52 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
keep these expressions constantly in view, and we hope we 
shall be able fully to illustrate the difference in the expression 
of even single trees, in this respect. A few strongly marked 
objects, either picturesque, or simply beautiful, will often 
confer their character upon a whole landscape ; as the de- 
struction of a single group of bold rocks, covered with wood, 
may render a scene, once picturesque, completely insipid. 
The early writers on the modern style were content with 
trees allowed to grow in their natural forms, and with an 
easy assemblage of sylvan scenery in the pleasure-grounds, 
which resembled the usual woodland features of nature. 
The effect of this method will always be interesting, and an 
agreeable effect will ever be the result of following the 
simplest hints derived from the free and luxuriant forms of 
nature. No residence in the country can fail to be pleasing, 
whose features are natural groups of forest trees, smooth 
lawn, and hard gravel walks. 
But this is scarcely Landscape Gardening in the true sense 
of the word, although apparently so understood by many 
writers. By Landscape Gardening, we understand not only 
an imitation, in the grounds of a country residence, of the 
general forms of nature, but an expressive , harmonious , and 
refined imitation * In Landscape Gardening, we should aim 
* “ Thus, there is a beauty of nature and a beauty of art. To copy the 
beauty of nature cannot be called being an artist in the highest sense of the word, 
as a mechanical talent only is requisite for this. The beautiful in art depends 
on ideas, and the true artist, therefore, must possess, together with the talent 
for technical execution, that genial power which revels freely in rich forms, and 
is capable of producing and animating them. It is by this, that the merit of the 
artist and his production is to be judged; and these cannot be properly esti- 
mated among those barren copyists which we find so many of our flower, land- 
scape, and portrait painters to be. But the artist stands much higher in the 
scale, who, though a copyist of visible nature, is capable of seizing it with poetic 
feeling, and representing it in its more dignified sense ; such for example as 
Raphael, Poussin, Claude, &c.” — Weinbreuner. 
