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LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
out of the power of the landscape gardener; and but few painters 
succeed in depicting such scenes, unless assisted by the narrative of 
the historian, the visions of the poet, or the unnatural indistinctness 
and absurd obscurities of their art. 
The creation of beautiful scenery belongs particularly to the province 
of the landscape gardener; and when he has a fair field on which to 
display it, and is thoroughly cognisant of its principles, generally 
acquits himself with credit. His dispositions are usually pleasing; 
but, unluckily for him, they do not attract the fastidious eye of ex¬ 
tremely fine taste. Neither are beautiful scenes admired by the land¬ 
scape painter ; their bland smoothness and regularly-flowing lines 
offend him ; there is too much sameness of tint, not sufficient contrast, 
nor flickering intricacy, to give freedom and licence to his pencil; and 
therefore it is that purely beautiful scenes are seldom painted. 
It is the next description of scenery, namely, the picturesque, which 
the connoisseur delights to contemplate, and the painter to pourtray. 
Such scenery has received its very designation from the circumstance 
of its being so often chosen for the canvas; and it becomes a question 
whether the ease of the artist and facility of execution on the one 
hand, or any real gratification to either our mental or visual faculties 
on the other, have formed the standard by which all painted as well as 
real landscapes are judged. This surmise requires, perhaps, a little 
explanation. I presume you will agree with me that all regular figures 
are more difficult to draw—at least they require much more care in 
tracing the outline—than those that are irregular. Any fault in the 
latter—a tree, for instance, however differing from the original—cannot 
be discovered; whereas the most trifling defect in the representation 
of an obelisk, column, or other regular figure, is, on the most transient 
glance, detectable. 
To suit the notions of the artist, there are also what are called 
painters’ trees— that is, such as are but thinly clothed with leaves, 
and these growing in tufts, through which all the ramifications of the 
branches may be seen. A tree of a regularly rotund or pyramidal shape, 
or if it bears a thick mass of foliage, is an abomination to a painter; 
and therefore nothing but the most irregular dispositions and forms, 
the deepest shadows, and warmest varied colours (for uniformity of 
colour is also disliked) are considered fit for the pencil. 
These being the ideas of painters, and all the most famous pictures 
of the old masters being painted in this style, it is not at all to be won¬ 
dered at that modern critics can relish no real scenery, unless it bears 
some resemblance to the standard on which they have grounded their 
principles of taste. Of course they advise all landscape gardeners to 
