26 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
and refined by art • while the latter abounds in puerilities 
and whimsical conceits — rocky hills, five feet high — minia- 
ture bridges— dwarf oaks, a hundred years old and twenty 
inches in altitude — which, whatever may be our admiration 
for the curious ingenuity and skill tasked in their produc- 
tion, leave on our mind, no very favourable impression of 
the taste which designed them. 
The most distinguished English Landscape Gardeners of 
more recent date, are the late Humphrey Repton, who died 
in 1818 ; and since him John Claudius Loudon, better known 
in this country, as the celebrated gardening author. Repton’s 
taste in Landscape gardening was cultivated and elegant, and 
many of the finest parks and pleasure grounds of England, 
at the present day, bear witness to the skill and harmony of 
his designs. His published works are full of instructive 
hints, and at Cobham Hall, one of the finest seats in 
Britain, is an inscription to his memory, by Lord Darnley. 
Mr. Loudon’s* writings and labours in tasteful gardening, 
are too well known, to render it necessary that we should 
do more than allude to them here. Much of what is known 
of the art in this country undoubtedly is, more or less directly 
to be referred to the influence of his published works. Al- 
though he is, as it seems to us, somewhat deficient as an 
artist, in imagination, no previous author ever deduced, so 
clearly, sound artistical principles in Landscape Gardening, 
and Rural Architecture ; and fitness, good sense, and beauty, 
are combined with a remarkable unity of feeling in all his 
works. 
* While we are revising this edition, we regret deeply to learn the death of Mr. 
Loudon. His herculean labours as an author, have at last destroyed him ; and 
in his death we lose one who has done more than any other person that ever 
lived to popularise, and render universal, a taste for Gardening and Domestic 
Architecture. 
