LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
370 
figures—were abolished soon after the beginning of the last century. 
So much art was exercised in their first formation and subsequent 
keeping, and so different from every pleasurable disposition of nature, 
that they were condemned as violations of all true taste. These were 
succeeded by designs of far more chaste and less intricate character— 
simple dispositions, which included beauty in the strictest sense of the 
word ; dispositions without studied intricacy, and entirely free from 
roughness, angular terminations, or abrupt turnings. Aiming only at 
simplicity and general smoothness, the closest turf was chosen as the 
general carpet, embossed with the gayest shrubs, and enamelled with 
the sweetest flowering herbs, and shaded thinly with trees of the most 
light and feathery foliage. Through among these groups gravel walks 
were led in graceful, though not in regular curves, so that the whole 
might be seen without leaving the walks, unless in dry weather the 
turf might be more more inviting to the lover of flowers. 
It is in this style the flower-garden at Fairfax Hall has been 
designed; and, considering it as a station for the sole culture of 
flowering plants, it is excellently adapted. In size, it is large enough 
to contain every choice plant, whether herb, shrub, or tree, and 
whether annual, biennial, or perennial; and being at all times kept 
in the highest style of neatness, must be at all seasons a most 
charming spot. 
Geometric flower-gardens exist but in very few places in this country 
at present; but I observe, from what has been lately published in 
horticultural periodicals, that there appears to be something like a 
return to that style of gardening. This retrograde movement is justi¬ 
fied on the ground that we, in escaping from the stiff and formal style 
prevalent during the reign of William III., have run into the opposite 
extreme, by a futile endeavour to give the acknowledged works of art a 
natural semblance. Works of art, it is said, should be acknowledged as 
such by every practicable means. Trees, shrubs, and herbs should be 
kept in masses by themselves, to show that not any one of them has 
been so placed by chance; and, moreover, that all planted trees should 
be chiefly exotics, to show still more clearly that the scenery is entirely 
artificial. Now, in considering this train of argument, it does strike 
me that, on entering a park or garden, we need neither exotic trees nor 
regularity of arrangement to remind us that we are not in a forest, or 
on a common. Nor can I conceive a situation in which any person 
could be placed, as to leave him in any kind of doubt whether or not 
he was in a garden; for whatever its plants or style of arrangement 
may be, it needs not a descriptive sign, like the bad picture of an 
ancient painter, who was obliged'to write This is a cock " below his 
