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 ebellishments of a park, a farm, or a riding; and the busines of a gardener is to select and to apply whatever is great, elegant or characteristic in any f 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, 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 deterine him in the choice and arrangement of then. Nature, always simple, employs but four materials in the co position of her scenes, round, wood, water, and rocks. The cultivation of nature has introduced a fifth species, the buildings requisite for the accommodation of men. Sach of those again admit of varieties in their figure, dimensions, 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 ground must be either a convex, a corcave, or a plane; in terms less technical called a swell, a hollow, and a level. By combinations of these 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 forms in themselves of ore variety than a plane: either of then may therefore be adiitted to a greater extent thun can be allowed to the ot'or; but 1otels are not therefore totally inad iscible. The preference unjustly shown to then in the old gardens, where they prevailed al ost in exclusion of every other form, has raised a prejudice against thou. It is frequently reckoned an excellence in a piece of rude round, that every the lost part of it is uneven; but then it wants one of the three great varietics of ground, which may so..etimes be inter mixed with the other two. gentle concave declivity falls and spreads easily on a flat; the channels between several swells deponerate into pore gutters, if some |
