We are not, however, to suppose, that the old feudal barons made ornamental scenery any part of their study. When planting their parks, or when cutting paths and glades through them, their attention was probably entirely occupied with the protection of the deer and convenience of the huntsman. Long avenues were particularly necessary for those large parties, resembling our modern battues, where, the honoured guests, being stationed in fit standings, had an opportunity of displaying their skill in venery, by selecting the buck which was in season, and their dexterity at bringing him down with the cross-bow or long-bow; and hence all the great forests were pierced by these long rectilinear alleys which appear in old prints, and are mentioned in old books. The following description of Chantilly, by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, though the scene is in France, and on a scale of unusual grandeur and extent, is no bad picture of the domains by which the feudal nobility surrounded their castles and manor-houses, and of the dignified character of the mansions themselves.

A little river, descending from some higher grounds, in a country which was almost all his (the Constable de Montmorency's) own, and falling at last upon a rock in the middle of a valley, which, to keep drawing forwards, it must on one or other side thereof have declined some of the ancestors of the Montmorencys, to ease the river of this labour, made clear channels through this rock, to give it a free passage, dividing the rock by this means into little islands, upon which he built a great strong castle, joined together with bridges, and sumptuously furnished with hangings of silk and gold, rare pictures, and statues; all which buildings, erected as I formerly told, were encompassed about with water. One might see the huge carps, pikes, and trouts, which were kept in several divisions, gliding along the waters very easily. Yet nothing, in my opinion, added so much to the glory of this castle as a forest adjoining to it, and upon a level with the house; for, being of a very large extent, and set thick both with tall trees and underwood, the whole forest, which was replenished with wild boar, stag, and roe-deer, was cut into long walks every way, so that although the dogs might follow their chase through the thickets, the huntsman might ride along the sand walks, and meet or overtake their game in some one of them, they being cut with that art that they led to all the parts in the said forest.'

Charles V., when passing through France, was so delighted with Chantilly, as to declare he would have given a province in the Low Countries to have possessed such a residence; and the reader must be exclusively prejudiced indeed to the modern system, who cannot image to himself the impression made by the gorgeous splendour of the chateau, contrasted with the wilderness of the surrounding forest.

If the reader will imagine a house in the irregular form of archi

tecture

tecture which was introduced in Elizabeth's time, its varied front, graced with projecting oriels, and its angles ornamented with turrets; its columnar chimneys, so much adorned as to make that a beauty which is generally a deformity; its fair halls, banquetingrooms, galleries, and lodgings for interior accommodation,-it will afford no uncomfortable notion of the days of good Queen Bess. In immediate and close connexion with the mansion lie its gardens, with their terraces, urtis, statues, staircases, screens, alcoves, and summer-houses; its dry paved or turfed walks, leading through a succession of interesting objects, the whole line of architecture corresponding with that of the house, with its Gothic labels and entablature, but assuming gradually a plainer and more massive character, as the grounds extended and seemed to connect themselves with the open country. The inhabitants possessed the means, we must also suppose, of escaping from this display of ostentatious splendour to the sequestered paths of a lonely chase, dark enough and extensive enough to convey the idea of a natural forest, where, as in strong contrast with the scene we have quitted, the cooing of the wood-pigeon is alone heard, where the streams find their way unconfined, and the trees spread their arms untortured by art; where all is solemn, grand, and untutored, and seems the work of unassisted nature. We would ask the reader, when he has arranged in his ideas such a dwelling, with its accompaniments, of a natural and ornamental character, not whether the style might be corrected by improving the internal arrangement of the apartments; by diminishing the superfluous ornaments of the plaisance; by giving better, yet not formal, access to the natural beauties of the park, extending its glades in some places, and deepening its thickets in others for all this we willingly admit; bnt whether our ancestors did not possess all that good taste could demand as the materials of most delightful habitations?

The civil wars of Charles I.'s time, as they laid low many a defensible house of the preceding period, disparked and destroyed in general the chases, ridings, and forest-walks which belonged to them; and when the Restoration followed, the Cavaliers who had the good luck to retain their estates, were too poor to reestablish their deer-parks, and, perforce, contented to let Ceres reassume the land. Thus the chase or park, one of the most magnificent features of the ancient mansion, was lost in so many instances, that it could be no longer regarded as the natural and marked appendage of the seat of an English gentleman of fortune. The trim garden,' which could be added as easily to the suburban villa as to the sequestered country-seat, maintained its place and fashion longer; while the French taste of Charles II.'s time,

introducing treillages and cabinets de verdure, and still more, the Dutch fashion, brought in, as we have before hinted, by King William, introduced so many fantastic caprices into the ancient style, that it became necessary, as we have already hinted, to resort to the book of nature, and turn over a new leaf. ✔

Kent, too much extolled in his life, and, perhaps, too much dispraised since his death, was the first to devise a system of laying out ground different from that which had hitherto prevailed in general, though with some variations in detail, for perhaps a century and a half. It occurred to this artist, that, instead of the marked distinction which was made by the old system between the garden and its accompaniments on the one hand, and the surrounding country on the other, it might be possible to give to the former some of the simplicity of the country, and invest that, on the other hand, with somewhat of the refinement of the garden. With this view, all, or nearly all, the ancient and domestic ornaments of the plaisance were placed under ban. The garden, as already noticed, was banished to as great a distance as possible; the plaisance was changed into a pleasure-ground! Down went many a trophy of old magnificence, court-yard, ornamented inclosure, foss, avenue, barbican, and every external muniment of battled wall and flanking tower, out of the midst of which the ancient dome rising high above all its characteristic accompaniments, and seemingly girt round by its appropriate defences, which again circled each other in their different gradations, looked, as it should, the queen and mistress of the surrounding country. It was thus that the huge old tower of Glamis, 'whose birth tradition notes not,' once showed its lordly head above seven circles (if we recollect aright) of defensive boundaries, through which the friendly guest was admitted, and at each of which a suspicious person was unquestionably put to his answer. A disciple of Kent had the cruelty to render this splendid old mansion, the more modern part of which was the work of Inigo Jones, more parkish, as he was pleased to call it; to raze all those exterior defences, and bring his mean and paltry gravel-walk up to the very door from which, deluded by the name, one might have imagined Lady Macbeth (with the form and features of Siddons) issuing forth to receive King Duncan. It is thirty years and upwards since we have seen Glamis; but we have not yet forgotten or forgiven the atrocity which, under pretence of improvement, deprived that lordly place of all its appropriate accompaniments,

เ Leaving an ancient dome and towers like these

Beggared and outraged.'

The

The ruling principle that dictated Kent's innovations was in itself excellent. The improver was considered as a painter, the landscape as the canvass on which, with such materials as he possessed, he was to display his power. Thus far the conception was laudable; and, indeed, it had already occurred to Sir John Vanbrugh, when consulted about laying out the grounds at Blenheim, who recommended to the Duke of Marlborough to advise with a landscape-painter upon that subject, as the most competent judge. Had Kent but approached in execution the principle which he adopted in theory, he would have been in reality the great man that his admirers accounted him. But, unhappily, though an artist by profession, this father of the English landscape was tame and cold of spirit; his experience had not made him acquainted with the grander scenes of nature, or the poverty of his soul had not enabled him to comprehend and relish them. Even the Nature whom he pretended to choose for his exclusive guide seemed to have most provokingly disappeared from him. By the time that spades, mattocks, and pickaxes had formed and sloped his declivities in the regular and undulating line which he required,—that the water's edge had been trimly bordered with that thin, lank grass, which grows on a new sown lawn, and has so little resemblance to the luxuriant vegetation of nature,-his meagre and unvaried slopes were deprived of all pretension to a natural appearance, as much as the toes which were pinched, squeezed, and pared that they might be screwed into the little glass slipper, were different from the graceful fairy foot which it fitted without effort. Thus, while Kent's system banished Art from the province which might, in some degree, be considered as her own, he introduced her into that more especially devoted to Nature, and in which the character of her exertions always made her presence offensively conspicuous. For water-works and architectural ornaments, the professed productions of art, Kent produced ha-has! sheets of artificial water, formal clumps and belts of trees, and bare expanded flats or slopes of shaven grass, which, indicating the recent use of the levelling spade and roller, have no more resemblance to that nature which we desire to see imitated, than the rouge of an antiquated coquette, bearing all the marks of a sedulous toilette, bears to the artless blush of a cottage girl. His style is not simplicity, but affectation labouring to seem simple.

It is worth notice, that, while exploding the nuisance of graven images in the ancient and elaborate gardens, Kent, like some of the kings of Israel, though partly a reformer, could not altogether wean himself from every species of idolatry. He swept, indeed,

the

the gardens clear of every representation of mythology, and the visiter's admiration was no longer excited by beholding

'Statues growing that noble place in,
All heathen goddesses most rare,
Homer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar,
All standing naked in the open air.'

But to make amends for their ejection, Kent and his followers had temples, obelisks, and gazabos of every description in the park, all stuck about on their respective high places, with as little meaning, and at least as little pretension to propriety, as the horticultural Pantheon which had been turned out of doors.

The taste for this species of simplicity spread far and wide. Browne, the successor of Kent, followed in his footsteps; but his conceptions, to judge from the piece of artificial water at Blenheim, (formed, we believe, chiefly to blunt the point of an illnatured epigram,) were more magnificent than those of his predecessor. We cannot, however, suppose old Father Thames so irritable as this celebrated professor intimated, when he declared that the river would never forgive him for having given him so formidable a rival.

The school of spade and mattock flourished the more, as it was a thriving occupation, when the projector was retained to superintend his improvements-which seldom failed to include some forcible alteration on the face of nature. The vanity of some capability-men dictated those violent changes which were recommended chiefly by the cupidity of others. While the higher-feeling class were desirous, by the introduction of a lake, the filling up a hollow, or the elevation of a knoll, to show to all the world that Mr. had laid out those grounds; the meaner brothers of the trade were covetous of sharing the very considerable sums which must be expended in making such alterations. Mannerists they were to the extremity of monotony, and what they extolled as new and striking, was frequently only some trick of affectation. For example, a pupil of Browne, Robertson by name, laid out the grounds of Duddingstone, near Edinburgh. The place was flat, though surrounded by many distinguished features. A brook flowed through the grounds, which, by dint of successive dam-heads, was arrested in its progress, twisted into the links of a string of pork-sausages, flung over a stone embankment, and taught to stagnate in a lake with islets, and swans quantum sufficit. The whole demesne was surrounded by a belt, which now, at the distance of forty or fifty years, is still a formal circuit of dwindled trees. It was to be expected that some advantage might have been gained by looking out from some point of the grounds on Craigmillar Castle, a ruin beautiful