APRIL. 
99 
places were altered to the new order of things were at all equal to the 
due appreciation of pure English landscape. 
There was, in fact, at this period an outcry against the French 
school, which had declined from the time of La Notre, or, rather, so 
many puerilities and absurdities had been introduced into its component 
parts, that it was fairly open to the keen shafts of ridicule directed 
against it by Pope, and to the less violent, but perhaps more persuasive, 
remonstrances of Addison. The public therefore condemned it without 
a hearing, and without the least regard to its many points of grandeur, 
and suitability to accompany a high order of architecture. 
I am quite willing to confess that both Bridgeman and Kent, who 
were the first regular professors of the new school (though much over¬ 
praised at the time by the false taste of the day), had a genius for their 
work, and that, barring the difficulties inseparable from running from 
one extreme of style to another, laid down principles which even now 
we must admire. I am further willing to admit that Kent had perhaps 
a purer taste than any of his followers for true natural scenery, 
infinitely more so, I consider, than Brown. Ye> with all this, when 
their ideas came into the hands of others to be carried out, the professors 
must either have given up an important principle of their art, have 
blindly introduced what was quite as inconsistent with the style adopted 
as they had so unmercifully swept away, for we find that temples to 
the heathen divinities, grottoes, alcoves, statues from the Greek 
mythology, and tablets inscribed with the most wretched poetry, were 
plentifully interwoven through scenery styled, par excellence^ the 
natural! I should not condemn this so entirely (for I consider some 
parts of the above admissible in any style), except for the purpose of 
showing how utterly inconsistent it was with the doctrine its professors 
publicly taught; for, properly speaking, neither the one nor the other 
should have found a place in English scenery; and to imitate even that 
of classic Greece, was a fault fatal to the principles enunciated by the 
authors of the new style. The so-called natural style was, in fact, 
nothing more than nature-planting mixed up with an incongruous 
assemblage of subjects foreign to the true principles of taste, and in no 
way connected with natural scenery, which, I again repeat, was not 
thoroughly understood till the time of Whately and G Ipin, to whom 
belongs the credit of establishing the principles which govern the pure 
and beautiful in landscape gardening. 
True, the modern school of the time I allude to introduced greater 
freedom and breadth into the component parts of scenery, and, unfettered 
by the rule and line which confined their predecessors, a wider scope 
and greater comprehensiveness was given to ornamental planting. It 
is also true that the formation and puerile conceits of the old style 
were abolished, that the dead wall was removed, and the ha-ha 
substituted (a decided improvement), yet it would still appear that 
either the professors of the new art themselves, or those who employed 
them, had a secret longing after the “ old worship.” They studied and 
introduced Nature into their works, yet they must needs mix up a little 
of the past style with it also. It was the imperfect taste of the day, 
and hence the incongruity I complain of, even in the best designs the 
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