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 (says Mr Wheatley) 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, as already observed, regulates also the disposition and embellishment of a park, a farm, a forest, &c.: 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 show all the advantages of the place upon which he is employed; to supply its defects, to correct its faults, and to improve its beauties. Sect. I. Materials of Gardening.

These may be divided into two general classes; Natural and Facitious.

§ 1. Of the Natural Materials.

The, according to Mr Wheatley's enumeration, are—Ground, Wood, Water, and Rocks.

I. GROUND. By this is meant that portion of naked surface which is included within the place to be improved; whether that surface be swamp, lawn, roughet, or broken ground; and whether it be a height, a valley, a plain, or a composition of swells, dips, and levels.

The following passage has been quoted from Mr Gilpin's observations on the Wye, as affording a sublime idea of what ground ought to be.—"Nothing (says he) gives so just an idea of the beautiful swellings of ground as those of water, where it has sufficient room to undulate and expand. In ground which is composed of very refractory materials, you are presented often with harsh lines, angular insertions, and disagreeable abruptnesses. In water, whether in gentle or in agitated motion, all is easy, all is softened into itself; and the hills and valleys play into each other in a variety of the most beautiful forms. In agitated water, abruptnesses indeed there are, but yet they are such abruptnesses as in some part or other unite properly with the surface around them; and are on the whole peculiarly harmonious. Now, if the ocean in any of these swellings and agitations could be arrested and fixed, it would produce that pleasing variety which we admire in ground. Hence it is common to fetch our images from water, and apply them to land: we talk of an undulating line, a playing lawn, and a billowy surface; and give a much stronger and more adequate idea by such imagery, than plain language could possibly present."

The exertions of art, however, are here inadequate; and the artist ought not to attempt to create a mountain, a valley or a plain: he should but rarely meddle even with the smaller inequalities of grounds. Roughets and broken ground may generally be reduced to lawn, or hid with wood; and a swamp may be drained or covered with water; whilst lawn may be variegated at pleasure by wood, and sometimes by water.

II. 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, or clump. 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 group of trees; but both are equally clumps, whatever may be the shape or situation.

1. One of the noblest objects in nature (Mr Wheatley observes) 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 characterizes 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 haven level of foliage is neither agreeable nor natural; the different growths of trees commonly break it in reality, and their shadows fill 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 groups must not be too strong, where greatness is the character 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 cluter 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.

When, in a romantic situation, very broken ground is overpread 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, Wood. sitions, 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 thrown 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: these 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 shows 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 proscribed 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 connexion, 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.

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 forever. They are greater deviations from the continued line which they are intended to break; and their effect is to enlarge 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 thrown 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 Gardening short turn has more spirit in it than a tedious circuitry; 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. 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 flirting 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 shown to advantage by the space behind them; and that space, seen between their items they in return throw into an agreeable perspective.

2. 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 wilderness of its bulk, and to blend graces with greatness. The character of a grove is beauty. 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 connexion 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, païses 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 equally improper. 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 connexion will allow. In the forms and the varieties of these groups, these lines, and these openings, principally confers 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 connexion between the parts is never broken. Even a group, 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 groups, 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 groups, 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 launter 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 groups 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 knoll, 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 fill 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.

It is, however, 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 sunbeam; 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.

3. It has been already observed, that clumps differ Of Clumps, only 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 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 jealousy of art constantly attends them, which irregularity in their figure will not always alone remove. Though elevations show 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 amenity; 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.

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 altogether, they call 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 connexions, their contrasts, are more important than their forms.

III. WATER. All inland 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.

1. Space or expansion is essential to a lake. It 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 attones 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. An artificial lake, again, may be comparatively extravagant in its dimensions. It may be 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, are the remedies to be employed. If the length of a piece of water be too great for its breadth, so as to destroy all idea of circuitry, 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 shows 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 undetermined; 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, 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.

Bays, creeks, and promontories, however, though extremely beautiful, should not 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 light suggest ideas of extent to the imagination.

2. Though the windings of a river are proverbially defective 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: