APPENDIX. 
493 
IV. 
Note on professional quackery. 
Landscape Gardening, like all other arts, is not free from ignorant 
pretenders to knowledge, who, without a spark of appreciation for the 
beautiful in nature, boldly undertake to remodel, in what they con- 
sider a tasteful and fashionable style, every piece of natural landscape, 
whether of a simple or highly picturesque character. They succeed 
in leaving behind them, on the places they attempt to improve, indubitable 
marks of their footsteps in a sort of laboured ease, and stiff striving 
after grace, but they are pretty certain, also, to mar, or obliterate in a 
great degree the natural charm of any fine situation. We have seen 
one or two examples lately where a foreign soi-disant landscape gardener 
has completely spoiled the simply grand beauty of a fine river residence, 
by cutting up the breadth of a fine lawn with a ridiculous effort at 
what he considered a very charming arrangement of walks and groups 
of trees. In this case he only followed a mode sufficiently common 
and appropriate in a level inland country, like that of Germany, from 
whence he introduced it, but entirely out of keeping with the bold and 
lake-like features of the landscape which he thus made discordant. 
One of this kind of improvers was, some years ago, very cleverly 
satirized by Mr. Peacock, an English reviewer of celebrity, in a comic 
work entitled “Headlong Hall.” The latter is the name of the sup- 
posed seat of Lord Littlebrain, who has assembled around him during the 
Christmas feastings an odd party, among whom is Mr. Milestone, the 
landscape gardener, evidently a portrait of “ Capability Brown.” Mr. 
Milestone has been examining the estate, and, full of his projected park, 
is exhibiting his portfolio of drawings of the proposed improvements, to 
his host and some of the guests. 
“ Mr. Milestone. — This, you perceive, is the natural state of one 
part of the grounds. Here is a wood, never yet touched by the finger 
of taste ; thick, intricate, and gloomy. Here is a little stream, dashing 
from stone to stone, and overshadowed with these untrimmed boughs. 
Miss Tenorina. — The sweet romantic spot ! How beautifully the 
birds must sing there on a summer evening ! 
Miss Graziosa.— Dear sister ! how can you endure the horrid thicket 1 
