former, and the poem of the latter, though verging on the opposite 

 extreme of the evil they wished to remove, have greatly improved the taste of proprietors 

 and patrons. Tlie object of The Landscape, a didactic poem, is to teach tlie art of cre- 

 ating scenery more congruous and picturesque than what is met witli in that " tiresome 

 and monotonous scene called Pleasure-ground." Price's Essays on the Picturesque, and 

 on the use of studying Pictures, with a view to the improvemejit of real Landscape, are 

 written with the same intention ; but, as might be expected from a prose work, enter on 

 the subject much more at length. In order to discover " whether the present system of 

 improving is founded on any just principles of taste," Price begins by enquiring, 

 *' whether there is any standard, to which, in point of grouping and of general compo- 

 sition, works of this sort can be referred ; any authority higher than that of the persons 

 who have gained the most general and popular reputation by their works, and whose 

 method of conducting them has had the most extensive influence on the general taste." 

 This standard (which, it will be recollected by the candid reader, is desired only for what 

 relates to grouping and composition, not to utility and convenience, as some have unfairly 

 asserted) Price finds in the productions " of those great artists, who have most diligently 

 studied the beauties of nature, both in their grandest and most general effects, and in their 

 minutest detail ; who have obser%-ed every variety of form and of color ; have been able 

 to select and combine ; and then, by the magic of their art, to fix upon the canvass 

 all these various beauties." Price recommends the study of the principles of painting, 

 " not to the exclusion of nature, but as an assistant in the study of her works." He 

 points out and illustrates two kinds of beauty in landscape ; the one the picturesque, 

 characterised by roughness, abruptness, and sudden variation ; the other beauty in the 

 more general acceptation, characterised by smoothness, undulations, intermixed with a 

 certain degree of roughness and variation, producing intricacy and variety. Such beauty 

 was made choice of by Claude in his landscapes, and such, he thinks, particularly adapted 

 to the embellishment of ai'tificial sceneiy. These principles are applied by Price, in a 

 very masterly manner, to wood, water, and buildings. 



347. The reformation in taste contended for by Piice and ICnight was, like all other pro- 

 posals for reform, keenlj- opposed by professors, by a numerous class of mankind who hate 

 innovation, and with whom " whatever is is right," including perhaps some men of taste, 

 who had no feeling for the picturesque, or had mistaken the object of the book. The 

 first answer to Price's work, was a letter by Repton, in which candor obliges^ us to state, 



