REVIEW OF " THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
141 
harangue. If the visitor applies to know the meaning of the angles and contor 
tion, in Petruchio's language— 
' What ! up and down, carved like an apple tart. 
Here's snip, and nip, and cut, and slish, and slash, 
Like to a censer in a barber's shop— 5 
he receives the plausible reply, that what he now sees is not the final result of the 
designer's art ; but that all this fantastic zig-zaggery, which resembles the traces of 
a dog scampering among snow, is only a set of preparations. It resembles, we are 
told, a lady's tresses in papillotes, as they are called, and in training for the con- 
quests which they are to make when combed into becoming ringlets." {Quart. 
Review, March, 1828.) The examples referred to by Sir Walter are considered by 
Mr. W. S. Gilpin as having been produced by the mischievous effects of conceit and 
ignorance. 
The style in question is evidently much more artificial, and consequently stiff, 
as may be seen in the Birmingham borders, than the Dutch-clipt hedges and yew 
trees cut out in pretended imitation of peacocks, and the like ; and it is rather 
surprising that the cutting satire in the paper just quoted has not done as much to 
banish these bizarreries, as was done by Pope's witty paper in the Guardian* 
" People of- the common level of understanding," says Pope, " are principally 
delighted with the little niceties and fantastical operations of art, and constantly 
think that finest which is least natural. A citizen is no sooner proprietor of a 
couple of yews, but he entertains thoughts of erecting them into giants, like those 
of Guildhall. I knew an eminent cook, who beautified his country seat with a 
coronation dinner of greens, where you see the champion, &c, flourishing on 
horseback at one end of the table, and the queen in perpetual youth at the other." 
{Guardian, No. 173.) There was at least meaning in the cook's madness, but 
what the grotesque figures at Bethlehem, or the mazy tambour work at Birmingham 
means, it would be hard to discover, unless it can be traced to the artificial love of 
curves and irregularity. 
|The truth is, that it is much more natural ; and M. Cousin justly and profoundly 
considers it an innate taste in man to admire regularity than irregularity. Nay, it is 
even so in natural productions, as is seen in the re-entrant angles of mountain 
valleys, in the balanced arms and heads of trees, and particularly in the exact cor- 
respondence of the right and left sides of all animal bodies. It is, therefore, a 
narrow, partial, and incorrect principle to represent nature as irregular. At the 
same time, it seems to be quite forgotten that gardens are not natural, but artificial 
productions, nearly as much so as houses, or temples, or statues ; any attempt to 
conceal the art, any attempt to make a garden not appear like a garden, but like a 
natural wood, or a natural wilderness, must prove abortive or ridiculous. I am well 
aware that it is maintained by some as a general principle of the fine arts, that they 
should be as exact imitations of nature as possible ; grapes so natural that birds 
would peck at them, and the like ; but nothing would be easier than to disprove 
the doctrine. If a tragedian, in Macbeth, for example, were to imitate nature so 
closely as to deceive the audience into a belief in the reality, hundreds would leap 
