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ON THE PROGRESS AND PRINCIPLES OF ORNAMENTAL 

 GARDENING. 



The art of ornamental gardening has been studied more or less among civi- 

 lised nations, from the earliest periods of which we have any detailed records. 

 The " hanging gardens " of the palaced terraces of Babylon, — the minutely- 

 described pleasure-grounds of the villas of Pliny, so carefully recorded by their 

 vain possessor, — the architectural melange of art and nature at Versailles, — and 

 the landscape gardens of more recent date in England, give us very distant and 

 distinct phases of the art, influenced by the peculiar character of the state of 

 civilisation which called them respectively into existence ; yet in each phase, 

 however different in character, we may safely imagine equally beautiful results 

 to have been produced ; for, wherever in art a true principle governs a design, 

 not only in its general conception but in the working out of all its minor and 

 ornamental details, beautiful combinations must be evolved, and results agreeable 

 to the reason and pleasing to the eye must be produced. Two principles 

 totally opposite in character, followed out in any design of art with equal talent, 

 would produce one common result — beauty. However opposite in effect, the 

 result would be, in beauty, equal. They would please differently prejudiced or 

 differently constituted minds in different degrees, but the abstract beauty would 

 still be equal. For instance, to borrow an illustration from an art nearly related 

 to the one under discussion, architecture, — the Grecian and Gothic styles (taking 

 each in their purest period) may be said to be equally beautiful ; the Grecian, 

 following out its principle of a combination of horizontal lines, and the Gothic 

 its reverse principle of a combination of perpendicular lines, have each arrived 

 at beauty by opposite roads ; and hence it would seem that what is called 

 " taste," or criticism in art, should consist, not in preferring beauty under any 

 particular form or influence, but in appreciating beauty in the abstract, let the 

 forms under which it is presented, and the principles by which it is produced, 

 be what they may. . Without a governing principle, and that principle in 

 harmonious accordance with time, place, and circumstance, true beauty cannot 

 be produced in artistical combinations ; and hence it appears also, not only that 

 " taste," or criticism, consists in the equal appreciation of beauty produced by 

 opposite principles, but that works of combination in art, produced without a 

 governing principle, are devoid of taste, and beneath criticism. 



It is common to hear persons, speaking from prejudice, or feelings which 

 have at some time or other received their colouring from peculiar circumstances, 

 speak of the " stiff and unmeaning"" or " frightful " taste of the Dutch or French 

 gardens of the last century ; others equally decry the " stupid serpentine walks, 

 rustic bridges," &c, of the more modern landscape garden: — each is equally 



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