PROGRESS AND STYLE OF ORNAMENTAL GARDENING. 225 
sinuosities and overhanging trees and bushes. Nor would he be anxious 
to expose too much of the water in one place, unless it would appear as a 
reach, either advancing’towards or receding from the eye, for the sake of 
the reflections from the ripple on its surface. If a lake, he would choose 
to have it of a very irregular shape, and as much diversified by trees 
and islands as its size would allow, carefully masking its extremities, if 
such were too visible. 
If buildings of any description, either for use or ornament, were in 
the landscape, the painter would advise them to be partly concealed, 
and only allowing the most ornamental or characteristic angle to jut 
out from among trees. If the park was of a finely jandulating surface, 
consisted of smoothly-rounded knolls, with winding dips between, the 
painter would adapt the forms of his groups and thickets, and the 
characters of the trees to correspond. On the other hand, if the 
environs presented strong natural features, as cliff’s and rugged declivi¬ 
ties, deep ravines forming the beds of mountain streams, &c., he would 
add such accompaniments of vegetation, alpine and aquatic trees, &c., 
as would harmonise with the general aspect of the place, so as to 
produce (whatever may be the character of the district) a well-connected 
and harmonious whole. 
Now if all this would be advised by a painter, or an amateur having 
“ a painter’s eye;” it differs not a jot from what would be done by every 
landscape gardener who knows his business, or who deserves the name. 
Hiding the hard lines in the dressed ground, and employing more 
under-growths among the trees in the park, are the only additional 
amendments in the common practice, which the painter could recom¬ 
mend in laying out a park in the English style. He would also object 
to any great extent of lawn being seen from any principal station, 
because nothing is so horrifying to a painter as great blotches of any 
one colour on the canvas, without chequering of shadows, of flocks or 
herds, or of other objects admitting variety of tints ; and therefore a 
park laid out by a painter would be rather a series of diverging glades, 
than a park dignified by the grandeur of its vast masses of wood, and 
its expansive extent of verdant turf. 
That many of our parks, laid out in the style last alluded to, are 
lifeless and uninteresting, must be acknowledged. In passing through 
them, though they may have an air of grandeur suitable enough 
for a regal or ducal palace; yet no part of such scenery would be 
admired by the painter, because wholly unfit for the canvas. Hence 
it may be inferred that an English landscape-gardener’s park may be 
very suitable for a residence, and yet by no means equal to the beau 
ideal of a connoisseur, who may be blessed or plagued by possessing a 
VOL. IV.—NO. XLVIII. Y 
