same system should be carried into the country, amidst forests, lawns, and mountains, it is not easy to guess. A certain degree of regularity, indeed, such as that very subordinate parts, occupying the same situations, and serving the same purposes, as columns, capitals, mouldings, &c. should be of the same form, common sense requires; since, in such instances, no reason could be given for deviation: but that the principal parts should all be regular, and correspond with each other, in situations, where all the accompaniments are irregular, and none of them corresponding with each other, seems to me the extreme of absurdity and incongruity. 93. By the old system of laying out ground, indeed, this incongruity was, in a great degree, obviated; for the house being surrounded by gardens, as uniform as itself, and only seen through vistas at right angles, every visible accompaniment was in unison with it; and the systematic regularity of the whole discernible from every point of sight: but when, according to the modern fashion, all around is levelled and thrown open; and the poor square edifice exposed alone, or with the accompaniment only of its regular wings and portico, amidst spacious lawns interspersed with irregular clumps, or masses of wood, and sheets of water, I do not know a more melancholy object: it neither CHAP. II. associates nor harmonizes with any thing; and, as the beauties of symmetry, which might appear Of Imagina in its regularity, are only perceived when that tion. regularity is seen; that is, when the building is shown from a point of sight at right angles with one of the fronts, the man of taste takes care that it never shall be so shown; but that every view of it shall be oblique, from the tangent of a curve in a serpentine walk; from whence it appears neither quite regular, nor quite irregular; but with that sort of lame and defective uniformity, which we see in an animal that has lost a limb. 94. The view from one of these solitary mansions is still more dismal than that towards it: for, at the hall door, a boundless extent of open lawn presents itself in every direction, which the despairing visitant must traverse, before he can get into any change of scenery: and, to complete the congruity of the whole, the clumps, with which this monotonous tract is dotted, and the winding stream or canal, by which it is intersected, are made as neat and determinate as ever the ancient gardens were; which having been professedly a work of art, and an appendage to the house, the neatness and even formality of architecture were its proper characteristics; and when its terraces and borders were intermixed with vines and flowers (as I have seen them in Italian villas, and in some oid English gardens in the same style) the mixture of splendor, richness, and neatness, was beautiful and pleasing in the highest degree. But the modern art of landscape gardening, as it is called, takes away all natural enrichment, and adds none of its own; unless, indeed, meagre or formal clumps of trees, and still more formal patches of shrubs, may be called enrichment. Why this art has been called landscape gardening, perhaps he, who gave it the title, may explain :-I can see no reason, unless it be the efficacy, which it has shown in destroying landscapes, in which, indeed, it seems to be infallible; not one complete painter's composition being, I believe, to be found in any of the numerous, and many of them beautiful and picturesque spots, which it has visited in different parts of this island.* * In answer to this, we are gravely told by an eminent Professor, that he alone has made three thousand such compositions, and published between two and three hundred of them, the extensive sale of which proves public opinion to be very different from mine. (Enquiry, &c. by H. Repton, Esq. p. 121.) These are rot however, he admits, painters' landscapes; but things sui generis, certain non-descripts, named after the art because utterly incompatible with it, as lucus a non lucendo; and adapted to the taste of another species of non-descript, called in true British Latin, elegantia formarum spectator. (p. 3. 122. &c.) Elegans formarum spectator had before been heard of in Roman Latin. CHAP. 11. Of Imagina tion. CHAP. Of Imagina- 95. The practice, which was so prevalent in the beginning of this century, of placing the mansion-house between two correspondent wings, in which were contained the offices, has of late fallen into disuse; and one still more adverse to composition succeeded; Had I read the work, which I am accused of pillaging, (p. 118.) I should candidly have acknowledged every debt, which casual coincidence of opinion might seem to have incurred; though, when an author favours the public with such profound remarks as, "that a building should not be larger than its situation will admit ;" and "that a house would not be habitable unless the ground sloped sufficiently to drain off the water from it;" (both supplied by a single page, $7) he ought not surely to pronounce every such coincidence a plagiarism, nor triumph in the concession of what was never disputed. As for my own principles and practice, I beg to assure Mr. Repton that they still continue unaltered; though many points are here introduced, which, not belonging peculiarly to landscape, were not noticed in a work on that subject. Consistently with those principles, and that practice, I choose to retain, what offends him so much, cross roads and directing posts within 200 yards of my house, rather than sacrifice, as he has done in so many instances, all the charms of retirement, intricacy, and variety, to the vanity of a splendid approach, or the ostentation of undivided property. I also continue to prefer the enrichments of my fore-grounds, composed of fragments of rock, trailing plants, flowering shrubs, and trees, to the groupes of cattle in his drawings; which, though harmless and quiet on paper, are very apt, in nature, to destroy all other enrichment, and to show them selves in every place, but where they are wanted. namely, that of entirely hiding the offices behind masses of plantation, and leaving the wretched square solitary mansion-house to exhibit its pert bald front between the dwarf shrubberies, which seem like whiskers added to the portico or entrance. To break its formality with large trees is impossible; for as it has no parts, but consists of one uniform square mass, not an angle of it can be shown without the stiff and bald formality of the whole being discovered. Had the offices been shown with it, in subordinate ranges of less elevated building, though the forms had individually been bad, yet by dividing and grouping them with trees, pleasing effects of composition might have been produced; at once to gratify the eye with some varieties of tint and light and shadow, and to amuse the imagination with some appearance of intricacy. Where they are only masked by shrubberies, this may still be done; but unfortunately they are often concealed in recesses, or behind mounds; the improver generally picking out the most retired intricate and beautiful spot, that can be found near the house, to bury them in. 96. When that is the case, I know of no remedy but the hanging terraces of the Italian. gardens; which, if the house be placed upon an eminence, with sloping ground before it, may be employed with very good effect; as CHAP. 11. Of Imagina tion. |