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recreation. They are exactly like Burton's-court at Chelfea-college, and rarely larger.

One man, one great man we had, on whom nor education nor custom could impofe their prejudices; who, on evil days though fallen, and with darkness and folitude compaffed round, judged that the mistaken and fantastic ornaments he had feen in gardens, were unworthy of the Almighty hand that planted the delights of Paradife. He feems with the prophetic eye of tafte [as I have heard tafte well defined] to have conceived, to have forefeen modern gardening; as Lord Bacon announced the difcoveries fince made by experimental philofophy. The defcription of Eden is a warmer and more just picture of the prefent ftyle than Claud Lorrain could have painted from Hagley or Stourhead. The first lines I fhall quote, exhibit Stourhead on a more magnificent fcale.

1 Thro' Eden went a river large, Nor chang'd his course, but thro' the thaggy hill

Pafs'd underneath ingulph'd, for God had

thrown

That mountain as his garden-mound, high

rais'd

Upon the rapid current

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Imbrown'd the noon-tide bow'rs. Thus was . this place

4 happy rural feat of varicus view, Read this tranfporting defcription, paint to your mind the fcenes that follow, contraft them with the favage but refpectable terror with which the poet guards the bounds of his Paradife, fenced

-with the champion head Of a fteep wilderness, whose hairy fides With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, Access denied; and over head upgrew Infuperable height of loftieft fhade, Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,

A fylvan fcene, and as the ranks afcend,
Shade above fhade, a woody theatre
Of ftatelieft view-

and then recollect that the author of this fublime vision had never feen a glimpse of any thing like what he has imagined, that his favourite ancients had dropped not

Hagley feems pictured in what fol- a hint of fuch divine fcenery, and lows,

which through veins Of porous earth with kindly thirst up

drawn,

Rofe a fresh fountain, and with many a rill Water'd the garden

What colouring, what freedom of pencil, what landscape in thefe lines,

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that the conceits in Italian garfuch, were the brightest originals dens, and Theobalds and Nonthat his memory could furnish. His intellectual eye faw a nobler plan, fo little did he suffer by the lofs of fight. It fufficed him to have feen the materials with which he could work. The vigour of a how a plan might be disposed, boundless imagination told him that would embellish nature, and

reftore

refore art to its proper office, the juft improvement or imitation of

it.

or Our

It is neceffary that the concurrent teftimony of the age should fwear to pofterity that the defcription above quoted was written above half a century before the introduction of modern gardening, incredulous defcendants will defraud the poet of half his glory, by being perfuaded that he copied fome garden or gardens he had feer-fo minutely do his ideas correfpond with the prefent ftandard. But what fhall we fay for that intervening half century who could read that plan and never attempt to put it in execution?

Now let us turn to an admired writer, pofterior to Milton, and fee how cold, how infipid, how taftelefs, is his account of what he pronounced a perfect garden. I fpeak not of his ftyle, which it was not neceffary for him to animate with the colouring and glow of poetry. It is his want of ideas, of imagination, of tafte, that I cenfure, when he dictated on a fubject that is capable of all the graces that a knowledge of beautiful nature can bestow. Sir William Temple was an excellent man; Milton, a genius of the firft order.

We cannot wonder that Sir William declares in favour of parterres, fountains, and ftatues, as neceffary to break the famenefs of large grafs plats, which he thinks have an ill effect upon the eye, when he acknowledges that he difcovers fancy in the gardens of Alcinous. Milton fludied the ancients with equal enthufiafm, but no bigotry, and had judgment to

diftinguish between the want of invention and the beauties of poetry. Compare his Paradife with Homer's garden, both afcribed to a celeftial defign. For Sir Wil liam, it is just to obferve, that his ideas centered in a fruit garden. He had the honour of giv ing to his country many delicate fruits, and he thought of little elfe than difpofing them to the best advantage. Here is the paffage I propofed to quote; it is long, but I need not make an apology to the reader for entertaining him with any other words inftead of my own.

"The best figure of a garden is either a fquare or an oblong, and either upon a flat or a defcent: they have all their beauties, but the beft I efteem an oblong upon a defcent. The beauty, the air, the view, makes amends for the expence, which is very great in finishing and fupporting the terras-walk, in levelling the parterres, and in the stoneftairs that are neceffary from one to the other.

"The perfecteft figure of a garden I ever faw, either at home or abroad, was that of Moor-park in Hertfordshire, when I knew it about thirty years ago. It was made by the Countefs of Bedford, elteemed among the greatest wits of her time, and celebrated by Doctor Donne; and with very great care, excellent contrivance, and much coft; but greater fums may be thrown away without effect or honour, if there want fenfe in proportion to money, or if nature be not followed, which I take to be the great role in this, and perhaps in every thing elfe, as far as the conduct not only of our lives, but

our

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Our governments." [We fhall fee two cloisters are two terraffes cohow natural that admired garden vered with lead and fenced with was.] balufters; and the paffage into thefe airy walks is out of the two fummer-houses at the end of the firit terras-walk. The cloifter facing the fouth is covered with vines, and would have been proper for an orange-house, 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

"Becaufe 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 fteep. The length of the houfe, where the best rooms and moft use 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 itandard laurels and at large diftances, which have the beauty of orange-trees out of flower and fruit. From this walk are three defcents by many ftone fteps, in the middle and at each end, into a very large parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravel walks, and adorned with two fountains and eight ftatues in the feveral quarters. At the end of the terras-walk are two fummer-houfes, 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 cloisters, which are paved with ftone, and defigned for walks of fhade, there being none other in the whole parterre. Over thefe

now.'

"From the middle of this parterre is a defcent by many fteps 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 thell-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 house, 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 fweetelt 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 design and build as fweet a garden who had been born in and never ftirred cut 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 fill prefer natural flights of steps 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 tafte. He planted St. James's and Greenwich parks -no great monuments of his invention.

To do farther juftice to Sir William Temple, I muft not omit what he adds. What I have faid of the belt 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 difagreeing parts into fome figure, which fhail 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 greateft reach of imagination is employed in contriving figures, where the beauty fhall be great and trike the eye, but with out any order or difpofition of parts, that all be commonly or easily obferved. And though we have har ly 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 first fight, they fay that Sharawadgi is fine or is admirable, or any fuch expreffion of efteem-but I fhould hardly advife any of thefe 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 fucceed 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 Chinefe. 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 ftrait lines, of our ancestors. An artificial perpendicular rock flarting 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 tafte and zeal for the prefent ftyle, was fo perfuaded of the Chinese emperor's pleafureground being laid out on principles refembling ours, that he tranflated and published, under the name of Sir Harry Beaumont, a particular account of that incle. fure 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 bills from 20 to 60 feet high, ftreams and lakes, and one of the latter five miles round. These waters are paffed by bridges, -but even their bridges must 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 trait canal is as rational at leaft as a mæandring bridge. The colonades undulate in the fame manner. In fhort, this pretty gaudy fcene is the work of caprice and whim; and when we refect 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 majetty 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 exercife for his royal amulement 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 purpose; the eunuchs fow, reap, and carry in their harveft 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 style, and what hints he had received to fuggeft and conduct 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 flocked our gardens with giants, animals, monsters, 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 chalte; 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 straw hats gracefully fmart on one fide of their heads, and filken cloaks haif veiling their necks; all executed in Ronc.

he

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