Book II. 



IN DIFFERENT CLIMATES. 



117 



subdivided, by stripes of wood, rows of trees, canals, ponds, walls, and hedges. The 

 credit or distinction to be obtained here, by continuing to employ the ancient style, could 

 be no greater than what the Romans would have obtained by imitating nature. In their 

 case all the country was one scene of uncultivated, in ours it was one scene of cultivated, 

 beauty. In this state of things the modern style was adopted, not solely from a wish to 

 imitate the gardening of the Chinese, or a high degree of refinement in taste, but from 

 the steady operation of the same motives which produced and continued the ancient style, 

 — a desire of distinction. 



533. The modern style of gardening is unsuitable to countries not generally under cul- 

 tivation. The English style cannot long please in such countries as Sweden, Poland, 

 and America, otherwise than from its novelty, or as giving rise to certain associations 

 with the people, whose name it bears. What delight or distinction can be produced by 

 the English style in Poland, for example, where the whole country is one forest, and 

 the cultivated spots only so many open glades, with the most irregular and picturesque 

 sylvan boundaries ? But let a proprietor there dispose of the scenery around his resi- 

 dence in the Roman or French manner ; let him display a fruit or kitchen garden 

 bounded by high stone walls ; a farm subdivided by clipped hedges and ditches ; and a 

 pleasure-ground of avenues, stars, circles, fountains, statues, temples, and prospect- 

 towers, and he will gratify every spectator. The view of so much art, industry, and 

 magnificence, amid so much wild and rude scenery, awake so many social ideas of com- 

 fort and happiness, and so much admiration at the wealth and skill employed, that a 

 mind of the greatest refinement and the justest taste would feel the highest sensation of 

 pleasure, and approve as much of such a country -residence in the wilds of Poland or 

 America, as he would of the most natural and picturesque residence of England, amid 

 its highly artificial scenery. Such is the dreariness of the public roads in Poland, 

 Sweden, and Lapland, that the stran- 

 ger-traveller hails as marks of civili- 

 sation [jig. 41.) what in cultivated 

 countries would fill his mind with 

 horror. 



534. The modem style is not an 

 improvement on the ancient manner, 

 but the substitute of one style for 

 another. Part of the prevailing an- 

 tipathy to the ancient style proceeds 

 from a generally entertained idea, 

 that the modern is an improvement 

 on it, in the same way as a modern plough is an improvement on the clumsy implements 

 of our ancestors ; but the truth is, the two styles are as essentially and entirely different 

 in principle, as painting and architecture, the one being an imitative, and the other an 

 inventive art. The more the ancient style is improved and perfected, the more it will 

 differ from the modern style ; and neither improvement nor neglect of the modern style 

 will ever bring it a step nearer the ancient manner. 



Landscape-gardening agrees with ancient gardening in no other circumstance than as employing the same 

 materials. It is an imitative art, like painting or poetry, and is governed by the same laws. The ancient 

 style is an inventive and mixed art, like architecture, and governed by the same principles. The beauties 

 which architecture and geometric gardening aimed at, were those of art and utility, in which art was every 

 where avowed. The modern style of gardening, and the arts of poetry and painting, imitate nature ; and, 

 in doing so, the art employed is studiously concealed. Those arts, therefore, can never be compared, 

 whose means are so different ; and to say that landscape-gardening is an improvement on geometric 

 gardening, is a similar misapplication of language, as to say that a lawn is an improvement of a corn-field, 

 because it is substituted in its place. It is absurd, therefore, to despise the ancient style, because it has 

 not the same beauties as the modern, to which it never aspired. It has beauties of a different kind, equally 

 perfect in their manner as those of the modern style, and equally desirable under certain circumstances. The 

 question therefore is not, whether we shall admit occasional specimens of obsolete gardening, for the sake 

 of antiquity, but whether we shall admit specimens of a different style, from that in general use, but equally 

 perfect in its kind. {Ed. Encyc. art. Landscape Gardening.) 



535. An enlightened mind will derive pleasure from every style. " When I perceive a 

 man," observes Sir W. Bridges, " incapable of deriving pleasure from more than one 

 style of composition, and dogmatising on its exclusive merit, I pity his weakness and de- 

 spise his presumption. When he narrows his curiosity, either to what is old or what is new ; 

 when he confines his praise, either to the dead or to the living, though in both cases he is 

 ridiculous, perhaps his folly is more evinced in the last." (^Censura Literuria, vol. viii. 

 p. 214.) It is the privilege of the man, who has opened to his mind by observation and 

 study all the springs of pleasant association, to delight by turns in the rudeness of solitary 

 woods, in the cheerfulness of spreading plains, in the decorations of refined art, in the 

 magnificence of luxuriant wealth, in the activity of crowded ports, the industry of cities, 

 the pomp of spectacles, the pageantry of festivals. {Ed. Rev. 1 806. ) 



536. We may therefore conclude that gardening, as an art of design, must be considered 

 relatively to the climate and situation of the country, and habits and manners of the 



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