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our governments." [We fhall fee how natural that admired garden was.]

"Because I take the garden I have named to have been in all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the figure and difpofition, that I have ever feen, I will defcribe it for a model to thofe that meet with fuch a fituation, and are above the regards of common expence. It lies on the fide of a hill, upon which the houfe ftands, but not very steep. The length of the houfe, where the best rooms and most ufe or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden; the great parlour opens in the middle of a terras gravel-walk that lies even with it, and which may lie, as I remember, about three hundred paces long, and broad in proportion; the border fet with ftandard laurels and at large distances, which have the beauty of orange-trees out of flower and fruit. From this walk are three defcents by many stone steps, in the middle and at each end, into a very large parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravelwalks, and adorned with two fountains and eight ftatues in the feveral quarters. At the end of the terras-walk are two fummer-houses, and the fides of the parterre are ranged with two large cloifters open to the garden, upon arches of ftone, and ending with two other fummer houfes even with the cloifters, which are paved with ftone, and defigned for walks of hade, there being none other in the whole parterre. Over these

two cloisters are two terraffes covered with lead and fenced with balufters; and the paffage into thefe airy walks is out of the two fummer-houfes at the end of the firft terras- walk. The cloifter facing the fouth is covered with vines, and would have been proper for an orange-houfe, and the other for myrtles or other more common greens, and had, I doubt not, been caft for that purpose, if this piece of gardening had been then in as much vogue as it is now.

"From the middle of this parterre is a defcent by many iteps flying on each fide of a grotto that lies between them, covered with lead and flat, into the lower garden, which is all fruit-trees ranged about the feveral quarters of a wilderness which is very fhady; the walks here are all green, the grotto embellished with figures of fhell-rock-work, fountains, and water- works. If the hill had not ended with the lower garden, and the wall were not bounded by a common way that goes through the park, they might have added a third quarter of all greens; but this want is fupplied by a garden on the other fide the houfe, which is all of that fort, very wild, fhady, and adorned with rough rock-work and fountains.

"This was Moor-park, when I was acquainted with it, and the fweetest place, I think, that I have feen in my life, either before or fince, at home or abroad."—

I will make no farther remarks on this defcription. Any man

* The garden feems to have been made after the plan laid down by Lord Bacon in his 46th effay, to which, that I may not multiply quotations, I will refer the reader.

might defign and build as fweet a garden who had been born in and never stirred out of Holbourn. It was not peculiar to Sir William Temple to think in that manner. How many Frenchmen are there who have feen our gardens, and till prefer natural flights of fteps and fhady cloifters covered with lead! Le Nautre, the architect of the groves and grottoes at Verfailles, came hither on a miffion to improve our taste. He planted St. James's and Greenwich parks -no great monuments of his in

vention.

To do farther juftice to Sir William Temple, I muft not omit what he adds. "What I have faid of the best forms of gardens, is meant only of fuch as are in fome fort regular; for there may be other forms wholly irregular, that may, for aught I know, have more beauty than any of the others; but they must owe it to fome extraordinary difpofitions of nature in the feat, or fome great race of fancy or judgment in the contrivance, which may reduce many disagreeing parts into fome figure, which shall yet, upon the whole, be very agreeable. Something of this I have feen in fome places, but heard more of it from others, who have lived much among the Chinefes, a people whofe way of thinking feems to lie as wide of ours in Europe, as their country does. Their greatest reach of imagination is employed in contriving figures, where the beauty fhall be great and ftrike the eye, but without any order or difpofition of parts, that shall be commonly or eafily obferved. And though we have hardly any notion of this fort of beauty, yet they have a

particular word to exprefs it; and where they find it hit their eye at firft fight, they fay that Sharawadgi is fine or is admirable, or any fuch expreffion of eleem-but I fhould hardly advise any of these attempts in the figure of gardens among us, they are adventures of too hard atchievement for any common hands; and though there may be more honour if they fuc ceed well, yet there is more difhonour if they fail, and it is twenty to one they will; whereas in regular figures, it is hard to make any great and remarkable faults.”

Fortunately Kent and a few others were not quite fo timid, or we might ftill be going up and down ftairs in the open air.

It is true, we have heard much lately, as Sir William Temple did, of irregularity and imitations of nature in the gardens or grounds of the Chinese. The former is certainly true; they are as whimfically irregular, as European gardens are formally uniform, and unvaried but with regard to nature, it feems as much avoided, as in the fquares and oblongs, and trait lines of our ancestors. An artificial perpendicular rock starting out of a flat plain, and connected with nothing, often pierced through in various places with oval hollows, has no more pretenfion to be deemed natural than a lineal terrafs or a parterre. The late Mr. Jofeph Spence, who had both taste and zeal for the prefent ftyle, was fo perfuaded of the Chinese emperor's pleasureground being laid out on principles refembling ours, that he tranflated and published, under the name of Sir Harry Beaumont, a particular account of that inclofure from the collection of the

letters

letters of the Jefuits. I have looked it over, and except a determined irregularity, can find nothing in it that gives me any idea of attention being paid to nature. It is of vaft circumference, and contains 200 palaces, befides as many contiguous for the eunuchs, all gilt, painted and varnished. There are raised hills from 20 to 60 feet high, ftreams and lakes, and one of the latter five miles round. Thefe waters are paffed by bridges -but even their bridges muft not be ftrait-they ferpentize as much as the rivulets, and are fometimes fo long as to be furnished with refting-places, and begin and end with triumphal arches. Methinks a ftrait canal is as rational at least as a mæandring bridge. The colonades undulate in the fame manner. In fhort, this prctty gaudy fcene is the work of caprice and whim; and when we reflect on their buildings, prefents no image but that of unfubftantial tawdrinefs. Nor is this all. With in this fantastic Paradife is a fquare town, each fide a mile long. Here the eunuchs of the court, to entertain his imperial majefty with the bustle and bufinefs of the capital in which he refides, but which it is not of his dignity ever to fee, act merchants and all forts of trades, and even defignedly exercise for his royal amufement every art of knavery that is practifed under his aufpicious government. Methinks this is the childish folace and repofe of grandeur, not a retirement from affairs to the de

lights of rural life. Here too his majefty plays at agriculture; there is a quarter fet apart for that purpofe; the eunuchs fow, reap, and carry in their harvest in the imperial prefence; and his majefty returns to Pekin perfuaded that he has been in the country.

Having thus cleared my way by afcertaining what have been the ideas on gardening in all ages, as far as we have materials to judge by, it remains to fhow to what degree Mr. Kent invented the new tyle, and what hints he had received to fuggeft and condu& his undertaking.

We have feen what Moor-park was, when pronounced a standard. But as no fucceeding generation in an opulent and luxurious country contents itself with the perfection established by its ancestors, more perfect perfection was ftill fought; and improvements had gone on, till London and Wife had ftocked our gardens with giants, animals, monfters *, coats of arms and mottoes in yew, box and holly. Abfurdity could go no farther, and the tide turned. Bridgman, the next fafhionable defigner of gardens, was far more challe; and whether from good fenfe, or that the nation had been ftruck and reformed by the admirable paper in the Guardian, N° 173, he banished verdant fculpture, and did not even revert to the fquare precifion of the foregoing age. He enlarged his plans, difdained to make every divifion tally to its oppofite, and though

*On the piers of a garden-gate not far from Paris I obferved two very coquet fphinxes. Thefe lady monfters had ftraw hats gracefully fmart on one tide of their heads, and filken cloaks half veiling their necks; all executed in fone.

he

*

he ftill adhered much to ftrait walks with high clipped hedges, they were only his great lines; the rest he diverfified by wildernefs, and with loofe groves of oak, though ftill within furrounding hedges. I have obferved in the garden at Gubbins in Hertfordhire many detached thoughts, that ftrongly indicate the dawn of modern taste. As his reformation gained footing, he ventured farther, and in the royal garden at Richmond dared to introduce cultivated fields, and even morfels of a forest appearance, by the fides of thofe endless and tiresome walks, that ftretched out of one into another without in termiffion. But this was not till other innovators had broke loose too from rigid fymmetry.

But the capital ftroke, the leading ftep to all that has followed, was [I believe the first thought was Bridgman's] the deftruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fofsès-an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha! Ha's! to exprefs their furprize at finding a fudden and unperceived check to their walk.

One of the first gardens planted in this fimple though ftill formal ftyle, was my father's at Hough ton. It was laid out by Mr. Eyre, an imitator of Bridgman. It contains three and-twenty acres, then reckoned a confiderable portion.

I call a funk fence the leading ftep, for these reasons. No fooner was this fimple enchantment made,

than levelling, mowing, and rolling followed. The contiguous ground of the park without the funk fence was to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might affort with the wilder country without. The funk fence afcertained the specific garden, but that it might not draw too obvious a line of diftinction between the neat and the rude, the contiguous out-lying parts came to be included in a kind of general defign: and when nature was taken into the plan, under improvements, every step that was made, pointed out new beauties and infpired new ideas. At that moment appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the charms of landfcape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to ftrike out a great fyftem from the twilight of imperfect effays. He leaped the fence, and faw that all nature was a garden. He felt the delicious contraft of hill and valley changing imperceptibly into each other, tafted the beauty of the gentle fwell, or concave fcoop, and remarked how loofe groves crowned an eafy eminence with happy ornament, and while they called in the diftant view between their graceful ftems, removed and extended the perfpective by delufive comparison.

Thus the pencil of his imagination beftowed all the arts of landfcape on the scenes he handled. The great principles on which he

The feat of the late Sir Jeremy Sambroke. It had formerly belonged to Lady More, mother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, and had been tyrannically wrenched from her by Henry VIII. on the execution of Sir Thomas, though not her fon, and though her jointure from a former husband.

worked

worked were perspective, and light and fhade. Groups of trees broke too uniform or too extenfive a lawn; evergreens and woods were opposed to the glare of the champain, and where the view was lefs fortunate, or fo much exposed as to be beheld at once, he blotted out fome parts by thick fhades, to divide it into variety, or to make the richest scene more enchanting by referving it to a farther advance of the fpectator's ftep. Thus, felecting favourite objects, and veil ing deformities by fcreens of plantation; fometimes allowing the rudeft waste to add its foil to the richest theatre, he realized the compofitions of the greatest mafters in painting. Where objects were wanting to animate his horizon, his taste as an architect could beftow immediate termination.

But of all the beauties he added to the face of this beautiful country, none furpaffed his management of water. Adieu to canals, circular basons, and cascades tumbling down marble fteps, that laft abfurd magnificence of Italian and French villas. The forced elevation of cataracts was no more. The gentle ftream was taught to ferpentize feemingly at its pleafure, and where difcontinued by different levels, its courfe appeared to be concealed by thickets properly interfperfed, and glittered again at a distance where it might be fuppofed naturally to arrive. Its borders were smoothed, but preferved their waving irregularity. A few trees fcattered here and there on its edges fprinkled the tame bank that accompanied its mæanders; and when it difappeared among the hills, fhades defcending from the heights leaned

towards its progrefs, and framed the diftant point of light under which it was loft, as it turned afide to either hand of the blue horizon.

Thus dealing in none but the colours of nature, and catching its moft favourable features, men faw a new creation opening before their eyes. The living landscape was chaftened or polished, not tranfformed. Freedom was given to the forms of trees; they extended their branches unrestricted, and where any eminent oak, or mafter beech had escaped maiming and furvived the foreft, bush and bramble was removed, and all its ho nours were restored to diftinguish and fhade the plain. Where the united plumage of an ancient wood extended wide its undulating canopy, and stood venerable in its darkness, Kent thinned the foremoft ranks, and left but so many detached and fcattered trees, as foftened the approach of gloom and blended a chequered light with the thus lengthened shadows of the remaining columns.

Succeeding artists have added new master-strokes to these touches; perhaps improved or brought to perfection fome that I have named. The introduction of foreign trees and plants, which we owe principally to Archibald Duke of Argyle, contributed effentially to the richness of colouring fo peculiar to our modern landscape. The mixture of various greens, the contraft of forms between our foreft-trees and the northern and West-Indian firs and pines, are improvements more recent than Kent, or but little known to him. The weepingwillow and every florid fhrub, each tree of delicate or bold leaf, are new tints in the compofition of our gardens.

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