No. 8. "Water on a eminence, or on the side of a hill, is among the most common errors of Mr Brown's followers; in numerous instances I have been allowed to remove such pieces of water from the hills to the valleys, but in many my advice has not prevailed."
No. 9. "Deception may be allowable in imitating the works of Nature. Thus artificial rivers, lakes, and rock scenery can only be great by deception, and the mind acquiesces in the fraud after it is detected, but in works of Art every trick ought to be avoided. Sham churches, sham ruins, sham bridges, and everything which appears what it is not, disgusts when the trick is discovered."
No. 10. "In buildings of every kind the character should be strictly observed. No incongruous mixture can be justified. To add Grecian to Gothic, or Gothic to Grecian, is equally absurd; and a sharp pointed arch to a garden gate or a dairy window, however frequently it occurs, is not less offensive than Grecian architecture, in which the standard rules of relative proportion are neglected or violated."
The perfection of landscape-gardening consists in the fullest attention to these principles, Utility, Proportion, and Unity, or harmony of parts to the whole. (Repton, "Landscape Gardening," pp. 128-9.)
The best advice one can give to a young gardener is—know your Repton.
The writings of the new school of gardening, of which Repton is a notable personage in its later phase, are not, however, on a par with the writings of the old traditional school, either as pleasant garden literature, or in regard to broad human interest or artistic quality. They are hard and critical, and never lose the savour of the heated air of controversy in which they were penned. Indeed, I can think of no more sure and certain cure for a bad attack of garden-mania—nothing that will sooner wipe the bloom off your enjoyment of natural beauty—than a course of reading from the Classics of Landscape-garden literature! "I only sound the clarion," said the urbane master-gardener of an earlier day, "but I enter not into the battle." But these are at one another's throats! Who enters here must leave his dreams of fine gardening behind, for he will find himself in a chilly, disenchanted world, with nothing more romantic to feed his imagination upon than "Remarks on the genius of the late Mr. Brown," Critical enquiries, Observations on taste, Difference between landscape gardening and painting, Price upon Repton, Repton upon Price, Repton upon Knight, further answers to Messrs Price and Knight, &c. But all this is desperately dull reading, hurtful to one's imagination, fatal to garden-fervour.[32] And naturally so, for analysis of the processes of garden-craft carried too far begets loss of faith in all. Analysis is a kill-joy, destructive of dreams of beauty. "We murder to dissect." That was a true word of the cynic of that day, who summed up current controversy upon gardening in the opinion that "the works of Nature were well executed, but in a bad taste." The quidnuncs' books about gardening are about as much calculated to give one delight, as the music the child gets out of the strings of an instrument that it broke for the pride of dissection. Even Addison, with the daintiest sense and prettiest pen of them all, shows how thoroughly gardening had lost
... "its happy, country tone,
Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note
Of men contention-tost,"—
as he thrums out his laboured coffee-house conceit. "I think there are as many kinds of gardening as poetry; your makers of parterres and flower-gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this art; contrivers of bowers and grottoes, treillages, and cascades, are Romance writers. Wise and Loudon are our heroic poets." Nor is his elaborate argument meant to prove the gross inferiority of Art in a garden to unadorned Nature more inspiring. Nay, what is one to make of even the logic of such argument as this? "If the products of Nature rise in value according as they more or less resemble those of Art, we may be sure that artificial works receive a greater advantage from their resemblance of such as are natural." (Spectator.) But who does apply the Art-standard to Nature, or value her products as they resemble those of Art? And has not Sir Walter well said: "Nothing is more the child of Art than a garden"? And Loudon: "All art, to be acknowledged, as art must be avowed."
One prefers to this cold Pindaric garden-homage the unaffected, direct delight in the sweets of a garden of an earlier day; to realise with old Mountaine how your garden shall produce "a jucunditie of minde;" to think with Bishop Hall, as he gazes at his tulips, "These Flowers are the true Clients of the Sunne;" to be brought to old Lawson's state of simple ravishment, "What more delightsome than an infinite varietie of sweet-smelling flowers? decking with sundry colours the green mantle of the Earth, colouring not onely the earth, but decking the ayre, and sweetning every breath and spirit;" to taste the joys of living as, taking Robert Burton's hand, you "walk amongst orchards, gardens, bowers, mounts and arbours, artificial wildernesses, green thickets, groves, lawns, rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, between wood and water, in a fair meadow, by a river side, to disport in some pleasant plain or park, must needs be a delectable recreation;" to be inoculated with old Gerarde of the garden-mania as he bursts forth, "Go forward in the name of God: graffe, set, plant, nourishe up trees in every corner of your grounde;" to trace with Temple the lines and features that go to make the witchery of the garden at Moor Park, "in all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the Figure and Disposition, that I have ever seen," and which you may follow if you are not "above the Regards of Common Expence;" to hearken to Bacon expatiate upon the Art which is indeed "the purest of all humane pleasure, the greatest refreshment to the Spirits of man;" to feel in what he says the value of an ideal, the magic of a style backed by passion—to have garden precepts wrapped in pretty metaphors (such as that "because the Breath of Flowers is far Sweeter in the Air—where it comes and goes like the warbling of Musick—than in the Hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that Delight than to know what be the Flowers and Plants that do best perfume the Air;")—to be taught how to order a garden to suit all the months of the year, and have things of beauty enumerated according to their seasons—to feel rapture at the sweet-breathing presence of Art in a garden—to learn from one who knows how to garden in a grand manner, and yet be finally assured that beauty does not require a great stage, that the things thrown in "for state and magnificence" are but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden—this is garden-literature worth reading!
Compared with the frank raptures of such writings as these, the laboured treatises of the landscape-school are but petty hagglings over the mint and cummin of things. You go to the writings of the masters of the old formality, to come away invigorated as by a whiff of mountain air straight off Helicon; they shall give one fresh enthusiasm for Nature, fresh devotion to Art, fresh love for beautiful things. But from the other—