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LANDSCAPE GARDENING, 
lawn. They are even, in most cases, denied the advantage 
of shade, except perhaps occasionally a few straggling trees 
can be said to fulfil that purpose ; for richly tufted margins, 
and thickets of overhanging shrubs, are accompaniments 
rare indeed.* 
Lakes or ponds are the most beautiful forms in which 
* Simple and easy, as would appear the artificial imitation of these variations 
of nature, yet to an unpractised hand, and a tasteless mind, nothing is really more 
difficult. To produce meagre right lines and geometrical forms is extremely easy 
in any of the fine arts, but to give the grace, spirit, and variety of nature, requires 
both tasteful perception and some practice ; hence, in the infancy of any art, 
the productions are characterized by extreme meagerness and simplicity of 
which the first efforts to draw the human figure or to form artificial pieces of water, 
are good examples. 
Brown, who was one of the early practitioners of the modern style abroad, and 
who just saw far enough to lay aside the ancient formal method, without apprecia- 
ting nature sufficiently to be willing to take her for his model, once disgraced half 
of the finest places in England with his tame, bald pieces of artificial water, and 
round, formal clumps of trees. Mr. Knight, in his elegant poem, “ The Landscape,’’ 
spiritedly rebuked this practice in the following lines : — 
“ Shaved to the brink our brooks are taught to flow 
Where no obtruding leaves or branches grow : 
While clumps of shrubs bespot each winding vale 
Open alike to every gleam and gale : 
Each secret haunt and deep recess display’d. 
And intricacy banished with its shade. 
Hence, hence ! thou haggard fiend, however call’d. 
The meagre genius of the bare and bald ; 
Thy spade and mattock here at length lay down, 
And follow to the tomb, thy favourite, Brown ; 
Thy favourite Brown, whose innovating hand, 
First dealt thy curses o’er this fertile land ; 
First taught the walk in spiral forms to move, 
And from their haunts the secret Dryads drove ; 
With clumps bespotted o’er the mountain’s side, 
And bade the stream ’twixt banks close-shaven glide $ 
Banish’d the thickets of high tow’ring wood 
Which hung reflected o’er the glassy flood.” 
