HISTORICAL NOTICES. 
21 
The most distinguished English Landscape Gardeners 
of recent date, are the late Humphrey Repton, who died in 
1818; arid since him John Claudius Loudon better known 
in this country, as the celebrated gardening author. Repton’s 
taste in Landscape gardening was cultivated and elegant, 
and many of the finest parks and pleasure grounds of 
England, at the present day, bear witness to the skill and 
harmony of his designs. His published works are full of 
instructive hints, and at Cobham Hall, one of the finest 
seats in Britain, is an inscription to his memory, by Lord 
Darnley. 
Mr. Loudon’s* writings and labors in tasteful gardening, 
are too well known, to render it necessary that we should 
do more than allude to them here. Much of what is known 
of the art in this country undoubtedly is, more or less 
directly, to be referred to the influence of his published 
works. Although he is, as it seems to us, somewhat 
deficient as an artist in imagination, no previous author 
ever deduced, so clearly, sound artistical principles in Land- 
scape Gardening and Rural Architecture ; and fitness, good 
sense, and beauty, are combined with much unity of feeling 
in all his works. 
As the modern style owes its origin mainly to the 
English, so it has also been developed and carried to its 
greatest perfection in the British Islands. The law of 
primogeniture, which has there so long existed, in itself, 
contributes greatly to the continual improvement and 
embellishment of those vast landed estates, that remain 
perpetually in the hands of the same family. Magnificent 
* While we are revising the second edition, we regret deeply to learn the death 
of Mr. Loudon. His herculean labors as an author have at last destroyed him ; 
Hid in his death we lose one who has done more than any other person that 
ever lived, to popularize, and render universal, a taste for Gardening and 
Domestic Architecture. 
