254 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
ment. It is, however, a nice question, that would admit of 
many plausible arguments on both sides.” 
Gilpin also doubts the expedience of the alterations Brown 
was carrying out at Roche Abbey, when he visited that place. 
Brown, it is said, was himself unable to draw a line, and had 
had no artistic training or education sufficient to understand 
the historical interest, or natural beauties of the scenes he 
tried to improve. It is therefore not to be wondered at that 
he signally failed, on many occasions, in his endeavours to 
create a more suitable landscape. “ Many modern places,” 
wrote Gilpin, “ he has adorned and beautified, but a ruin 
presented a new idea, which I doubt whether he has sufficiently 
considered. He has finished one of the valleys which look 
towards Laughton spire : he has floated it with a lake, and 
formed it into a very beautiful scene. But I fear it is too- 
magnificent and too-artificial an appendage to be in unison 
with the ruins of an Abbey.” 1 He levelled all the ground 
round the old Abbey, leaving the walls and pillars standing in 
“ a neat bowling-green,” and he removed all the overgrown 
pieces of ruin and mounds, which showed the old lines of the 
building, and even took stones from the Abbey to make the 
dam in the river, and get the effect of a waterfall. Gilpin 
most sarcastically remarks : “ If Mr. Brown should proceed a 
step further, pull down the ruin, and build an elegant mansion, 
everything would then be right.” Some of Brown’s handiwork 
about the ruins has of late been removed, and their former 
conditions, as much as possible, restored. 
The following is the Agreement between Brown and Lord 
Scarborough made at the time of these alterations : 2 
The Agreement between Lord Scarborough and “ Capability 
Brown” 1774. 
September the 12th, 1774. 
Then an Agreement made between the Earl of Scarbrough 
on the one Part, and Lancelot Brown on the other, for the 
1 Gilpin, Observations on Picturesque Beauty , 1776, Particularly the 
Highlands of Scotland. 
2 Copied from the original manuscript at Sandbeck, by the kind 
permission of the Earl of Scarborough. 
