334 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
If any person will take the trouble to compare a piece of 
water so formed, when complete, with the square or circular 
sheets or ponds now in vogue among us, he must indeed be 
little gifted with an appreciation of the beautiful, if he do not 
at once perceive the surpassing merit of the natural style. 
In the old method, the banks, level, or rising alike on all 
sides, without any or but few surrounding trees, carefully 
gravelled along the edge of the water, or what is still worse, 
walled up, slope away in a tame, dull, uninteresting grass 
field. In the natural method, the outline is varied, sometimes 
receding from the eye, at others stealing out, and inviting the 
gaze — the banks here slope off gently with a gravelly beach, 
and there rise abruptly in different heights, abounding with 
hollows, projections, and eminences, showing various colour- 
ed rocks and soils, intermingled with a luxuriant vegetation 
of all sizes and forms, corresponding to the different situations. 
Instead of allowing the sun to pour down in one blaze of 
light, without any objects to soften it with their shade, the 
thick overhanging groups and masses of trees cast, here and 
there, deep cool shadows. Stealing through the leaves and 
branches, the sun-beams quiver and play upon the surface of 
the flood, and are reflected back in dancing light, while their 
full glow upon the broader and more open portions of the 
lake is relieved, and brought into harmony, by the cooler and 
softer tints mirrored in the water from the surrounding hues 
and tints of banks, rocks, and vegetation. 
Natural brooks and rivulets may often be improved great- 
ly by a few trifling alterations or additions, when they chance 
to come within the bounds of a country residence. Occa- 
sionally, they may be diverted from their original beds when 
they run through distant and unfrequented parts of the 
demesne, and brought through nearer portions of the pleasure- 
grounds or lawn. This, however, can only be done, with 
