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Selections from

OBSERVATIONS ON MODERN GARDENING

by

Thomas Whately

London
1801

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INTRODUCTION

I. Gardening, in the perfection to which it has been lately brought in England, is entitled to a place of considerable rank among the liberal arts. It is as superior to landskip 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 sopts from which it borrows its name, but regulates also the disposition and embellishments of a park, a farm, or a riding; and the business of a gardener is to select and to apply whatever is great, el want or characteristic in any of them; to discover and to shew all the advantages of the place upon which he is employed; to supply its defects, to correct its faults, and to improve its boauties. for these operations, the objects of nature are still his only materials. Fis first enquiry, therefore, must be into the means by which those effects are attained in nature, which he is to produce; and into those properties in the objects of nature, which should determine him in the choice and arrangement of then.

Nature, always simple, employs but four materials in the composition of her scenes, round, wood, water, and rocks. The cultivation of nature has introduced a fifth species, the buildings requisite for the accomodation of men. ach of those again admit of varieties in their figure, dimensions, colour, ani situation. Every landskip is composed of those parts only; every beauty in a landskip depends on the application of their several varieties.

OF GROUND.

II. The shape of cround must be either a convex, a concave, or a plane; in terms less technical called a swell, a hollow, and a level. By combinations of those are formed all the irregularities of which ground is capable; and the beauty of it depends on the degroes and the proportions in which they are blended.

Both the convex and the concave are forms in themselves of more variety than a plane: either of them may therefore be admitted to a greater extent than can be allowed to the ot'er; but levels are not therefore totally inadmissible. he preference unjustly shown to them in the old gardens, where they prevailed almost in exclusion of every other form, has raised a prejudice against them. It is frequently reckoned an excellence in a piece of inlo round, that every the least part of it is uneven; but then it wants one of the three great varieties of ground, which may no eti os he inter ixed with the other two. gentle concave declivity falls and spreads easily on a flat; the channels between several svolls degenerate into mere gutters, if some

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