PROGRESS AND STYLE OF ORNAMENTAL GARDENING. 223 
too radical however) took place. Every connoisseur wondered how 
the contracted ideas of the gardener could have been so long tolerated; 
a kind of remorse was felt that the visual enjoyment of real pictures 
should have been so long withheld ; a sweeping sentence of condemna¬ 
tion was instantly pronounced by the arbiters of fine taste, and open 
war was declared against every right line and right angle, and against 
every perpendicular form of Dutch or Italian gardening. 
Soon were the venerable avenues uprooted—the airy terrace and the 
verdant slope levelled with the general surface of the ground ; every 
nicely-clipped hedge or arcade, pyramid or globe, were quickly banished 
from the lawn and gardens ; right lines, whether of roads, or walks, 
or fences, were diverted into regularly flowing sweeps ; the mansion 
which had been for years partially shaded and veiled by trees, was set 
out and exposed on a smooth and closely-shaven law'n ; hedge-row trees 
were exchanged for insulated clumps dotted over hill and dale; and 
straight and visible fences gave way to crooked and invisible Ha ! ha’s ! 
Thus the regularity of the old style was excluded, to admit the 
irregularity of the new ; a change too recklessly made, and which has 
proved, in many instances, only a change from one kind of sameness to 
another fully as tedious and uninteresting. 
Nor was the new style an imitation of what it was presumed to be 
founded on, namely, the painter’s ideas of the most beautiful or most 
picturesque combinations of land, wood, and water. The opinion of 
the first reformers appeared to be, that, to depart as much as possible 
from the old style, by introducing irregularity, was all that was wanted 
to give the new scenery a truly natural character. 
The new style received the title of “ English gardening ; ” and cer¬ 
tainly there were some very perfect things of the kind executed in 
different parts of the kingdom, not, however, by clearing all the old 
features away, but by a judicious reservation of part of them, and not 
by an implicit adoption of every suggestion of the reformers, but by a 
tasteful rejection of many of their dogmas. 
It is perfectly true, that, though the guiding principles of composi¬ 
tion of both the painter and the landscape gardener are the same, 
there must necessarily be a great difference in the execution; the one 
endeavours to gratify the present, the other future generations. The 
painter can brighten his lights, deepen his shadows, give play to his 
outlines, and mellow his tints at pleasure, so as to preserve a well- 
balanced display of light and shade ; all his objects, whether on the 
foreground, in the middle distance, or in the off-scape, he can dispose 
as seems to him best. The height, and distance, and form of the 
mountains; the character and extent of water ; the very forms of the 
