duty to perform towards his neighbourhood, was accommodated by that arrangement of his pleasure-ground which enabled him to do the thing with most satisfaction to his guests, and least personal inconvenience to himself.

Such were the uses of the old fashioned and highly ornamented style of gardening. Its beauty, we have been informed by a sure, nay, we will add, the surest guide on such a subject, consists in its connexion with the house

'Where architectural ornaments are introduced into the garden about the house, however unnatural raised terraces, fountains, flights of steps, parapets with statues, vases, balustrades, &c. may be called-however our ancestors may have been laughed at, (and I was much diverted, though not at all convinced with the ridicule,) for walking up and down stairs in the open air-the effect of all these objects is very striking; and they are not more unnatural, that is, not more artificial, than the houses they are intended to accompany.'*

Nothing is more completely the child of art than a garden. Its artificial productions are necessarily surrounded by walls, marking out the space which they occupy as something totally distinct from the rest of the domain, and they are not seldom distinguished by the species of buildings which their culture requires. The green-houses and conservatories necessary to complete a garden on a large scale are subjects susceptible of much ornament, all of which, like the plants themselves, must be the production of art, and art in its most obvious phasis. It seems right and congruous that these objects, being themselves the offspring of art, should have all the grace of outward form and interior splendour which their parent art can give them. Their formality is to be varied and disguised, their shapes to be ornamented. A brick wall is, in itself, a disagreeable object; but its colour, when covered with green boughs, and partially seen through them, produces such a rich effect as to gratify the painter in a very high degree. Upon the various shapes and forms of shrubs, creepers, and flowers, it is unnecessary to dilate; they are the most beautiful of nature's works, and to collect them and arrange them with taste is the proper and rational purpose of art. of art. Water, even when disposed into the formal shapes of ponds, canals, and artificial fountains, although this may be considered as the greatest violence which can be perpetrated upon nature, affords effects beautiful in themselves, and congenial with the presence of ornamented architecture and artificial gardening. Our champion, Price himself, we presume to think, rather shrinks from his ground on this particular point, and may not be willing to follow his own banner so far as we are disposed to carry it. He justifies fountains only, on the

*Price's Essays on the Picturesque, vol. ii., page 135.

ground

ground that natural jets-d'eau, though rare, do exist, and are among the most surprising exhibitions of nature: these, he thinks, must therefore be proper objects of imitation; and since Art cannot emulate these natural fountains in greatness of style and execution, she is justified in compensating her weakness by symmetry, variety, and richness of effect. Now we are inclined, with all the devotion of reverence for Sir Uvedale Price, to dispute the ground of his doctrine on this subject, and to affirm, that whether the geyser, or any other natural jet-d'eau existed or no, the sight of a magnificent fountain, either flinging up its waters into the air and returning down in showers of mist, which make the ascending column resemble a giant in a shroud, or broken into other forms of importance and beauty, would still be a captivating spectacle; and the tasteful veteran argues, to our fancy, much more like himself when he manfully contends, that the element of water is as fitly at the disposal of the professor of hydraulics as the solid stone is at that of the architect. It has been a long time fashionable to declaim against architectural waterworks, and to ask triumphantly, what are les eaux of Versailles to the cataracts of the Nile and of Niagara, to the falls of Schaffhausen, or even to those of the Clyde? The answer is ready to a question which is founded on the meanest of all tastes-that which arises from comparison. The water-works of Versailles are certainly inferior to the magnificent cascades which we have mentioned; but we suspect they have been talked of by many authors who have never witnessed what is not now an everyday sight. Those who have seen that exhibition will certainly say they have witnessed a most magnificent and interesting scene, far beyond what they might have previously supposed it was within the compass of human art to produce.-We do not mean to say that the expense was altogether well laid out which was necessary to bring the waters of the Seine by the mediation of a complicated bundle of sticks, to throw summersets at Versailles. This is entirely a separate affair. The present question merely is, whether, the money being spent, and the water-works completed, a great example of human power over the elements has not been given, and a corresponding effect produced? We, at least, are prepared to answer in the affirmative.

Wealth, in this, as in other respects, has proved a snare, and played many fantastic tricks before high heaven.' If we approve of Palladian architecture, the vases and balustrades of Vitruvius, the enriched entablatures and superb stairs of the Italian school of gardening, we must not, on this account, be construed as vindicating the paltry imitations of the Dutch, who clipped yews into monsters of every species and description, and

relieved

relieved them with the painted wooden figures which are seen much in the attitude of their owners, silent and snugly smoking at the end of the paltry walk of every Lust-huys. This topiarian art, as it was called, came into England with King Wil liam, and has left strong and very ungraceful traces behind it. The distinction betwixt the Italian and Dutch is obvious. A stone hewn into a gracefully ornamented vase or urn has a value which it did not before possess; a yew hedge clipped into a fortification is only defaced. The one is a production of art, the other a distortion of nature. Yet now that these ridiculous anomalies have fallen into general disuse, it must be acknow ledged that there exist gardens, the work of Loudon, Wise, and such persons as laid out ground in the Dutch taste, which would be much better subjects for modification than for absolute destruction. Their rarity now entitles them to some care as a species of antiques, and unquestionably they give character to some snug, quiet, and sequestered situations, which would otherwise have no marked feature of any kind. We ourselves retain an early and pleasing recollection of the seclusion of such a scene. A small cottage, adjacent to a beautiful village, the habitation of an ancient maiden lady, was for some time our abode. It was situated in a garden of seven or eight acres, planted about the beginning of the eighteenth century by one of the Millars, related to the author of the Gardener's Dictionary, or, for aught we know, by himself. It was full of long straight walks betwixt hedges of yew and hornbeam, which rose tall and close on every side. There were thickets of flowering shrubs, a bower, and an arbour, to which access was obtained through a little maze of contorted walks, calling itself a labyrinth. In the centre of the bower was a splendid platanus, or oriental plane-a huge hill of leavesone of the noblest specimens of that regularly beautiful tree which we remember to have seen. In different parts of the garden were fine ornamental trees which had attained great size, and the orchard was filled with fruit-trees of the best description. There were seats and trellis-walks, and a banqueting-house. Even in our time this little scene, intended to present a formal exhibition of vegetable beauty, was going fast to decay. The parterres of flowers were no longer watched by the quiet and simple friends under whose auspices they had been planted, and much of the ornament of the domain had been neglected or destroyed to increase its productive value. We visited it lately, after an absence of many years. Its air of retreat, the seclusion which its alleys afforded, was entirely gone; the huge platanus had died, like most of its kind, in the beginning of this century; the hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed up, and the whole character of the place

so much destroyed, that we were glad when we could leave it. This was the progress of innovation, perhaps of improvement: yet, for the sake of that one garden, as a place of impressive and solemn retreat, we are inclined to enter a protest against the hasty and ill-considered destruction of things which, once destroyed, cannot be restored.

We may here also notice a small place, called Barncluth, in Lanarkshire, standing on the verge of the ridgy bank which views the junction of the Evan with the Clyde. Nothing can be more romantic than the scene around: the river sweeps over a dark rugged bed of stone, overhung with trees and bushes; the ruins of the original castle of the noble family of Hamilton frown over the precipice; the oaks which crown the banks beyond those grey towers are relics of the ancient Caledonian forest, and at least a thousand years old. It might be thought that the house and garden of Barncluth, with its walks of velvet turf and its verdant alleys of yew and holly, would seem incongruous among natural scenes as magnificent as those we have described. But the effect generally produced is exactly the contrary. The place is so small, that its decorations, while they form, from their antique appearance, a singular foreground, cannot compete with, far less subdue the solemn grandeur of the view which you look down upon; and thus give the spectator the idea of a hermitage constructed in the midst of the wilderness.

Those who choose to prosecute this subject farther, will find in Sir U. Price's book his regret for the destruction of a garden on the old system, described in a tone of exquisite feeling, which leads that distinguished author to declare in favour of many parts of the old school of gardening, and to argue for the preservation of the few remains of ancient magnificence that still exist, by awakening the owner to a sense of their beauties.

It were indeed high time that some one should interfere. The garden, artificial in its structure, its shelter, its climate, and its soil, which every consideration of taste, beauty, and convenience recommended to be kept near to the mansion, and maintained, as its appendage, in the highest state of ornamental decoration which could be used with reference to the character of the house itself, has, by a strange and sweeping sentence of exile, been condemned to wear the coarsest and most humbling form. Reduced to a clumsy oblong, inclosed within four rough-built walls, and sequestered in some distant corner where it may be best concealed from the eye to which it has been rendered a nuisance, the modern garden resembles nothing so much as a convict in his gaol apparel, banished, by his very appearance, from all decent society. If the peculiarity of the proprietor's taste inclines him to the worship

of

of Flora or Pomona, he must attend their rites in distance and secresy, as if he were practising some abhorred mysteries, instead of rendering an homage which is so peculiarly united with that of the household gods.*

Such being the great change in this department of rural economy, let us next look at that which has taken place in another no less essential part of it.-The passionate fondness of our ancestors for the chase is often manifested in their choice of a residence. In an ancient inscription on the house of Wharncliffe, we are informed that the lodge was built in Henry VIII.'s time, by one gentle knight, Sir Thomas Wortley, that he might hear the buck bell in the summer season,-a simple record, which speaks much to the imagination. The space of ground set apart for a park of deer must, to answer its purpose, possess the picturesque qualities which afford the greatest scope for the artist: there ought to be a variety of broken ground, of copse-wood, and of growing timber-of land, and of water. The soil and herbage must be left in its natural state; the long fern, amongst which the fawns delight to repose, must not be destroyed. In short, the stag, by nature one of the freest denizens of the forest, can only be kept under even comparative restraint, by taking care that all around him intimates a complete state of forest and wilderness. But the character of abode which is required by these noble animals of the chase is precisely the same which, from its beautiful effects of light and shadow, from its lonely and sequestered character, from the variety and intricacy of its glades, from the numerous and delightful details which it affords on every point, makes the strongest and most pleasing impression on all who are alive to natural beauty. The ancient English poets, Chaucer and Spenser in particular, never luxuriate more than when they get into a forest: by the accuracy with which they describe particular trees, and from their noticing the different characters of the different species, and the various effects of light and darkness upon the walks and glades of the forest, it is evident that they regarded woodland scenery not merely as associated with their favourite sports, but as having in itself beauties which they could appre ciate, though their age was not possessed of the fascinating art of committing them to canvass. Even the common people, as we noticed in a former Article, seldom mention the good forest,' and the merry green-wood,' without some expression of fondness, arising, doubtless, from the pleasure they took in the scenes themselves, as well as in the pastimes which they afforded.

The present Duke of Marlborough has all but violated this law, much to the honour of his taste, at White-Knights; and more recently, we hear, at Blenheim.

We