Francis, better known to the public by the title of Lord Gardenstone, was born at Edinburgh June 24th, in the year 1721. His father was Alexander Garden of Troup, an opulent landholder in Aberdeenshire; his mother was Jane, daughter of Sir Francis Grant of Cullen, S. C. I.
After passing through the usual course of liberal education at the school and the university, he betook himself to the study of law for his profession; and in the year 1744 he was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates, and called to the Scottish bar.
In his practice as an advocate he soon began to be distinguished, by a strong, native rectitude of understanding; by that vivacity of apprehension and imagination, which is commonly denominated genius; by manly candour in argument, often more persuasive than subtlety and sophistical artifice; by powers which, with diligence, might easily attain to the highest eminence of the profession. But the same strength, openness, and ardour of mind, which distinguished him so advantageously among the pleaders at the bar, tended to give him a fondness for the gay enjoyments of convivial intercourse, which was unfavourable to his progress in juridical erudition. Shining in the social and convivial circle, he became less solicitously ambitious than he might otherwise have been, of the character of an eloquent advocate, or of a profound and learned lawyer. The vivacity of his genius was adverse from austerity and plodding study, while it was captivated by the fascinations of polite learning, and of the fine arts. Nor did he always escape those excesses in the pursuit of pleasure into which the temptations of opening life are apt, occasionally, to seduce the most liberal and ingenious youth. But his cheerful conviviality, his wit, humour, taste, good-nature, and benevolence of heart, rendered him the delight of all his acquaintance. He became his majesty's solicitor July 3d, 1764.
At length the worth of his character, and his abilities as a lawyer, recommended him to the office of a judge in the courts of session and judiciary, the supreme judicatories, civil and criminal, for Scotland. His place in the court of session he continued to occupy till his death; but had, some years before, resigned the office of a commissioner of judiciary, and in recompense got a pension of £200. per annum.
Clear discernment, strong good sense, conscientious honesty, and amiable benevolence, remarkably distinguished all his opinions and conduct as a judge.
In the year 1762 he purchased the estate of Johnston, in the county of Kincardine. Within a few years after he began to attempt a plan of the most liberal improvement of the value of this estate, by an extension of the village of Laurencekirk, adjoining. He offered leases of small farms, and of ground for building upon, which were to last for the term of one hundred years; and of which the conditions were extremely inviting to the labourers and tradesmen of the surrounding country. These offers were eagerly listened to. More desirous to make the attempt beneficial to the country than to derive profit from it to himself, he was induced, within a few years, to reduce his groundrents to one-half of the original rate.—Weavers, joiners, shoemakers, and other artisans in a considerable number, resorted to settle in the rising village. His lordship's earnestness for the success of his project, and to promote the prosperity of the good people whom he had received under his protection, led him to engage in several undertakings; by the failure of which he incurred considerable losses. Projects of a print-field, and of manufactures of linen and of stockings, attempted with sanguine hopes in the new village, and chiefly at his lordship's risk and expense, misgave in such a manner as might well have finally disgusted a man of less steady and ardent philanthropy with every such engagement. But the village still continued to advance. It grew up under his lordship's eye, and was the favourite object of his care. In the year 1779, he procured it to be erected into a burgh of barony; having a magistracy, an annual fair, and a weekly market. He provided in it a good inn for the reception of travelers; and with an uncommon attention to the entertainment of the guests who might resort to it, furnished this inn with a library of books for their amusement. He invited an artist for drawing, from the continent, to settle at Laurencekirk. He had the pleasure of seeing a considerable linen-manufacture at length fixed in it. A bleachfield was also established as a natural counterpart to the linen-manufacture. Before his lordship's death, he saw his plan of improving the condition of the labourers, by the formation of a new village at Laurencekirk, crowned with success beyond his most sanguine hopes. He has acknowledged, with an amiable frankness, in a memoir concerning this village, "That he had tried, in some measure, a variety of the pleasures which mankind pursue; but never relished any so much as the pleasure arising from the progress of his village."
In the year 1785, upon the death of his elder brother, Alexander Garden of Troup, M. P. for Aberdeenshire, Lord Gardenstone succeeded to the possession of the family estates, which were very considerable. Until this time his lordship's income had never been more than adequate to the liberal expense into which his rank, and the generosity of his nature, unavoidably led him. But the addition of a fortune of about three thousand pounds a-year to his former revenue, gave him the power of performing many acts of beneficence with which he could not before gratify his good heart. It was happy, likewise, that his succession to this ample income, at a period when the vigour Garden of his constitution was rapidly yielding to the infirmities of old age, enabled him to seek relief, by a partial cessation from business, by travel, and by other means, which could not have been easily compatible with the previous state of his fortune.
In the month of Sept. 1786, he set out from London for Dover, and passed over into France. After visiting Paris, he proceeded to Provence, and spent the winter months in the genial climate of Hieres. In the spring of 1787 he returned northwards, visiting Geneva, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the Dutch provinces, and passing through Germany into Italy. With a fond curiosity, attentive alike to the wonders of nature, to the noble monuments of the arts, and to the awful remains of ancient grandeur, with which Italy abounds, he visited all its great cities, and surveyed almost every remarkable and famous scene that it exhibits.
His first object, in these travels, was to obtain the restoration of his declining health by the influence of a milder climate, by gentle, continued, and varied exercise; by that pleasing exhilaration of the temper and spirits, which is the best medicine to health, and is most successfully produced by frequent change of place, and of the objects of attention. But the curiosities of nature and art, in those countries through which he travelled, could not fail to attract, in a powerful manner, the curiosity of a mind cultivated and ingenious as his. He, whose breast glowed with the most ardent philanthropy, could not view the varied works and manners of a diversity of nations of his fellow men, without being deeply interested by all those circumstances which might appear to mark their fortunes as happy or wretched. He eagerly collected specimens of the spars, the shells, the strata, of rocks, and the veins of metals, in the several countries through which he passed. He amassed also cameos, medals, and paintings. He enquired into science, literature, and local institutions. He wrote down his observations, from time to time; not indeed with the minute care of a pedant, or the ostentatious labour of a man travelling with a design to publish an account of his travels; but simply to aid memory and imagination in the future remembrance of objects useful or agreeable.
After an absence of about three years, he returned to his native county. The last years were spent in the discharge of the duties of his office as a judge; in social intercourse with his friends, among whom was the venerable Lord Monboddo, and others of the most respectable characters that our country has to boast of; in the performance of a thousand generous offices of benevolence and humanity; in cherishing those fine arts, of which he was an eminent admirer and judge; and above all, in promoting the comfort, and encouraging the industry of his dependants, and in lending his aid to every rational attempt at the improvement of public economy and public virtue.
St Bernard's Well, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, had been, long since, distinguished for the medicinal virtues of its waters. But various circumstances had also concurred of late to throw it into neglect. Yet its waters being strongly mineralized by a fulminated hydrogenous gas, were, by this means, unquestionably qualified to operate, with highly beneficial effects, in the cure of various diseases. The qualities of this mineral water falling under Lord Gardenstone's notice, he was induced to purchase the property of the well, to direct it to be cleared from surrounding obstructions, which contaminated the virtues of the water, or made it inaccessible; to erect a beautiful and commodious edifice over it; and to appoint proper persons to distribute the water, for a very trivial compensation, to the public. The well lies at a distance from Edinburgh, which is very convenient for a summer morning's walk. Within the few years which have passed since Lord Gardenstone's benevolent care brought it into notice, it has attracted many of the inhabitants of that city to visit in the mornings of spring and summer. And, undoubtedly, the agreeable exercise to which they have thus been allured, and the salutary effects of the water, have contributed, in no mean degree, to dispel disease, and to confirm, or re-establish health. Such monuments are worthy to preserve the memory of a patriotic and a good man!
As an amuletment for the last two or three years of his life, when his increasing infirmities precluded him from more active exercise, and from mingling so frequently in the society of his friends as was agreeable to his social and convivial temper, he bequeathed himself of reviving some of the jeux d'esprit, and light fugitive pieces, in which he had indulged the gaiety of his fancy, in his earlier days; and a small volume of poems was published, in which the best pieces are, upon good authority, ascribed to Lord Gardenstone. He revised also the memorandums which he had made upon his travels, and permitted them to be sent to press. The two former volumes were published one after another while his lordship was yet alive; the third after his death. They met with a very favourable reception in the world, and were honoured with the high approbation of the most respectable writers of periodical criticism. They convey much agreeable information, and bespeak an elegant, enlightened, and amiable mind. The last volume is filled chiefly with memorandums of his lordship's travels in Italy; and contains many interesting criticisms upon some of the noblest productions of the fine arts of painting and sculpture.
His lordship's health had long been declining; and he died a bachelor on the 22d of July 1793, lamented by his relations and friends, by his tenants and humble dependants, and by all true patriots and good men to whom his merits and virtues were known.
a piece of ground properly laid out, cultivated, and ornamented with a variety of plants, flowers, fruits, &c. See GARDENING.
Gardens are usually distinguished into flower garden, fruit garden, and kitchen garden: the first of which, being designed for pleasure and ornament, is to be placed in the most conspicuous part, that is, next to the back front of the house; and the two latter, being designed for use, should be placed less in sight. But though the fruit and kitchen gardens are here mentioned as two distinct gardens, yet they are now usually in one; and that with good reason, since they both require a good soil and exposure, and equally require to be placed out of the view of the house.
In the choice of a place proper for a garden, the most essential points to be considered are, the situation, the soil, the exposure, water, and prospect.
As to the situation, it ought to be such a one Garden as is wholesome, and in a place neither too high nor too low; for if a garden be too high, it will be exposed to the winds, which are very prejudicial to trees; and if it be too low, the dampness, the vermine, and the venomous creatures that breed in ponds and marshy places, add much to their infallibility. The most happy situation is on the side of a hill, especially if the slope be easy, and in a manner imperceptible; if a good deal of level ground be near the house; and if it abounds with springs of water: for, being sheltered from the fury of the winds and the violent heat of the sun, a temperate air will be there enjoyed; and the water that descends from the top of the hill, either from springs or rain, will not only supply fountains, canals, and caledones for ornament, but, when it has performed its office, will water the adjacent valleys, and, if it be not suffered to stagnate, will render them fertile and wholesome.
2dly, A good earth or soil is next to be considered; for it is scarce possible to make a fine garden in a bad soil. There are indeed ways to meliorate ground, but they are very expensive; and sometimes, when the expense has been bestowed of laying good earth three feet deep over the whole surface, a whole garden has been ruined, when the roots of the trees have come to reach the natural bottom. To judge of the quality of the soil, observe whether there be any heath, thistles, or such like weeds, growing spontaneously in it; for they are certain signs that the ground is poor. Or if there be large trees growing thereabouts, observe whether they grow crooked, ill shaped, and grubby; and whether they are of a faded green, and full of moths, or infected with vermine: if this be the case, the place is to be rejected. But, on the contrary, if it be covered with good grass fit for pasture, you may then be encouraged to try the depth of the soil. To know this, dig holes in several places, six feet wide and four deep; and if you find three feet of good earth it will do very well, but less than two will not be sufficient. The quality of good ground, is neither to be stony nor too hard to work; neither too dry, too moist, nor too sandy and light; nor too strong and clayey, which is the worst of all for gardens.
3dly, The next requisite is water; the want of which is one of the greatest inconveniences that can attend a garden, and will bring a certain mortality upon whatever is planted in it, especially in the greater droughts that often happen in a hot and dry situation in summer; besides its usefulness in fine gardens for making fountains, canals, caledones, &c. which are the greatest ornaments of a garden.
4thly, The last thing to be considered is the prospect of a fine country; and though this is not so absolutely necessary as water, yet it is one of the most agreeable beauties of a fine garden: besides, if a garden be planted in a low place that has no kind of prospect, it will not only be disagreeable but unwholesome.
In the laying out and planting of gardens, the beauties of nature should always be studied; for the nearer a garden approaches to nature, the longer it will please. According to Mr Miller, the area of a handsome garden may take up 30 or 40 acres, but not more; and the following rules should be observed in the disposition of it. There ought always to be a descent of at least three steps from the house to the garden; this will render the house more dry and wholesome, and the prospect on entering the garden more extensive.—The first thing that ought to present itself to view should be an open lawn of grass, which ought to be considerably broader than the front of the building; and if the depth be one half more than the width, it will have a better effect: if on the sides of the lawn there are trees planted irregularly, by way of open groves, the regularity of the lawn will be broken, and the whole rendered more like nature. For the convenience of walking in damp weather, this lawn should be surrounded with a gravel walk, on the outside of which should be borders three or four feet wide for flowers: and from the back of these the prospect will be agreeably terminated by a slope of evergreen shrubs; which, however, should never be suffered to exclude agreeable prospects, or the view of handsome buildings. These walks may lead through the different plantations, gently winding about in an easy natural manner; which will be more agreeable than either those long straight walks, too frequently seen in gardens, or those serpentine windings that are twisted about into so many short turns as to render it difficult to walk in them; and as no garden can be pleasing where there is a want of shade and shelter, these walks should lead as soon as possible into plantations, where persons may walk in private, and be sheltered from the wind.
Narrow rivulets, if they have a constant stream, and are judiciously led about a garden, have a better effect than many of the large stagnating ponds or canals so frequently made in large gardens. When wildernesses are intended, they should not be cut into stars and other ridiculous figures, nor formed into mazes of labyrinths, which in a great degree appear trifling.
In short, the several parts of a garden should be diversified; but in places where the eye takes in the whole at once, the two sides should be always the same. In the business of designs, the aim should be always at what is natural, great, and noble. The general disposition of a garden and of its parts ought to be accommodated to the different situations of the ground, to humour its inequalities, to proportion the number and sorts of trees and shrubs to each part, and to shut out from the view of the garden no objects that may become ornamental. But for a more extended view of this subject, see the article Gardening.
A practical attention to a garden, is by some esteemed a degrading employment. It is true, indeed, that pastoral and agricultural manners, if we may form a judgment from the dignified descriptions of Virgil, are greatly degenerated. The employments of shepherds and husbandmen are now become mean and frivolous. The work of the garden is usually left to a peasant. Nor is it unreasonable to assign the labour, which wearies without amusement, to those who are sufficiently amused by the prospect of their wages. But the operations of grafting, of inoculating, of pruning, of transplanting, are curious experiments in natural philosophy; and that they are pleasing as well as curious, those can testify who remember what they felt on seeing their attempts in the amusements of practical gardening attended with success. Among the employments suitable to old age, Cicero has enumerated the superintendence of a garden. Garden. It requires no great exertion of mind or body; and its satisfactions are of that kind which please without violent agitation. Its beneficial influence on health is an additional reason for an attention to it at an age when infirmities abound.
In almost every description of the seats of the blest, ideas of a garden seem to have predominated. The word Paradise itself is synonymous with garden. The fields of Elysium, that sweet region of poetry, are adorned with all that imagination can conceive to be delightful. Some of the most pleasing passages of Milton, are those in which he represents the happy pair engaged in cultivating their blissful abode. Poets have always been delighted with the beauties of a garden. Lucan is represented by Juvenal as reposeful in his garden. Virgil's Georgics prove him to have been captivated with rural scenes; though, to the surprise of his readers, he has not assigned a book to the subject of a garden. Our Sherritone made it his study; but, with all his taste and fondness for it, he was not happy in it. The captivating scenes which he created at the Leasowes, afforded him, it is said, little pleasure in the absence of spectators. The truth is, he made the embellishment of his grounds, which should have been the amusement of his life, the business of it; and involved himself in such troubles, by the expenses it occasioned, as necessarily excluded tranquil enjoyment.
It is the lot of few, in comparison, to possess territories like his, extensive, and sufficiently well adapted to constitute an ornamented farm. Still fewer are capable of supporting the expense of preserving it in good condition. But let not the rich suppose they have appropriated the pleasures of a garden. The possessor of an acre, or a smaller portion, may receive a real pleasure, from observing the progress of vegetation, even in a plantation of culinary plants. A very limited tract, properly attended to, will furnish ample employment for an individual. Nor let it be thought a mean care; for the same hand that raised the cedar, formed the hyloph on the wall. Even the orchard, cultivated solely for advantage, exhibits beauties unequalled in the shrubbery; nor can the greenhouse produce an appearance to exceed the blossom of the apple and the almond.
Hanging Gardens, in antiquity, gardens raised on arches by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, in order to gratify his wife Amytis, daughter of Astyages king of Media. Quintus Curtius makes them equal in height to the walls of the city, viz. 50 feet. They contained a square of 400 feet on every side, and were carried up into the air in several terraces laid above one another, and the ascent from terrace to terrace was by stairs 10 feet wide. The arches sustaining the whole pile were raised above one another, and it was strengthened by a wall, surrounding it on every side, of 22 feet in thickness. The floors of each of the terraces were laid in the following manner; on the top of the arches were first laid large flat stones 16 feet long and 4 broad, and over them was a layer of reeds mixed with a great quantity of bitumen, over which were two rows of bricks closely cemented together by plaster, and over all were laid thick sheets of lead; and lastly, upon the lead was laid the mould of the garden. The mould or earth was of such a depth as to admit the largest trees to take root and grow; and it was covered with various kinds of trees, plants, and flowers. In the upper terrace there was an aqueduct or engine, whereby water was drawn up out of the river for watering the whole garden.
Floating Gardens. We are informed by the abbe Clavigero in his History of Mexico, that when the Mexicans were brought under subjection to the Colhuacan and Tepanecan nations, and confined to the miserable little islands in the lake of Mexico, they ceased for some years to cultivate the land, because they had none, until necessity and industry together taught them to form moveable fields and gardens, which floated on the waters of the lake. The method which they pursued to make these, and which they still practice, is extremely simple. They plait and twist willows and roots of marsh plants or other materials together, which are light, but capable of supporting the earth of the garden firmly united. Upon this foundation they lay the light bushes which float on the lake; and over all, the mud and dirt which they draw up from the bottom of the same lake. Their regular figure is quadrangular; their length and breadth various; but generally they are about eight perches long, and not more than three in breadth, and have less than a foot of elevation above the surface of the water. These were the first fields which the Mexicans owned after the foundation of Mexico; there they first cultivated the maize, great pepper, and other plants necessary for their support. In progress of time, as these fields grew numerous from the industry of the people, there were among them gardens of flowers and odoriferous plants, which were employed in the worship of their gods, and served for the recreation of the nobles. At present they cultivate flowers and every sort of garden herbs upon them. Every day of the year, at sunrise, innumerable vessels loaded with various kinds of flowers and herbs, which are cultivated in these gardens, are seen arriving by the canals, at the great market place of that capital. All plants thrive there surprisingly; the mud of the lake is an extremely fertile soil, and requires no water from the clouds. In the largest gardens there is commonly a little tree, and even a little hut to shelter the cultivator and defend him from rain or the sun. When the owner of a garden, or the Chinampas, as he is usually called, wishes to change his situation, to remove from a disagreeable neighbour, or to come nearer to his own family, he gets into his little vessel, and by his own strength alone, if the garden is small, or with the assistance of others if it is large, he tows it after him, and conducts it wherever he pleases with the little tree and hut upon it. That part of the lake where these floating gardens are, is a place of infinite recreation, where the senses receive the highest possible gratification.
GARDENING GARDENING;
The art of planning and cultivating gardens. In its utmost extent, whatever contributes to render the scenes of nature delightful, is among the subjects of gardening; and animate as well as inanimate objects are circumstances of beauty or character. The whole range of nature is open to the gardener, 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 through different species of country.
History of Gardening.
Gardening, Mr Walpole observes, was probably one of the first arts that succeeded to that of building houses, and naturally attended property and individual possession. Culinary, and afterwards medicinal herbs, were the objects of every head of a family: it became convenient to have them within reach, without seeking them at random in woods, in meadows, and on mountains, as often as they were wanted. When the earth ceased to furnish spontaneously all those primitive luxuries, and culture became requisite, separate enclosures for rearing herbs grew expedient. Fruits were in the same predicament; and those most in use or that demand attention must have entered into and extended the domestic enclosure. The good man Noah, we are told, planted a vineyard, drank of the wine, and was drunken; and everybody knows the consequences. Thus we acquired kitchen gardens, orchards, and vineyards. No doubt the prototype of all these sorts was the garden of Eden; but as that Paradise was a good deal larger than any we read of afterwards, being enclosed by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates; as every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for food grew in it; and as two other trees were likewise found there, of which not a slip or sucker remains; it does not belong to the present discussion. After the fall, no man living was suffered to enter into the garden; and the poverty and necessities of our first ancestors hardly allowed them time to make improvements in their estates in imitation of it, supposing any plan had been preserved. A cottage and a slip of ground for a cabbage and a gooseberry bush, such as we see by the side of a common, were in all probability the earliest seats and gardens: a well and bucket succeeded to the Pison and Euphrates. As settlements increased, the orchard and the vineyard followed; and the earliest princes of tribes possessed just the necessaries of a modern farmer.
Matters, we may well believe, remained long in this situation; and we have reason to think that for many centuries the term garden implied no more than a kitchen garden or orchard.
The garden of Alcinous, in the Odyssey, is the most renowned in the heroic times. Is there an admirer of Homer who can read his description without rapture? or who does not form to his imagination a scene of delights more picturesque than the landscapes of Tinian or Juan Fernandez? "Yet (continues our author) what was that boasted Paradise with which
the gods ordain'd
To grace Alcinous and his happy land?
Why, divested of harmonious Greek and bewitching poetry, it was a small orchard and vineyard, with some beds of herbs and two fountains that watered them, enclosed within a quickset hedge. The whole compass of this pompous garden enclosed—four acres:
Four acres was th' allotted space of ground, Fenc'd with a green enclosure all around.
The trees were apples, figs, pomegranates, pears, olives, and vines.
Tall thriving trees confess'd the fruitful mold; The red'ning apple ripens into gold. Here the blue fig with lucious juice o'erflows, With deeper red the full pomegranate glows; The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear, And verdant olives flourish round the year.
* * * * *
Beds of all various herbs, for ever green, In beauteous order terminate the scene.
Alcinous's garden was planted by the poet, enriched by him with the fairy gift of eternal summer, and no doubt an effort of imagination surpassing anything he had ever seen. As he has bestowed on the same happy prince a palace with brazen walls and columns of silver, he certainly intended that the gardens should be proportionally magnificent. We are sure, therefore, that, as late as Homer's age, an enclosure of four acres, comprehending orchard, vineyard, and kitchen garden, was a stretch of luxury the world at that time had never beheld."
Previous to this, however, we have in the sacred writings hints of a garden still more luxuriously furnished. We allude to the Song of Solomon, part of the scene of which is undoubtedly laid in a garden f. Chap. ii. Flowers and fruits are particularly spoken of as the ornaments and the produce of it; and besides these, aromatic vegetables formed a considerable part of the gratifications it afforded. The camphor and the cinnamon tree, with all trees of frankincense, and all the chief spices, flourished there f. Solomon tells us in another place ||, That he made him great works;—gar-† Cant. iv. dens and orchards, and planted in them trees of every kind. Indeed we must suppose his gardens to have been both amply and curiously furnished, seeing the kinds, nature, and properties of the vegetable tribes, seem to have been a favourite study with the royal philosopher, and to have been deemed a subject worthy of his pen: for we are told, that he wrote of plants, from the great cedar of Lebanon down to the hyssop of the wall §. § Kings iv. Fountains and streams of water appear also to have had a share in the composition, and probably for ornament as well as use.
The hanging gardens of Babylon, mentioned in a preceding preceding article, were a still greater prodigy. But as they are supposed to have been formed on terraces and the walls of the palace, whither foil was conveyed on purpose, Mr Walpole concludes, 'they were what sumptuous gardens have been in all ages till the present, unnatural, enriched by art, possibly with fountains, statues, balustrades, and summer houses, and were any thing but verdant and rural.'
Others, however, have allowed them greater praise. They seem in many respects, to have been laid out with good taste. Their elevation not only produced a variety and extent of view, but was also useful in moderating the heat. Such a situation would likewise suit a greater variety of trees and plants than a plain surface, and would contain a larger as well as a more diversified extent.
The suiting of the situation to the nature of the trees seems, from the account given by Josephus, to have been one view in the erecting the building in such a manner. And the success seems to have been answerable, as the trees are said to have flourished extremely well, and to have grown as tall as in their native situations. On the whole, then, however different these may appear from modern gardens, they seem to have been formed with judgment and taste, and well adapted to the situation and circumstances.
It seems probable, from several circumstances, that the eastern gardens were adjoining to the house or palace to which they belonged. Thus, King Ahasuerus goes immediately from the banquet of wine to walk in the garden of the palace. The garden of Cyrus, at Sardis, mentioned by Xenophon, was probably contiguous to the palace; as was that of Attalus, mentioned by Justin. The hanging gardens at Babylon, were not so much adjacent to the palace, as a part of the palace itself, since several of the royal apartments were beneath them.
It is not clear what the taste for gardening was among the Greeks. The Academus, we know, was a wooded shady place; and the trees appear to have been of the olive species. It was situated beyond the limits of the walls, and adjacent to the tombs of the heroes; and though we are nowhere informed of the particular manner in which this grove was disposed or laid out, it may be gathered from Pausanias, in his Attica, that it was an elegant ornamented place. At the entrance was an altar dedicated to Love, which was said to be the first erected to that deity. Within the Academus, were the altars of Prometheus, of the Muses, of Mercury, of Minerva, and Hercules; and at a small distance was the tomb of Plato. So that in all probability, it was highly adapted by art, as well as nature, to philosophic reflection and contemplation.
We are told by Plutarch, that before the time of Cimon, the Academus was a rude and uncultivated spot: but that it was planted by that general, and had water conveyed to it; whether this water was brought merely for use to refresh the trees, or for ornament, does not appear. It was divided into gymnasia, or places of exercise, and philosophic walks, shaded with trees. These are said to have flourished very well, until destroyed by Sylla (when he besieged Athens), as well as those in the Lyceum.
Near the academy were the gardens of the philosophers, of Plato and of the Epicurus; which, however, were probably but small. The scene of Plato's Dialogue concerning Beauty is elegantly described as being on the banks of the river Ilissus, and under the shade of the plantain; but no artificial arrangement of objects is mentioned, nor anything which will lead us to imagine the prospect to be any other than merely natural.
Among the Romans, a taste of gardening, any otherwise than as a matter of utility, seems not to have prevailed till a very late period; at least the writers on horticulture, Cato, Varro, Columella, and Palladius, make not the least mention of a garden as an object of pleasure, but solely with respect to its productions of herbs and fruits. The Lucullan gardens are the first we find mentioned of remarkable magnificence; though probably from the extravagance to which these were arrived, they were not the first. Plutarch speaks of them as incredibly expensive, and equal, to the magnificence of kings. They contained artificial elevations of ground to a surprising height, of buildings projected into the sea, and vast pieces of water made upon land. In short, his extravagance and expense were so great, that he acquired thence the appellation of the Roman Xerxes. It is not improbable, from the above account, and from the consideration of Lucullus having spent much time in Asia, in a situation wherein he had an opportunity of observing the most splendid constructions of this kind, that these gardens might be laid out in the Asiatic style. The vast masses of building said to have been erected, might have borne some resemblance, in the arrangement and style, to the Babylonian gardens; and the epithet of the Roman Xerxes might be applicable to the taste, as well as to the size and expense of his works.
The Tusculan villa of Cicero, though often mentioned, is not anywhere described in his works, so as to give an adequate idea of the style in which his gardens or grounds were disposed.
There is but little to be traced in Virgil relative to this subject. Pines, it seems probable, were a favourite ornament in gardens; and flowers, roses, &c., especially, were much esteemed, perfumes indeed having been always highly valued in warm climates. Virgil places Anchises in Elysium, in a grove of bays; and is careful to remark, that they were of the sweet scented kind. The Persian roses were chiefly valued for their excellent odour; and the same quality appears to be the cause why they were placed by Tibullus as ornaments to the Elysian fields. There appears also to have prevailed among the Romans a piece of luxury relative to gardens, which is equally prevalent at present among us, namely the forcing of flowers at seasons of the year not suited to their natural blowing; and roses were then, as at present, the principal flowers upon which these experiments were tried, as appears from Martial and others.
When Roman authors (Mr Walpole remarks), whose climate intimated a wish for cool retreats, speak of their enjoyments in that kind, they fig for grottoes, caves, and the refreshing hollows of mountains, near Lampridius rigorous and shady founts; or boast of their porticoes, walks of planes, canals, baths, and breezes from the sea. Their gardens are never mentioned as affording shade and shelter from the rage of the dog star. Pliny has left us descriptions of two of his villas. As he used his Laurentine villa for his winter retreat, it is not surprising surprising that the garden makes no considerable part of the account. All he says of it is, that the grotto or place of exercise, which surrounded the garden (the latter consequently not being very large), was bounded by a hedge of box, and, where that was perilous, with rosemary; that there was a walk of vines; and that most of the trees were fig and mulberry, the soil not being proper for any other sorts. On his Tuscan villa he is more diffuse; the garden makes a considerable part of the description:—and what was the principal beauty of that pleasure ground? Exactly what was the admiration of this country about three score years ago; box trees cut into monsters, animals, letters, and the names of the master and the artificer. In an age when architecture displayed all its grandeur, all its purity, and all its taste; when arose Vespasian's amphitheatre, the temple of Peace, Trajan's forum, Domitian's baths, and Adrian's villa, the ruins and vestiges of which still excite our astonishment and curiosity; a Roman consul, a polished emperor's friend, and a man of elegant literature and taste, delighted in what the mob now scarce admire in a college garden. All the ingredients of Pliny's corresponded exactly with those laid out by London and Wiltshire Dutch principles. He talks of slopes, terraces, a wilderness, shrubs methodically trimmed, a marble basin, pipes spouting water, a cascade falling into the basin, bay trees alternately planted with planes, and a straight walk from whence illus others parted off by hedges of box and apple trees, with obelisks placed between every two. There wants nothing but the embroidery of a parterre, to make a garden in the reign of Trajan serve for a description of one in that of King William. In one passage above, Pliny seems to have conceived that natural irregularity might be a beauty; in operae urbanissima, says he, fuita velut illati ruris initia. Something like a rural view was contrived amidst so much polished composition. But the idea soon vanished, lineal walks immediately enveloped the flight scene, and names and inscriptions in box again succeeded to compensate for the daring introduction of nature.
In the paintings found at Herculaneum are a few traces of gardens, as may be seen in the second volume of the prints. They are small square enclosures, formed by trellis-work and palisades, and regularly ornamented with vases, fountains, and caretides, elegantly symmetrical, and proper for the narrow spaces allotted to the garden of a house in a capital city.
From what has been said, it appears how naturally and intensively the idea of a kitchen garden slid into that which has for so many ages been peculiarly termed a garden, and by our ancestors in this country distinguished by the name of a pleasure garden. A square piece of ground was originally parted off in early ages for the use of the family:—to exclude cattle, and ascertain the property, it was separated from the fields by a hedge. As pride and desire of privacy increased, the enclosure was dignified by walls; and in climes where fruits were not lavished by the ripening glow of nature and soil, fruit trees were affixed and sheltered from surrounding winds by the like expedient: for the inundation of luxuries, which have swelled into general necessities, have almost all taken their source from the simple fountain of reason.
When the custom of making square gardens enclosed with walls was thus established to the exclusion of nature and prospect, pomp and solitude combined to call for something that might enrich and enliven the insipid and unanimated partition. Fountains, first invented for use, which grandeur loves to disguise and throw out of the question, received embellishments from costly marbles, and at last, to contradict utility, tossed their waste of waters into the air in spouting columns. Art, in the hands of rude man, had at first been made a succedaneum to nature; in the hands of ostentatious wealth, it became the means of oppressing nature; and the more it traversed the march of the latter, the more nobility thought its power was demonstrated. Canals measured by the line were introduced in lieu of meandering streams, and terraces were hoisted aloft in opposition to the facile slopes that imperceptibly unite the valley to the hill. Balustrades defended these precipitate and dangerous elevations, and flights of steps rejoined them to the subjacent flat from which the terrace had been dug. Vases and sculpture were added to these unnecessary balconies, and statues furnished the lifeless spot with mimic representations of the excluded sons of men. Thus difficulty and expense were the constituent parts of those sumptuous and selfish luxuries; and every improvement that was made, was but a step farther from nature. The tricks of waterworks to wet the unwary, not to refresh the panting spectator; and parterres embroidered in patterns like a petticoat, were but the childish endeavours of fashion and novelty to reconcile greatness to what it had forfeited on. To crown these impotent displays of false taste, the sheers were applied to the lovely wildness of form with which nature has distinguished each various species of tree and shrub. The venerable oak, the romantic beech, the useful elm, even the aspiring circuit of the lime, the regular round of the chestnut, and the almost moulded orange tree, were corrected by such fantastic admirers of symmetry. The copses and squares were of more use in plantations than the nurseryman. The measured walk, the quincunx, and the stoa, imposed their unsatisfying schemes on every royal and noble garden. Trees were headed, and their sides pared away; many French groves seem green cliffs set upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours, and summer houses, terminated every vista; and symmetry, even where the space was too large to permit its being remarked at one view, was so essential, that, as Pope observed,
each alley has a brother, And half the garden just reflects the other.
Knots of flowers were more decently subjected to the same regularity. Leisure, as Milton expressed it,
—in trim gardens took his pleasure.
In the garden of Marshal de Biron at Paris, consisting of 14 acres, every walk is buttoned on each side by lines of flower pots, which succeed in their seasons.
It does not precisely appear what our ancestors meant by a bower: it was probably an arbour; sometimes it meant the whole frittered enclosure, and in one instance it certainly included a labyrinth. Rosamond's bower was indubitably of that kind; though whether composed of walls or hedges, we cannot determine. A square and a round labyrinth were so capital ingredients of of a garden formerly, that in Du Cerceau's architecture, who lived in the time of Charles IX. and Henry III., there is scarce a ground plot without one of each.
In Kip's Views of the Seats of our Nobility and Gentry, we see the same tiresome and returning uniformity. Every house is approached by two or three gardens, consisting perhaps of a gravel walk and two grass plots or borders of flowers. Each rises above the other by two or three steps, and as many walls and terraces, and so many iron gates, that we recollect those ancient romances in which every entrance was guarded by nymphs or dragons. Yet though these and such preposterous inconveniences prevailed from age to age, good sense in this country had perceived the want of something at once more grand and more natural. These reflections, and the bounds set to the waste made by royal spoilers, gave origin to Parks. They were contracted forests, and extended gardens. Hentzner says, that according to Rous of Warwick, the first park was that at Woodstock. If so, it might be the foundation of a legend that Henry II. secured his mistress in a labyrinth; it was no doubt more difficult to find her in a park than in a palace, where the intricacy of the woods and various lodges buried in covert might conceal her actual habitation.
It is more extraordinary that, having so long ago stumbled on the principle of modern gardening, we should have persisted in retaining its reverse, symmetrical and unnatural gardens. That parks were rare in other countries, Hentzner, who travelled over great part of Europe, leads us to suppose, by observing that they were common in England. In France they retain the name, but nothing is more different both in compass and disposition. Their parks are usually square or oblong enclosures, regularly planted with walks of chestnuts or limes, and generally every large town has one for its public recreation.
"One man, one great man we had (continues Mr Walpole), on whom nor education nor custom could impose their prejudices; who, 'on evil days though fallen, and with darknels and solitude compassed round,' judged that the mistaken and fantastic ornaments he had seen in gardens, were unworthy of the Almighty hand that planted the delights of Paradise. He seems with the prophetic eye of taste to have conceived, to have foreseen modern gardening; as Lord Bacon announced the discoveries since made by experimental philosophy. The description of Eden is a warmer and more just picture of the present style than Claud Lorraine could have painted from Hagley or Stourhead. The first lines we shall quote exhibit Stourhead on a more magnificent scale:
Thro' Eden went a river large, Nor chang'd his course, but thro' the shaggy hill, Pals'd underneath ingulph'd: for God had thrown That mountain as his garden mound, high rais'd Upon the rapid current—
Hagley seems pictured in what follows:
Which thro' veins Of porous earth with kindly thirst updrawn, Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill Water'd the garden—
What colouring, what freedom of pencil, what landscape in these lines!
—from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, With mazy error under pendant shades, Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed Flow'r's worthy of Paradise, which not nice art In beds and curious knots, but nature boon, Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, Both where the morning sun first warmly finote The open field, and where the unspied shade Imbrown'd the noontide bow'r—Thus was this place A happy rural seat of various view.
Read this transporting description, paint to your mind the scenes that follow, contrast them with the savage but respectable terror with which the poet guards the bounds of his paradise, fenced
—with the champaign head Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy fides With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, Access denied; and over head up grew Insuperable height of loftiest shade, Cedar and pine, and fir, and branching palm, A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend, Shade above shade, a woody theatre, Of statelier view—
and then recollect, that the author of this sublime vision had never seen a glimpse of any thing like what he has imagined; that his favourite ancients had dropped not a hint of such divine scenery; and that the conceits in Italian gardens, and Theobalds and Nonnuch, were the brightest originals that his memory could furnish. His intellectual eye saw a nobler plan, so little did he suffer by the loss of sight. It sufficed him to have seen the materials with which he could work. The vigour of a boundless imagination told him how a plan might be disposed, that would embellish nature, and restore art to its proper office, the just improvement or imitation of it.
"Now let us return to an admired writer, posterior to Milton, and see how cold, how infipid, how tasteless, is his account of what he pronounced a perfect garden. We speak not of his style, which it was not necessary for him to animate with the colouring and glow of poetry. It is his want of ideas, of imagination, of taste, that deserve censure, when he dictated on a subject which is capable of all the graces that a knowledge of beautiful nature can bestow. Sir William Temple was an excellent man; Milton, a genius of the first order.
"We cannot wonder that Sir William declares in favour of parterres, fountains, and statues, as necessary to break the sameness of large grass plots, which he thinks have an ill effect upon the eye, when he acknowledges that he discovers fancy in the gardens of Alcinous. Milton studied the ancients with equal enthusiasm, but no bigotry; and had judgment to distinguish between the want of invention and the beauties of poetry. Compare his paradise with Homer's garden, both ascribed to a celestial design. For Sir William, it is just to observe, that his ideas centered in a fruit garden. He had the honour of giving to his country many delicate fruits, fruits, and he thought of little else than disposing them to the best advantage.
"The best figure of a garden (says he) is either a square or an oblong, and either upon a flat or a declivity; they have all their beauties, but the best I esteem an oblong upon a declivity. The beauty, the air, the view make amends for the expense, which is very great in finishing and supporting the terrace walks, in levelling the parterres, and in the stone stairs that are necessary from one to the other. The perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw, either at home or abroad, was that of Moor Park in Hertfordshire, when I knew it about 30 years ago. It was made by the Countess of Bedford, esteemed among the greatest wits of her time, and celebrated by Dr Donne; and with very great care, excellent contrivance, and much cost; but greater sums may be thrown away without effect or honour, if there want fence in proportion to money, or 'if nature be not followed,' which I take to be the great rule in this, and perhaps in every thing else, as far as the conduct not only of our lives but our governments." [We shall see how natural that admired garden was.] "Because I take the garden I have named to have been in all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the figure and disposition, that I ever have seen, I will describe it for a model to those that meet with such a situation, and are above the regards of common expense. It lies on the side of a hill, upon which the house stands, but not very steep. The length of the house, where the best rooms and of most use or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden; the great parlour opens into the middle of a terrace gravel walk that lies even with it, and which may be, as I remember, about 300 paces long, and broad in proportion; the border set with standard laurels and at large distances, which have the beauty of orange trees out of flower and fruit. From this walk are three declivities by many stone steps, in the middle and at each end, into a very large parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravel walks, and adorned with two fountains and eight statues in the several quarters. At the end of the terrace walk are two summer houses, and the sides of the parterre are ranged with two large cloisters open to the garden, upon arches of stone, and ending with two other summer houses even with the cloisters, which are paved with stone, and designed for walks of shade, there being none other in the whole parterre. Over these two cloisters are two terraces covered with lead and fenced with balusters; and the passage into these airy walks is out of the two summer houses at the end of the first terrace walk. The cloister facing the south is covered with vines, and would have been proper for an orange house, and the other for myrtles or other more common greens, and had, I doubt not, been set for that purpose, if this piece of gardening had been then in as much vogue as it is now. From the middle of this parterre is a declivity by many steps flying on each side of a grotto, that lies between them, covered with lead and flat, into the lower garden, which is all fruit trees ranged about the several quarters of a wilderness, which is very shady; the walks here are all green, the grotto embellished with figures of shell rockwork, fountains, and water works. If the hill had not ended with the lower garden, and the wall were not bounded by a common way that goes through the park, they might have added a third quarter of all greens; but this want is supplied by a garden on the other side the house, which is all of that sort, very wild, shady, and adorned with rough rock work and fountains. This was Moor Park when I was acquainted with it, and the sweetest place, I think, that I have been in my life, either before or since, at home or abroad."
"It is unnecessary to add any remarks on this description. Any man might design and build as sweet a garden, who had been born in and never tilled out of Holborn. It was not, however, peculiar to Sir William Temple to think in that manner. How many Frenchmen are there who have seen our gardens, and still prefer natural flights of steps and shady cloisters covered with lead! Le Nautre, the architect of the groves and grottoes at Versailles, came hither on a mission to improve our taste. He planted St James's and Greenwich Parks—no great monuments of his invention.
"To do farther justice to Sir William Temple, we must not omit what he adds. 'What I have said of the best forms of gardens is meant only of such as are in some fort regular; for there may be other forms wholly irregular, that may, for ought I know, have more beauty than any of the others: but they must owe it to some extraordinary dispositions of nature in the seat, or some great race of fancy or judgment in the contrivance, which may reduce many disagreeing parts into some figure, which shall yet, upon the whole, be very agreeable. Something of this I have seen in some places, but heard more of it from others who have lived much among the Chinese, a people whose way of thinking seems to lie as wide of ours in Europe as their country does. Their greatest reach of imagination is employed in contriving figures, where the beauty shall be great and strike the eye, but without any order or disposition of parts, that shall be commonly or easily observed. And though we have hardly any notion of this fort of beauty, yet they have a particular word to express it; and when they find it hit their eye at first sight, they say the Sharawadgi is fine or is admirable, or any such expression of esteem: but I should hardly advise any of these attempts in the figure of gardens among us; they are adventures of too hard achievement for any common hands; and though there may be more honour if they succeed well, yet there is more dishonour if they fail, and it is twenty to one they will; whereas in regular figures it is hard to make any great and remarkable faults.'
"Fortunately Kent and a few others were not quite so timid, or we might still be going up and down stairs in the open air. It is true, we have heard much lately, as Sir William Temple did, of irregularity and imitations of nature in the gardens or grounds of the Chinese. The former is certainly true: they are as whimsically irregular, as European gardens are formally uniform and unvaried—but with regard to nature, it seems as much avoided, as in the squares and oblongs and straight lines of our ancestors. An artificial perpendicular rock starting out of a flat plain, and connected with nothing, often pierced through in various places with oval hollows, has no more pretension to be deemed natural than a linear terrace or a parterre. The late Mr Joseph Spence, who had both taste and zeal..." for the present style, was so persuaded of the Chinese emperor's pleasure ground being laid out on principles resembling ours, that he translated and published, under the name of Sir Harry Beaumont, a particular account of that enclosure from the collection of the letters of the Jesuits. But except a determined irregularity, one can find nothing in it that gives any idea of attention being paid to nature. It is of vast circumference, and contains 200 palaces, besides as many contiguous for the eunuchs, all gilt, painted, and varnished. There are raised hills from 20 to 60 feet high, streams and lakes, and one of the latter five miles round. These waters are passed by bridges—but even their bridges must not be straight—they serpentine as much as the rivulets, and are sometimes so long as to be furnished with resting places, and begin and end with triumphal arches. The colonnades undulate in the same manner. In short, this pretty gaudy scene is the work of caprice and whim, and, when we reflect on their buildings, prefers no image but that of unsubstantial tawdriness. Nor is this all. Within this fantastic paradise is a square town, each side a mile long. Here the eunuchs of the court, to entertain his imperial majesty with the bustle and bustle of the capital in which he resides, but which it is not of his dignity ever to see, act merchants and all sorts of trades, and even designedly exercise for his royal amusement every art of knavery that is practised under his auspicious government. Methinks this is the childish folace and repose of grandeur, not a retirement from affairs to the delights of rural life. Here too his majesty plays at agriculture: there is a quarter set a part for that purpose; the eunuchs sow, reap, and carry in their harvest, in the imperial presence; and his majesty returns to Pekin, persuaded that he has been in the country.
Having thus cleared our way by ascertaining what have been the ideas on gardening in all ages as far as we have materials to judge by, it remains to show to what degree Mr Kent invented the new style, and what hints he had received to suggest and conduct his undertaking.
We have seen what Moor Park was, when pronounced a standard. But as no succeeding generation in an opulent and luxurious country contents itself with the perfection established by its ancestors, more perfect perfection was still sought; and improvements had gone on, till London and Wife had stocked all our gardens with giants, animals, monsters, coats of arms, and mottoes, in yew, box, and holly. Ablurdity could go no farther, and the tide turned. Bridgman, the next fashionable designer of gardens, was far more chaste; and whether from good sense, or that the nation had been struck and reformed by the admirable paper in the Guardian, No 173, he banished verdant sculpture, and did not even revert to the square precision of the foregoing age. He enlarged his plans, disdained to make every division tally to its opposite; and though he still adhered much to straight walks with high clipped hedges, they were only his great lines; the rest he diversified by wilderness, and with loose groves of oak, though still within surrounding hedges. As his reformation gained footing, he ventured, in the royal garden at Richmond, to introduce cultivated fields, and even morsels of a forest appearance, by the sides of those endless and tiresome walks that stretched out of one into another without intermission. But this was not till other innovators had broke loose too from rigid symmetry.
But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed, was the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses—an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha! Ha's! to express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk.
A sunk fence may be called the leading step, for these reasons. No sooner was this simple enchantment made, than levelling, mowing, and rolling, followed. The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prime regularity, that it might afford with the wilder country without. The sunk fence ascertained the specific garden; but that it might not draw too obvious a line of distinction between the neat and the rude, the contiguous out-lying parts came to be included in a kind of general design; and when nature was taken into the plan, under improvements, every step that was made pointed out new beauties, and inspired new ideas. At that moment appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold, and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays. He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden. He felt the delicious contrast of hill and valley changing imperceptibly into each other, tasted the beauty of the gentle swell or concave scoop, and remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament; and while, they called in the distant view between their graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by delusive comparison.
Thus the pencil of his imagination bestowed all the arts of landscape on the scenes he handled. The great principles on which he worked were perspective, and light and shade. Groupes of trees broke too uniform or too extensive a lawn; evergreens and woods were opposed to the glare of the champaign; and where the view was less fortunate, or so much exposed as to be beheld at once, he blotted out some parts by thick shades, to divide it into variety, or to make the richest scene more enchanting by referring it to a farther advance of the spectator's step. Thus, selecting favourite objects, and veiling deformities by screens of plantation; sometimes allowing the rudest waste to add its foil to the richest theatre; he realized the compositions of the greatest masters in painting. Where objects were wanting to animate his horizon, his taste as an architect could befall immediate termination. His buildings, his seats, his temples, were more the works of his pencil than of his compasses. We owe the restoration of Greece and the diffusion of architecture to his skill in landscape.
But of all the beauties he added to the face of this beautiful country, none surpassed his management of water. Adieu to canals, circular basins, and cascades tumbling down marble steps, that last abridged magnificence of Italian and French villas. The forced elevation of cataracts was no more. The gentle stream was taught to serpentine seemingly at its pleasure; and where where discontinued by different levels, its course appeared to be concealed by thickets properly interposed, and glittered again at a distance, where it might be supposed naturally to arrive. Its borders were smoothed, but preserved their waving irregularity. A few trees scattered here and there on its edges sprinkled the tame bank that accompanied its meanders; and when it disappeared among the hills, shades descending from the heights leaned towards its progress, and framed the distant point of light under which it was lost, as it turned aside to either hand of the blue horizon.
"Thus, dealing in none but the colours of nature, and catching its most favourable features, men saw a new creation opening before their eyes. The living landscape was chastened or polished, not transformed. Freedom was given to the forms of trees: they extended their branches unrestricted; and where any eminent oak, or master beech, had escaped maiming and survived the forest, bush and bramble was removed, and all its honours were restored to distinguish and shade the plain. Where the united plumage of an ancient wood extended wide its undulating canopy, and stood venerable in its darkness, Kent thinned the forest ranks, and left but so many detached and scattered trees, as softened the approach of gloom, and blended a chequered light with the thus lengthened shadows of the remaining columns.
"Succeeding artists have added new matter strokes to these touches; perhaps improved or brought to perfection some that have been named. The introduction of foreign trees and plants, which we owe principally to Archibald duke of Argyle, contributed essentially to the richness of colouring so peculiar to our modern landscape. The mixture of various greens, the contrast of forms between our forest trees and the northern and West Indian firs and pines, are improvements more recent than Kent, or but little known to him. The weeping willow, and every florid shrub, each tree of delicate or bold leaf, are new tints in the composition of our gardens.
"But just as the encomiums are that have been bestowed on Kent's discoveries, he was neither without assistance or faults. Mr Pope undoubtedly contributed to form his taste. The design of the prince of Wales's garden at Carlton house was evidently borrowed from the poet's at Twickenham. There was a little of affected modesty in the latter, when he said, of all his works he was most proud of his garden. And yet it was a singular effort of art and taste to impress so much variety and scenery on a spot of five acres. The passing through the gloom from the grotto to the opening day, the retiring and again assembling shades, the dusky groves, the larger lawn, and the solemnity of the termination at the cypresses that lead up to his mother's tomb, are managed with exquisite judgment; and though Lord Peterborough affixed him
"To form his quincunx and to rank his vines, those were not the most pleasing ingredients of his little perspective.
"Having routed professed art (for the modern gardener exerts his talents to conceal his art), Kent, like other reformers, knew not how to stop at the just limits. He had followed Nature, and imitated her so happily, that he began to think all her works were equally proper for imitation. In Kensington garden he planted dead trees to give a greater air of truth to the scene—but he was soon laughed out of this excess. His ruling principle was, that nature abhors a straight line. His mimics (for every genius has his apes,) seemed to think that she could love nothing but what was crooked. Yet so many men of taste of all ranks devoted themselves to the new improvements, that it is surprising how much beauty has been struck out, with how few absurdities. Still in some lights the reformation seems to have been pushed too far. Though an avenue crossing a park or separating a lawn, and intercepting views from the seat to which it leads, are capital faults; yet a great avenue cut through woods, perhaps before entering a park, has a noble air, and,
Like footmen running before coaches
To tell the inn what lord approaches,
announces the habitation of some man of distinction. In other places the total banishment of all particular neatness immediately about a house, which is frequently left gazing by itself in the middle of a park, is a defect. Sheltered and even close walks, in so very uncertain a climate as ours, are comforts ill exchanged for the few picturesque days that we enjoy; and whenever a family can purloin a warm and even something of an old-fashioned garden from the landscape designed for them by the undertaker in fashion, without interfering with the picture, they will find satisfactions in those days that do not invite strangers to come and see their improvements."
PART I. PRINCIPLES OF GARDENING.