20 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
residences in the country, it's principles may be studied 
with advantage, even by him who has only three trees to 
plant for ornament; and we hope no one will think his 
grounds too small, to feel willing to add something to the 
general amount of beauty in the country. If the possessor 
of the cottage acre would embellish in accordance with 
propriety, he must not, as we have sometimes seen, rendei 
the whole ridiculous by aiming at ambitious and costly em- 
bellishments ; but he will rather seek to delight us by the 
good taste evinced in the tasteful simplicity of the whole 
arrangement. And if the proprietors of our country villas, 
in their improvements, are more likely to run into any one 
error than another, we fear it will be that of too great a 
desire for display — too many vases, temples, and seats, — 
and too little purity and simplicity of general effect. 
The inquiring reader will perhaps be glad to have a 
glance at the history and progress of the art of tasteful 
gardening ; a recurrence to which, as well as to the history 
of the fine arts, will afford abundant proof that, in the first 
stage or infancy of all these arts, while the perception of 
their ultimate capabilities is yet crude and imperfect, man- 
kind has, in every instance, been completely satisfied with 
the mere exhibition of design or art. Thus in Sculpture 
the first statues were only attempts to imitate rudely the 
form of a human figure, or in painting, to represent that of 
a tree : the skill of the artist, in effecting an imitation suc- 
cessfully, ‘being sufficient to excite the astonishment and 
admiration of those who had not yet made such advances 
as to enable them o appreciate the superior beauty of 
expression. 
Landscape Gardening is, indeed, only a modern word; 
first coined, we believe, by Shenstone. 
