GARDENING

G A R D E N I N G;

THE art of cultivating or planning gardens.—Gardening, in the perfection to which it has been lately brought in Britain, is entitled to a place of considerable rank among the liberal arts. It is as superior to landscape-painting, as a reality to a representation: it is an exertion of fancy; a subject for taste; and being released now from the restraints of regularity, and enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic convenience, the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble

scenes of nature, are all within its province. For it is no longer confined to the spots from which it takes its name; but regulates also the disposition and embellishments of a park, a farm, or a riding: and the business of a gardener is to select and apply whatever is great, elegant, or characteristic, in any of them; to discover and to shew all the advantages of the place upon which he is employed; to supply its defects, to correct its faults, and to improve its beauties. For all these operations,

Section I. GROUND. perations, the objects of nature are still his only materials. His first inquiry, therefore, must be into the means by which those effects are attained in nature,

which he is to produce; and into those properties in the objects of nature, which should determine him in the choice and arrangement of them.

PART I. OF THE CONSTITUENT PARTS OF THE SCENES OF NATURE.

NATURE, always simple, employs but four materials in the composition of her scenes; ground, wood, water, and rocks. The cultivation of nature has introduced a fifth species, the buildings requisite for the accommodation of men. Each of these again admits of varieties in figure, dimensions, colour, and situation. Every landscape is composed of these parts only; every beauty in a landscape depends on the application of their several varieties.

SECT. I. Of Ground.

THE shape of ground must be either a convex, a concave, or a plane; in terms less technical called a swell, a hollow, and a level. By combinations of these are formed all the irregularities of which ground is capable; and the beauty of it depends on the degrees and the proportions in which they are blended.

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Of a level. Both the convex and the concave are forms in themselves of more variety, and may therefore be admitted to a greater extent than a plane. But levels are not totally inadmissible. The preference unjustly shewn to them in the old gardens, where they prevailed almost in exclusion of every other form, has raised a prejudice against them. It is frequently reckoned an excellence in a piece of made ground, that every the least part of it is uneven; but then it wants one of the three great varieties of ground, which may sometimes be intermixed with the other two. A gentle concave declivity falls and spreads easily on a flat; the channels between several swells degenerate into mere gutters, if some breadth be not given to the bottoms by flattening them; and in many other instances, small portions of an inclined or horizontal plane may be introduced into an irregular composition. Care only must be taken to keep them down as subordinate parts, and not to suffer them to become principal.

There are, however, occasions on which a plane may be principal: a hanging level often produces effects not otherwise attainable. A large dead flat, indeed, raises no other idea than of safety: the eye finds no amusement, no repose on such a level: it is fatigued, unless timely relieved by an adequate termination; and the strength of that termination will compensate for its distance. A very wide plain, at the foot of a mountain, is less tedious than one of much less compass surrounded only by hillocks. A flat therefore of considerable extent may be hazarded in a garden, provided the boundaries also be considerable in proportion; and if, in addition to their importance, they become still more interesting by their beauty, then the facility and distinctness with which they are seen over a flat make the whole an agreeable composition. The greatness and the beauty of the boundary are not, however, alone sufficient; the form of it is of still more consequence. A continued range of the noblest wood, or the finest hill, would not cure the insipidity of a flat: a less important, a less pleasing

boundary, would be more effectual, if it traced a more varied outline; if it advanced sometimes boldly forward, sometimes retired into deep recesses; broke all the sides into parts, and marked even the plain itself with irregularity.

At Moor Park, on the back-front of the house, is a lawn of about thirty acres, absolutely flat; with falls below it on one hand, and heights above it on the other. The rising ground is divided into three great parts, each so distinct and so different, as to have the effect of several hills. That nearest to the house shelves gently under an open grove of noble trees which hang on the declivity, and advance beyond it on the plain. The next is a large hill pressing forward, and covered with wood from the top to the bottom. The third is a bold steep, with a thicket falling down the steepest part, which makes it appear still more precipitate: but the rest of the slope is bare; only the brow is crowned with wood, and towards the bottom is a little groupe of trees. These heights, thus finely characterized in themselves, are further distinguished by their appendages. The small, compact groupe near the foot, but still on the descent, of the farther hill, is contrasted by a large straggling clump, some way out upon the lawn, before the middle eminence. Between this and the first hill, under two or three trees which cross the opening, is seen to great advantage a winding glade, which rises beyond them, and marks the separation. This deep recess, the different distances to which the hills advance, the contrast in their forms, and their accompaniments, cast the plain on this side into a most beautiful figure. The other side and the end were originally the flat edge of a descent; a harsh, offensive termination: but it is now broken by several hillocks, not diminutive in size, and considerable by the fine clumps which distinguish them. They recede one beyond another, and the outline waves agreeably amongst them. They do more than conceal the sharpness of the edge; they convert a deformity into a beauty, and greatly contribute to the embellishment of this most lovely scene: a scene, however, in which the flat is principal; and yet a more varied, a more beautiful landscape, can hardly be desired in a garden.

A plain is not, however, in itself interesting; and the least deviation from the uniformity of its surface changes its nature: as long as the flat remains, it depends on the objects around for all its variety, and all its beauty. But convex and concave forms are generally pleasing, and the number of degrees and combinations into which they may be cast is infinite: those forms only in each which are perfectly regular must be avoided. A semicircle can never be tolerable: small portions of large circles blended together, or lines gently curved which are not parts of any circle, a hollow sinking but little below a level, a swell very much flattened at the top, are commonly the most agreeable figures.

In ground which lies beautifully, the concave will generally prevail; within the same compass it shews more surface than a swell. All the sides of the latter are not visible at the same time, except in a few particular situations: but it is only in a few particular situations, that any part of a hollow is concealed; earth seems to have been accumulated to raise the one, and taken away to sink the other. The concave, therefore, appears the lighter, and for the most part it is the more elegant shape: even the slopes of a swell can hardly be brought down, unless broken now and then into hollows, to take off from the heaviness of the mass. There are, however, situations where the convex form should be preferred: a hollow just below the brow of a hill reduces it to a narrow ridge, which has a poor meagre appearance; and an abrupt fall will never seem to join with a concave form immediately above it: a sharp edge divides them; and to connect them, that edge must be rounded, or at least flattened; which is, in fact, to interpose a convex or a level.

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Of the connection between the parts in ground.

In made ground, the connection is, perhaps, the principal consideration. A swell which wants it is but a heap, a hollow but a hole, and both appear artificial: the one seems placed upon a surface to which it does not belong; the other, dug into it. On the great scale of nature, indeed, either may be so considerable in itself, as to make its relation to any other almost a matter of indifference: but, on the smaller scale of a garden, if the parts are disjointed, the effect of the whole is lost; and the union of all is not more than sufficient to preserve an idea of greatness and importance, to spots which must be varied, and cannot be spacious. Little inequalities are besides in nature usually well blended together: all lines of separation have, in a course of time, been filled up; and therefore, when in made ground they are left open, that ground appears artificial.

Even where artifice is avowed, a breach in the connection offends the eye. The use of a fosse is merely to provide a fence, without obstructing the view. To blend the garden with the country is no part of the idea: the cattle, the objects, the culture, without the sunk fence, are discordant to all within, and keep up the division. A fosse may open the most polished lawn to a corn-field, a road, or a common, though they mark the very point of separation. It may be made on purpose to shew objects which cannot, or ought not to be in the garden; as a church, or a mill, a neighbouring gentleman's seat, a town, or a village; and yet no consciousness of the existence can reconcile us to the sight of this division. The most obvious disguise is to keep the hither above the further bank all the way; so that the latter may not be seen at a competent distance. But this alone is not always sufficient: for a division appears, if an uniformly continued line, however faint, be discernible; that line, therefore, must be broken. Low but extended hillocks may sometimes interrupt it; or the shape on one side may be continued, across the sunk fence, on the other; as when the ground sinks in the field, by beginning the declivity in the garden. Trees too without, connected with those within, and seeming part of a clump or a grove there, will frequently obliterate every trace of an interruption. By such, or other means, the line may be, and should be,

hid or disguised; not for the purpose of deception, (when all is done, we are seldom deceived), but to preserve the continued surface entire.

If, where no union is intended, a line of separation is disagreeable, it must be disgusting when it breaks the connection between the several parts of the same piece of ground. That connection depends on the junction of each part to those about it, and on the relation of every part to the whole. To complete the former, such shapes should be contiguous as most readily unite; and the actual division between them should be anxiously concealed. If a swell descends upon a level; if a hollow sinks from it, the level is an abrupt termination, and a little rim marks it distinctly. To cover that rim, a short sweep at the foot of the swell, a small rotundity at the entrance of the hollow, must be interposed. In every instance, when ground changes its direction, there is a point where the change is effected, and that point should never appear; some other shapes, uniting easily with both extremes, must be thrown in to conceal it. But there must be no uniformity even in these connections: if the same sweep be carried all round the bottom of a swell, the same rotundity all round the top of a hollow, though the junction be perfect, yet the art by which it is made is apparent, and art must never appear. The manner of concealing the separation should itself be disguised: and different degrees of cavity and rotundity; different shapes and dimensions to the little parts thus distinguished by degrees; and those parts breaking, in one place more in another less, into the principal forms which are to be united; produce that variety with which all nature abounds, and without which ground cannot be natural.

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Of the relation of the parts to the whole.

The relation of all the parts to the whole, when clearly marked, facilitates their junction with each other: for the common bond of union is then perceived, before there has been time to examine the subordinate connections; and if these should be deficient in some niceties, the defect is lost in the general impression. But any part which is at variance with the rest, is not barely a blemish in itself: it spreads disorder as far as its influence extends; and the confusion is in proportion as the other parts are more or less adapted to point out any particular direction, or to mark any peculiar character in the ground.

If, in ground all descending one way, a piece is twisted another, the general fall is obstructed by it; but if all the parts incline in the same direction, it is hardly credible how small a declivity will seem to be considerable. An appearance even of steepness may be given to a very gentle descent, by raising hillocks upon it, which shall lean to the point, whither all the rest are tending: for the eye measures from the top of the highest, to the bottom of the lowest ground; and when the relation of the parts is well preserved, such an effect from one is transfused over the whole.

But they should not, therefore, all lie exactly in the same direction: some may seem to point to it directly, others to incline very much, others but little, some partially, some entirely. If the direction be strongly marked on a few principal parts, great liberties may be taken with the others, provided none of them are turned the contrary way. The general idea must, however, be preserved, clear even of a doubt. A hillock which only intercepts the sight, if it does not contribute

tribute to the principal effect, is at the best an unnecessary excrescence; and even an interruption in the general tendency, tho' it hide nothing, is a blemish. On a descent, any hollow, any fall, which has not an outlet to lower ground, is a hole: the eye skips over it, instead of being continued along it; it is a gap in the composition.

There may indeed be occasions, when we should rather wish to check, than to promote, the general tendency. Ground may proceed too hastily towards its point; and we have equal power to retard, or to accelerate, the fall. We can slacken the precipitancy of a steep, by breaking it into parts, some of which shall incline less, than the whole before inclined, to the principal direction; and by turning them quite away, we may even change the course of the descent. These powers are of use in the larger scenes, where the several great parts often lie in several directions; and if they are thereby too strongly contrasted, or led towards points too widely asunder, every art should be exerted to bring them nearer together, to assimilate, and to connect them. As scenes increase in extent, they become more impatient of controul: they are not only less manageable, but ought to be less restrained; they require more variety and contrast. But still the same principles are applicable to the least, and to the greatest, tho' not with equal severity: neither ought to be rent to pieces; and tho' a small neglect, which would distract the one, may not disturb the other, yet a total disregard of all the principles of union is alike productive of confusion in both.

The style also of every part, must be accommodated to the character of the whole. For every piece of ground is distinguished by certain properties: it is either tame or bold, gentle or rude, continued or broken; and if any variety, inconsistent with those properties, be obtruded, it has no other effect than to weaken one idea without raising another. The insipidity of a flat is not taken away by a few scattered hillocks; a continuation of uneven ground can alone give the idea of inequality. A large, deep, abrupt break, among easy swells and falls, seems at the best but a piece left unfinished, and which ought to have been softened: it is not more natural, because it is more rude; nature forms both the one and the other, but seldom mixes them together. On the other hand, a small fine polished form, in the midst of rough, misshapen ground, though more elegant than all about it, is generally no better than a patch, itself disgraced, and disfiguring the scene. A thousand instances might be adduced to shew, that the prevailing idea ought to pervade every part, so far at least indispensably as to exclude whatever distracts it, and as much further as possible to accommodate the character of the ground to that of the scene it belongs to.

On the same principle, the proportion of the parts may often be adjusted. For though their size must be very much governed by the extent of the place, and a feature which would fill up a small spot may be lost in a large one; though there are forms of a particular cast, which appear to advantage only within certain dimensions, and ought not therefore to be applied where they have not room enough, or where they must occupy more space than becomes them; yet, independent of these considerations, a character of greatness

belongs to some scenes, which is not measured by their extent, but raised by other properties, sometimes only by the proportional largeness of their parts. On the contrary, where elegance characterises the spot, the parts should not only be small, but diversified besides with subordinate inequalities, and little delicate touches every where scattered about them. Striking effects, forcible impressions, whatever seems to require effort, disturb the enjoyment of a scene intended to amuse and to please.

In other instances, similar considerations will determine rather the number than the proportion of the parts. A place may be distinguished by its simplicity, which many divisions would destroy; another spot, without any pretensions to elegance, may be remarkable for an appearance of richness: a multiplicity of objects will give that appearance, and a number of parts in the ground will contribute to the profusion. A scene of gaiety is improved by the same means; the objects and the parts may differ in style, but they must be numerous in both. Sameness is dull: the purest simplicity can at the most render a place composed of large parts placid; the sublimest ideas only make it striking: it is always grave; to enliven it, numbers are wanting.

But ground is seldom beautiful or natural without variety, or even without contrast; and the precautions which have been given, extend no farther than to prevent variety from degenerating into inconsistency, and contrast into contradiction. Within the extremes, nature supplies an inexhaustible fund; and variety thus limited, so far from destroying, improves the general effect: Each distinguished part makes a separate impression; and all bearing the same stamp, all concurring to the same end, every one is an additional support to the prevailing idea: that is multiplied, it is extended, it appears in different shapes, it is shewn in several lights, and the variety illustrates the relation.

But variety wants not this recommendation; it is always desirable where it can be properly introduced; and an accurate observer will see in every form several circumstances by which it is distinguished from every other. If the scene be mild and quiet, he will place together those which do not differ widely; and he will gradually depart from the similitude. In ruder scenes, the succession will be less regular, and the transitions more sudden. The character of the place must determine the degree of difference between forms which are contiguous. Besides distinctions in the shapes of ground, differences in their situations and their dimensions are sources of variety. The position will alter the effect, though the figure be the same; and for particular effects, a change only in the distance may be striking. If that be considerable, a succession of similar shapes sometimes occasions a fine perspective; but the diminution will be less marked, that is, the effect will be less sensible, if the forms are not nearly alike: we take more notice of one difference, when there is no other. Sometimes a very disagreeable effect, produced by too close a resemblance of shapes, may be remedied only by an alteration in the size. If a steep descends in a succession of abrupt falls, nearly equal, they have the appearance of steps, and are neither pleasing nor wild; but if they are made to differ in height and length, the objection is removed: and at all times a

Section I.
GROUND. difference in the dimensions will be found to have a greater effect than in speculation we should be inclined to ascribe to it, and will often disguise a similarity of figure.

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Of the lines traced by the several parts in ground. It also contributes, perhaps more than any other circumstance, to the perfection of those lines, which the eye traces along the parts of a piece of ground, when it glances over several together. No variety of form compensates for the want of it. An undulating line composed of parts all elegant in themselves, all judiciously contrasted, and happily united, but equal one to another, is far from the line of beauty. A long straight line has no variety at all; and a little deviation into a curve, if there be still a continued uniformity, is but a trifling amendment. Though ground all falling the same requires every attention to its general tendency, yet the eye must not dart down the whole length immediately in one direction, but should be infensibly conducted towards the principal point with some circuit and delay. The channels between hillocks ought never to run in straight, nor even regularly curved lines; but winding gently among them, and constantly varying in form and in dimensions, should gradually find their way. The beauty of a large hill, especially when seen from below, is frequently impaired by the even continuation of its brow. An attempt to break it by little knoles is seldom successful; they seem separate independent hillocks artificially put on. The intended effect may indeed be produced by a large knole descending in some places lower than in others, and rooted at several points into the hill. The same end may be attained by carrying some channel or hollow on the side upwards, till it cut the continued line; or by bringing the brow forward in one place, and throwing it back in another; or by forming a secondary ridge a little way down the side, and casting the ground above it into a different though not opposite direction to the general descent. Any of these expedients will at least draw the attention off from the defect. But if the break were to divide the line into equal parts, another uniformity would be added, without removing the former: for regularity always suggests a suspicion of artifice; and artifice detected, no longer deceives. Our imaginations would industriously join the broken parts, and the idea of the continued line would be restored.

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Of contrast. WHATEVER break be chosen, the position of it must be oblique to the line which is to be broken. A rectangular division produces sameness; there is no contrast between the forms it divides: but if it be oblique, while it diminishes the part on one side, it enlarges that on the other. Parallel lines are liable to the same objection as those at right angles: though each by itself be the perfect line of beauty; yet if they correspond, they form a shape between them, whose sides want contrast. On the same principle, forms will sometimes be introduced, less for their intrinsic than their occasional merit in contrasting happily with those about them: each sets off the other; and together they are a more agreeable composition than if they had been more beautiful, but at the same time more similar.

One reason why tame scenes are seldom interesting, is, that though they often admit of many varieties, they allow of few, and those only faint, contrasts. We may be pleased by the number of the former, but we

can be struck only by the force of the latter. These ought to abound in the larger and bolder scenes of a garden, especially in such as are formed by an assemblage of many distinct and considerable parts thrown together: as when several rising grounds appear one beyond another; a fine swell seen above a flanting sweep which runs before it, has a beautiful effect, which a nearer resemblance would destroy: and (except in particular instances) a close similarity between lines which either cross, or face, or rise behind one another, makes a poor, uniform, disagreeable composition.

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Of extraordinary effects. The application of any of the foregoing observations to the still greater scenes of nature, would carry us at present too far; nor could it well be made, before the other constituent parts of those scenes, wood, water, rocks, and buildings, have been taken into consideration. The rules which have been given, are chiefly applicable to ground which may be managed by a spade; and even there they are only general, not universal: few of them are without exception; very few, which, on particular occasions, may not be dispensed with. Many of the above remarks are, however, so far of use in scenes the farthest from our reach, as they may assist in directing our choice of those parts which are in our power to shew, or to conceal, though not to alter. But in converting them to this purpose, a caution, which has more than once been alluded to, must always be had in remembrance; never to suffer general considerations to interfere with extraordinary great effects, which rise superior to all regulations, and perhaps owe part of their force to their deviation from them. Singularity causes at least surprise, and surprise is allied to astonishment. These effects are not, however, attached merely to objects of enormous size; they frequently are produced by a greatness of style and character, within such an extent as ordinary labour may modify, and the compass of a garden include.

The caution therefore may not be useless within these narrow bounds: but nature proceeds still further, beyond the utmost verge to which art can follow; and, in scenes licentiously wild, not content with contrast, forces even contradictions to unite. The grotesque discordant shapes which are often there confusedly jumbled together, might sufficiently justify the remark. But the caprice does not stop here: to mix with such shapes a form perfectly regular, is still more extravagant; and yet the effect is sometimes so wonderful, that we cannot with the extravagance corrected. It is not unusual to see a conical hill standing out from a long, irregular, mountainous ridge, and greatly improving the view: but at Ilam such a hill is thrown into the midst of the rudest scene, and almost fills up an abyss, sunk among huge, bare, misshapen hills, whose unwieldy parts, and uncouth forms, cut by the tapering lines of the cone, appear more savage from the opposition: and the effect would evidently be stronger, were the figure more complete; for it does not rise quite to a point, and the want of perfect regularity seems a blemish. Whether such a mixture of contrarieties would for a length of time be engaging, can be known only to those who are habituated to the spot. It certainly at first sight rivets the attention. But the conical hill is the most striking object. In such a situation it appears more strange, more fantastic, than the

Section I.
GROUND. the rude shapes which are heaped about it: and together they suit the character of the place, where nature seems to have delighted to bring distances together; where two rivers, which are ingulphed many miles afunder, issue from their subterraneous passages, the one often muddy when the other is clear, within a few paces of each other: but they appear only to lose themselves again; for they immediately unite their streams, just in time to fall together into another current, which also runs through the garden. Such whimsical wonders, however, lose their effect, when represented in a picture, or mimicked in ground artificially laid. They there want that vastness which constitutes their force; that reality which ascertains the caprice. As accidents they may surprise; but they are not objects of choice.

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Effects of wood on the form of ground.

To determine the choice to its proper objects is the purpose of the foregoing observations. Some of the principles upon which they are founded will be applicable also, and perhaps without further explanation, to the other constituent parts of the scenes of nature: they will there be often more obvious than in ground. But this is not a place for the comparison; the subject now is ground only. It is not, however, foreign to that subject to observe, that the effects which have been recommended, may sometimes be produced by wood alone, without any alteration in the ground itself: a tedious continued line may by such means be broken. It is usual for this purpose to place several little clumps along a brow; but if they are small and numerous, the artifice is weak and apparent: an equal number of trees collected into one or two large masses, and dividing the line into very unequal parts, is less suspicious, and obliterates the idea of sameness with more certainty. Where several similar lines are seen together, if one be planted, and the other bare, they become contrasts to each other. A hollow in certain situations, has been mentioned as a disagreeable interruption in a continued surface: but, filled with wood, the heads of the trees supply the vacancy; the irregularity is preserved; even the inequalities of the depth are in some measure shewn; and a continuation of surface is provided. Raising ground may, on the other hand, be in appearance raised still higher, by covering it with wood, of humble growth towards the bottom, and gradually taller as it ascends. An additional mark of the inclination of falling ground may also be obtained, by placing a few trees in the same direction, which will strongly point out the way; whereas plantations athwart a descent, bolster up the ground, and check the fall: but obliquely crossing it, they will often divert the general tendency; the ground will in some measure assume their direction, and they will make a variety, not a contradiction. Hedges, or continued plantations, carried over uneven ground, render the irregularity more conspicuous, and frequently mark little inequalities, which would otherwise escape observation: or if a line of trees run close upon the edge of an abrupt fall, they give it depth and importance. By such means a view may be improved; by similar means, in more confined spots, very material purposes may be answered.

SECT. II. Of Wood.

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Characteristic. In the above instances the ground is the principal consideration: but previous to any inquiry into the greater

effects of wood, when it is itself an object, an examination of the characteristic differences of trees and shrubs is necessary. We do not mean botanical distinctions: we mean apparent, not essential varieties; and these must be obvious and considerable, to merit regard in the disposition of the objects they distinguish.

Trees and shrubs are of different shapes, greens, and growths.

The varieties in their shapes may be reduced to the following heads.

Some thick with branches and foliage have almost an appearance of solidity; as the beech and the elm, the lilac and syringa. Others thin of boughs and of leaves seem light and airy; as the ash and the arbutus, the common arbor vitæ and the tamarisk.

There is a mean betwixt the two extremes, very distinguishable from both; as in the bladder-nut, and the aspen-leaved maple.

They may again be divided into those whose branches begin from the ground, and those which shoot up in a stem before their branches begin. Trees which have some, not much clear stem, as several of the firs, belong to the former class; but a very short stem will rank a shrub, such as the althæa, in the latter.

Of those whose branches begin from the ground, some rise in a conical figure, as the larch, the cedar of Lebanon, and the holly; some swell out in the middle of their growth, and diminish at both ends, as the Weymouth pine, the mountain ash, and the lilac: and some are irregular and bushy from the top to the bottom, as the evergreen oak, the Virginian cedar, and Guelder rose.

There is a great difference, between one whose base is very large, and another whose base is very small, in proportion to its height: the cedar of Lebanon, and the cypress, are instances of this difference; yet in both the branches begin from the ground.

The heads of those which shoot up into a stem before their branches begin, sometimes are slender cones, as of many firs: sometimes are broad cones, as of the horse-chestnut; sometimes they are round, as of the stone-pine, and most sorts of fruit-trees; and sometimes irregular, as of the elm. Of this last kind there are many considerable varieties.

The branches of some grow horizontally, as of the oak. In others they tend upwards, as in the almond, and in several sorts of broom and of willows. In others they fall, as in the lime, and the acacia: and in some of these last they incline obliquely, as in many of the firs; in some they hang directly down, as in the weeping willow.

These are the most obvious great distinctions in the shapes of trees and shrubs. The differences between shades of green cannot be so considerable; but these also will be found well deserving of attention.

Some are of a dark green, as the horse-chestnut and the yew; some of a light green, as the lime and the laurel; some of a green tinged with brown, as the Virginian cedar; some of a green tinged with white, as the arbutus and the sage tree; and some of a green tinged with yellow, as the aspen-leaved maple and the Chinese arbor vitæ. The variegated plants also are generally entitled to be classed with the white, or the yellow, by the strong tincture of the one or the other of those colours on their leaves.

Other

Other considerations concerning colours will soon be suggested: the present inquiry is only into great fixed distinctions. Those in the shapes and the greens of trees and shrubs have been mentioned: there are others, as great and as important, in their growths; but they are too obvious to deserve mentioning. Every gradation, from the most humble to the most lofty, has, in certain situations, particular effects: it is unnecessary to divide them into stages.

One principal use in settling these characteristic distinctions, is to point out the stores whence varieties may at all times be readily drawn, and the causes by which sometimes inconsistencies may be accounted for. Trees which differ but in one of these circumstances, whether of shape, of green, or of growth, though they agree in every other, are sufficiently distinguished for the purpose of variety: if they differ in two or three, they become contrasts; if in all, they are opposites, and seldom groupe well together. But there are intermediate degrees, by which the most distant may be reconciled: the upright branches of the almond mix very ill with the falling boughs of the weeping willow; but an interval filled with other trees, in figure between the two extremes, renders them at least not unsightly in the same plantation. Those, on the contrary, which are of one character, and are distinguished only as the characteristic mark is strongly or faintly impressed upon them, as a young beech and a birch, an acacia and a larch, all pendant, though in different degrees, form a beautiful mass, in which unity is preserved without sameness; and still finer groups may often be produced by greater deviations from uniformity into contrast.

Occasions to show the effects of particular shapes in certain situations will hereafter so frequently occur, that a further illustration of them now would be needless. But there are besides, sometimes in trees, and commonly in shrubs, still more minute varieties,—in the turn of the branches, in the form and the size of the foliage, which generally catch, and often deserve attention. Even the texture of the leaves frequently occasions many different appearances: some have a stiffness, some an agility, by which they are more or less proper for several purposes; on many there is a gloss, very useful at times to enliven, at other times too glittering for the hue of the plantation. But all these inferior varieties are below our notice in the consideration of great effects: they are of consequence only where the plantation is near to the sight; where it skirts a home-scene, or borders the side of a walk: and in a shrubbery, which in its nature is little both in style and in extent, they should be anxiously sought for. The noblest wood is not indeed disguised by them; and when a wood, having served as a great object to one spot, becomes in another the edge of a walk, little circumstances, varying with ceaseless change along the outline, will then be attended to: but where-ever these minute varieties are fitting, the grossest taste will feel the propriety, and the most cursory observation will suggest the distinctions: a detail of all would be endless; nor can they be reduced into classes. To range the shrubs and small trees so that they may mutually set off the beauties, and conceal the blemishes, of each other; to aim at no effects which depend on a nicety for their success, and which the soil,

the exposure, or the season of the day, may destroy; to attend more to the groups than to the individuals; and to consider the whole as a plantation, not as a collection of plants; are the best general rules which can be given concerning them.

The different tints of greens may seem at first sight to be rather minute varieties than characteristic distinctions: but upon experience it will be found, that from small beginnings they lead to material consequences; that they are more important on the broad expanse, than along the narrow outline of a wood; and that by their union, or their contrast, they produce effects not to be disregarded in scenes of extent and of grandeur.

A hanging wood in autumn is enriched with colours, whose beauty cheers the approaches of the inclement season they forebode: but when the trees first droop, while the verdure as yet only begins to fade, they are no more than stronger tints of those colours with which the greens in their vigour are shaded; and which now are succeeded by a paler white, a brighter yellow, or a darker brown. The effects are not different; they are only more faintly impressed at one time than another; but when they are strongest, they are most observable. The fall of the leaf, therefore, is the time to learn the species, the order, and the proportion of tints, which blended will form beautiful masses; and, on the other hand, to distinguish those which are incompatible near together.

The peculiar beauty of the tints of red cannot then escape observation, and the want of them throughout the summer-months must be regretted: but that want, though it cannot perfectly, may partially be supplied; for plants have a permanent and an accidental colour. The permanent is always some shade of green; but any other may be the accidental colour; and there is none which so many circumstances concur to produce as a red. It is assumed in succession by the bud, the blossom, the berry, the bark, and the leaf. Sometimes it profusely overspreads, at other times it dimly tinges the plant; and a reddish green is generally the hue of those plants, on which it lasts long, or frequently returns.

Admitting this, at least for many months in the year, among the characteristic distinctions, a large piece of red green, with a narrow edging of dark green along the further side of it, and beyond that a piece of light green larger than the first, will be found to compose a beautiful mass. Another, not less beautiful, is a yellow green nearest to the eye, beyond that a light green, then a brown green, and lastly a dark green. The dark green must be the largest, the light green the next in extent, and the yellow green the least of all.

From these combinations, the agreements between particular tints may be known. A light green may be next either to a yellow or a brown green, and a brown to a dark green, all in considerable quantities; and a little rim of dark green may border on a red or a light green. Further observations will show, that the yellow and the white greens connect easily; but that a large quantity of the light, the yellow, or the white greens, does not mix well with a large quantity also of the dark green; and that to form a pleasing mass, either the dark green must

Section II. WOOD. must be reduced to a mere edging, or a brown or an intermediate green must be interposed: that the red, the brown, and the intermediate greens, agree among themselves: and that any of them may be joined to any other tint; but that the red green will bear a larger quantity of the light than of the dark green near it, nor does it seem so proper a mixture with the white green as with the rest.

In massing these tints, an attention must be constantly kept up to their forms, that they do not lie in large stripes one beyond another; but that either they be quite intermingled, or, which is generally more pleasing, that considerable pieces of different tints, each a beautiful figure, be, in different proportions, placed near together. Exactness in the shapes must not be attempted, for it cannot be preserved; but if the great outlines be well drawn, little variations, afterwards occasioned by the growth of the plants, will not spoil them.

¹⁷ Effects arising from the disposition of the greens. A small thicket is generally most agreeable, when it is one fine mass of well-mixed greens: that mass gives to the whole a unity, which can by no other means be so perfectly expressed. When more than one is necessary for the extent of the plantation, still if they are too much contrasted, if the gradations from one to another are easy, the unity is not broken by the variety.

While the union of tints is productive of pleasing effects, strong effects may, on the other hand, be sometimes produced by their disagreements. Opposites, such, for instance, as the dark and light greens, in large quantities close together, break to pieces the surface upon which they meet; and an outline which cannot be sufficiently varied in form, may be in appearance, by the management of its shades: every opposition of tints is a break in a continued line: the depth of recesses may be deepened by darkening the greens as they retire; a tree which stands out from a plantation may be separated by its tint as much as by its position; the appearance of solidity or airiness in plants depends not solely on the thickness or thinness, but partly on the colour of the leaves; clumps at a distance, may be rendered more or less distinct by their greens; and the fine effect of a dark green tree, or groupe of trees, with nothing behind it but the splendor of a morning or the glow of an evening sky, cannot be unknown to any who was ever delighted with a picture of Claude, or with the more beautiful originals in nature.

Another effect attainable by the aid of the different tints, is founded on the first principles of perspective. Objects grow faint as they retire from the eye; a detached clump, or a single tree, of the lighter greens, will, therefore, seem farther off than one equidistant of a darker hue; and a regular gradation from one tint to another will alter the apparent length of a continued plantation, according as the dark or light greens begin the gradation. In a straight line this is obvious; in a broken one, the fallacy in the appearance is seldom detected, only because the real extent is generally unknown; but experiments will support the principle, if they are made on plantations not very small, nor too close to the eye: the several parts may then be shortened or lengthened, and the variety of the outline be improved by a judicious arrangement of greens.

OTHER effects arising from mixtures of greens will occasionally present themselves in the disposition of a wood, which is the next consideration. Wood, as a general term, comprehends all trees and shrubs in whatever disposition; but it is specifically applied in a more limited sense, and in that sense we shall now use it.

Every plantation must be either a wood, a grove, a clump, or a single tree.

A wood is composed both of trees and underwood, covering a considerable space. A grove consists of trees without underwood. A clump differs from either only in extent: it may be either close or open: when close, it is sometimes called a thicket; when open, a groupe of trees; but both are equally clumps, whatever may be the shape or situation.

ONE of the noblest objects in nature is the surface of a large thick wood, commanded from an eminence, or seen from below, hanging on the side of a hill. The latter is generally the more interesting object. Its aspiring situation gives it an air of greatness; its termination is commonly the horizon: and, indeed, if it is deprived of that splendid boundary, if the brow appears above it, (unless some very peculiar effect characterises that brow), it loses much of its magnificence: it is inferior to a wood which covers a less hill from the top to the bottom; for a whole space filled is seldom little: but a wood commanded from an eminence is generally no more than a part of the scene below; and its boundary is often inadequate to its greatness. To continue it, therefore, till it winds out of sight, or loses itself in the horizon, is generally desirable: but then the varieties of its surface grow confused as it retires; while those of a hanging wood are all distinct; the furthest parts are held up to the eye; and none are at a distance, though the whole be extensive.

The varieties of a surface are essential to the beauty of it: a continued smooth shaven level of foliage is neither agreeable nor natural; the different growths of trees commonly break it in reality, and their shadows still more in appearance. These shades are so many tints, which, undulating about the surface, are its greatest embellishment; and such tints may be produced with more effect, and more certainty, by a judicious mixture of greens; at the same time an additional variety may be introduced, by grouping and contrasting trees very different in shape from each other: and whether variety in the greens or in the forms be the design, the execution is often easy, and seldom to a certain degree impossible. In raising a young wood, it may be perfect. In old woods, there are many spots which may be either thinned or thickened: and there the characteristic distinctions should determine what to plant, or which to leave; at the least will often point out those which, as blemishes, ought to be taken away; and the removal of two or three trees will sometimes accomplish the design. The number of beautiful forms, and agreeable masses, which may decorate the surface, is so great, that where the place will not admit of one, another is always ready; and as no delicacy of finishing is required, no minute exactness is worth regarding, great effects will not be disconcerted by small obstructions and little disappointments.

The contrasts, however, of masses and of groupes must not be too strong, where greatness is the character.

ter of the wood; for unity is essential to greatness; and if direct opposites be placed close together, the wood is no longer one object; it is only a confused collection of several separate plantations. But if the progress be gradual from the one to the other, shapes and tints widely different may assemble on the same surface; and each should occupy a considerable space: a single tree, or a small cluster of trees, in the midst of an extensive wood, is in size but a speck, and in colour but a spot; the groups and the masses must be large to produce any sensible variety.

Yet single trees in the midst of a wood, though seldom of use to diversify a surface, often deserve particular regard as individuals, and are important to the greatness of the whole. The superficies of a shrubby thicket, how extensive soever, does not convey the same ideas of magnificence, as that of a hanging wood: and yet, at first sight, the difference is not always very discernible. It often requires time to collect the several circumstances in the latter, which suggest the elevation to which that broad expanse of foliage is raised, the vastness of the trunks which support it so high, the extent of the branches which spread it so far. When these circumstances, all of grandeur, crowd together upon the mind, they dignify the space; which, without them, might, indifferently, be the superficies of a thicket or the surface of a wood: but a few large trees, not eminent above all about them, but distinguished by some slight separation, and obvious at a glance, immediately resolve the doubt. They are noble objects in themselves; become the situation; and serve as a measure to the rest. On the same principle, trees which are thin of boughs and of leaves, those whose branches tend upwards, or whose heads rise in slender cones, have an appearance more of airiness than of importance; and are blemishes in a wood, where greatness is the prevailing idea. Those, on the contrary, whose branches hang directly down, have a breadth of head, which suits with such a situation, though their own peculiar beauty be lost in it.

These decorations are natural graces, which never derogate from greatness; and a number of shades playing on the surface, over a variety of those beautiful forms into which it may be cast, enliven that sameness, which, while it prevails, reduces the merit of one of the noblest objects in nature to that of mere space. To fill that space with objects of beauty, to delight the eye after it has been struck, to fix the attention where it has been caught, and to prolong astonishment into admiration, are purposes not unworthy of the greatest designs; and, in the execution, productive of embellishments, which in style are not unequal to scenes of richness and magnificence.

WHEN, in a romantic situation, very broken ground is overspread with wood, it may be proper, on the surface of the wood, to mark the inequalities of the ground. Rudeness, not greatness, is the prevailing idea; and a choice directly the reverse of that which is productive of unity, will produce it. Strong contrasts, even oppositions, may be eligible; the aim is rather to disjoint than to connect: a deep hollow may sink into dark greens; an abrupt bank may be shewn by a rising stage of aspiring trees, a sharp ridge by a narrow line of conical shapes; firs are of great use

upon such occasions; their tint, their form, their singularity, recommend them.

A hanging wood of thin forest-trees, and seen from below, is seldom pleasing: those few trees, are by the perspective brought nearer together; it loses the beauty of a thin wood, and is defective as a thick one: the most obvious improvement, therefore, is to thicken it. But, when seen from an eminence, a thin wood is often a lively and elegant circumstance in a view; it is full of objects; and every separate tree shews its beauty. To increase that vivacity, which is the peculiar excellence of a thin wood, the trees should be characteristically distinguished both in their tints and their shapes; and such as for their airiness have been prescribed in a thick wood, are frequently the most eligible here. Differences also in their growths are a further source of variety; each should be considered as a distinct object, unless where a small number are grouped together; and then all that compose the little cluster must agree: but the groups themselves, for the same reason as the separate trees, should be strongly contrasted; the continued underwood is their only connection, and that is not affected by their variety.

THOUGH the surface of a wood, when commanded, deserves all these attentions, yet the outline more frequently calls for our regard: it is also more in our power; it may sometimes be great, and may always be beautiful. The first requisite is irregularity. That a mixture of trees and underwood should form a long straight line, can never be natural; and a succession of easy sweeps and gentle rounds, each a portion of a greater or less circle, composing all together a line literally serpentine, is, if possible, worse. It is but a number of regularities put together in a disorderly manner, and equally distant from the beautiful both of art and of nature. The true beauty of an outline consists more in breaks than in sweeps; rather in angles than in rounds; in variety, not in succession.

The outline of a wood is a continued line, and small variations do not save it from the insipidity of sameness: one deep recess, one bold prominence, has more effect than twenty little irregularities. That one divides the line into parts, but no breach is thereby made in its unity; a continuation of wood always remains; the form of it only is altered, and the extent is increased. The eye, which hurries to the extremity of whatever is uniform, delights to trace a varied line through all its intricacies, to pause from stage to stage, and to lengthen the progress. The parts must not, however, on that account be multiplied till they are too minute to be interesting, and so numerous as to create confusion. A few large parts should be strongly distinguished in their forms, their directions, and their situations; each of these may afterwards be decorated with subordinate varieties; and the mere growth of the plants will occasion some irregularity; on many occasions, more will not be required.

Every variety in the outline of a wood must be a prominence, or a recess. Breadth in either is not so important as length to the one, and depth to the other. If the former ends in an angle, the latter diminishes to a point; they have more force than a shallow dent, or a dwarf excrescence, how wide soever. They are greater deviations from the continued line which they are intended to break; and their effect is to enlarge the

Section II. Wood. the wood itself, which seems to stretch from the most advanced point, back beyond the most distant to which it retires. The extent of a large wood on a flat, not commanded, can by no circumstance be so manifestly shewn, as by a deep recess; especially if that recess wind so as to conceal the extremity, and leave the imagination to pursue it. On the other hand, the poverty of a shallow wood might sometimes be relieved by here and there a prominence, or clumps, which by their apparent junction should seem to be prominences from it. A deeper wood with a continued outline, except when commanded, would not appear so considerable.

An inlet into a wood seems to have been cut, if the opposite points of the entrance tally; and that show of art depreciates its merit: but a difference only in the situation of those points, by bringing one more forward than the other, prevents the appearance, though their forms be similar. Other points, which distinguish the great parts, should in general be strongly marked: a short turn has more spirit in it than a tedious circuit; and a line broken by angles has a precision and firmness, which in an undulated line are wanting: the angles should indeed commonly be a little softened; the rotundity of the plant which forms them is sometimes sufficient for the purpose; but if they are mellowed down too much, they lose all meaning. Three or four large parts thus boldly distinguished, will break a very long outline; more may be, and often ought to be, thrown in, but seldom are necessary: and when two woods are opposed on the sides of a narrow glade, neither has so much occasion for variety in itself as if it were single; if they are very different from each other, the contrast supplies the deficiency to each, and the interval between them is full of variety. The form of that interval is indeed of as much consequence as their own: though the outlines of both the woods be separately beautiful, yet if together they do not cast the open space into an agreeable figure, the whole scene is not pleasing; and a figure is never agreeable, when the sides too closely correspond; whether they are exactly the same, or exactly the reverse of each other, they equally appear artificial.

Every variety of outline hitherto mentioned, may be traced by the underwood alone; but frequently the same effects may be produced with more ease, and with much more beauty, by a few trees standing out from the thicket, and belonging, or seeming to belong, to the wood, so as to make a part of its figure. Even where they are not wanted for that purpose, detached trees are such agreeable objects, so distinct, so light, when compared to the covert about them, that skirting along it in some parts, and breaking it in others, they give an unaffected grace, which can no otherwise be given to the outline. They have a still further effect, when they stretch across the whole breadth of an inlet, or before part of a recess into the wood: they are themselves shewn to advantage by the space behind them, and that space, seen between their stems, they in return throw into an agreeable perspective. An inferior grace of the same kind may be often introduced, only by distinguishing the boles of some trees in the wood itself, and keeping down the thicket beneath them. Where even this cannot be well executed, still the outline may be filled with such trees and shrubs as swell out in the middle of their growth,

and diminish at both ends; or with such as rise in a slender cone; with those whose branches tend upwards; or whose base is very small in proportion to their height; or which are very thin of boughs and of leaves. In a confined garden-scene, which wants room for the effect of detached trees, the outline will be heavy, if these little attentions are disregarded.

The prevailing character of a wood is generally grandeur: the principal attention therefore which it requires, is to prevent the excesses of that character, to diversify the uniformity of its extent, to lighten the unwieldiness of its bulk, and to blend graces with greatness. But the character of a grove is branty. Fine trees are lovely objects; a grove is an assemblage of them; in which every individual retains much of its own peculiar elegance, and whatever it loses is transferred to the superior beauty of the whole. To a grove, therefore, which admits of endless variety in the disposition of the trees, differences in their shapes and their greens are seldom very important, and sometimes they are detrimental. Strong contrasts scatter trees which are thinly planted, and which have not the connection of underwood; they no longer form one plantation; they are a number of single trees. A thick grove is not indeed exposed to this mischief, and certain situations may recommend different shapes and different greens for their effects upon the surface; but in the outline they are seldom much regarded. The eye attracted into the depth of the grove, passes by little circumstances at the entrance; even varieties in the form of the line do not always engage the attention: they are not so apparent as in a continued thicket, and are scarcely seen if they are not considerable.

But the surface and the outline are not the only circumstances to be attended to. Though a grove be beautiful as an object, it is besides delightful as a spot to walk or to sit in; and the choice and the disposition of the trees for effects within, are therefore a principal consideration. Mere irregularity alone will not please: strict order is there more agreeable than absolute confusion; and some meaning better than none. A regular plantation has a degree of beauty; but it gives no satisfaction, because we know that the same number of trees might be more beautifully arranged. A disposition, however, in which the lines only are broken, without varying the distances, is less natural than any; for though we cannot find straight lines in a forest, we are habituated to them in the hedge-rows of fields: but neither in wild nor in cultivated nature do we ever see trees equi-distant from each other: that regularity belongs to art alone. The distances, therefore, should be strikingly different: the trees should gather into groups, or stand in various irregular lines, and describe several figures: the intervals between them should be contrasted both in shape and in dimensions: a large space should in some places be quite open; in others the trees should be so close together, as hardly to leave a passage between them; and in others as far apart as the connection will allow. In the forms and the varieties of these groups, these lines, and these openings, principally consists the interior beauty of a grove.

The force of them is most strongly illustrated at Claremont; where the walk to the cottage, though destitute of many natural advantages, and eminent for

none; though it commands no prospect; though the water below it is a trifling pond; though it has nothing, in short, but inequality of ground to recommend it; is yet the finest part of the garden: for a grove is there planted in a gently curved direction, all along the side of a hill, and on the edge of a wood, which rises above it. Large recesses break it into several clumps, which hang down the declivity; some of them approaching, but none reaching quite to the bottom. These recesses are so deep as to form great openings in the midst of the grove; they penetrate almost to the covert: but the clumps being all equally suspended from the wood; and a line of open plantation, though sometimes narrow, running constantly along the top; a continuation of grove is preserved, and the connection between the parts is never broken. Even a groupe, which near one of the extremities stands out quite detached, is still in style so similar to the rest, as not to lose all relation. Each of these clumps is composed of several others still more intimately united: each is full of groupes, sometimes of no more than two trees, sometimes of four or five, and now and then in larger clusters: an irregular waving line, issuing from some little crowd, loses itself in the next; or a few scattered trees drop in a more distant succession from the one to the other. The intervals, winding here like a glade, and widening there into broader openings, differ in extent, in figure, and direction; but all the groupes, the lines, and the intervals, are collected together into large general clumps, each of which is at the same time both compact and free, identical and various. The whole is a place wherein to tarry with secure delight, or fanter with perpetual amusement.

The grove at Esher-place was planted by the same masterly hand; but the necessity of accommodating the young plantation to some large trees which grew there before, has confined its variety. The groupes are few and small; there was not room for larger or for more: there were no opportunities to form continued narrow glades between opposite lines; the vacant spaces are therefore chiefly irregular openings spreading every way, and great differences of distance between the trees are the principal variety; but the grove winds along the bank of a large river, on the side and at the foot of a very sudden ascent, the upper part of which is covered with wood. In one place, it presses close to the covert; retires from it in another; and stretches in a third across a bold recess, which runs up high into the thicket. The trees sometimes overspread the flat below; sometimes leave an open space to the river; at other times crown the brow of a large knole, climb up a steep, or hang on a gentle declivity. These varieties in the situation more than compensate for the want of variety in the disposition of the trees; and the many happy circumstances which concur

In Esher's peaceful grove,
Where Kent and nature vie for Pelham's love,

render this little spot more agreeable than any at Claremont. But though it was right to preserve the trees already standing, and not to sacrifice great present beauties to still greater in futurity; yet this attention has been a restraint; and the grove at Claremont, considered merely as a plantation, is in delicacy of taste, and fertility of invention, superior to that at Esher.

Both were early essays in the modern art of garden-

ing: and, perhaps from an eagerness to shew the effect, the trees in both were placed too near together: though they are still far short of their growth, they are run up into poles, and the groves are already past their prime; but the temptation to plant for such a purpose no longer exists, now that experience has justified the experiment. If, however, we still have not patience to wait, it is possible to secure both a present and a future effect, by fixing first on a disposition which will be beautiful when the trees are large, and then intermingling another which is agreeable while they are small. These occasional trees are hereafter to be taken away; and must be removed in time, before they become prejudicial to the others.

The consequence of variety in the disposition, is variety in the light and shade of the grove; which may be improved by the choice of the trees. Some are impenetrable to the fiercest sun-beam; others let in here and there a ray between the large masses of their foliage; and others, thin both of boughs and of leaves, only chequer the ground. Every degree of light and shade, from a glare to obscurity, may be managed, partly by the number, and partly by the texture, of the trees. Differences only in the manner of their growths have also corresponding effects: there is a closeness under those whose branches descend low, and spread wide; a space and liberty where the arch above is high; and frequent transitions from the one to the other are very pleasing. These still are not all the varieties of which the interior of a grove is capable: trees indeed, whose branches nearly reach the ground, being each a sort of thicket, are inconsistent with an open plantation: but though some of the characteristic distinctions are thereby excluded, other varieties more minute succeed in their place; for the freedom of passage throughout brings every tree in its turn near to the eye, and subjects even differences in foliage to observation. These, slight as they may seem, are agreeable when they occur: it is true, they are not regretted when wanting; but a defect of ornament is not necessarily a blemish.

It has been already observed, that clumps differ only in extent from woods, if they are close; or from groves, if they are open: they are small woods, and small groves, governed by the same principles as the larger, after allowances made for their dimensions. But besides the properties they may have in common with woods or with groves, they have others peculiar to themselves, which require examination.

They are either independent or relative: when independent, their beauty, as single objects, is solely to be attended to; when relative, the beauty of the individuals must be sacrificed to the effect of the whole, which is the greater consideration.

The least clump that can be, is of two trees; and the best effect they can have is, that their heads united should appear one large tree: two therefore of different species, or seven or eight of such shapes as do not easily join, can hardly be a beautiful groupe, especially if it have a tendency to a circular form. Such clumps of five, though very common, are seldom pleasing; they do not compose one mass, but are only a confused number of pinnacles. The confusion is however avoided, by placing them in succession, not in clusters; and a clump of such trees is therefore more agreeable when it is ex-

Wood. Three trees together must form either a right line, or a triangle: to disguise the regularity, the distances should be very different. Distinctions in their shapes contribute also to the same end; and a variety in their growths still more. When a straight line consists of two trees nearly similar, and of a third much lower than they are, the even direction in which they stand is hardly discernible.

If humbler growths at the extremity can discompose the strictest regularity, the use of them is thereby recommended upon other occasions. It is indeed the variety peculiarly proper for clumps: every apparent artifice affecting the objects of nature, disguises; and clumps are such distinguished objects, so liable to the suspicion of having been left or placed on purpose to be so distinguished, that, to divert the attention from these symptoms of art, irregularity in the composition is more important to them than to a wood or to a grove: being also less extensive, they do not admit so much variety of outline: but variety of growths is most observable in a small compass; and the several gradations may often be cast into beautiful figures.

The extent and the outline of a wood or a grove engage the attention more than the extremities; but in clumps the last are of the most consequence: they determine the form of the whole; and both of them are generally in sight: great care should therefore be taken to make them agreeable and different. The ease with which they may be compared, forbids all similarity between them: for every appearance of equality suggests an idea of art; and therefore a clump as broad as it is long, seems less the work of nature than one which stretches into length.

Another peculiarity of clumps, is the facility with which they admit a mixture of trees and of shrubs, of wood and of grove; in short, of every species of plantation. None are more beautiful than those which are so composed. Such compositions are, however, more proper in compact than in straggling clumps: they are most agreeable when they form one mass: if the transitions from very lofty to very humble growths, from thicket to open plantations, be frequent and sudden, the disorder is more suited to rude than to elegant scenes.

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Uses and situations of independent clumps. The occasions on which independent clumps may be applied, are many. They are often desirable as beautiful objects in themselves; they are sometimes necessary to break an extent of lawn, or a continued line, whether of ground or of plantation; but on all occasions a jealousy of art constantly attends them, which irregularity in their figure will not always alone remove. Though elevations shew them to advantage, yet a hillock evidently thrown up on purpose to be crowned with a clump, is artificial to a degree of disgust: some of the trees should therefore be planted on the sides, to take off that appearance. The same expedient may be applied to clumps placed on the brow of a hill, to interrupt its sameness: they will have less ostentation of design, if they are in part carried down either declivity. The objection already made to planting many along such a brow, is on the same principle: a single clump is less suspected of art; if it be an open one, there can be no finer situation for it, than just at the point of an abrupt hill, or on a promontory into a

lake or a river. It is in either a beautiful termination, distinct by its position, and enlivened by an expanse of sky or of water about and beyond it. Such advantages may balance little defects in its form: but they are lost if other clumps are planted near it; art then intrudes, and the whole is displeasing.

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Of clumps which have a relation to each other. But though a multiplicity of clumps, when each is an independent object, seldom seems natural; yet a number of them may, without any appearance of art, be admitted into the same scene, if they bear a relation to each other: if by their succession they diversify a continued outline of wood, if between them they form beautiful glades, if all together they cast an extensive lawn into an agreeable shape, the effect prevents any scrutiny into the means of producing it. But when the reliance on that effect is so great, every other consideration must give way to the beauty of the whole. The figure of the glade, of the lawn, or of the wood, are principally to be attended to: the finest clumps, if they do not fall easily into the great lines, are blemishes; their connections, their contrasts, are more important than their forms.

A line of clumps, if the intervals be closed by others beyond them, has the appearance of a wood, or of a grove; and in one respect the semblance has an advantage over the reality. In different points of view, the relations between the clumps are changed, and a variety of forms is produced, which no continued wood or grove, however broken, can furnish. These forms cannot all be equally agreeable; and too anxious a solicitude to make them every where pleasing, may, perhaps, prevent their being ever beautiful. The effect must often be left to chance; but it should be studiously consulted from a few principal points of view; and it is easy to make any recess, any prominence, any figure in the outline, by clumps thus advancing before, or retiring behind one another.

But amidst all the advantages attendant on this species of plantation, it is often exceptionable when commanded from a neighbouring eminence: clumps below the eye lose some of their principal beauties, and a number of them betray the art of which they are always liable to be suspected; they compose no surface of wood, and all effects arising from the relations between them are entirely lost. A prospect spotted with many clumps can hardly be great: unless they are so distinct as to be objects, or so distant as to unite into one mass, they are seldom an improvement of a view.

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The proper situations for single trees are frequently the same as for clumps: the choice will often be determined, solely by the consideration of proportion between the object, and the spot it is intended to occupy; and if the desired effect can be attained by a single tree, the simplicity of the means recommends it. Sometimes it will be preferred merely for variety; and may be used to mark one point in a scene in which two or three points are already distinguished by clumps. It may occasionally be applied to most of the purposes for which clumps are used; may be an independent object; may interrupt a continued line, or decorate an extent of space. There is but one effect resulting from clumps which may not to a certain degree be produced by single trees: a number of them will never unite into one large mass; but more distant relations may be observed between them. Scattered about a lawn, they may

may cast it into an agreeable shape; and to produce that shape, each must be placed with an attention to the rest: they may stand in particular directions, and collectively form agreeable figures; or between several straggling trees little glades may open, full of variety and beauty. The lines they trace are fainter than those which larger plantations describe; but then their forms are their own: they are therefore absolutely free from all appearance of art; any disposition of them, if it be but irregular, is sure to be natural.

The situations of single trees is the first consideration, and differences in the distances between them their greatest variety. In shape, they admit of no choice but that which their species affords: greatness often, beauty often, sometimes mere solidity, and now and then peculiarity alone, recommends them. Their situations will also frequently determine the species. If they are placed before a continued line of wood only to break it, they should commonly be similar to the trees in that wood; they will else lose their connection, and not affect the outline which they are intended to vary: but if they are designed to be independent objects, they are as such more discernible when distinguished, both in their shapes and their greens, from any plantations about them. After all, the choice, especially in large scenes, is much confined to the trees on the spot. Young clumps from the first have some, and soon produce a considerable effect: but a young single tree for many years has none at all: and it is often more judicious to preserve one already growing, though not exactly such as might be wished, either in itself, or in its situation, than to plant in its stead another, which may be a finer object, and better placed, in a distant futurity.

SECT. III. Of Water.

In considering the subjects of gardening, ground and wood first present themselves: water is the next; which, though not absolutely necessary to a beautiful composition, yet occurs so often, and is so capital a feature, that it is always regretted when wanting; and no large place can be supposed, a little spot can hardly be imagined, in which it may not be agreeable. It accommodates itself to every situation; is the most interesting object in a landscape, and the happiest circumstance in a retired recess; captivates the eye at a distance, invites approach, and is delightful when near: it refreshes an open exposure; it animates a shade; cheers the dreariness of a waste, and enriches the most crowded view. In form, in style, and in extent, it may be made equal to the greatest compositions, or adapted to the least: it may spread in a calm expanse to soothe the tranquillity of a peaceful scene; or, hurrying along a devious course, add splendor to a gay, and extravagance to a romantic, situation. So various are the characters which water can assume, that there is scarcely an idea in which it may not concur, or an impression which it cannot enforce. A deep stagnated pool, dank and dark with shades which it dimly reflects, befits the seat of melancholy; even a river, if it be sunk between two dismal banks, and dull both in motion and colour, is like a hollow eye, which deadens the countenance; and over a sluggish, silent stream, creeping heavily along all together, a gloom hangs, which no art can dissipate, nor even the sunshine disperse. A gently

murmuring rill, clear and shallow, just gurgling, just dimpling, imposes silence, suits with solitude, and leads to meditation: a brisker current, which wanders in little eddies over a bright sandy bottom, or babbles among pebbles, spreads cheerfulness all around: a greater rapidity, and more agitation, to a certain degree are animating; but in excess, instead of wakening, they alarm the senses: the roar and the rage of a torrent, its force, its violence, its impetuosity, tend to inspire terror; that terror which, whether as cause or effect, is so nearly allied to sublimity.

Abstracted, however, from all these ideas, from every sensation, either of depression, compulsion, or exertion; and considering water merely as an object; no other is so apt soon to catch, and long to fix, the attention. But it may want beauties of which we know it is capable, or the marks may be confused by which we distinguish its species; and these defects displease: to avoid them, the properties of each species must be determined.

All water is either running, or stagnated: when stagnated, it forms a lake or a pool, which differ only in extent; and a pool and a pond are the same. Running waters are either a rivulet, a river, or a rill; and these differ only in breadth: a rivulet and a brook are synonymous terms; a stream and a current are general names for all.

In a garden, the water is generally imitative. That which in the open country would be called a great pond, there assumes the name, and should be shaped as if it had the extent, of a lake; for it is large in proportion to the other parts of the place. Though sometimes a real river passes thro' a garden, yet still but a small portion of it is seen; and more frequently the semblance only of such a portion is substituted instead of the reality. In either case, the imitation is lost, if the characteristic distinctions between a lake and a river be not scrupulously preserved.

This characteristic property of running water is progress; of stagnated, is circularity: the one stretches into length, the other spreads over space. But it is necessary that the whole circumference of a lake be seen, or that no bounds be set to the prospect of a river: on the contrary, the latter is never more beautiful than when it is lost in a wood, or retires behind a hill from the view: the former never appears so great as when its termination is concealed; the shape, not the close, denotes the character: if the opposite shores are both concave, they seem intended to surround, and to meet; if they are nearly parallel, they show no tendency to come together, but suggest the idea of continuation.

To make both the banks of a river in concave forms is to sin against this first principle; and yet the fault is often committed, in order to increase the expanse. But when the bold sweep of a river is thus converted into an insignificant pool, more is lost to the imagination in length, than is gained to the view in breadth; and, paradoxical as the assertion may seem, it is certainly true, that the water would appear more important were it narrower. When one bank, therefore, retires, the other, if it does not advance, should, at the least, continue its former direction; or if that should be convex, it may be straitened; but both must not together depart from the appearance of progress.

Particular occasions may, however, justify a seeming

Section III.
WATER.

ing deviation from the rule. To make room for an island, it may be proper to widen the river every way: for there the water is, in fact, intended to surround, and to meet; while the currents on each side preserve the principal character. The same liberty may also be allowed on the influx of a collateral stream; and the accession will account for both the breadth and for the shape: but the licence must here be used with moderation, lest the wide place become principal, and divide the river into two streams, the one falling into a pool, and the other issuing from it. Both the sides of a lake may at all times retire; but on such an accession, the increase should be chiefly on the shore opposite to the collateral stream, that it may appear to be a real enlargement of the lake, and not merely the mouth of a river.

A collateral stream should, in general, keep, or seem to keep, for some way, to nearly the same breadth: if it diminishes very fast, it must soon come to an end, and has more the appearance of a creek than of a stream. Whether it be the one or the other, may be matter of indifference when it falls into a lake: but a creek is seldom agreeable in a river; it diverts the current, its waters seem stagnated, it weakens the idea of progress.

All recesses in which the current is lost, are blameworthy in a river. A bay is as exceptionable as a creek. Whatever be the form, if it be a receptacle, not a passage, it is a symptom that the water rather spreads than proceeds, and hurts the character of the river. But a head-land, which only turns or contracts the stream, though it make a sort of bay, is not liable to the same objection. Such a bay has a vent; such an obstruction only strengthens the current; they do not suggest the most distant idea of stagnation. It is almost needless to add, that in a lake, just the reverse of a river, creeks, bays, recesses of every kind, are always in character, sometimes necessary, and generally beautiful: the objections to them in the one, are recommendations of them to the other.

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Of a lake. Besides the circumstances which have been mentioned, and in which a river and a lake essentially differ; besides those in which they agree, and which are too obvious to require illustration; there are some peculiar to each character, and which, though common in the one, can hardly occur in the other; at least, not so often, nor to that degree, as to become subjects of comparison.

Space is essential to a lake; it may spread to any extent; and the mind, always pleased to expand itself on great ideas, delights even in its vastness. A lake cannot be too large as a subject of description or of contemplation: but the eye receives little satisfaction when it has not a form on which to rest: the ocean itself hardly atones by all its grandeur for its infinity; and a prospect of it is, therefore, always most agreeable, when in some part, at no great distance, a reach of shore, a promontory, or an island, reduces the immensity into shape. If the most extensive view which can be the object of vision, must be restrained in order to be pleasing; if the noblest ideas which the creation can suggest, must be checked in their career, before they can be reconciled to the principles of beauty; an offence against those principles, a transgression of that restraint, will not easily be forgiven on a subject less

than infinite: a lake whose bounds are out of sight, is circumscribed in reality, not in appearance; at the same time that it disappoints the eye, it confines the imagination; it is but a waste of waters, neither interesting nor agreeable.

A distant flat coast, dimly and doubtfully seen, does not obviate the objection; but it may be the means of removing it; for elevation and distinctness give an appearance of proximity, and contract the space they limit. This is the constant effect of a high shore: a low one, covered with wood, is in reality raised; and marked by buildings, becomes more conspicuous; it acquires an artificial elevation and distinctness.

These observations, though immediately relative to very large bodies of water, are still applicable to imitative lakes in parks and gardens. The principles upon which they are founded are equally true in both; and though an artificial lake cannot be supposed, which shall be absolutely, yet comparatively it may be extravagant. It may be so out of proportion to its appendages, as to seem a waste of water; for all size is in some respects relative: if this exceeds its due dimensions, and if a flatness of shore beyond it adds still to the dreariness of the scene, wood to raise the banks, and objects to distinguish them, will, from the same cause, produce the same effects as on a larger scale. If the length of a piece of water be too great for its breadth, so as to destroy all idea of circuit, the extremities should be considered as too far off, and made important, to give them proximity; while at the same time the breadth may be favoured, by keeping down the banks on the sides. On the same principle, if the lake be too small, a low shore will, in appearance, increase the extent.

But it is not necessary that the whole scene be bounded: if form be impressed on a considerable part, the eye can, without disgust, permit a large reach to stretch beyond its ken; it can even be pleased to observe a tremulous motion in the horizon, which shews that the water has not there yet attained its termination. Still short of this, the extent may be kept in uncertainty; a hill or a wood may conceal one of the extremities, and the country beyond it, in such a manner as to leave room for the supposed continuation of so large a body of water. Opportunities to choose this shape are frequent, and it is the most perfect of any: the scene is closed, but the extent of the lake is undermined; a complete form is exhibited to the eye, while a boundless range is left open to the imagination.

But mere form will only give content, not delight: that depends upon the outline, which is capable of exquisite beauty; and the bays, and the creeks, and the promontories, which are ordinary parts of that outline, together with the accidents of islands, of inlets and of outlets to rivers, are in their shapes and their combinations an inexhaustible fund of variety.

A straight line of considerable length may find a place in that variety; and it is sometimes of singular use to prevent the semblance of a river in a channel formed between islands and the shore. But no figure perfectly regular ought ever to be admitted; it always seems artificial, unless its size absolutely forbid the supposition. A femicircular bay, though the shape be beautiful, is not natural; and any reclinear figure is abso-

Section III. absolutely ugly: but if one line be curved, another may sometimes be almost straight: the contrast is agreeable; and to multiply the occasions of shewing contrasts, may often be a reason for giving several directions to a creek, and more than two sides to a promontory.

Bays, creeks, and promontories, though extremely beautiful, should not, however, be very numerous: for a shore broken into little points and hollows has no certainty of outline; it is only ragged, not diversified; and the distinctness and simplicity of the great parts are hurt by the multiplicity of subdivisions. But islands, though the channels between them be narrow, do not so often derogate from greatness: they intimate a space beyond them whose boundaries do not appear; and remove to a distance the shore which is seen in perspective between them. Such partial interruptions of the sight suggest ideas of extent to the imagination.

The inlets and the outlets of rivers have similar effects: fancy pursues the course of the stream far beyond the view; no limits are fixed to its excursions. The greatest composition therefore of water is that which is in part a lake, and in part a river; which has all the expanse of the one, and all the continuation of the other, each being strongly characterised to the very point of their junction. If that junction break into a side of the lake, the direction of the river should be oblique to the line it cuts; rectangular bifections are in this, as in all other instances, formal: but when the conflux is at an angle, so that the bank of the river coincides with one shore of the lake, they should both continue for some way in the same direction; a deviation from that line immediately at the outlet detaches the lake from the river.

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Course of a river.

THOUGH the windings of a river are proverbially descriptive of its course; yet without being perpetually wreathed, it may be natural. Nor is the character expressed only by the turnings. On the contrary, if they are too frequent and sudden, the current is reduced into a number of separate pools, and the idea of progress is obscured by the difficulty of tracing it. Length is the strongest symptom of continuation: long reaches are, therefore, characteristic of a river; and they conduce much to its beauty: each is a considerable piece of water; and variety of beautiful forms may be given to their outlines; but a straight one can very seldom be admitted: it has the appearance of a cut canal, unless great breadth, a bridge across it, and strong contrasts between the objects on the banks, disguise the formality. A very small curvature obliterates every idea of art and stagnation; and a greater is often mischievous: for an excess of deviation from a straight towards a circular line, shortens the view, weakens the idea of continuation, and tho' not chargeable with stiffness, yet approaches to regularity; whereas the line of beauty keeps at a distance from every figure which a rule can determine or a compass describe.

A considerable degree of roundness is, however, often becoming, where the stream changes its direction: and if the turn be effected by a sharp point of land on one side, there is the more occasion for circuitity on the other. The river should also be widened under that other bank: for it is the nature of water thus driven out of its course, to dash and encroach up-

on the opposite shore. Where this circumstance has been attended to, the bend appears natural; and the view ending in space, gives scope to the imagination. The turn, therefore, ought generally to be larger than a right angle: if it be less, it closes immediately, and checks the idea of progress.

To further that idea is one use of bridges. Though they cross, they do not close the view: the water is seen to run through them, and is supposed to continue far beyond them: such a communication between the opposite banks implies the want of any other, and gives both length and depth to the stream. The form of a lake, on the contrary, intimates, that all the several shores are, by making a certain circuit, accessible. Bridges, therefore, are inconsistent with the nature of a lake, but characteristic of a river: they are on that account used to disguise a termination: but the deception has been so often practised, that it no longer deceives; and a bolder aim at the same effect will now be more successful. If the end can be turned just out of sight, a bridge at some distance raises a belief, while the water beyond it removes every doubt, of the continuation of the river: the supposition immediately occurs, that if a disguise had been intended, the bridge would have been placed further back; and the disregard thus shewn to one deception, gains credit for the other.

To give to bridges their full effect, the connection between them and the river must be attended to: from the want of it, the single wooden arch, now much in fashion, seems to us generally misplaced. Elevated, without occasion, so much above, it is totally detached from the river: it is often seen straddling in the air, without a glimpse of the water to account for it: and the ostentation of it as an ornamental object, diverts all that train of ideas which its use as a communication might suggest. The vastness of Walton bridge cannot without affectation be mimicked in a garden, where the magnificent idea of including the Thames under one arch is wanting, and where the structure itself reduced to a narrow scale retains no pretensions to greatness. Unless the situation make such a height necessary, or the point of view be greatly above it, or wood or rising ground instead of sky behind it, fill up the vacancy of the arch, it seems an effort without a cause, forced and preposterous.

The vulgar foot-bridge, of planks only, guarded on one hand by a common rail, and supported by a few ordinary piles, is often more proper. It is perfect as a communication, because it pretends to nothing further: it is the utmost simplicity of cultivated nature: and if the banks from which it starts be of a moderate height, its elevation preserves it from meanness. No other species so effectually characterises a river: it seems too plain for an ornament, too obscure for a disguise: it must be for use; it can be a passage only: it is therefore spoiled, if adorned; it is disguised, if only painted of any other than a dusky colour.

But being thus incapable of all decoration and importance, it is often too humble for a great, and too simple for an elegant, scene. A stone bridge is generally more suitable to either: but in this also, an extraordinary elevation is seldom becoming, unless the grandeur compensate for the distance at which it leaves the water

Section III. water below. A gentle rise, and easy sweep, more closely preserve the relation: a certain degree of union should also be formed between the banks and the bridge; that it may seem to rise out of the banks, not barely to be imposed upon them. It ought not generally to swell much above their level; the parapet wall should be brought down near to the ground, or end against some swell; and the size and the uniformity of the abutments should be broken by hillocks or thickets about them: every expedient should be used to mark the connection of the building both with the ground from which it starts, and the water which it crosses.

In wild and romantic scenes may be introduced a ruined stone-bridge, of which some arches may be still standing, and the lots of those which are fallen may be supplied by a few planks, with a rail, thrown over the vacancy. It is a picturesque object; it suits the situation; and the antiquity of the passage, the care taken to keep it still open though the original building is decayed, the apparent necessity which thence results for a communication, give it an imposing air of reality.

In every scene of magnificence, in some where elegance chiefly prevails, a bridge with a colonnade, or other ornamental structure upon it, is characteristically proper, and it has a peculiarity which recommends it to many situations. The colonnade is alone a perfect independent object, which may belong to several species of buildings: it may, therefore, embellish a scene where no water is visible: but the sight must not be let down below the balustrade. If the arches appear, this is like other bridges shown by themselves: they may now and then be of use to mark a continuation of water, which would otherwise be doubtful; but in general they only remind us of what is wanting to the view.

In some situations, two or three bridges may be admitted into one scene; a collateral stream always, the turnings of the same stream often, afford opportunities to place them in several directions; and a greater distinction between objects is seldom required, than that between two bridges, in construction exactly alike, one of which presents the passage over it, and the other that under it, to the eye. Such a variety of beautiful forms have besides been invented for them, that, in similar positions, they may be objects in very different styles: and collateral circumstances occasion still further distinctions. A bridge, which, by means of a bend in the river, is backed with wood or rising grounds, has, in the effect, little similarity to one through which nothing can be seen but the water and the sky: and if the accident which distinguishes, immediately groups with the bridge; if, for instance, a tree, or a little cluster of trees, stand so that the stems appear beneath, the heads above the arches; the whole is but one picturesque object, which retains no more than a distant resemblance to a bridge quite simple and unaccompanied. Amidst all this variety, two or three may easily be chosen, which, in the same landscape, so far from assimilating, will diversify the parts; and, if properly disposed, neither in a confused crowd nor in a formal succession, will not encumber the view.

A RIVER requires a number of accompaniments. The

changes in its course furnish a variety of situations; while the fertility, convenience, and amenity, which attend it, account for all appearances of inhabitants and improvement. Profusion of ornament on a fictitious river, is a just imitation of cultivated nature. Every species of building, every file of plantation, may abound on the banks; and whatever be their characters, their proximity to the water is commonly the happiest circumstance in their situation. A lustre is from thence diffused on all around; each derives an importance from its relation to this capital feature: those which are near enough to be reflected, immediately belong to it; those at a greater distance still share in the animation of the scene; and objects totally detached from each other, being all attracted towards the same interesting connexion, are united into one composition.

In the front of Blenheim was a deep broad valley, which abruptly separated the castle from the lawn and the plantations before it; even a direct approach could not be made, without building a monstrous bridge over the vast hollow: but this forced communication was only a subject of raillery; and the scene continued broken into two parts, absolutely distinct from each other. This valley has been lately flooded: it is not filled; the bottom only is covered with water: the sides are still very high; but they are no longer the steep of a chasm, they are the bold shores of a noble river. The same bridge is standing without alteration: but no extravagance remains; the water gives it propriety. Above it the river first appears, winding from behind a small thick wood, in the valley; and soon taking a determined course, it is then broad enough to admit an island filled with the finest trees: others, corresponding to them in growth and disposition, stand in groups on the banks, intermixed with younger plantations. Immediately below the bridge, the river spreads into a large expanse: the sides are open lawn. On that furthest from the house formerly stood the palace of Henry the Second, celebrated in many an ancient ditty by the name of Fair Rosamond's Bower. A little clear spring, which rises there, is by the country people still called Fair Rosamond's Well. The spot is now marked by a single willow. Near it, is a fine collateral stream, of a beautiful form, retaining its breadth as far as it is seen, and retiring at last behind a hill from the view. The main river, having received this accession, makes a gentle bend; then continues for a considerable length in one wide direct reach; and, just as it disappears, throws itself down a high cascade, which is the present termination. On one of the banks of this reach is the garden: the steep are there diversified with thickets and with glades; but the covert prevails, and the top is crowned with lofty trees. On the other side is a noble hanging wood in the park: it was depreciated when it sunk into a hollow, and was poorly lost in the bottom; but it is now a rich appendage to the river, falling down an easy slope quite to the water's edge, where, without overshadowing, it is reflected on the surface. Another face of the same wood borders the collateral stream, with an outline more indented and various; while a very large irregular clump adorns the opposite declivity. This clump is at a considerable distance from the principal river: but the stream is

belongs to, brings it down to connect with the rest; and the other objects, which were before dispersed, are now, by the interest of each in a relation which is common to all, collected into one illustrious scene. The castle is itself a prodigious pile of building; which, with all the faults in its architecture, will never seem less than a truly princely habitation; and the confined spot where it was placed, on the edge of an abyss, is converted into a proud situation, commanding a beautiful prospect of water, and open to an extensive lawn, adequate to the mansion, and an emblem of its domain. In the midst of this lawn stands a column, a stately trophy, recording the exploits of the Duke of Marlborough, and the gratitude of Britain. Between this pillar and the castle is the bridge, which now, applied to a subject worthy of it, is established in all the importance due to its greatness. The middle arch is wider than the Rialto, but not too wide for the occasion; and yet this is the narrowest part of the river: but the length of the reaches is every where proportioned to their breadth: each of them is alone a noble piece of water: and the last, the finest of all, loses itself gradually in a wood, which, on that side, is also the boundary of the lawn, and rises into the horizon. All is great in the front of Blenheim: but in that vast space no void appears; so important are the parts, so magnificent the objects. The plain is extensive, the valley is broad, the wood is deep. Tho' the intervals between the buildings are large, they are filled with the grandeur which buildings of such dimensions and so much pomp diffuse all around them; and the river, in its long varied course, approaching to every object, and touching upon every part, spreads its influence over the whole. Notwithstanding their distances from each other, they all seem to be assembled about the water, which is every where a fine expanse, whose extremities are undetermined. In size, in form, and in style, it is equal to the majesty of the scene; and is designed in the spirit, is executed with the liberality, of the original donation, when this residence of a mighty monarch was bestowed by a great people, as a munificent reward on the hero who had deserved best of his country.

In the composition of this scene, the river, both as a part itself, and as uniting the other parts, has a principal share. But water is not lost, though it be in so confined or so concealed a spot as to enter into no view; it may render that spot delightful. It is capable of the most exquisite beauty in its form; and though not in space, may yet in disposition have pretensions to greatness: for it may be divided into several branches, which will form a cluster of islands all connected together, make the whole place irriguous, and, in the stead of extent, supply a quantity of water. Such a sequestered scene usually owes its retirement to the trees and the thickets with which it abounds; but in the disposition of them, one distinction should be constantly attended to. A river flowing through a wood which overspreads one continued surface of ground, and a river between two woods, are in very different circumstances. In the latter case, the woods are separate; they may be contrasted in their forms and their characters, and the outline of each should be forcibly marked. In the former, no outline ought to be discernible; for the river passes between trees, not

between boundaries: and though, in the progress of its course, the style of the plantations may be often changed, yet on the opposite banks a similarity should constantly prevail, that the identity of the wood may never be doubtful.

A river between two woods may enter into a view; and then it must be governed by the principles which regulate the conduct and the accompaniments of a river in an open exposure. But, when it runs through a wood, it is never to be seen in prospect: the place is naturally full of obstructions; and a continued opening, large enough to receive a long reach, would seem an artificial cut. The river must therefore necessarily wind more than in crossing a lawn, where the passage is entirely free: but its influence will never extend so far on the sides: the buildings must be near the banks; and, if numerous, will seem crowded, being all in one track, and in situations nearly alike. The scene, however, does not want variety: on the contrary, none is capable of more. The objects are not indeed so different from each other as in an open view: but they are very different, and in much greater abundance: for this is the interior of a wood, where every tree is an object, every combination of trees a variety, and no large intervals are requisite to distinguish the several dispositions; the grove, the thicket, or the group, may prevail, and their forms and their relations may be constantly changed, without restraint of fancy, or limitation of number.

Water is so universally and so deservedly admired in a prospect, that the most obvious thought in the management of it, is to lay it as open as possible, and purposely to conceal it would generally seem a severe self-denial: yet so many beauties may attend its passage through a wood, that larger portions of it might be allowed to such retired scenes, than are commonly spared from the view, and the different parts in different styles would be fine contrasts to each other. If the water at Wotton were all exposed, a walk of near two miles along the banks would be of a tedious length, from the want of those changes of the scene, which now supply through the whole extent a succession of perpetual variety. That extent is so large as to admit of a division into four principal parts, all of them great in style and in dimensions, and differing from each other both in character and situation. The two first are the least. The one is a reach of a river, about the third of a mile in length, and of a competent breadth, flowing through a lovely mead, open in some places to views of beautiful hills in the country, and adorned in others with clumps of trees, so large, that their branches stretch quite across, and form a high arch over the water. The next seems to have been once a formal basin, encompassed with plantations, and the appendages on either side still retain some traces of regularity; but the shape of the water is free from them: the size is about 14 acres; and out of it issue two broad collateral streams, winding towards a large river, which they are seen to approach, and supposed to join. A real junction is however impossible, from the difference of the levels; but the terminations are so artfully concealed, that the deception is never suspected, and when known is not easily explained. The river is the third great division of the water: a lake into which it falls, is the fourth. These two do ac-

tually join: but their characters are directly opposite; the scenes they belong to are totally distinct; and the transition from the one to the other is very gradual: for an island near the conflux, dividing the breadth, and concealing the end of the lake, moderates for some way the space; and permitting it to expand but by degrees, raises an idea of greatness, from uncertainty accompanied with increase. The reality does not disappoint the expectation; and the island, which is the point of view, is itself equal to the scene: it is large, and high above the lake; the ground is irregularly broken; thickets hang on the sides; and towards the top is placed an Ionic portico, which commands a noble extent of water, not less than a mile in circumference, bounded on one side with wood, and open on the other to two sloping lawns, the least of an hundred acres, diversified with clumps, and bordered by plantations. Yet this lake, when full in view, and with all the importance which space, form, and situation can give, is not more interesting than the sequestered river, which has been mentioned as the third great division of the water. It is just within the verge of a wood, three quarters of a mile long, every where broad, and its course is such as to admit of infinite variety without any confusion. The banks are cleared of underwood; but a few thickets still remain, and on one side an impenetrable covert soon begins: the interval is a beautiful grove of oaks, scattered over a green sward of extraordinary verdure. Between these trees and these thickets the river seems to glide gently along, constantly winding, without one short turn, or one extended reach, in the whole length of the way. This even temper in the stream suits the scenes through which it passes; they are in general of a very sober cast; not melancholy, but grave; never exposed to a glare; never darkened with gloom; nor, by strong contrasts of light and shade, exhibiting the excess of either. Undisturbed by an extent of prospects without, or a multiplicity of objects within, they retain at all times a mildness of character; which is still more forcibly felt when the shadows grow faint as they lengthen, when a little rustling of birds in the spray, the leaping of the fish, and the fragrancy of the woodbine, denote the approach of evening; while the setting sun shoots its last gleams on a Tuscan portico, which is close to the great basin, but which from a seat near this river is seen at a distance, through all the obscurity of the wood glowing on the banks, and reflected on the surface of the water. In another still more distinguished spot is built an elegant bridge, with a colonnade upon it, which not only adorns the place where it stands, but is also a picturesque object to an octagon building near the lake, where it is shewn in a singular situation, over-arched, encompassed, and backed with wood, without any appearance of the water beneath. This building in return is also an object from the bridge; and a Chinese room, in a little island just by, is another: neither of them are considerable, and the others which are visible are at a distance, but more or greater adventitious ornaments are not required in a spot so rich as this in beauties peculiar to its character. A profusion of water pours in from all sides round upon the view; the opening of the lake appears; a glimpse is caught of the large basin; one of the collateral streams is full in sight; and the

bridge itself is in the midst of the finest part of the river: all seem to communicate the one with the other. Though thickets often intercept, and group perplex, the view, yet they never break the connection between the several pieces of water: each may still be traced along large branches, or little catches; which in some places are over-shadowed and dim; in others glister through a glade, or glimmer between the boles of trees in a distant perspective; and in one, where they are quite lost to the view, some arches of a stone-bridge, but partially seen among the wood, preserve their connection. However interrupted, however varied, they still appear to be parts of one whole, which has all the intricacy of number, and the greatness of unity; the variety of a stream, and the quantity of a lake; the solemnity of a wood, and the animation of water.

If a large river may sometimes, a smaller current undoubtedly may often, be conducted through a wood: it seldom adorns, it frequently disfigures a prospect, where its course is marked, not by any appearance of water, but by a confused line of clotted grass, which disagrees with the general verdure. A rivulet may, indeed, have consideration enough for a home scene, though it be open; but a rill is always most agreeable when most retired from public view. Its characteristic excellencies are vivacity and variety, which require attention, leisure, and silence, that the eye may pore upon the little beauties, and the ear listen to the low murmurs of the stream without interruption. To such indulgence a confined spot only is favourable; a close copse is, therefore, often more acceptable than a high wood, and a sequestered valley at all times preferable to any open exposure: a single rill at a very little distance is a mere water-course; it loses all its charms; it has no importance in itself, and bears no proportion to the scene. A number of little streams have, indeed, an effect in any situation, but not as objects; they are interesting only on account of the character they express, the irriguous appearance which they give to the whole.

The full tide of a large river has more force than activity, and seems too unwieldy to allow of very quick transitions. But in a rill, the agility of its motion accounts for every caprice: frequent windings disguise its insignificance: short turnings shew its vivacity: sudden changes in the breadth are a species of its variety: and however fantastically the channel may be wreathed, contracted, and widened, it still appears to be natural. We find an amusement in tracing the little stream through all the intricacies of its course, and in seeing it force a passage through a narrow streight, expatiate on every opportunity, struggle with obstructions, and puzzle out its way. A rivulet, which is the mean betwixt a river and a rill, partakes of the character of both: it is not licensed to the extravagance of the one, nor under the same restraints as the other: it may have more frequent bends than the river; longer reaches than a rill: the breadth of a stream determines whether the principal beauty results from extent or from variety.

The murmurs of a rill are amongst the most pleasing circumstances which attend it. If the bed of the stream be rough, mere declivity will occasion a constant rippling noise: when the current drops down a

Section III. WATER. descent, though but of a few inches, or forcibly bubbles up from a little hollow, it has a deep gurgling tone, not uniformly continued, but incessantly repeated, and therefore more engaging than any. The flatness of all, is that found rather of the splashing than the fall of water, which an even gentle slope, or a tame obstruction, will produce: this is less pleasing than the others; but none should be entirely excluded: all in their turns are agreeable; and the choice of them is much in our power: by observing their causes, we may often find the means to strengthen, to weaken, or to change them; and the addition or removal of a single stone, or a few pebbles, will sometimes be sufficient for the purpose.

A rill cannot pretend to any found beyond that of a little water-fall: the roar of a cascade belongs only to larger streams; but it may be produced by a rivulet to a considerable degree, and attempts to do more have generally been unsuccessful. A vain ambition to imitate nature in her great extravagancies betrays the weakness of art. Though a noble river, throwing itself headlong down a precipice, be an object truly magnificent, it must however be confessed, that in a single sheet of water there is a formality, which its vastness alone can cure; but the height, not the breadth, is the wonder: when it falls no more than a few feet, the regularity prevails; and its extent only serves to expose the vanity of affecting the style of a cataract in an artificial cascade. It is less exceptionable if divided into several parts: for then each separate part may be wide enough for its depth; and in the whole, variety, not greatness, will be the predominant character. But a structure of rough, large, detached stones, cannot easily be contrived of strength sufficient to support a great weight of water: it is sometimes from necessity almost smooth and uniform; and then it loses much of its effect: several little falls in succession are preferable to one great cascade which in figure or in motion approaches to regularity.

When greatness is thus reduced to number, and length becomes of more importance than breadth, a rivulet vies with a river; and it more frequently runs in a continued declivity, which is very favourable to such a succession of falls. Half the expence and labour which are sometimes bestowed on a river, to give it, at the best, a forced precipitancy, in one spot only, would animate a rivulet through the whole of its course: and, after all, the most interesting circumstance in falling waters is their animation. A great cascade fills us with surprise: but all surprise must cease; and the motion, the agitation, the rage, the froth, and the variety of the water, are finally the objects which engage the attention: for these a rivulet is sufficient; and they may there be produced without that appearance of effort which raises a suspicion of art.

To obviate such a suspicion, it may be sometimes expedient to begin the descent out of sight; for the beginning is the difficulty: if that be concealed, the subsequent falls seem but a consequence of the agitation which characterises the water at its first appearance; and the imagination is, at the same time, let loose to give ideal extent to the cascades. When a stream issues from a wood, such management will have a great effect: the bends of its course in an open exposure may afford frequent opportunities for it; and sometimes a

low broad bridge may furnish the occasion: a little fall hid under the arch will create a disorder; in consequence of which, a greater cascade below will appear very natural.

SECT. IV. Of Rocks.

RILLS, rivulets, and cascades, abound among rocks: they are natural to the scene; and such scenes commonly require every accompaniment which can be procured for them. Mere rocks, unless they are peculiarly adapted to certain impressions, may surprise, but can hardly please: they are too far removed from common life, too barren, and unhospitable; rather desolate than solitary, and more horrid than terrible. So austere a character cannot be long engaging, if its rigour be not softened by circumstances which may belong either to these or to more cultivated spots: and when the dreariness is extreme, little streams and water-falls are of themselves insufficient for the purpose; an intermixture of vegetation is also necessary, and on some occasions even marks of inhabitants are proper.

Middleton-dale is a cleft between rocks, ascending gradually from a romantic village, till it emerges, at about two miles distance, on the vast moor-lands of the Peake. It is a dismal entrance to a desert: the hills above it are bare; the rocks are of a grey colour; their surfaces are rugged, and their shapes savage; frequently terminating in craggy points, sometimes resembling vast unwieldy bulwarks, or rising in heavy buttresses one above another; and here and there a mishappen mass bulging out hangs lowering over its base. No traces of men are to be seen, except in a road which has no effect on such a scene of desolation, and in the lime-kilns constantly smoking on the side; but the labourers who occasionally attend them live at a distance; there is not a hovel in the dale; and some scanty withering bushes are all its vegetation: for the soil between the rocks produces as little as they do; it is disfigured with all the tinges of brown and red, which denote barrenness; in some places it has crumbled away, and strata of loose dark stones only appear; and in others, long lines of drofs and rubbish shoveled out of mines, have fallen down the steep. In these mines, the veins of lead on one side of the dale, are observed always to have corresponding veins, in exactly the same direction, on the other: and the rocks, though differing widely in different places, yet always continue in one style for some way together, and seem to have a relation to each other. Both these appearances make it probable, that Middleton-dale is a chasm rent in the mountain by some convulsion of nature, beyond the memory of man, or perhaps before the island was peopled: the scene, though it does not prove the fact, yet justifies the supposition; and it gives credit to the tales of the country people, who, to aggravate its horrors, always point to a precipice, down which they say that a poor girl of the village threw herself headlong, in despair, at the neglect of the man whom she loved; and shew a cavern, where a skeleton was once discovered, but of what wretch is unknown, his bones were the only memorial left of him. All the dreariness however of the place, which accords so well with such traditions, abates upon the junction of another valley, the sides of which are still of rock, but mixed and crowned with fine wood; and Middleton-dale becomes

Section IV. more mild by sharing in its beauties: near this junction a clear stream issues from under the hill, and runs down the dale, receiving as it proceeds many rills and springs, all as transparent as itself. The principal rivulet is full of little water-falls: they are sometimes continued in succession along a reach of considerable length, which is whitened with froth all the way; at other times the brook wreathes in frequent windings, and drops down a steep at every turn; or slopes between tufts of grass, in a brisk, though not a precipitant descent; when it is most quiet, a thousand dimples still mark its vivacity; it is every where active, sometimes rapid, seldom silent, but never furious or noisy: the first impressions which it makes are of sprightliness and gaiety, very different from those which belong to the scene all around; but by dwelling upon both, they are brought nearer together; and a melancholy thought occurs, that such a stream should be lost in watering a waste; the wilderness appears more forlorn which so much vivacity cannot enliven; as the idea of desolation is heightened by reflecting that the

Flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air;

The nightingale attunes her notes,
Where none are left to hear.

If such a scene occurs within the precincts of a park or a garden, no expence should be spared to meliorate the soil, wherever any soil can be found. Without some vegetation among the rocks, they are only an object of curiosity, or a subject of wonder: but verdure alone will give some relief to the dreariness of the scene; and shrubs or bushes, without trees, are a sufficiency of wood: the thickets may also be extended by the creeping plants, such as pyracantha, vines, and ivy, to wind up the sides, or cluster on the tops of the rocks. And to this vegetation may be added some symptoms of inhabitants, but they must be slight and few: the use of them is only to cheer, not to destroy, the solitude of the place; and such therefore should be chosen as are sometimes found in situations retired from public resort; a cottage may be lonely, but it must not here seem ruinous and neglected; it should be tight and warm, with every mark of comfort about it, to which its position in some sheltered recess may greatly contribute. A cavity also in the rocks, rendered easy of access, improved to a degree of convenience, and maintained in a certain state of preservation, will suggest similar ideas of protection from the bitterest inclemencies of the sky, and even of occasional refreshment and repose. But we may venture still further: a mill is of necessity often built at some distance from the town which it supplies; and here it would at the same time apply the water to a use, and increase its agitation. The dale may besides be made the haunt of those animals, such as goats, which are sometimes wild, and sometimes domestic; and which accidentally appearing, will divert the mind from the sensations, natural to the scene, but not agreeable if continued long without interruption. These and such other expedients will approximate the severest retreat to the habitations of men, and convert the appearance of a perpetual banishment into that of a temporary retirement from society.

But too strong a force on the nature of the place al-

ways fails. A winding-path, which appears to be worn, not cut, has more effect than a high road, all artificial and level, which is too weak to overbear, and yet contradicts the general idea. The objects therefore to be introduced must be those which hold a mean between solitude and population; and the inclination of that choice towards either extreme, should be directed by the degree of wildness which prevails: for tho' that runs sometimes to an excess which requires correction, at other times it wants encouragement, and at all times it ought to be preferred: it is the predominant character of rocks, which mixes with every other, and to which all the appendages must be accommodated; and they may be applied so as greatly to increase it: a licentious irregularity of wood and of ground, and a fantastic conduct of the streams, neither of which would be tolerated in the midst of cultivation, become and improve romantic spots; even buildings, partly by their style, but still more by their position, in strange, difficult, or dangerous situations, distinguish and aggravate the native extravagancies of the scene.

In the choice and the application of these accompaniments, consists all our power over rocks; they are themselves too vast and too stubborn to submit to our controul; but by the addition or removal of appendages, which we can command, parts may be shewn or concealed, and the characters with their impressions may be weakened or enforced: to adapt the accompaniments accordingly, is the utmost ambition of art when rocks are the subject.

Their most distinguished characters are, dignity, terror, and fancy: the expressions of all are constantly wild; and sometimes a rocky scene is only wild, without pretensions to any particular character.

That which inspires ideas of greatness, as distinguished from those of terror, has less wildness in it than any. There is a composure in dignity, which is disconcerted by quick transitions and the flutter of variety. A succession, therefore, of nearly the same forms, a repetition of them one above the other, do not derogate from an effect, which depends more on the extent than the changes of the scene: the dimensions which are necessary to produce that effect, contract the room for variety; the parts must be large: if the rocks are only high, they are but stupendous, not majestic: breadth is equally essential to their greatness; and every slender, every grotesque shape, is excluded.

Art may interpose to shew these large parts to the eye, and magnify them to the imagination, by taking away thickets which stretch quite across the rocks, so as to disguise their dimensions; or by filling with wood the small intervals between them, and thus, by concealing the want, preserving the appearance of continuation.

When rocks retire from the eye down a gradual declivity, we can, by raising the upper ground, deepen the fall, lengthen the perspective, and give both height and extent to those at a distance: this effect may be still increased by covering that upper ground with a thicket, which shall cease, or be lowered, as it descends.

A thicket, on other occasions, makes the rocks which rise out of it seem larger than they are. If they stand upon a bank overspread with shrubs, their beginning is at the least uncertain; and the presumption is, that

Another use of this brushy underwood is to conceal the fragments and rubbish which have fallen from the fides and the brow, and which are often unsightly. Rocks are seldom remarkable for the elegance of their forms; they are too vast, and too rude, to pretend to delicacy; but their shapes are often agreeable; and we can affect those shapes to a certain degree, at least we can cover many blemishes in them, by conducting the growth of shrubby and creeping plants about them.

For all these purposes mere underwood suffices: but for greater effects larger trees are requisite: they are worthy of the scene; and not only improvements, but accessions to its grandeur: we are used to rank them among the noblest objects of nature; and when we see that they cannot aspire to the midway of the heights around them, the rocks are raised by the comparison. A single tree is, therefore, often preferable to a clump: the size, though really less, is more remarkable: and clumps are besides generally exceptionable in a very wild spot, from the suspicion of art which attends them; but a wood is free from that suspicion, and its own character of greatness recommends it to every scene of magnificence.

On the same principle, all the consideration which can be, should be given to the streams. No number of little rills are equal to one broad river; and in the principal current, some varieties may be sacrificed to importance: but a degree of strength should always be preserved: the water, though it needs not be furious, should not be dull; for dignity, when most serene, is not languid; and space will hardly atone for want of animation.

The character, however, of greatness, when divested of terror, is placid. It does not, therefore, exclude marks of inhabitants, though it never requires them to tame its wildness: and without inviting, it occasionally admits an intermixture of vegetation. It even allows of buildings intended only to decorate the scene: but they must be adequate to it, both in size and in character. And if cultivation is introduced, that too should be conformable to the rest: not a single narrow patch cribbed out of the waste; but the confines of a country shelving into the vale, and suggesting the idea of extent: nothing trivial ought to find admittance. But, on the other hand, the character is not violated by a mixture of agreeableness with its grandeur; and far less is extravagance required to support it: strange shapes in extraordinary positions, enormous weights unaccountably sustained, trees rooted in the fides, and torrents raging at the foot of the rocks, are, at the best, needless excesses. There is a temperance in dignity, which is rather hurt by a wanton violence on the common order of nature. Great objects alone, great in their dimensions and in their style, are amply sufficient to satisfy and to fill the mind: when these fail, then, and then only, we are apt to have recourse to wonder, in order to excite admiration.

⁴² Description of Matlock Bath, (in Derbyshire.) Many of the circumstances which have been mentioned concur at Matlock Bath, which is situated in a vale near three miles long, shut up at one end by a rising moor, and at the other end by vast cliffs of rock: the entrance into it is hewn through one of them, and is indeed a noble rude portal to a scene of romantic

magnificence. One side of the valley is a very high range of hill, rough with bushes, and great blocks or ledges of stone. The other side is washed by the Derwent, and consists chiefly of rocks; which, however, are often interrupted by steep declivities of green sward, large thickets, and gentle descents of fine fields from the adjacent country. The rocks sometimes form the brow, sometimes they fix the foot, and sometimes they break the fides, of the hill. At the high Tor they are 123 yards above the water: in other places they are no more than an abrupt bank of a few feet to the river: for the most part they are nearly perpendicular, falling in several stages, or in one vast precipice, from the top to the bottom. But though similar in shape, they are widely different in their construction: in one place they are irregularly jointed, in another more uniformly ribbed, in a third they form a continued surface from the summit to the base, and frequently they are composed of enormous masses of stone heaped upon each other. From some such scene probably was conceived the wild imagination in ancient mythology of the giants piling Pelion upon Ossa: in this, all is vast; height, breadth, solidity, boldness of idea, and unity of style, combine to form a character of greatness, consistent throughout, not uniform, unmixed with any littleness, unallayed with any extravagance. The colour of the rocks is almost white; and their splendour is enhanced in many places by ivy and single yew-trees appearing amongst them: the intervals between them are generally filled with a brushy underwood, which diversifies and embellishes the scene very beautifully, but for want of large trees adds nothing to its grandeur; there are few of any note through out the vale: the best are in a small wood near the bath; but they are not adequate to the objects around them, to the steepness of the hill, the loftiness of the rocks, and the character of the Derwent. That character is, indeed, rather too strong for the place: in size, and in the direction of its course, the river is exactly such as might be wished; but it is a torrent, in which force and fury prevail: the cascades in it are innumerable; before the water is recovered from one fall, it is hurried down another; and its agitation being thus increased by repeated shocks, it pushes on with restless violence to the next, where it dashes against fragments of rocks, or foams among heaps of stones which the stream has driven together. The colour all along is of a reddish brown; even the foam is tinged with a dusky hue: and where there are no cascades, still the declivity of the bed preserves the rapidity, and a quantity of little breakers continue the turbulence of the current. Many of these circumstances are certainly great: but a more temperate river, rolling its full tide along with strength and activity, without rage; falling down one noble cascade, instead of many; and if animated sometimes by resistance, yet not constantly struggling with obstructions; would have been more consistent with the sedate steady dignity of these noble piles of rock, whose brightness, together with the verdure of a vigorous and luxuriant, though humble vegetation, and some appearances of culture, give to the whole an air of cheerful serenity, which is disturbed by the impetuosity of the Derwent.

This river would be better suited to a scene characterized by that terror, which the combination of greatness with force inspires, and which is animating and in-

Section IV. interesting, from the exertion and anxiety attending it. ROCKS. The terrors of a scene in nature are like those of a dramatic representation: they give an alarm; but the sensations are agreeable, so long as they are kept to such as are allied only to terror, unmixed with any that are horrible and disgusting. Art may therefore be used to heighten them, to display the objects which are distinguished by greatness, to improve the circumstances which denote force, to mark those which intimate danger, and to blend with all here and there a cast of melancholy.

Greatness is as essential to the character of terror as to that of dignity: vast efforts in little objects are but ridiculous; nor can force be supposed upon trifles incapable of resistance. On the other hand, it must be allowed, that exertion and violence supply some want of space. A rock wonderfully supported, or threatening to fall, acquires a greatness from its situation, which it has not in dimensions; so circumstanced, the size appears to be monstrous: a torrent has a consequence which a placid river of equal breadth cannot pretend to: and a tree, which would be inconsiderable in the natural soil, becomes important when it bursts forth from a rock.

Such circumstances should be always industriously sought for; it may be worth while to cut down several trees, in order to exhibit one apparently rooted in the stone. By the removal perhaps of only a little brush-wood, the alarming disposition of a rock, strangely undermined, rivetted, or suspended, may be shewn; and if there be any soil above its brow, some trees planted there, and impending over it, will make the object still more extraordinary. As to the streams, great alterations may generally be made in them: and therefore it is of use to ascertain the species proper to each scene, because it is in our power to enlarge or contract their dimensions; to accelerate or retard their rapidity; to form, increase, or take away obstructions; and always to improve, often to change, their characters.

Inhabitants furnish frequent opportunities to strengthen the appearances of force, by giving intimations of danger. A house placed at the edge of a precipice, any building on the pinnacle of a crag, makes that situation seem formidable, which might otherwise have been unnoticed: a steep, in itself not very remarkable, becomes alarming, when a path is carried assant up the side: a rail on the brow of a perpendicular fall, shews that the height is frequented and dangerous: and a common foot-bridge thrown over a cleft between rocks has a still stronger effect. In all these instances, the imagination immediately transports the spectator to the spot, and suggests the idea of looking down such a depth: in the last, that depth is a chasm, and the situation is directly over it.

In other instances, exertion and danger seem to attend the occupations of the inhabitants:

Half way down
Hangs one that gathers sapphire; dreadful trade!

is a circumstance chosen by the great master of nature, to aggravate the terrors of the scene he describes. Mines are frequent in rocky places: and they are full of ideas suited to such occasions. To these may sometimes be added the operations of engines: for machinery, especially when its powers are stupendous or its effects formidable, is an effort of art which may be ac-

commodated to the extravagancies of nature.

A scene at the New Weir on the Wye, which in itself is truly great and awful, so far from being disturbed, becomes more interesting and important, by the business to which it is destined. It is a chasm between two high ranges of hill, which rise almost perpendicularly from the water; the rocks on the sides are mostly heavy masses, and their colour is generally brown: but here and there a pale craggy shape starts up to a vast height above the rest, unconnected, broken, and bare: large trees frequently force out their way amongst them: and many of them stand far back in the covert, where their natural dusky hue is deepened by the shadow which overhangs them. The river too, as it retires, loses itself in woods, which close immediately above, then rise thick and high, and darken the water. In the midst of all this gloom is an iron forge, covered with a black cloud of smoke, and surrounded with half-burned ore, with coal, and with cinders: the fuel for it is brought down a path, worn into steps narrow and steep, and winding among precipices: and near it is an open space of barren moor, about which are scattered the huts of the workmen. It stands close to the cascade of the Weir; where the agitation of the current is increased by large fragments of rocks, which have been swept down by floods from the banks, or shivered by tempests from the brow: and the sullen sound, at stated intervals, from the strokes of the great hammers in the forge, deadens the roar of the waterfall. Just below it, while the rapidity of the stream still continues, a ferry is carried across it: and lower down the fishermen use little round boats, called struckles, the remains, perhaps, of the ancient British navigation, which the least motion will overset, and the slightest touch may destroy. All the employments of the people seem to require either exertion or caution: and the ideas of force or of danger which attend them, give to the scene an animation unknown in a solitary, though perfectly compatible with the wildest romantic situations.

But marks of inhabitants must not be carried to the length of cultivation, which is too mild for the ruggedness of the place, and has besides an air of cheerfulness inconsistent with the character of terror: a little inclination towards melancholy is generally acceptable, at least to the exclusion of all gaiety; and beyond that point, so far as to throw just a tinge of gloom upon the scene. For this purpose, the objects whose colour is obscure should be preferred; and those which are too bright may be thrown into shadow: the wood may be thickened, and the dark greens abound in it: if it is necessarily thin, yews and shabby firs should be scattered about it: and sometimes to shew a withering or a dead tree, it may for a space be cleared entirely away. All such circumstances are acquisitions, if they can be had without detriment to the principal character: for it must ever be remembered, that where terror prevails, melancholy is but a secondary consideration.

The different species of rocks often meet in the same place, and compose a noble scene, which is not distinguished by any particular character: it is only when one eminently prevails, that it deserves such a preference as to exclude every other. Sometimes a spot, remarkable for nothing but its wildness, is highly romantic: and when this wildness rises to fancy, when

the most singular, the most opposite forms and combinations are thrown together, then a mixture also of several characters adds to the number of instances which there concur to display the inexhaustible variety of nature.

So much variety, so much fancy, are seldom found within the same extent as in Dove-dale. It is about two miles in length, a deep, narrow, hollow valley: both the sides are of rock; and the Dove in its passage between them is perpetually changing its course, its motion, and appearance. It is never less than ten, nor so much as twenty yards wide, and generally about four feet deep: but transparent to the bottom, except when it is covered with a foam of the purest white, under water-falls which are perfectly lucid. These are very numerous, but very different. In some places they stretch straight across, or asslant the stream: in others, they are only partial; and the water either dashes against the stones, and leaps over them, or, pouring along a steep, rebounds upon those below; sometimes it rushes through the several openings between them; sometimes it drops gently down; and at other times it is driven back by the obstruction, and turns into an eddy. In one particular spot, the valley almost closing, leaves hardly a passage for the river, which pent up, and struggling for a vent, rages and roars and foams, till it has extricated itself from the confinement. In other parts, the stream, though never languid, is often gentle; flows round a little desert island, glides between bits of bulrushes, disperses itself among tufts of grass or of moss, bubbles about a water-dock, or plays with the slender threads of aquatic plants which float upon the surface. The rocks all along the dale vary as often in their structure, as the stream in its motion. In one place, an extended surface gradually diminishes from a broad base almost to an edge; in another, a heavy top hanging forwards, overshadows all beneath: sometimes many different shapes are confusedly tumbled together; and sometimes they are broken into slender sharp pinnacles, which rise upright, often two or three together, and often in more numerous clusters. On this side of the dale, they are universally bare; on the other, they are intermixed with wood; and the vast height of both the sides, with the narrowness of the interval between them, produces a further variety: for whenever the sun shines from behind the one, the form of it is distinctly and completely cast upon the other; the rugged surface on which it falls diversifies the tints; and a strong reflected light often glares on the edge of the deepest shadow. The rocks never continue long in the same figure or situation, and are very much separated from each other: sometimes they form the sides of the valley, in precipices, in steep, or in flags; sometimes they seem to rise in the bottom, and lean back against the hill; and sometimes they stand out quite detached, heaving up in cumbrous piles, or starting into conical shapes, like vast spars, an 100 feet high; some are firm and solid throughout, some are cracked, and some, split and undermined, are wonderfully upheld by fragments apparently unequal to the weight they sustain. One is placed before, one over another, and one fills, at some distance behind, an interval between two. The changes in their disposition are infinite; every step produces some new combination;

they are continually crossing, advancing, and retiring: the breadth of the valley is never the same 40 yards together: at the narrow pass which has been mentioned, the rocks almost meet at the top, and the sky is seen as through a chink between them: just by this gloomy abyss, is a wider opening, more light, more verdure, more cheerfulness, than any where else in the dale. Nor are the forms and the situations of the rocks their only variety: many of them are perforated by large natural cavities, some of which open to the sky, some terminate in dark recesses, and through some are to be seen several more uncouth arches, and rude pillars, all detached, and retiring beyond each other, with the light shining in between them, till a rock far behind them closes the perspective: the noise of the cascades in the river echoes amongst them; the water may often be heard at the same time gurgling near, and roaring at a distance; but no other sounds disturb the silence of the spot: the only trace of man is a blind path, but lightly and but seldom trodden, by those whom curiosity leads to see the wonders they have been told of Dove-dale. It seems, indeed, a fitter haunt for more ideal beings: the whole has the air of enchantment. The perpetual shifting of the scenes; the quick transitions, the total changes; then the forms all around, grotesque as chance can cast, wild as nature can produce, and various as imagination can invent; the force which seems to have been exerted to place some of the rocks where they are now fixed immovable, the magic by which others appear still to be suspended; the dark caverns, the illuminated recesses, the fleeting shadows, and the gleams of light glancing on the sides, or trembling on the stream; and the loneliness and the stillness of the place, all crowding together on the mind, almost realize the ideas which naturally present themselves in this region of romance and of fancy.

The solitude of such a scene is agreeable, on account of the endless entertainment which its variety affords, and in the contemplation of which both the eye and the mind are delighted to indulge: marks of inhabitants and cultivation would disturb that solitude; and ornamental buildings are too artificial in a place so absolutely free from restraint. The only accompaniments proper for it are wood and water; and by these sometimes improvements may be made. When two rocks similar in shape and position are near together, by skirting one of them with wood, while the other is left bare, a material distinction is established between them: if the streams be throughout of one character, it is in our power, and should be our aim, to introduce another. Variety is the peculiar property of the spot, and every accession to it is a valuable acquisition. On the same principle, endeavours should be used, not only to multiply, but to aggravate differences, and to increase distinctions into contrasts: but the subject will impose a caution against attempting too much. Art must almost despair of improving a scene, where nature seems to have exerted her invention.

BUILDINGS are the very reverse of rocks. They are absolutely in our power, both the species and the situation; and hence arises the excess in which they often

Section V. BUILDINGS. often abound. The desire of doing something, is stronger than the fear of doing too much: these may always be procured by expence, and bought by those who know not how to choose; who consider profusion as ornament, and confound by number instead of distinguishing by variety.

Buildings probably were first introduced into gardens merely for convenience, to afford refuge from a sudden shower, and shelter against the wind; or, at the most, to be seats for a party; or for retirement. They have since been converted into objects, and now the original use is too often forgotten in the greater purposes to which they are applied: they are considered as objects only; the inside is totally neglected, and a pompous edifice frequently wants a room barely comfortable. Sometimes the pride of making a lavish display to a visitor, without any regard to the owner's enjoyments, and sometimes too scrupulous an attention to the style of the structure, occasions a poverty and dulness within, which deprives the buildings of part of their utility. But in a garden they ought to be considered both as beautiful objects, and as agreeable retreats: if a character becomes them, it is that of the scene they belong to; not that of their primitive application. A Grecian temple or Gothic church, may adorn spots where it would be affectation to preserve that solemnity within, which is proper for places of devotion: they are not to be exact models, subjects only of curiosity or study; they are also seats: and such seats will be little frequented by the proprietor; his mind must generally be indisposed to so much simplicity, and so much gloom, in the midst of gaiety, richness, and variety.

But though the interior of buildings should not be disregarded, it is by their exterior that they become objects; and sometimes by the one, sometimes by the other, and sometimes by both, they are entitled to be considered as characters.

As objects, they are designed either to distinguish, or to break, or to adorn, the scenes to which they are applied.

The differences between one wood, one lawn, one piece of water, and another, are not always very apparent; the several parts of a garden would, therefore, often seem similar, if they were not distinguished by buildings: but these are so observable, so obvious at a glance, so easily retained in the memory, they mark the spots where they are placed with so much strength, they attract the relation of all around with so much power, that parts thus distinguished can never be confounded together. Yet it by no means follows, that therefore every scene must have its edifice: the want of one is sometimes a variety; and other circumstances are often sufficiently characteristic: it is only when these too nearly agree, that we must have recourse to buildings for differences: we can introduce, exhibit, or contrast them as we please: the most striking object is thereby made a mark of distinction; and the force of this first impression prevents our observing the points of resemblance.

The uniformity of a view may be broken by similar means, and on the same principle: when a wide heath, a dreary moor, or a continued plain, is in prospect, objects which catch the eye supply the want of variety: none are so effectual for this purpose as build-

ings. Plantations or water can have no very sensible effect, unless they are large or numerous, and almost change the character of the scene: but a small single building diverts the attention at once from the sameness of the extent; which it breaks, but does not divide; and diversifies, without altering, its nature. The design, however, must not be apparent. The merit of a cottage applied to this purpose, consists in its being free from the suspicion; and a few trees near it will both enlarge the object, and account for its position. Ruins are a hackneyed device immediately detected, unless their style be singular, or their dimensions extraordinary. The semblance of an ancient British monument might be adapted to the same end, with little trouble, and great success. The materials might be brick, or even timber plastered over, if stone could not easily be procured: whatever they were, the fallacy would not be discernible; it is an object to be seen at a distance, rude, and large, and in character agreeable to a wild open view. But no building ought to be introduced, which may not in reality belong to such a situation: no Grecian temples, no Turkish mosques, no Egyptian obelisks or pyramids; none imported from foreign countries, and unusual here. The apparent artifice would destroy an effect; which is so nice as to be weakened, if objects proper to produce it are displayed with too much ostentation; if they seem to be contrivances, not accidents; and the advantage of their position appear to be more laboured than natural.

But in a garden, where objects are intended only to adorn, every species of architecture may be admitted, from the Grecian down to the Chinese; and the choice is so free, that the mischief most to be apprehended, is an abuse of this latitude in the multiplicity of buildings. Few scenes can bear more than two or three: in some, a single one has a greater effect than any number: and a careless glimpse, here and there, of such as belong immediately to different parts, frequently enliven the landscape with more spirit than those which are industriously shewn. If the effect of a partial sight, or a distant view, were more attended to, many scenes might be filled, without being crowded; a greater number of buildings would be tolerated, when they seemed to be casual, not forced; and the animation, and the richness of the objects, might be had without pretence or display.

Too fond an ostentation of buildings, even of those which are principal, is a common error; and when all is done, they are not always shewn to the greatest advantage. Though their symmetry and their beauties ought in general to be distinctly and fully seen, yet an oblique is sometimes better than a direct view: and they are often less agreeable objects when entire, than when a part is covered, or their extent is interrupted; when they are bosomed in wood, as well as backed by it; or appear between the items of trees which rise before or above them: thus thrown into perspective, thus grouped and accompanied, they may be as important as if they were quite exposed, and are frequently more picturesque and beautiful.

But a still greater advantage arises from this management, in connecting them with the scene: they are considerable, and different from all around them; inclined therefore to separate from the rest; and yet they

they are sometimes still more detached by the pains taken to exhibit them: that very importance which is the cause of the distinction, ought to be a reason for guarding against the independence to which it is naturally prone, and by which an object, which ought to be a part of the whole, is reduced to a mere individual. An elevated is generally a noble situation. When it is a point or a pinnacle, the structure may be a continuation of the ascent; and on many occasions, some parts of the building may descend lower than others, and multiply the appearances of connection: but an edifice in the midst of an extended ridge, commonly seems naked alone, and imposed upon the brow, not joined to it. If wood, to accompany it, will not grow there, it had better be brought a little way down the declivity; and then all behind, above, and about it, are so many points of contact, by which it is incorporated into the landscape.

Accompaniments are important to a building; but they lose much of their effect, when they do not appear to be casual. A little mount just large enough for it: a small piece of water below, of no other use than to reflect it; and a plantation close behind, evidently placed there only to give it relief; are as artificial as the structure itself, and alienate it from the scene of nature into which it is introduced, and to which it ought to be reconciled. These appendages therefore should be so disposed, and so connected with the adjacent parts, as to answer other purposes, tho' applicable to this; that they may be bonds of union, not marks of difference; and that the situation may appear to have been chosen, at the most, not made, for the building.

In the choice of a situation, that which shews the building best ought generally to be preferred: eminence, relief, and every other advantage which can be, ought to be given to an object of so much consideration: they are for the most part desirable; sometimes necessary; and exceptionable only when, instead of rising out of the scene, they are forced into it, and a contrivance to procure them at any rate is avowed without any disguise. There are, however, occasions, in which the most tempting advantages of situation must be waved; the general composition may forbid a building in one spot, or require it in another; at other times, the interest of the particular group it belongs to, may exact a sacrifice of the opportunities to exhibit its beauties and importance; and at all times, the pretensions of every individual object must give way to the greater effect of the whole.

The same structure which adorns as an object, may also be expressive as a character. Where the former is not wanted, the latter may be desirable: or it may be weak for one purpose, and strong for the other; it may be grave, or gay; magnificent, or simple; and, according to its style, may or may not be agreeable to the place it is applied to. But mere consistency is not all the merit which buildings can claim: their characters are sometimes strong enough to determine, improve, or correct, that of the scene; and they are so conspicuous, and so distinguished, that whatever force they have is immediately and sensibly felt. They are fit therefore to make a first impression; and when a scene is but faintly characterised, they give at once a cast which spreads over the whole, and which the weaker

parts concur to support, though perhaps they were not able to produce it.

Nor do they stop at fixing an uncertainty, or removing a doubt; they raise and enforce a character already marked: a temple adds dignity to the noblest, a cottage simplicity to the most rural, scenes; the lightness of a spire, the airiness of an open rotunda, the splendor of a continued colonnade, are less ornamental than expressive; others improve cheerfulness into gaiety, gloom into solemnity, and richness into profusion: a retired spot, which might have passed unobserved, is noticed for its tranquillity, as soon as it is appropriated by some structure to retreat; and the most unfrequented place seems less solitary than one which appears to have been the haunt of a single individual, or even of a sequestered family, and is marked by a lonely dwelling, or the remains of a deserted habitation.

The means are the same, the application of them only is different, when buildings are used to correct the character of the scene; to enliven its dulness, mitigate its gloom, or to check its extravagance; and, on a variety of occasions, to soften, to aggravate, or to counteract, particular circumstances attending it. But care must be taken that they do not contradict too strongly the prevailing idea: they may lessen the dreariness of a waste, but they cannot give it amenity; they may abate horrors, but they will never convert them into graces; they may make a tame scene agreeable, and even interesting, not romantic; or turn solemnity into cheerfulness, but not into gaiety. In these, and in many other instances, they correct the character, by giving it an inclination towards a better, which is not very different; but they can hardly alter it entirely: when they are totally inconsistent with it, they are at the best nugatory.

The great effects which have been ascribed to buildings, do not depend upon those trivial ornaments and appendages, which are often too much relied on; such as the furniture of a hermitage, painted glass in a Gothic church, and sculpture about a Grecian temple; grotesque or bacchanalian figures to denote gaiety, and death's-heads to signify melancholy. Such devices are only descriptive, not expressive, of character; and must not be substituted in the stead of those superior properties, the want of which they acknowledge, but do not supply. They besides often require time to trace their meaning, and to see their application; but the peculiar excellence of buildings is, that their effects are instantaneous, and therefore the impressions they make are forcible. In order to produce such effects, the general style of the structure, and its position, are the principal considerations: either of them will sometimes be strongly characteristic alone; united, their powers are very great; and both are so important, that if they do not concur, at least they must not contradict one another. The colour also of the buildings is seldom a matter of indifference: that excessive brightness which is too indiscriminately used to render them conspicuous, is apt to disturb the harmony of the whole, sometimes makes them too glaring as objects, and is often inconsistent with their characters. When these essential points are secured, subordinate circumstances may be made to agree with them; and though minute, they may not

not be improper, if they are not affected; they frequently mark a correspondence between the outside and the inside of a building: in the latter they are not inconsiderable; they may there be observed at leisure, and there they explain in detail the character which is more generally expressed in the air of the whole.

To enumerate the several buildings which may be used for convenience, or distinction, as ornaments, or as characters, would lead us far from our subject into a treatise of architecture: for every branch of architecture furnishes, on different occasions, objects proper for a garden; and different species may meet in the same composition: no analogy exists between the age and the country whence they are borrowed, and the spot they are applied to, except in some particular instances; but, in general, they are naturalized to a place of the most improved cultivated nature by their effects: beauty is their use; and they are consistent with each other, if all are conformable to the style of the scene, proportioned to its extent, and agreeable to its character. On the other hand, varieties more than sufficient for any particular spot, enough for a very extensive view, may be found in every species; to each also belong a number of characters; the Grecian architecture can lay aside its dignity in a rustic building; and the caprice of the Gothic is sometimes not incompatible with greatness: our choice therefore may be confined to the variations of one species, or range through the contrasts of many, as circumstances, taste, or other considerations, shall determine.

The choice of situations is also very free. Circumstances which are requisite to particular structures, may often be combined happily with others, and enter into a variety of compositions: even where they are appropriated, they may still be applied in several degrees, and the same edifice may thereby be accommodated to very different scenes. Some buildings which have a just expression when accompanied with proper appendages, have none without them; they may therefore be characters in one place, and only objects in another. On all these occasions, the application is allowable, if it can be made without inconsistency: a hermitage must not be close to a road; but whether it be exposed to view on the side of a mountain, or concealed in the depth of a wood, is almost a matter of indifference; that it is at a distance from public resort, is sufficient. A castle must not be sunk in a bottom; but that it should stand on the utmost pinnacle of a hill, is not necessary: on a lower knoll, and backed by the rise, it may appear to greater advantage as an object, and be much more important to the general composition. A tower,

"Bosom'd high in tufted trees,"

has been selected by one of our greatest poets as a singular beauty; and the justness of his choice has been so generally acknowledged, that the description is become almost proverbial; and yet a tower does not seem designed to be surrounded by a wood; but the appearance may be accounted for: it does sometimes occur; and we are easily satisfied of the propriety, when the effect is so pleasing. Many buildings, which from their splendor best become an open exposure, will yet be sometimes not ill bestowed on a more se-

quested spot, either to characterise or adorn it; and others, for which a solitary would in general be preferred to an eminent situation, may occasionally be objects in very conspicuous positions. A Grecian temple, from its peculiar grace and dignity, deserves every distinction; it may, however, in the depth of a wood, be so circumstanced, that the want of those advantages to which it seems entitled, will not be regretted. A happier situation cannot be devised, than that of the temple of Pan at the south lodge on Enfield chace. It is of the usual oblong form, encompassed by a colonnade; in dimensions, and in style, it is equal to a most extensive landscape: and yet by the antique and rustic air of its Doric columns without bases; by the chastity of its little ornaments, a crook, a pipe, and a scrip, and those only over the doors; and by the simplicity of the whole both within and without; it is adapted with so much propriety to the thickets which conceal it from the view, that no one can wish it to be brought forward, who is sensible to the charms of the Arcadian scene which this building alone has created. On the other hand, a very spacious field, or sheep-walk, will not be disgraced by a cottage, a Dutch barn, or a hay-stack; nor will they, though small and familiar, appear to be inconsiderable or insignificant objects. Numberless other instances might be adduced to prove the impossibility of restraining particular buildings to particular situations, upon any general principles: the variety in their forms is hardly greater than in their application.

To this great variety must be added the many changes of ruins, which may be made by the means of ruins. They are a class by themselves, beautiful as objects, expressive as characters, and peculiarly calculated to connect with appendages into elegant groups. They may be accommodated with ease to irregularity of ground, and their disorder is improved by it. They may be intimately blended with trees and thickets; and the interruption is an advantage: for imperfection and obscurity are their properties; and to carry the imagination to something greater than is seen, is their effect. They may for any of these purposes be separated into detached pieces; contiguity is not necessary, nor even the appearance of it, if the relation be preserved; but straggling ruins have a bad effect, when the several parts are equally considerable. There should be one large mass to raise an idea of greatness, to attract the others about it, and to be a common centre of union to all: the smaller pieces then mark the original dimensions of one extensive structure; and no longer appear to be the remains of several little buildings.

All remains excite an inquiry into the former state of the edifice, and fix the mind in a contemplation of the use it was applied to; besides the characters expressed by their style and position, they suggest ideas which would not arise from the buildings if entire. The purposes of many have ceased: an abbey, or a castle, if complete, can now be no more than a dwelling; the memory of the times, and of the manners to which they are adapted, is preserved only in history, and in ruins; and certain sensations of regret, of veneration, or compassion, attend the recollection. Nor are these confined to the remains of buildings which are now in disuse: those of an old mansion raise

reflections on the domestic comforts once enjoyed, and the ancient hospitality which reigned there. Whatever building we see in decay, we naturally contrast its present to its former state, and delight to ruminate on the comparison. It is true that such effects properly belong to real ruins; they are however produced in a certain degree by those which are fictitious: the impressions are not so strong, but they are exactly similar; and the representation, though it does not present facts to the memory, yet suggests subjects to the imagination. But, in order to affect the fancy, the supposed original design should be clear, the use obvious, and the form easy to be traced: no fragments should be hazarded without a precise meaning, and an evident connection; none should be perplexed in their construction, or uncertain as to their application. Conjectures about the form, raise doubts about the existence of the ancient structure: the mind must not be allowed to hesitate; it must be hurried away from examining into the reality, by the exactness and the force of the resemblance.

In the ruins of Tintern abbey, the original construction of the church is perfectly marked; and it is principally from this circumstance that they are celebrated as a subject of curiosity and contemplation. The walls are almost entire; the roof only is fallen in, but most of the columns which divided the aisles are still standing: of those which have dropped down, the bases remain, every one exactly in its place; and in the middle of the nave four lofty arches, which once supported the steeple, rise high in the air above all the rest, each reduced now to a narrow rim of stone, but completely preserving its form. The shapes even of the windows are little altered: but some of them are quite obscured, others partially shaded, by tufts of ivy; and those which are most clear, are edged with its slender tendrils, and lighter foliage, wreathing about the sides and the divisions: it winds round the pillars; it clings to the walls; and in one of the aisles clusters at the top in bunches, so thick and so large, as to darken the space below. The other aisles, and the great nave, are exposed to the sky: the floor is entirely overspread with turf; and to keep it clear from weeds and bushes, is now its highest preservation. Monkish tomb-stones, and the monuments of benefactors long since forgotten, appear above the green sward; the

bases of the pillars which have fallen, rise out of it; and maimed effigies, and sculpture worn with age and weather, Gothic capitals, carved cornices, and various fragments, are scattered about, or lie in heaps piled up together. Other shattered pieces, though disjointed and mouldering, still occupy their original places; and a stair-case much impaired, which led to a tower now no more, is suspended at a great height, uncovered and inaccessible. Nothing is perfect; but memorials of every part still subsist; all certain, but all in decay; and suggesting, at once, every idea which can occur in a seat of devotion, solitude, and desolation. Upon such models, fictitious ruins should be formed: and if any parts are entirely lost, they should be such as the imagination can easily supply from those which are still remaining. Distinct traces of the building which is supposed to have existed, are less liable to the suspicion of artifice, than an unmeaning heap of confusion. Precision is always satisfactory, but in the reality it is only agreeable; in the copy, it is essential to the imitation.

A material circumstance to the truth of the imitation, is, that the ruin appear to be very old. The idea is besides interesting in itself: a monument of antiquity is never seen with indifference; and a semblance of age may be given to the representation, by the hue of the materials, the growth of ivy and other plants, and cracks and fragments seemingly occasioned rather by decay than by destruction. An appendage evidently more modern than the principal structure will sometimes corroborate the effect: the shed of a cottager amidst the remains of a temple, is a contrast both to the former and to the present state of the building; and a tree flourishing among ruins, shows the length of time they have lain neglected. No circumstance so forcibly marks the desolation of a spot once inhabited, as the prevalence of nature ever it:

"Campos ubi Troja fuit,"

is a sentence which conveys a stronger idea of a city totally overthrown, than a description of its remains; but in a representation to the eye, some remains must appear; and then the perversion of them to an ordinary use, or an intermixture of a vigorous vegetation, intimates a settled despair of their restoration.

PART II. OF THOSE PROPERTIES IN THE OBJECTS OF NATURE WHICH SHOULD DETERMINE THE CHOICE AND ARRANGEMENT OF THEM IN GARDENING.

SECT. I. Of Art.

THE several constituent parts of the scenes of nature having now been considered, the next inquiry is into the particular principles and circumstances which may affect them when they are applied to the subjects of gardening.

It has always been supposed, that art must then interfere: but art was carried to excess, when from accessory it became principal, and the subject upon which it was employed was brought under regulations less applicable to that than to any other: when ground, wood, and water, were reduced to mathema-

tical figures, and similarity and order were preferred to freedom and variety. These mischiefs, however, were occasioned, not by the use, but the perversion of art; it excluded, instead of improving upon nature, and thereby destroyed the very end it was called in to promote.

So strange an abuse probably arose from an idea of some necessary correspondence between the mansion, and the scene it immediately commanded: the forms, therefore, of both were determined by the same rules; and terraces, canals, and avenues, were but so many variations of the plan of the building. The regularity thus established spread afterwards to more distant

Section I. ART. distant quarters: there, indeed, the absurdity was acknowledged as soon as a more natural disposition appeared; but a prejudice in favour of art, as it is called, just about the house, still remains. If, by the term, regularity is intended, the principle is equally applicable to the vicinity of any other building; and every temple in the garden ought to have its concomitant formal slopes and plantations: or the conformity may be reversed, and we may as reasonably contend, that the building ought to be irregular, in order to be consistent with the scene it belongs to. The truth is, that both propositions are erroneous: architecture requires symmetry; the objects of nature freedom; and the properties of the one cannot with justice be transferred to the other. But if, by the term, no more is meant than merely design, the dispute is at an end: choice, arrangement, composition, improvement, and preservation, are so many symptoms of art, which may occasionally appear in several parts of a garden, but ought to be displayed without reserve near the house: nothing there should seem neglected; it is a scene of the most cultivated nature; it ought to be enriched, it ought to be adorned; and design may be avowed in the plan, and expence in the execution.

Even regularity is not excluded: so capital a structure may extend its influence beyond its walls: but this power should be exercised only over its immediate appendages. The platform upon which the house stands, is generally continued to a certain breadth on every side; and, whether it be pavement or gravel, may undoubtedly coincide with the shape of the building. The road which leads up to the door may go off from it in an equal angle, so that the two sides shall exactly correspond: and certain ornaments, though detached, are yet rather within the province of architecture than of gardening. Works of sculpture are not, like buildings, objects familiar in scenes of cultivated nature; but vases, statuettes, and termini, are usual appendages to a considerable edifice: as such, they may attend the mansion, and trespass a little upon the garden, provided they are not carried so far into it as to lose their connection with the structure. The platform and the road are also appurtenances to the house; all these may therefore be adapted to its form, and the environs will thereby acquire a degree of regularity: but to give it to the objects of nature, only on account of their proximity to others which are calculated to receive it, is, at the best, a refinement.

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Of the approach. UPON the same principles regularity has been required in the approach; and an additional reason has been assigned for it, that the idea of a seat is thereby extended to a distance. But that may be done by other means than by an avenue. A private road is easily known. If carried through grounds, or a park, it is commonly very apparent: even in a lane, here and there a bench, a painted gate, a small plantation, or any other little ornament, will sufficiently denote it: if the entrance only be marked, simple preservation will retain the impression along the whole progress. Or the road may wind through several scenes distinguished by objects, or by an extraordinary degree of cultivation; and then the length of the way, and the variety of improvements through which it is conducted, may extend the appearance of domain, and the idea of a seat, beyond the reach of any direct avenue.

An avenue being confined to one termination, and excluding every view on the sides, has a tedious famelessness throughout: to be great, it must be dull; and the object to which it is appropriated, is after all seldom shewn to advantage. Buildings, in general, do not appear so large, and are not so beautiful, when looked at in front, as when they are seen from an angular station, which commands two sides at once, and throws them both into perspective. But a winding lateral approach is free from these objections; it may besides be brought up to the house without disturbing any of the views from it: but an avenue cuts the scenery directly in two, and reduces all the prospect to a narrow vista. A mere line of perspective, be the extent what it may, will seldom compensate for the loss of that space which it divides, and of the parts which it conceals.

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Description of the approach at Caversham, [the seat of Lord Cadogan, near Reading.] The approach to Caversham, though a mile in length, and not once in sight of the house till close upon it, yet can never be mistaken for any other way than it is: a passage only through a park is not introduced with so much distinction, so precisely marked, or kept in such preservation. On each side of the entrance is an elegant lodge: the interval between them is a light open palliade, crossing the whole breadth of a lovely valley: the road is conducted along the bottom, continually winding in natural easy sweeps, and presenting at every bend some new scene to the view: at last it gently flants up the side of a little rise to the mansion, where the eminence, which seemed inconspicuous, is found to be a very elevated situation, to which the approach, without once quitting the valley, had been insensibly ascending all the way. In its progress, it never breaks the scenes through which it passes: the plantations and the glades are continued without interruption, quite across the valley: the opposite sides have a relation to each other, not answering, not contrasted, but connected: nor does the disposition ever seem to have been made with any attention to the road; but the scenes still belong purely to the park; each of them is preserved entire, and avails itself of all the space which the situation will allow. At the entrance the slopes are very gentle, with a few large hawthorns, beeches, and oaks, scattered over them: these are thickened by the perspective as the valley winds; and just at the bend, a large clump hangs on a bold ascent, from whence different groupes, growing gradually less and less till they end in single trees, stretch quite away to a fine grove which crowns the opposite brow. The road passes between the groupes, under a light and lofty arch of ash; and then opens upon a glade, broken on the left only by a single tree, and on the right by several beeches standing to close together as to be but one in appearance. This glade is bounded by a beautiful grove, which in one part spreads a perfect gloom, but in others divides into different clusters, which leave openings for the gleams of light to pour in between them. It extends to the edge, and borders for some way the side of a collateral dale, which retires slowly from the view; and in which the falls of the ground are more tame, the bottom more flattened, than in the principal valley; the banks of this also, near the junction, are more gentle than before: but on the opposite side, the steep and the clumps still continue; and amongst them is a fine knole, from which

Section I. ART. which descend two or three groups of large trees, feathering down to the bottom, and by the pendency of their branches favouring the declivity. To these succeeds an open space, diversified only by a few scattered trees; and in the midst of it, some magnificent beeches crowding together, overshadow the road, which is carried through a narrow darksome passage between them: soon after it rises under a thick wood in the garden up to the house, where it suddenly bursts out upon a rich and extensive prospect, with the town and the churches of Reading in full sight, and the hills of Windsor-forest in the horizon. Such a view at the end of a long avenue, would have been, at the best, but a compensation for the tediousness of the way; but here the approach is as delightful as the termination. Yet even in this, a similarity of style may be said to prevail. But it has every variety of open plantations; and these are not confusedly thrown together, but formed into several scenes, all of them particularly marked: one is characterised by a grove, the next by clumps, and others by little groups or single trees: the plantations sometimes cover only the brow, and retire along the top from the view; sometimes they seem to be suspended on the edge or the sides of the descents; in one place they leave the bottom clear, in another they overspread the whole valley: the intervals are often little less than lawns; at other times they are no more than narrow glades between the groves, or only small openings in the midst of a plantation. The ground, without being broken into diminutive parts, is cast into an infinite number of elegant shapes, in every gradation from the most gentle slope, to a very precipitous fall: the trees also are of several kinds, and their shadows of various tints; those of the horse-chestnuts are dark; the beeches spread a broader but less gloomy obscurity; and they are often so vast, they swell out in a succession of such enormous masses, that, though contiguous, a deep shade sinks in between them, and distinguishes each immense individual: such intervals are in some places filled up with other species; the maples are of so extraordinary a size, that they do not appear inconsiderable, when close to the forest-trees; large hawthorns, some oaks, and in one part many, perhaps too many limes, the remains of former avenues, are intermixed; and amongst all these often rise the tallest ash, whose lighter foliage only chequers the turf beneath, while their peculiar hue diversifies the greens of the groups they belong to.

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Of regularity in the several parts of a garden. If regularity is not entitled to a preference in the environs or approach to a house, it will be difficult to support its pretensions to a place in any more distant parts of a park or a garden. Formal slopes of ground are ugly: right or circular lines bounding water, do not indeed change the nature of the element; it still retains some of its agreeable properties; but the shape given to it is disgusting. Regularity in plantations is less offensive; we are habituated, as has been already observed, to straight lines of trees, in cultivated nature; a double row, meeting at the top, and forming a complete arched vista, has a peculiar effect; other regular figures have a degree of beauty; and to alter or to disguise such a disposition, without destroying a number of fine trees, which cannot well be spared, may sometimes be difficult; but it hardly ever ought to be chosen in the arrangement of a young plantation.

Section II. PICTURE-RESQUE BEAUTY. Regularity was, however, once thought essential to every garden, and every approach; and it yet remains in many. It is still a character, denoting the neighbourhood of a gentleman's habitation; and an avenue, as an object in a view, gives to a house, otherwise inconsiderable, the air of a mansion. Buildings which answer one another at the entrance of an approach, or on the sides of an opening, have a similar effect; they distinguish at once the precincts of a seat from the rest of the country. Some pieces of sculpture also, such as vases and termini, may perhaps now and then be used, to extend the appearance of a garden beyond its limits, and to raise the mead in which they are placed above the ordinary improvements of cultivated nature. At other times they may be applied as ornaments to the most polished lawns; the traditional ideas we have conceived of Arcadian scenes, correspond with such decorations: and sometimes a solitary urn, inscribed to the memory of a person now no more, but who once frequented the shades where it stands, is an object equally elegant and interesting. The occasions, however, on which we may, with any propriety, trespass beyond the bounds of cultivated nature, are very rare; the force of the character can alone excuse the artifice avowed in expressing it.

SECT. II. Of Picturesque Beauty.

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But regularity can never attain to a great share of beauty, and to none of the species called picturesque; a denomination in general expressive of excellence, but which, by being too indiscriminately applied, may be sometimes productive of errors. That a subject is recommended at least to our notice, and probably to our favour, if it has been distinguished by the pencil of an eminent painter, is indisputable: we are delighted to see those objects in the reality, which we are used to admire in the representation; and we improve upon their intrinsic merit, by recollecting their effects in the picture. The greatest beauties of nature will often suggest the remembrance; for it is the business of a landscape painter to select them: and his choice is absolutely unrestrained; he is at liberty to exclude all objects which may hurt the composition; he has the power of combining those which he admits in the most agreeable manner; he can even determine the season of the year, and the hour of the day, to shew his landscape in whatever light he prefers. The works therefore of a great master, are fine exhibitions of nature, and an excellent school wherein to form a taste for beauty: but still their authority is not absolute; they must be used only as studies, not as models; for a picture and a scene in nature, though they agree in many, yet differ in some particulars, which must always be taken into consideration, before we can decide upon the circumstances which may be transferred from the one to the other.

In their dimensions the distinction is obvious; the same objects on different scales have very different effects; those which seem monstrous on the one, may appear diminutive on the other; and a form, which is elegant in a small object, may be too delicate for a large one. Besides, in a canvas of a few feet, there is not room for every species of variety which in nature is pleasing. Though the characteristic distinction of trees may be marked, their more minute differences, which

Section II. which however enrich plantations, cannot be expressed: and a multiplicity of enclosures, catches of water, cottages, cattle, and a thousand other circumstances, which enliven a prospect, are, when reduced into a narrow compass, no better than a heap of confusion. Yet, on the other hand, the principal objects must often be more diversified in a picture than in a scene: a building which occupies a considerable portion of the former, will appear small in the latter when compared to the space all around it; and the number of parts which may be necessary to break its sameness in one, will aggravate its insignificance in the other. A tree which presents one rich mass of foliage, has sometimes a fine effect in nature; but when painted, is often a heavy lump, which can be lightened only by separating the boughs, and showing the ramifications between them. In several other instances the object is frequently affected by the proportion it bears to the actual, not the ideal, circumjacent extent.

Painting, with all its powers, is still more unequal to some subjects, and can give only a hint, if any, representation of them: but a gardener is not therefore to reject them: he is not debarred from a view down the sides of a hill, or a prospect where the horizon is lower than the station, because he never saw them in a picture. Even when painting exactly imitates the appearances of nature, it is often weak in conveying the ideas which they excite, and on which much of their effect sometimes depends. This however is not always a disadvantage; the appearance may be more pleasing than the idea which accompanies it, and the omission of the one may be an improvement of the other. Many beautiful tints denote disagreeable circumstances: the hue of a barren heath is often finely diversified; a piece of bare ground is sometimes overspread with a number of delicate shades; and yet we prefer a more uniform verdure to all their variety. In a picture, the several tints which occur in nature may be blended, and retain only their beauty, without suggesting the poverty of the soil which occasions them: but in the reality, the cause is more powerful than the effect: we are less pleased with the sight, than we are hurt by the reflection; and a most agreeable mixture of colours may present no other idea than of dreariness and sterility.

On the other hand, utility will sometimes supply the want of beauty in the reality, but not in a picture. In the former, we are never totally inattentive to it; we are familiarised to the marks of it; and we allow a degree of merit to an object which has no other recommendation. A regular building is generally more agreeable in a scene than in a picture, and an adjacent platform, if evidently convenient, is tolerable in the one; it is always a right line too much in the other. Utility is at the least an excuse, when it is real; but it is an idea never included in the representation.

Many more instances might be alleged to prove, that the subjects for a painter and a gardener are not always the same. Some which are agreeable in the reality, lose their effect in the imitation; and others, at the best, have less merit in a scene than in a picture. The term picturesque is therefore applicable only to such objects in nature, as, after allowing for the differences between the arts of painting and of gardening, are fit to be formed into groups, or to enter into a composition where the several parts have a relation

to each other, and in opposition to those which may be spread abroad in detail, and have no merit but as individuals.

SECT. III. Of Character.

CHARACTER is very reconcilable with beauty; and, even when independent of it, has attracted so much regard, as to occasion several frivolous attempts to produce it: statues, inscriptions, and even paintings, history and mythology, and a variety of devices, have been introduced for this purpose. The heathen deities and heroes have therefore had their several places assigned to them in the woods and the lawns of a garden: natural cascades have been disguised with river-gods; and columns erected only to receive quotations: the compartments of a summer-house have been filled with pictures of gambols and revels, as significant of gaiety: the cypresses, because it was once used in funerals, has been thought peculiarly adapted to melancholy: and the decorations, the furniture, and the environs of a building, have been crowded with puerilities under pretence of propriety. All these devices are rather emblematical than expressive: they may be ingenious contrivances, and recall absent ideas to the recollection; but they make no immediate impression: for they must be examined, compared, perhaps explained, before the whole design of them is well understood: and though an allusion to a favourite or well-known subject of history, of poetry, or of tradition, may now and then animate or disguise a scene; yet as the subject does not naturally belong to a garden, the allusion should not be principal: it should seem to have been suggested by the scene; a transitory image, which irresistibly occurred; not sought for, not laboured; and have the force of a metaphor, free from the detail of an allegory.

ANOTHER species of character arises from direct imitation; when a scene or an object, which has been celebrated in description, or is familiar in idea, is represented in a garden. Artificial ruins, lakes, and rivers, fall under this denomination. The air of a seat extended to a distance, and scenes calculated to raise ideas of Arcadian elegance or of rural simplicity, with many more which have been occasionally mentioned or will obviously occur, may be ranked in this class. They are all representations. But the materials, the dimensions, and other circumstances, being the same in the copy and the original, their effects are similar in both: and if not equally strong the defect is not in the resemblance; but the consciousness of an imitation checks that train of thought which the appearance naturally suggests. Yet an over-anxious solicitude to disguise the fallacy is often the means of exposing it: too many points of likeness sometimes hurt the deception; they seem studied and forced; and the affectation of resemblance destroys the supposition of a reality. A hermitage is the habitation of a recluse; it should be distinguished by its solitude, and its simplicity: but if it is filled with crucifixes, hour-glasses, beads, and every other trinket which can be thought of, the attention is diverted from enjoying the retreat to examining the particulars: all the collateral circumstances which agree with a character, seldom meet in one subject; and when they are industriously brought together, though each be natural, the collection is artificial.

The

The peculiar advantages which gardening has over other imitative arts, will not, however, support attempts to introduce, they rather forbid the introduction of characters, to which the space is not adequate. A plain simple field, unadorned but with the common rural appendages, is an agreeable opening: but if it is extremely small, neither a hay-stack, nor a cottage, nor a stile, nor a path, nor much less all of them together, will give it an air of reality. A harbour or an artificial lake is but a conceit: it raises no idea of refuge or security; for the lake does not suggest an idea of danger: it is detached from the large body of water; and yet it is in itself but a poor inconsiderable basin, vainly affecting to mimic the majesty of the sea. When imitative characters in gardening are egregiously defective in any material circumstance, the truth of the others exposes and aggravates the failure.

But the art of gardening aspires to more than imitation: it can create original characters, and give expressions to the several scenes superior to any they can receive from allusions. Certain properties, and certain dispositions, of the objects of nature, are adapted to excite particular ideas and sensations: many of them have been occasionally mentioned; and all are very well known. They require no discernment, examination, or discussion; but are obvious at a glance, and instantaneously distinguished by our feelings. Beauty alone is not so engaging as this species of character: the impressions it makes are more transient and less interesting; for it aims only at delighting the eye, but the other affects our sensibility. An assemblage of the most elegant forms in the happiest situations is to a degree indiscriminate, if they have not been selected and arranged with a design to produce certain expressions; an air of magnificence, or of simplicity, of cheerfulness, tranquillity, or some other general character, ought to pervade the whole; and objects pleasing in themselves, if they contradict that character, should therefore be excluded: those which are only indifferent, must sometimes make room for such as are more significant; many will often be introduced for no other merit than their expression; and some, which are in general rather disagreeable, may occasionally be recommended by it. Barrenness itself may be an acceptable circumstance in a spot dedicated to solitude and melancholy.

The power of such characters is not confined to the ideas which the objects immediately suggest; for these are connected with others, which insensibly lead to subjects, far distant, perhaps, from the original thought, and related to it only by a similitude in the sensations they excite. In a prospect, enriched and enlivened with inhabitants and cultivation, the attention is caught at first by the circumstances which are gayest in their season, the bloom of an orchard, the fertility of a hay-field, and the carols of harvest-home: but the cheerfulness which these infuse into the mind, expands afterwards to other objects than those immediately presented to the eye; and we are thereby disposed to receive, and delighted to pursue, a variety of pleasing ideas, and every benevolent feeling. At the sight of a ruin, reflections on the change, the decay, and the desolation before us, naturally occur; and they introduce a long succession of others, all tinctured with that melancholy which these have inspired:

or if the monument revive the memory of former times, we do not stop at the simple fact which it records, but recollect many more coeval circumstances, which we see, not perhaps as they were, but as they are come down to us, venerable with age, and magnified by fame. Even, without the assistance of buildings, or other adventitious circumstances, nature alone furnishes materials for scenes which may be adapted to almost every kind of expression: their operation is general, and their consequences infinite: the mind is elevated, depressed, or composed, as gaiety, gloom, or tranquillity, prevail in the scene; and we soon lose sight of the means by which the character is formed: we forget the particular objects it presents; and giving way to their effects, without recurring to the cause, we follow the track they have begun, to any extent which the disposition they accord with will allow. It suffices that the scenes of nature have a power to affect our imagination and our sensibility: for such is the constitution of the human mind, that if once it is agitated, the emotion often spreads far beyond the occasion; when the passions are roused, their course is unrestrained; when the fancy is on the wing, its flight is unbounded; and, quitting the inanimate objects which first gave them their spring, we may be led by thought above thought, widely differing in degree, but still corresponding in character, till we rise from familiar subjects up to the sublimest conceptions, and are rapt in the contemplation of whatever is great or beautiful, which we see in nature, feel in man, or attribute to divinity.

SECT. IV. Of the General Subject.

The scenes of nature are also affected by the general subject to which they are applied, whether that be a farm, a garden, a park, or a riding. These may all indeed be parts of one place; they may border on each other; they may, to a degree, be intermixed: but each is still a character of such force, that, whichever prevails, the propriety of all other characters, and of every species of beauty, must be tried by their conformity to this. And circumstances necessary to one, may be inconsistencies in the rest: elegance is the peculiar excellence of a garden, greatness of a park, simplicity of a farm, and pleasantness of a riding. These distinguishing properties will alone exclude from the one, many objects which are very acceptable in the others; but these are not the only properties in which they essentially differ.

A garden is intended to walk or to sit in, which are circumstances not considered in a riding; a park comprehends all the uses of the other two; and these uses determine the proportional extent of each. A large garden would be but a small park; and the circumference of a considerable park but a short riding. A farm is in some measure denominated from its size: if it greatly exceed the dimensions of a garden, so that its bounds are beyond the reach of a walk, it becomes a riding. A farm and a garden hence appear to be calculated for indolent, a riding for active amusements, and a park for both: seats, therefore, and buildings for refreshment or indulgence, should be frequent in a garden or a farm; should sometimes occur in a park; but are unnecessary in a riding.

Within the narrow compass of a garden, there is not

Section IV. not room for distant effects. On the other hand, it allows of objects which are striking only in a single point of view; for we may stop there to contemplate them: and an obscure catch, or a partial glimpse of others, are also acceptable circumstances, in the leisure of a seat, or even in the course of a loitering walk. But these are lost in a riding, where the pleasantness of the road, not of the spot, is the principal consideration; and its greatest improvement is a distant object, which may be seen from several points, or along a considerable part of the way. Minute beauties in general may abound in a garden; they may be frequent in a farm; in both we have opportunities to observe and to examine them: in a park, they are below our notice; in a riding, they escape it.

Prospects are agreeable to either of the four general subjects, but not equally necessary to all. In a garden, or in a farm, scenes within themselves are often satisfactory; and, in their retired spots, an opening would be improper. A park is defective, if confined to its inclosure: a perpetual succession of home-scenes, through so large an extent, wants variety; and fine prospects are circumstances of greatness: but they are not required in every part. The place itself supplies many noble views; and these are not much improved by a distant rim, or a little peep of the country, which is inadequate to the rest of the composition. A riding has seldom much beauty of its own; it depends on objects without for its pleasantness: if it only leads now and then to a striking point, and is dull all the rest of the way, it will not be much frequented; but very moderate views are sufficient to render its progress agreeable.

By concealing, therefore, much of the prospects, we destroy the amusement of a riding. The view of the country should not be hurt by the improvements of the road. In a garden, on the contrary, continuation of shade is very acceptable; and if the views be sometimes interrupted, they may still be caught from many points: we may enjoy them there whenever we please; and they would pass if constantly in sight. The best situation for a house is not that which has the greatest command; a cheerful look-out from the windows is all that the proprietor desires. He is more sensible to the charms of the greater prospects, if he sees them only occasionally, and they do not become insipid by being familiar: for the same reason he does not wish for them in every part of his garden; and temporary concealments give them fresh spirit whenever they appear. But the views of a riding are not visited so often, as thereby to lose any of their effect. Plantations, therefore, in a country, should be calculated rather for objects to look at, than for shades to pass through. In a park, they may answer both purposes: but in a garden, they are commonly considered as places to walk or to sit in. As such, too, they are most welcome in a farm: but still the distinction between an improved and an ordinary farm being, by no circumstance, so sensibly marked, as by the arrangement of the trees, they are more important, as objects, there than in a garden.

Though a farm and a garden agree in many particulars connected with extent, yet, in style, they are the two extremes. Both, indeed, are subjects of cultivation: but cultivation in the one is husbandry, and

in the other decoration; the former is appropriated to profit, the latter to pleasure. Fields profusely ornamented do not retain the appearance of a farm; and an apparent attention to produce, obliterates the idea of a garden. A park is sometimes not much hurt by being turned to account. The use of a riding is to lead from one beauty to another, and be a scene of pleasure all the way: made avowedly for that purpose only, it admits more embellishment and distinction than an ordinary road through a farm. See the articles FARM, PARK, and RIDING.

SECT. V. Of a Garden.

The gravel paths have been mentioned † as contributing to the appearance of a garden: they are unusual elsewhere; they constantly present the idea of a walk; and the correspondence between their sides, the exactness of the edges, the nicety of the materials and of the preservation, appropriate them to spots in the highest state of improvement. Applied to any other subject than a park, their effect is the same. A field, surrounded by a gravel-walk, is, to a degree, bordered by a garden; and many ornaments may be introduced as appendages to the latter, which would otherwise appear to be inconsistent with the former. When these accompaniments occupy a considerable space, and are separated from the field, the idea of a garden is complete as far as they extend; but if the gravel be omitted, and the walk be only of turf, a greater breadth to the border, and more richness in the decorations, are necessary to preserve that idea.

Many gardens are nothing more than such a walk round a field; that field is often raised to the character of a lawn: and sometimes the inclosure is, in fact, a paddock. Whatever it be, the walk is certainly garden: it is a spot set apart for pleasure; it admits on the sides a profusion of ornament; it is fit for the reception of every elegance, and requires the nicest preservation: it is attended also with many advantages; may be made and kept without much expence; leads to a variety of points; and avails itself, in its progress, of the several circumstances which belong to the inclosure it surrounds, whether they be the rural appurtenances of a farm, or those more refined which distinguish a paddock.

But it has at the same time its inconveniences and defects. Its approach to the several points is always circuitous, and they are thereby often thrown to a distance from the house and from each other: there is no access to them across the open exposure: the way must constantly be the same: the view all along is into one opening, which must be peculiarly circumstanced, to furnish within itself a sufficient variety: and the embellishments of the walk are seldom important; their number is limited; and the little space allotted for their reception admits only of those which can be accommodated to the scale, and will conform to the character. This species of garden, therefore, reduces almost to a sameness all the places it is applied to: the subject seems exhausted: no walk round a field can now be very different from several others already existing. At the best too it is but a walk: the fine scenery of a garden is wanting; and that in the field, which is substituted in its stead, is generally of an inferior character; and often defective in connection with the spot which commands

Section V. GARDEN. mandates it, by the intervention of the fence, or the visible difference in the preservation.

This objection, however, has more or less force according to the character of the inclosure. If that be a paddock or a lawn, it may exhibit scenes not unworthy of the most elegant garden; which agreeing in style, will unite in appearance, with the walk. The other objections also are stronger or weaker in proportion to the space allowed for the appendages; and not applicable at all to a broad circuit of garden, which has room within itself for scenery, variety, and character: but the common narrow walk, too indiscriminately in fashion, if continued to a considerable extent, becomes very tiresome; and the points it leads to must be more than ordinarily delightful, to compensate for the fatigue of the way.

This tediousness may, however, be remedied, without any extravagant enlargement of the plan, by taking in, at certain intervals, an additional breadth, sufficient only for a little scene to interrupt the uniformity of the progress. The walk is then a communication, not between points of view, through all which it remains unaltered; but between the several parts of a garden, in each of which it is occasionally lost; and, when resumed, it is at the worst a repetition, not a continuation of the same idea; the eye and the mind are not always confined to one tract; they expatiate at times, and have been relieved before they return to it. Another expedient, the very reverse of this, may now and then be put in practice: it is to contract, instead of enlarging, the plan; to carry the walk, in some part of its course, directly into the field, or at the most to secure it from cattle; but, to make it quite simple, omit all its appendages, and drop every idea of a garden. If neither of these, nor any other means, be used to break the length of the way, though the inclosure should furnish a succession of scenes, all beautiful, and even contrasted to each other, yet the walk will introduce a similarity between them. This species of garden, therefore, seems proper only for a place of a very moderate extent; if it be stretched out to a great length, and not mixed with other characters, its sameness hurts that variety, which is its peculiar merit to discover.

But the advantages attending it upon some, and the use of it on so many, occasions, have raised a partiality in its favour; and it is often carried round a place, where the whole inclosure is garden: the interior openings and communications furnish there a sufficient range; and they do not require that number and variety of appendages, which must be introduced to disguise the uniformity of the circuitous walk, but which often interfere with greater effects. It is at the least unnecessary in such a garden; but plain gravel-walks to every part are commonly deemed to be indispensable: they undoubtedly are convenient; but it must also be acknowledged, that though sometimes they adorn, yet at other times they disguise, the scenes thro' which they are conducted. The proprietor of the place, who visits these scenes at different seasons, is most anxious for their beauty in fine weather; he does not feel the restraint to be grievous, if all of them be not at all times equally accessible; and a gravel-walk perpetually before him, especially when it is useless, must be irksome. It ought not, therefore, to be ostentatiously

shewn; on many occasions it should be industriously concealed: that it lead to the capital points is sufficient: it can never be requisite along the whole extent of every scene: it may often skirt a part of them, without appearing; or just touch upon them, and withdraw; but if it cannot be introduced at all without hurting them, it ought commonly to be omitted.

The sides of a gravel-walk must correspond, and its course be in sweeps gently bending all the way. It preserves its form, though conducted through woods, or along glades, of the most licentious irregularity. But a grass walk is under no restraint; the sides of it may be perpetually broken, and the direction frequently changed: sudden turns, however, are harsh; they check the idea of progress; they are rather disappointments than varieties; and if they are similar, they are in the worst style of affectation. The line must be curved, but it should not be wreathed; if it be truly serpentine, it is the most unnatural of any. It ought constantly to proceed; and wind only just so much, that the termination of the view may differ at every step, and the end of the walk never appear: the thickets which confine it should be diversified with several mixtures of greens; no distinctions in the forms of the shrubs or the trees will be lost, when there are opportunities to observe them so nearly; and combinations and contrasts without number may be made, which will be there truly ornamental. Minute beauties are proper in a spot precluded from great effects: and yet such a walk, if it be broad, is by no means insignificant; it may have an importance which will render it more than a mere communication.

But the peculiar merit of that species of garden which occupies the whole inclosure, consists in the larger scenes: it can make room for them both in breadth and in length; and being dedicated entirely to pleasure, free from all other considerations, those scenes may be in any style which the nature of the place will allow: a number of them is expected; all different; sometimes contrasted; and each distinguished by its beauty. If the space be divided into little slips, and made only a collection of walks, it forfeits all its advantages, loses its character, and can have no other excellence than such as it may derive from situation: whereas, by a more liberal disposition, it may be made independent of whatever is external; and though prospects are no where more delightful than from a point of view which is also a beautiful spot, yet if in such a garden they should be wanting, the elegant, picturesque, and various scenes within itself, almost supply the deficiency.

This is the character of the gardens at Stowe: for there the views in the country are only circumstances of Stowe. subordinate to the scenes; and the principal advantage of the situation is the variety of the ground within the inclosure. The house stands on the brow of a gentle ascent; part of the gardens lie on the declivity, and spread over the bottom beyond it: this eminence is separated by a broad winding valley from another which is higher and steeper; and the descents of both are broken by large dips and hollows, sloping down the sides of the hills. The whole space is divided into a number of scenes, each distinguished with taste and fancy; and the changes are so frequent, so sudden, and complete, the transitions so artfully conducted, that

Section V. that the same ideas are never continued or repeated to
GARDEN. satiety.

These gardens were begun when regularity was in fashion; and the original boundary is still preserved, on account of its magnificence: for round the whole circuit, of between three or four miles, is carried a very broad gravel walk, planted with rows of trees, and open either to the park or the country; a deep-funk fence attends it all the way, and comprehends a space of near four hundred acres. But in the interior scenes of the garden, few traces of regularity appear: where it yet remains in the plantations, it is generally disguised: every symptom, almost, of formality is obliterated from the ground; and an octagon basin in the bottom, is now converted into an irregular piece of water, which receives on one hand two beautiful streams, and falls on the other down a cascade into a lake.

In the front of the house is a considerable lawn, open to the water: beyond which are two elegant Doric pavilions, placed in the boundary of the garden, but not marking it, though they correspond to each other; for still further back, on the brow of some rising grounds without the inclosure, stands a noble Corinthian arch, by which the principal approach is conducted, and from which all the gardens are seen, reclining back against their hills: they are rich with plantations; full of objects; and, lying on both sides of the house almost equally, every part is within a moderate distance, notwithstanding the extent of the whole.

On the right of the lawn, but concealed from the house, is a perfect garden-scene, called the queen's amphitheatre, where art is avowed, though formality is avoided. The fore ground is scooped into a gentle hollow. The plantations on the sides, though but just rescued from regularity, yet in style are contrasted to each other: they are, on one hand, chiefly thickets, standing out from a wood; on the other, they are open groves, through which a glimpse of the water is visible. At the end of the hollow, on a little knole, quite detached from all appendages, is placed an open Ionic rotunda: beyond it, a large lawn slopes across the view; a pyramid stands on the brow; the queen's pillar, in a recess on the descent; and all the three buildings, being evidently intended for ornament alone, are peculiarly adapted to a garden-scene. Yet their number does not render it gay: the dusky hue of the pyramid, the retired situation of the queen's pillar, and the solitary appearance of the rotunda, give it an air of gravity; it is encompassed with wood; and all the external views are excluded; even the opening into the lawn is but an opening into an inclosure.

At the king's pillar, very near to this, is another lovely spot; which is small, but not confined; for no termination appears: the ground one way, the water another, retire under the trees out of sight, but nowhere meet with a boundary. The view is first over some very broken ground, thinly and irregularly planted; then between two beautiful clumps, which feather down to the bottom; and afterwards across a glade, and through a little grove beyond it, to that part of the lake, where the thickets, close upon the brink, spread a tranquillity over the surface, in which their shadows are reflected. Nothing is admitted to disturb that quiet: no building obtrudes: for objects

to fix the eye are needleless in a scene, which may be comprehended at a glance; and none would suit the pastoral idea it inspires, of elegance too refined for a cottage, and of simplicity too pure for any other edifice.

The situation of the rotunda promises a prospect more enlarged; and in fact most of the objects on this side of the garden are there visible: but they want both connection and contrast; each belongs peculiarly to some other spot: they are all blended together in this, without meaning; and are rather shewn on a map, than formed into a picture. The water only is capital; a broad expanse of it is so near as to be seen under the little groups on the bank without interruption. Beyond it is a wood, which in one place leaves the lake, to run up behind a beautiful building, of three pavilions joined by arcades, all of the Ionic order: it is called Kent's Building. And never was a design more happily conceived: it seems to be characteristically proper for a garden; it is so elegant, so varied, and so purely ornamental: it directly fronts the rotunda, and a narrow rim of the country appears above the trees beyond it. But the effect even of this noble object is fainter here than at other points: its position is not the most advantageous; and it is but one among many other buildings, none of which are principal.

The scene at the temple of Bacchus is in character directly the reverse of that about the rotunda, though the space and the objects are nearly the same in both: but in this, all the parts concur to form one whole. The ground from every side shelves gradually towards the lake; the plantations on the further bank open to shew Kent's building, rise from the water's edge towards the knole on which it stands, and close again behind it. That elegant structure, inclined a little from a front view, becomes more beautiful by being thrown into perspective; and though at a greater distance, is more important than before, because it is alone in the view: for the queen's pillar and the rotunda are removed far aside; and every other circumstance refers to this interesting object: the water attracts, the ground and the plantations direct, the eye thither; and the country does not just glimmer in the offskip, but is close and eminent above the wood, and connected by clumps with the garden. The scene all together is a most animated landscape: and the splendor of the building; the reflection in the lake; the transparency of the water, and the picturesque beauty of its form, diversified by little groups on the brink, while on the broadest expanse no more trees cast their shadows than are sufficient to vary the tints of the surface; all these circumstances, vying in lustre with each other, and uniting in the point to which every part of the scene is related, diffuse a peculiar brilliancy over the whole composition.

The view from Kent's building, is very different from those which have been hitherto described. They are all directed down the declivity of the lawn. This rises up the ascent: the eminence being crowned with lofty wood, becomes thereby more considerable; and the hillocks into which the general fall is broken, sloping further out this way than any other, they also acquire an importance which they had not before: that, particularly, on which the rotunda is placed,

seems here to be a profound situation; and the structure appears to be properly adapted to so open an exposure. The temple of Bacchus, on the contrary, which commands such an illustrious view, is itself a retired object, close under the covert. The wood rising on the brow, and descending down one side of the hill, is shewn to be deep; is high, and seems to be higher than it is. The lawn too is extensive; and part of the boundary being concealed, it suggests the idea of a still greater extent. A small portion only of the lake indeed is visible; but it is not here an object: it is a part of the spot; and neither termination being in sight, it has no diminutive appearance: if more water had been admitted, it might have hurt the character of the place, which is sober and temperate; neither solemn nor gay; great and simple, but elegant; above rusticity, yet free from ostentation.

These are the principal scenes on one side of the gardens. On the other, close to the lawn before the house, is the winding valley abovementioned: the lower part of it is assigned to the Elygian fields. These are watered by a lovely rivulet; are very lightsome, and very airy, so thinly are the trees scattered about them; are open at one end to more water and a larger glade; and the rest of the boundary is frequently broken to let in objects afar off, which appear still more distant from the manner of shewing them. The entrance is under a Doric arch, which coincides with an opening among the trees, and forms a kind of vista, through which a Pembroke bridge just below, and a lodge built like a castle in the park, are seen in a beautiful perspective. That bridge is at one extremity of the gardens; the queen's pillar is at another; yet both are visible from the same station in the Elygian fields: and all these external objects are unaffectedly introduced, divested of their own appurtenances, and combined with others which belong to the spot. The temple of friendship also is in sight, just without the place: and within it, are the temples of ancient virtue, and of the British worthies; the one in an elevated situation, the other low down in the valley, and near to the water: both are decorated with the effigies of those who have been most distinguished for military, civil, or literary merit; and near to the former stands a rostral column, sacred to the memory of captain Grenville, who fell in an action at sea: by placing here the meed of valour, and by filling these fields with the representations of those who have deserved best of mankind, the character intended to be given to the spot is justly and poetically expressed; and the number of the images which are presented or excited, perfectly corresponds with it. Solitude was never reckoned among the charms of Elysium; it has been always pictured as the mansion of delight and of joy: and in this imitation, every circumstance accords with that established idea. The vivacity of the stream which flows through the vale; the glimpses of another approaching to join it; the sprightly verdure of the green sward, and every bust of the British worthies reflected in the water; the variety of the trees: the lightness of the greens; their disposition; all of them distinct objects, and dispersed over gentle inequalities of the ground; together with the multiplicity of objects both within and without, which embellish and enliven the scene; give it a gaiety, which the imagi-

nation can hardly conceive, or the heart wish to be exceeded.

Close by this spot, and a perfect contrast to it, is the alder grove; a deep recess, in the midst of a shade, which the blaze of noon cannot brighten. The water seems to be a stagnated pool, eating into its banks; and of a peculiar colour, not dirty but clouded, and dimly reflecting the dun hue of the horse-chestnuts and alders which press upon the brink: the stems of the latter, rising in clusters from the same root, bear one another down, and float over the water. Milkapen elms and ragged firs are frequent in the wood which encompasses the hollow; the trunks of dead trees are left standing amongst them; and the uncouth sumach, and the yew, with elder, nut, and holly, compose the underwood: some limes and laurels are intermixed; but they are not many: the wood is in general of the darkest greens; and the foliage is thickened with ivy, which not only twines up the trees, but creeps also over the falls of the ground: these are steep and abrupt: the gravel-walk is covered with moss; and a grotto at the end, faced with broken flints and pebbles, preserves, in the simplicity of its materials, and the duskiness of its colour, all the character of its situation: two little rotundas near it were better away; one building is sufficient for such a scene of solitude as this, in which more circumstances of gloom concur than were ever perhaps collected together.

Immediately above the alder-grove is the principal eminence in the gardens. It is divided by a great dip into two pinnacles; upon one of which is a large Gothic building. The space before this structure is an extensive lawn: the ground on one side falls immediately into the dip; and the trees which border the lawn, sinking with the ground, the house rises above them, and fills the interval: the vast pile seems to be still larger than it is; for it is thrown into perspective, and between and above the heads of the trees, the upper story, the porticoes, the turrets and ballustrades, and all the slated roofs, appear in a noble confusion. On the other side of the Gothic building, the ground slopes down a long-continued declivity into a bottom, which seems to be perfectly irriguous. Divers streams wander about it in several directions: the conflux of that which runs from the Elygian fields with another below it, is full in sight; and a plain wooden bridge thrown over the latter, and evidently designed for a passage, imposes an air of reality on the river. Beyond it is one of the Doric porticoes which front the house; but now it is alone; it stands on a little bank above the water, and is seen under some trees at a distance before it: thus grouped, and thus accompanied, it is a happy incident, concurring with many other circumstances to distinguish this landscape by a character of cheerfulness and amenity.

From the Gothic building a broad walk leads to the Grecian valley, which is a scene of more grandeur than any in the gardens. It enters them from the park, spreading at first to a considerable breadth; then winds; grows narrower, but deeper; and loses itself at last in a thicket, behind some lofty elms, which interrupt the sight of the termination. Lovely woods and groves hang all the way on the declivities: and the open space is broken by detached trees; which, near the park, are cautiously and sparingly introduced.

Section V. left the breadth should be contracted by them; but as GARDEN

wanting: if they cannot be had on a large scale, they are acceptable on a smaller; and so many circumstances are common to all, that they may often be intermixed; they may always border on each other.

SECT. VI. Of the Seasons.

To every view belongs a light which shews it to advantage: every scene and every object is in its highest beauty only at particular hours of the day; and every place is, by its situation or its character, peculiarly agreeable in certain months of the year. The seasons thus become subjects of consideration in gardening; and when several of those circumstances which distinguish a spot more at one time than another happen to concur, it will often be worth the while to add to their number, and to exclude such as do not agree with them, for no other purpose than to strengthen their effect at that particular time. Different parts may thus be adapted to different seasons, and each in its turn will be in perfection. But if the place will not allow of such a succession, still occasional effects may often be secured and improved, without prejudice to the scene when they are past, and without affectation while they continue.

The temple of Concord and Victory at Stowe has been mentioned as one of the noblest objects that ever adorned a garden: but there is a moment when it appears in singular beauty. The setting sun shines on the long colonnade which faces the west: all the lower parts of the building are darkened by the neighbouring wood: the pillars rise at different heights out of the obscurity; some of them are nearly overspread with it, some are chequered with a variety of tints, and others illuminated almost down to their bases. The light is gently softened off by the rotundity of the columns: but it spreads in broad gleams upon the wall within them; and pours full and without interruption on all the entablature, distinctly marking every dentil. On the statues which adorn the several points of the pediment, a deep shade is contrasted to splendor: the rays of the sun linger on the side of the temple long after the front is overcast with the sober hue of evening; and they tip the upper branches of the trees, or glow in the openings between them, while the shadows lengthen across the Grecian valley.

Such an occasional effect, however transient, is so exquisitely beautiful, that it would be unpardonable to neglect it. Others may be produced at several hours of the day; and the disposition of the buildings, of the ground, the water, and the plantations, may often be accommodated to support them. There are also occasional effects in certain months, or only weeks, of the year, arising from some particular bloom, some occupation then carrying on, or other incident, which may so far deserve attention as to recommend a choice and arrangement of objects, which at that time will improve the composition, though at another they may have no extraordinary merit.

BESIDES these transitory effects, there are others which may be defined and produced with more exactness, which are fixed to stated periods, and have certain properties belonging to them. Some species and situations of objects are in themselves adapted to receive or to make the impressions which characterize

the principal parts of the day: their splendor, their sobriety, and other peculiarities, recommend or prohibit them upon different occasions. The same considerations direct the choice also of their appendages; and in consequence of a judicious assemblage and arrangement of such as are proper for the purpose, the spirit of the morning, the excess of noon, or the temperance of evening, may be improved or corrected by the application of the scene to the season.

In a morning, the freshness of the air allays the force of the sun-beams, and their brightness is free from glare: the most splendid objects do not offend the eye, nor suggest the idea of heat in its extreme; but they correspond with the glitter of the dew which bespangles all the produce of the earth, and with the cheerfulness diffused over the whole face of the creation. A variety of buildings may therefore be introduced to enliven the view: their colour may be the purest white, without danger of excess, though they face the eastern sun; and those which are in other aspects should be so contrived, that their turrets, their pinnacles, or other points, may catch glances of the rays, and contribute to illuminate the scene. The trees ought in general to be of the lightest greens, and so situated as not to darken much of the landscape by the length of their shadows. Vivacity in the streams, and transparency in a lake, are more important at this than at any other hour of the day: and an open exposure is commonly the most delightful, both for the effect of particular objects, and the general character of the scene.

At noon, every expedient should be used to correct the excess of the season. The shades are shortened, they must therefore be thick; but open plantations are generally preferable to a close covert: they afford a passage, or at least admittance to the air; which, tempered by the coolness of the place, soft to the touch, and refreshing at once to all the senses, renders the shade a delightful climate, not a mere refuge from heat. Groves, even at a distance, suggest the ideas which they realize on the spot; and, by multiplying the appearances, improve the sensations of relief from the extremity of the weather. Grottos, caves, and cells, are on the same account agreeable circumstances in a sequestered recess; and though the chill within be hardly ever tolerable, the eye catches only an idea of coolness from the sight of them. Other buildings ought in general to be cast into shade, that the glare of the reflection from them may be obscured. The large expanse of a lake is also too dazzling: but a broad river moving gently, and partially darkened with shadow, is very refreshing; more so perhaps than a little rill, for the vivacity of the latter rather disturbs the repose which generally prevails at mid-day. Every breeze then is still; the reflexion of an aspen-leaf scarcely trembles on the water; the animals remit their search of food, and man ceases from his labour: the steam of heat seems to oppress all the faculties of the mind, and all the active powers of the body; and any very lively motion discomposes the languor in which we then delight to indulge. To hear, therefore, the murmurs of a brook purling underneath a thicket, or the echo of falling waters through a wood, is more agreeable than the sight of a current; the idea conveyed by the sound is free from any agitation:

but if no other stream than a rill can be introduced, the refreshment which attends the appearance of water must not be denied to the scene.

In the evening, all splendor fades: no buildings glare; no water dazzles. The calmness of a lake suits the quiet of the time: the light hovers there, and prolongs the duration of day. An open reach of a river has a similar, though a fainter, effect; and a continued stream all exposed, preserves the last rays of the sun along the whole length of its course, to beautify the landscape: but a brisk current is not so consistent as a lake with the tranquillity of evening. And other objects should in general conform to the temper of the time. Buildings of a dusky hue are most agreeable to it: but a very particular effect from a setting sun will recommend those of a brighter colour; and they may also be sometimes used, among other means, to correct the uniformity of twilight. No contrast of light and shade can then be produced: but if the plantations, which by their situation are the first to be obscured, be of the darkest greens, if the buildings which have a western aspect be of a light colour, and if the management of the lawns and the water be adapted to the same purpose, a diversity of tints will be preserved long after the greater effects are faded.

The delights, however, of the morning and evening are confined to a few months of the year; at other times, two or three hours before, and as much after, noon, are all that are pleasant; and even then the heat is seldom so extreme as to require relief from its excess. The distinctions, therefore, between the three parts of the day may in general be reckoned among the characteristics of summer. The occasional effects which by the position of objects may occur at any hour, are common to all the seasons of the year: and such as arise from the accidental colours of plants, though they are more frequent and more beautiful in one season than another, yet exist in all; and very agreeable groups may be formed by an assemblage of them. A degree of importance may be given even to the flowers of a border, if, instead of being indiscriminately mixed, they are arranged according to their heights, their sizes, and their colours, so as to display their beauties, and to blend or contrast their varieties to the greatest advantage. The bloom of shrubs differs from that of flowers only in the scale; and the tints occasioned by the hue of the berry, the foliage, or the bark, are sometimes little inferior to bloom. By collecting into one spot such plants as have at the same time their accidental colours, considerable effects may be produced from the concurrence of many little causes.

Those which arise from bloom are the most striking, and the most certain; and they abound chiefly in the spring. Bloom is a characteristic of the season; and a villa near town, which is designed principally for that time of the year, is not adapted to its use if this property be not amply provided for. In such a place, therefore, shrubberies, with an intermixture of flowers, are peculiarly proper. In the summer-months, a border between the thicket and the greenward, breaks the connexion, and destroys the greater effect: it ought not to be then introduced, except to enliven small spots, and as the best species of parterre. But in the spring, the thicket is hardly formed: its principal

Section VI. SEASONS.

Principal beauty is bloom; and flowers before or among the shrubs, are agreeable to the character of the season. An orchard, which, at other times, is unsightly, is then delightful; and, if a farm joins to the garden, should not be forgotten. But evergreens appear in general to great disadvantage. Most of them have a ruff or a dark hue, which suffers by being contrasted to the lively verdure of the young shoots on the deciduous trees. That verdure is, however, so light, and so universal, that effects, from a mixture of greens, can seldom be produced; and those which depend on a depth of shade will often be disappointed. But buildings, views of water, and whatever tends to animate the scene, accord with the season; which is full of youth and vigour, fresh and sprightly, brightened by the verdure of the herbage and the woods, gay with blossoms and flowers, and enlivened by the songs of the birds in all their variety, from the rude joy of the sky-lark, to the delicacy of the nightingale.

In summer, both the buildings and the water are agreeable, not as objects only, but also as circumstances of refreshment: the pleasantness, therefore, of the rooms in the former, of the seats and the walks near the latter, is to be regarded. The plantations also should be calculated at least as much for places of retreat, as for ornaments of the view; and a continuation of shade be preserved, with very few and short interruptions, through all the parts of the garden. Communications by gravel walks are of less consequence: they do not suggest that idea of utility which attends them in winter or autumn; and their colour, which in spring is a lively contrast to the verdure through which it winds, is in the intemperate blaze of a summer day glaring and painful. They should, therefore, be concealed as much as possible; and the other considerations which belong to the noon-tide hour should be particularly attended to, at the same time that the delights of the morning and the evening are also liberally provided for. But, exclusive of all such incidental circumstances, the scenes of nature in general appear at this season to the greatest advantage: though the bloom of the spring be faded, and the verdure of the herbage may be sometimes affected by drought; yet the richness of the produce of the earth, and the luxuriance of the foliage in the woods; the sensations of refreshment, added to the beauty of water; the ideas of enjoyment which accompany the sight of every grove, of every building, and every delightful spot; the characters of rocks, heightened by their appendages, and unallayed by any disconsolate reflections; the connexion of the ground with the plantations, the permanency of every tint, and the certainty of every effect; all concur, in summer, to raise the several compositions to their highest state of perfection.

But maturity is always immediately succeeded by decay: flowers bloom and fade; fruits ripen and rot; the grass springs and withers; and the foliage of the woods shoots, thickens, and falls. In the latter months of autumn, all nature is on the decline; it is a comfortless season: not a blossom is left on the shrubs or the trees; and the few flowers which still remain in the borders, dripping with wet, and sickening even as they blow, seem hardly to survive the leaves of the plant which are shrivelling beneath them. But

the change of the leaf precedes the fall; and thence results a variety of colours, superior to any which the spring or the summer can boast of. To shew and to improve that variety should be principally attended to, in a place, such as a sporting seat, which is frequented only in autumn. It appears to advantage, whenever the surface of a wood can be commanded; and it may be produced to a considerable degree, even in a shrubbery, if the plants are so disposed as to rise in gradation one behind another. By observing the tints which the leaves assume when they change, the choice may be directed to the improvement of their variety; and by attending to the times when they fall, a succession of these transitory beauties may be provided, from the earliest to the latest in the season. Many shrubs and trees are at this time also covered with berries, which furnish still further varieties of colour; both evergreens and deciduous plants abound with them; and the verdure of the former is besides a welcome substitute to that which is daily fading away. Open buildings, airy groves, views of water, and the other delights of summer, now lose their charms; and more homely circumstances of comfort and convenience are preferable to all their beauties.

A place which is the residence of a family all the year is very defective, if some portion of it be not set apart for the enjoyment of a fine day, for air, and exercise, in winter. To such a spot shelter is absolutely essential; and evergreens being the thickest covert, are therefore the best: their verdure also is then agreeable to the eye; and they may be arranged so as to produce beautiful mixtures of greens, with more certainty than deciduous trees, and with almost equal variety: they may be collected into a wood; and through that wood gravel-walks may be led, along openings of a considerable breadth, free from large trees which would intercept the rays of the sun, and winding in such a manner as to avoid any draft of wind, from whatever quarter it may blow. But when a retreat at all times is thus secured, other spots may be adapted only to occasional purposes; and be sheltered towards the north or the east on one hand, while they are open to the sun on the other. The few hours of cheerfulness and warmth which its beams afford are so valuable, as to justify the sacrifice even of the principles of beauty to the enjoyment of them; and therefore no objections of sameness or formality can prevail against the pleasantness of a straight walk, under a thick hedge or a south wall. The eye may, however, be diverted from the screen, by a border before it, where the aconite and the snowdrop, the crocus and the hepatica, brought forward by the warmth of the situation, will be welcome harbingers of spring; and on the opposite side of the walk, little tufts of laurel, and of variegated evergreens, may be planted. The spot thus enlivened by a variety of colours, and even a degree of bloom, may be still further improved by a green-house. The entertainment which exotics afford peculiarly belongs to this part of the year; and if amongst them be interspersed some of our earliest flowers, they will there blow before their time, and anticipate the gaiety of the season which is advancing. The walk may also lead to the stoves, where the climate and the plants are always the same. And the kitchen-garden should not be far off; for that is never quite

Conclusion. quite destitute of produce, and always an active scene: the appearance of business is alone engaging; and the occupations there are an earnest of the happier seasons to which they are preparative. By these expedients even the winter may be rendered cheerful in a place, where shelter is provided against all but the bitterest inclemencies of the sky, and agreeable objects and interesting amusements are contrived for every hour of tolerable weather.

To conclude: Whatever contributes to render the scenes of nature delightful, is amongst the subjects of gardening; and animate as well as inanimate objects, are circumstances of beauty or character. Several of these have been occasionally mentioned; others will readily occur; and nothing is unworthy of the attention of a gardener, which can tend to improve his compositions, whether by immediate effects, or by suggesting a train of pleasing ideas. The whole range of nature is open to him, from the parterre to the forest; and whatever is agreeable to the senses or the imagination, he may appropriate to the spot he is to improve: it is a part of his business to collect into one place, the delights which are generally dispersed thro' different species of country.

But in this application, the genius of the place must always be particularly considered: to force it, is hazardous; and an attempt to contradict it, is always unsuccessful. The beauties peculiar to one character, cannot be transferred to its opposite: even where the characters are the same, it is difficult to copy directly

from the one into the other; and by endeavouring to produce a resemblance of a scene which is justly admired, the proper advantages of the place are often neglected for an imitation much inferior the original. The excellence of the latter probably depends on the happy application of the circumstances to the subject; and the subjects of both are never exactly alike. The art of gardening, therefore, is not to be studied in those spots only where it has been exercised; though they are in this country very numerous, and very various. Yet all together they contain but a small proportion of the beauties which nature exhibits: and unless the gardener has stored his mind with ideas from the infinite variety of the country at large, he will feel the want of that number which is necessary for choice; he will have none ready to apply to the subject immediately before him; and will be reduced to copy an imitation. But improved places are of singular use to direct the judgment in the choice, and the combinations, of the beauties of nature: an extensive knowledge of them is to be acquired in the country where they casually occur; discernment of their excellencies, and a taste for the disposition of them, is to be formed in places where they have been selected, and arranged with design.

For the particular Operations in GARDENING, see PLANTING, PRUNING, GRAFTING, INOCULATING, KITCHEN-GARDEN, ORCHARD, GREEN-HOUSE, HOT-HOUSE, INARCHING, ESPALIER, &c. and the culture and management of different plants under their respective names.

GARDINER (Stephen), bishop of Winchester, and lord chancellor of England, born at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, natural son to Richard Woodville, brother to queen Elizabeth wife to Edward IV. was learned in the canon and civil laws, and in divinity. He signed the divorce of Henry VIII. from Katharine of Spain; abjured the pope's supremacy; and writ De vera et falsa obedientia, in behalf of the king: yet in Edward's reign he opposed the reformation, and was punished with imprisonment; but queen Mary coming to the throne, she enlarged him. He drew up the articles of marriage between the queen and Philip of Spain, which were very advantageous to England. He was violent against the reformers; but on his death-bed was dissatisfied with his life, and often repeated these words: Erravi cum Petro, sed non flevi cum Petro. He died in 1555.

GARGARISM, (from γαργαῖς, "to wash the mouth;" a gargle. Its use is for washing the mouth and throat with, when inflammations, ulcerations, &c. are there. A small quantity may be taken into the mouth, and moved briskly about, and then spit out; or if the patient cannot do this to any advantage, the liquor may be injected by a syringe. When gargles are required, their use should be more frequently repeated than is done in common practice.

GARLAND, a sort of chaplet made of flowers, feathers, and sometimes precious stones, worn on the head, in manner of a crown.—The word is formed of the French guirlande, and that of the barbarous Latin garlanda, or Italian ghirlanda. Menage traces its origin from gyrus, through gyralus, to gyralus, gyran-

dum, ghirlandum, and at length ghirlanda and guirlande; so that guirlande and garland are descended in the sixth or seventh degree from gyrus.—Hicks rejects this derivation, and brings the word from gardel handa, which in the northern languages signify a nosegay artfully wrought with the hand.

GARLAND also denotes ornaments of flowers, fruits, and leaves, intermixed; anciently much used at the gates of temples, where feasts and solemn rejoicings were held; or at any other place where marks of public joy or gaiety were required, as at triumphal arches, tournaments, &c.

GARLIC. See ALLIUM.

GARNET, in natural history, a very beautiful gem, of a red colour, with an admixture of blue.

When pure and free from blemishes, it is little inferior, in appearance, to the oriental ruby, tho' only of a middle degree of hardness between the sapphire and common crystal. It is found of various sizes, from that of a pin's head to an inch in diameter.

Among our lapidaries and jewellers, genuine garnets are known by different names according to their different degrees of colour. 1. The garnet, simply so called, is the finest and most valuable kind, being of a very deep blood-red, with a faint admixture of blue. 2. The rock-ruby, a name very improperly given to the garnet, when it is of a very strong but not deep red, and has a fairer cast of the blue: this is a very beautiful gem. 3. The forane or ferain garnet; that of a yet brighter red, approaching to the colour of native cinnabar, with a faint blue tinge. 4. The almandine, a garnet only a little paler than that called the