THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
29 
April 17.] 
WEEKLY CALENDAR. 
i 
M W 
APRIL 17—23, 1851. 
Weather near London in 1850. 
Sun 
Sun 
Moon 
Moon’s 
Clock 
Day of 
D D 
I 
Barometer. 
Thermo. 
Wind. 
Rain in In’ 
Rises. 
Sets. 
R.&S. 
Age. 
bef. Sun. 
Year. 
17'Th 
Song Pettychaps shivering note. 
29776 — 29.718 
47—25 
N.W. 
0.02 
3 a. 5 
57 a. 6 
9 1 
16 
0 
22 
107 
18 F 
Good Friday. 
29.921 — 29.861 
50—32 
W. 
0.28 
1 
58 
10 15 
17 
0 
36 
108 
19S 
Harebell Flowers. 
29.484 — 29.204 
39—32 
N.E. 
0.45 
IV 
VII 
11 25 
18 
0 
50 
109 
20 Son Easter Sunday. Sun’s decl. 11°24 'n. 
29.806 — 29.561 
47—26 
N. 
0.01 
57 
2 
morn. 
19 
1 
4 
no 
21 M 
Easter Monday. 
29.926 — 29.864 
48—27 
W. 
_ 
54 
3 
0 26 
20 
] 
16 
111 
22 To 
Easter Tuesday. Large Bat seen. 
29.930 — 29.762 
48—39 
s.w. 
0.22 
52 
5 
1 17 
21 
1 
29 
112 
23 W 
St. George. 
29.633 — 29.561 
50—38 
s.w. 
0.21 
50 
6 
2 0 
€ 
1 
41 
113 
Good taste is that power of the mind which enables it justly to appre¬ 
ciate the beautiful—yet who can say what constitutes the beautiful ? 
Who can discover a combination of form and colour, that all persons at 
all times shall say is an embodiment of beauty ? Many cultivated minds— 
Burke, and Price, and Payne Knight, and Alison, with many others of 
lesser mark, have wrestled with the problem, but it foiled them all, and 
What is beauty? yet remains an unanswered question. It has been said 
that the precious remains of Grecian sculpture afford standards of real 
beauty, grace, and elegance in the human form, and the modes of 
adorning it; but it is not so, for although they are admitted as examples 
of such excellence by Europeans, they are the very antipodes of what is 
beautiful in the eyes of the natives of the other three quarters of the 
globe. Habit—that to which the eye is accustomed—fashion, call it what 
we will, sets all standards of ideal beauty at defiance. “ Of this,” says 
Mr. Pavne Knight, “ the revolutions in dress only, not to mention those 
in building, furnishing, gardening, &c., which have taken place within 
the last two centuries, afford ample illustration ; and it is not the least 
extraordinary circumstance in these revolutions, that they have been the 
most violent, sudden, and extravagant in the personal decorations of that 
part of the species which, having most natural, has least need of arti¬ 
ficial charms ; which is always most decorated when least adorned ; and 
which, as it addresses its attractions to the primordial sentiments and 
innate affections of man, would, it might reasonably be supposed, never 
have attempted to increase them by distortion and disguise. Yet art has 
been wearied, and nature ransacked; tortures have been endured, and 
health sacrificed ; and all to enable this lovely part of the creation to ap¬ 
pear in shapes as remote as possible from that in which all its native 
loveliness consists. Only a few years ago, a beauty equipped for conquest 
1 was a heterogeneous combination of incoherent forms which nature could 
] never have united to one animal, nor art blended in one composition : it 
consisted of a head, disguised so as to resemble that of no living creature, 
placed upon an inverted cone, the point of which rested upon the centre 
of the curve of a semi-eliptic base more than three times the diameter of 
its own. Yet, if high-dressed heads, tight-laced stays, and wide hoops, 
had not been thought really ornamental, how came they to be worn by all 
who could afford them ? ” “In judging, however, of the works of nature, 
it must be owned that there appears to have been less inconstancy ; the 
beauties of particular kinds of trees, plants, flowers, and animals, having, 
I believe, been universally recognized in all ages, and all countries ; but, 
over these, it must be remembered that the power of man is more limited, 
nor can he indulge those partial and extravagant caprices of his taste, 
which he has so abundantly displayed in the productions of his own art 
and labour. As far, however, as he has been able, he has done it most 
profusely. At one time he crops the tail and ears of his dogs and horses ; 
and, at another, forces them to grow in forms and directions, which 
nature never intended ; his trees and shrubs are planted in fantastic 
lines, or shorn into the shapes of animals or implements ; and all for the 
sake of beauty. Happily for the poor animals, it has never appeared 
possible to shear or twist them into the shapes of plants, or it would, 
without doubt, have been attempted ; and we should have been as much 
delighted at seeing a stag terminating in a yew tree, as ever we were at 
seeing a yew tree terminating in a stag. These metamorphoses of plants 
are not now, indeed, in fashion; but it is merely fashion that has ex¬ 
ploded them; and as both fashions have had their respective admirers, 
not only among the vulgar, but among the most discerning and en¬ 
lightened of mankind, it may reasonably be doubted, whether either of 
them be at all consonant to the real principles of beauty, if any such 
there be.” . 
That there are no such principles, we fear must be admitted, and that 
as there never was a face so ugly as to find no taste that could discern in 
it a line of beauty, so has there never been a fashion for arranging dress, 
or dwellings, or'gardens, that has not been generally adopted and ad¬ 
mired for a time. It is vain, with such facts before us, to search after the 
principles of beauty; for abstracted beauty can but be what is pleasing to 
the many at a given time, and at a given place; yet, as we have already 
observed, many men of powerful minds have sought to detect those prin¬ 
ciples, and the writings of one of those men, Richard Payne Knight, 
are now open upon our table. He is among the defeated, and as he failed in 
the research, who is likely to succeed ? Nursed in the lap of wealth, with 
an eye that had dwelt, and a hand that had rested upon all the best that 
remains of Grecian and Roman art; highly educated, and with a taste 
that could appreciate and practically demonstrate what is beautiful in 
nature—beautiful according to our ideas of the beautiful—yet, in no one 
page of his writings has he demonstrated a principle of universal beauty. 
He has shown us that Burke and Price were mistaken, but he has not 
substituted one truth of his own in the niche from which he plucked their 
error. We have wandered with him through every passage of his Land¬ 
scape, his Progress of Civil Society, and his Analytical Enquiry into the 
Principles of Taste, all varying in merit, all sprinkled over with flowers ; 
full of useful suggestions, full of amusement, and beaming with light 
upon many subjects of taste; but we have never found that he discovered 
one of the principles after which he inquired. A man of taste, we fear, 
like the poet, has his gift as a birth-right; and that this was the case with 
Mr. Knight, there can be no doubt. The son of the Rev. Thomas 
Knight, he was born in the year 1750, at Wormsley Grange, in Hereford¬ 
shire, and weakly and sickly throughout childhood, he remained without 
classical instruction until after the death of his father, in 1764 . The con¬ 
sequences of that neglect he has thus confessed:— 
“ And tho’ neglect my boyish years o’erspread, 
Nor early science dawning reason fed ; 
Tho’ no preceptor’s care, or parent’s love, 
To form and raise my infant genius strove ; 
But, long abandon’d in the darksome way, 
Ungovern’d passions led my soul astray, 
And still, where pleasure laid the bait for wealth, 
Bought dear experience with the waste of health, 
Consum’d in riot all that life adorn’d, 
For joys unrelish’d, shar’d with those I scorn’d ; 
Yet, when exhausted spirits claim’d repose, 
Each milder spring of mental vigour rose, 
Aspiring pride my soul to science led, 
And bade me seek at once its fountain-head; 
Its fountain-head, whence Grecian genius pours 
O’er the wide earth its everlasting stores ; 
And in each deep and lucid current shows 
How fancy, join’d with ease, corrected flows.” 
Sent to school after his parent’s decease, he rapidly progressed in 
classical acquirements, and in early manhood had passed over Italy, as 
much in accordance with his taste for the beautiful, as in the pursuit of 
health. Some of the results of his studies, and his travels, appeared in 
the works we have enumerated, but others remain to be told, inheriting, 
from his grandfather. Downton, near Ludlow, he devoted much of his 
taste and time to the decoration of its grounds ; but he was not less assi¬ 
duous in gathering together the beautiful remains of antiquity, and so 
rich had become his collection, that when he died on the 24th of April, 
1824 , and bequeathed it to the British Museum, it was valued at ^50,000. 
His endeavours to decorate the grounds of Downton were most successful, 
and with this sketch of them, as they existed during his life, we must 
close our notice : — 
“The grounds are a happy exemplification of the ideas contained in 
The Landscape. Nature has done that which he has not suffered the 
hand of art to spoil. The grounds fall rapidly from the house into a 
beautiful little valley, at the bottom of which is a wild and impetuous 
stream ; and immediately from the opposite bank rises the hill again, clad 
with rich wood in a variety of shapes to its very summit, and opening at 
parts into rude sheep-walks, the whole formed out of a waste, which 
formerly went by the name of Bringwood-chase. But this is not the 
most characteristic part. To the right of the castle the ground does not 
fall as it does from the castle itself, but pushes forward in a flat till it 
hangs almost perpendicularly over the stream, covered with wood to its 
very foot. Here, then, the valley is literally of no greater width than the 
stream itself; for the hill rises equally abruptly from the other margin. 
At the point where the Team issues from its narrow banks, to the wider 
valley, which is overlooked by the castle, Mr, Knight has thrown a bridge 
across it. A walk descends to this bridge ; which, after crossing a narrow 
path to the right, leads along the margin of the river, the most wild, rich, 
and solitary path I ever trod, till it brings the passenger to a recluse mill, 
at which a rustic bridge again conveys him over the furious water to the 
opposite bank, where an irregular path, still by the side of the river, con¬ 
ducts him till he gradually ascends again to the castle. To the left of the 
castle the valley winds with the stream in its course to Ludlow. In the 
valley to the left of the castle lie the great iron forges, probably the foun¬ 
dation of the riches which this family now possess. Would that fortune 
would more frequently put wealth into the hands of people equally 
adorned with mental qualifications ! Beyond Bringwood-chase, on the 
hills in front of Downton, stands a lone cottage, called Marinold, in a 
most romantic situation, looking through a deep valley, whose sides, up 
to their very summit, are clothed with rich wood, into a flat and distant 
country, covered with seats, villages, and churches. The castle of Ludlow, 
immortalised by the first representation of Comus within its walls, and by 
the writing of Hudibras over its gateway, exhibits now the most melan¬ 
choly ruins. Its roofs and very floors are at length gone, and tumbling 
walls alone remain.” 
Meteorology of the Week. —At Chiswick, from observations 
during the last twenty-four years, the average highest and lowest tem¬ 
peratures are 57-9° and 38.1°, respectively. The greatest heat, 71°, 
occurred on the 17 th, in 1844. During the time 98 days were fine, and 
on 70 rain fell. 
No. CXX XIII., Vol. Yl. 
