LANDSCAPE GARDENING 
245 
pioneers of this school of Nature. Dyer, in his poem of 
Grongar Hill , and Thomson, in his Seasons , called up 
pictures which the gardeners and architects of the day strove 
to imitate in the scenery they planned. The idea was to 
create a landscape such as poets celebrated or as Claude 
immortalized on canvas. But the lovers of the beauties of 
Nature soon became as hopelessly fettered by rules and theories 
as had been the designers of the more formal schools. The 
gardens they laid out were planned to produce a set impression 
on the beholder. “ Garden scenes/' wrote the poet Shenstone, 
“ may perhaps be divided into the sublime, the beautiful, and 
the melancholy or pensive/' 1 “ Art/' says this same writer, 
“ should never be allowed to set foot in the province of Nature/' 
and yet these gardeners advocated every sort of artifice to 
impose on the spectator, and to make the landscape appear 
different from what it really was. Shenstone himself suggests 
a means by which an avenue may be made to appear longer 
than its true length. “ An avenue that is widened in front and 
planted there with yew trees, then firs, then with trees more 
and more fady, till they end in the almond willow or silver 
osier ; will produce a very remarkable deception." His own 
garden at Leasowes was held by all who practised this “ art 
of gardening " to be a most perfect specimen of this style. 
There was a lake, and small streams, and cascades, which 
George Mason describes as “ living fountains/' and says they 
were here “ carried to the pitch of perfection." A seat over¬ 
looking one of these streams was inscribed with a poem in its 
praise, which ends thus : 
“ Flow, gentle stream, nor let the vain 
Thy small unsullied stores disdain :■—■ 
Nor let the pensive sage repine 
Whose latent course resembles thine.” 
All through the garden, in the dingle, or by the side of the 
serpentine walks, seats, grottoes, ruins, or urns, appeared at 
unexpected places, and were inscribed with lines addressed to 
some friend, or singing the praises of some natural beauty. 
Most conspicuous among the innovations was the change in 
1 Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening , by Wm. Shenstone, 1764. 
