HISTORICAL NOTICES. 
23 
of that day in gardening, seemed, doubtless, to render espe- 
cially necessary, but which the discordant abortions of am- 
bitious, would-be men of taste, prove is one soonest violated 
in every succeeding age. 
The change in the popular feeling thus created, soon 
gave rise to innovations in the practical art. Bridgeman, 
the fashionable garden artist of the time, struck, as Horace 
Walpole thinks, by Pope’s criticisms, banished verdant 
sculpture from his plans, and introduced bits of forest scene- 
ry in the gardens at Richmond. And Loudon and Wise, 
the two noted nurserymen of the day, laid out Kensington 
gardens anew in a manner so much more natural as to 
elicit the warm commendations of Addison in the Specta- 
tor. It is not too much to say that Kent was the leader of 
this class. Originally a painter, and the friend of Lord 
Burlington, he next devoted himself to the subject, and 
was, undoubtedly, the first professional landscape gardener 
in the modern style. Previous artists had confined their 
efforts within the rigid walls of the garden, but Kent, who 
saw in all nature a garden-landscape, demolished the walls, 
introduced the ha-ha , and by blending the park and the 
garden, substituted for the primness of the old enclosure, 
the freedom of the ‘pleasure-ground. His taste seems to 
have been partly formed by Pope, and the Twickenham 
garden was the prototype of those of Carlton House, Kent’s 
chef d? oeuvre. And, notwithstanding his faults, “his tem- 
ples, obelisks, and gazabos of every description in the park, 
all stuck about in their respective high places,” notwith- 
standing that his passion for natural effects led him into the 
absurdity of sometimes planting an old dead tree to make 
the allusion more perfect, we have no hesitation in ac- 
cording to Kent the merit of first fully establishing, in 
