THE PLANTEE's GUIDE. 



35 



the method of employing it, as interesting to landscape 

 gardening ; but few particulars are recorded of the pro- 

 gress made by either art on this side of the Tweed. To 

 a nation not inconstant nor Tolatile, and certainly poor, 

 when compared with their present condition, it was no 

 very easy nor grateful undertaking, to demoHsh at once 

 their favourite terraces, their formal gardens, and other 

 appendages of ancient grandeur, for a new-fangled art of 

 which Price wittily said that Horace had long since 

 described it in three words ; for its leading merit consists 

 in exchanging squares and parallelograms for circles and 

 ellipses, — 



" Mutat quadrata rotundis."* 



When such was the only master under whom the art 

 of transplanting was studied in Scotland, we shall not 

 greatly wonder at the slender advances it has made, or 

 rather at the ill success that has attended it, for more 

 than half a century. In fact, it may be said that it is 

 at this moment in no better condition, as to either skill 

 or science, than Robertson left it threescore years since. 

 This artist (according to the account given by Hayes of 

 his own practice,! which was borrowed from Robertson's) 

 was not very nice in his selection of subjects, but took 

 them indiscriminately from close woods and open disposi- 

 tions, just as either fell in his way ; so that if his method 

 was bad, as we have already seen, his subjects must have 

 been at least as bad as his method. As to the attempt 

 to introduce a better, there is reason to think that, more 

 than thirty years since, I myself was probably the first 

 planter who made known in Scotland the mode of pre- 

 paring the roots of trees as practised by Lord Fitzharding ; 



* Essays on the Picturesque, vol. i. p. 230. f Practical Treatise on Planting. 



