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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 es superior to landskip painting, as a roulity to a representation: it is an exertion of fancy, a subject for tusto; and being released now from the restraints of regularity, and enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic convenience, the most beautiful, the most simple, the nost noble scenes of nature are all within its province: for it is no longer confined to the sopts from which it borros its name, but regulates also the disposition and e.bellishments of a park, a far, or a riding; and the busines of a gardener is to select and to apply whatever is great, elegant or characteristic in any I 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 beauties. For these operations, the objects of nature are still his only materials. His first enquiry, His 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 hin in the choice and arrangement of then.

Nature, always simple, employs but four materials in the co position of her scones, ground, wood, water, and rocks. The cultivation of nature has introduced a fifth species, the builings requisite for the accommodation of mon. ach of those again admit of varieties in their figure, di onsions, colour, and situation. Every landskip is composed of these parts only; every beauty in a landskip depon's 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 tems 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 degrees and the proportions in which they are blended.

Both the convex and the concave are forns in themselv. of . oro variety than a plane: either of them may therefore be admitted to a greater extent than can to allowed to the ot'or; but levels are 10t therefore totally inad icsible. The proference unjustly shown to thou in the old gardens, where they prevailed almost in exclusion of every other form, has raised a predice against them. It is frequently reckoned an excellence in a piece of unde promë, that every the lost part of it is uneven; but then it wants one of the three great varies of ground, which may sooties be inter:ixel with the other two. gentle concave declivity falls and spreads easily on a lat; the channels between several swells deponerate into hero guttors, if some

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