INTRODUCTION. 



Landscape Gardening has very properly been termed an imitative 

 art, for its object is to arrange, to form into symmetry, and to beautify 

 particular scenes, in agreement with the great original, — Nature ; and 

 the closer the adherence, the more pleasing and satisfactory will be 

 the effect. Considering the advancement in the arts and sciences 

 during the latter part of the last century, it is not surprising that 

 gardening should have undergone improvement; indeed, it would 

 have been extraordinary if this delightful art had been neglected. 



In the works of Cicero and Pliny, we read of the formal and stiff 

 kind of gardening which then prevailed, such as clipped hedges 

 and long avenues of trees ; and in Propertius we read of the intro- 

 duction of statues and jets d'eau. Pliny the younger has given an 

 account of his Villa at Laurentinum, situated some distance from 

 Rome ; he describes a variety of building attached to it, and the 



B 



