PART I.

HISTORICAL NOTICES.

Taste influenced by Fashion.-Every revolution in the taste of a country may be accounted for on the same principles with the revolutions in its laws, its customs, and opinions-the love of change or novelty in a few, and of sameness or imitation in the many. And however the pride of system may revolt at taste being influenced and liable to change with the fashions of the day, it is impossible to fix any standard for taste, that may not be shaken by the prevailing opinions of the public, whether right or wrong. Thus, in whatever relates to the amusements and pleasures of mankind, though an old fashion may be most rational, yet a received new fashion will be deemed in the best taste. This leads me to consider the origin of what is called fashion, and, by the multitude, generally considered as taste.

Origin of Fashion.-Although each individual may have the power of thinking, yet the mass of mankind act without thought, and, like sheep, follow a leader through the various paths of life. Without this natural propensity for imitation, every member of society would hold a different opinion, and the world would be at perpetual warfare. Indeed, every disagreement, from the enmity of nations to the petty squabbles of a parish, is caused and conducted by some leader, whom the multitude follow, imitate, and support.

This is the origin of changes, in customs or fashions, in every shape. Opinions are declared by one man, and followed by the many. If persons only of superior sense were the leaders, or if mankind always examined what they followed, fashion might, perhaps, be more reasonable: but this supposes mankind always to act like rational beings, which is contrary to every test of experience.

Therefore, whether in religion, in politics, in philosophy, in medicine, in language, in the arts, in dress, in equipage, in furniture, or in the most trifling concerns of life, we see thousands move in the way that some one has gone before: and if it be too great a stretch of thought to mark a new track, it is also too great to investigate whether the new track marked out by another be good or bad.

Changes, by whom made.-Changes in the fashion, or, in other words, in the customs of a country, become a source of wealth and commerce, and contribute to those daily occupations which make life preferable in civilized society. The clown and the savage require no change, no variety; and the vulgar, who are one degree above them, slowly adopt the changes of others, although they insensibly slide into the fashion. On the contrary, the nice observer, the 'elegantiæ formarum spectator' [exact judge of beauty], eagerly seizes and imitates whatever appears new; and, perhaps, without inquiring into its reasonableness or propriety. Thus, forms and fashions of one climate are often brought into another, without attending to their uses or original intentions.

Fashions in dress, in furniture, &c. are comparatively harmless; they soon pass away, and become ridiculous, in proportion to the distance of their dates. Thus we laugh at the odd figures of our ancestors on canvas, and wonder at the bad taste of old worm-eaten furniture, without reflecting that, in a few years, our own taste will become no less obsolete.

But in the more lasting works of art, fashion should be guided by common sense, or we may perpetuate absurdities. Of this kind was the general rage for destroying those old English buildings called Gothic; and for introducing the architecture of a hot country, ill adapted to a cold one-as the Grecian and Roman portico to the north front of an English house, or the Indian verandah as a shelter from the cold east winds of this climate.

In Gardening.-Fashion has had its full influence on gardening, as on architecture, importing models from foreign countries. The gardens in England have, at one time, imitated those of Italy, and, at another, those of Holland.

Italian style. The Italian style of gardens consisted in ballustraded terraces of masonry, magnificent flights of steps,

arcades, and architectural grottos, lofty clipped hedges, with niches and recesses, enriched by sculpture. This was too costly for general use; and where it was adopted, as at Nonsuch, and some other palaces, it was discovered to be inapplicable to the climate of England; and no traces now remain of it, except in some pictures of Italian artists. *

Dutch style. To this succeeded the Dutch garden, introduced by King William III., and which prevailed in this country for half a century. It consisted of sloped terraces of grass, regular shapes of land and water, formed by art, and quaintly adorned with trees in pots, or planted alternately, and clipped, to preserve the most perfect regularity of shape. These were the kind of terraces, and not those of the grand Italian style, which Brown destroyed, by endeavouring to restore the ground to its original shape.

English style.-He observed that Nature, distorted by great labour and expense, had lost its power of pleasing, with the loss of its novelty; and that every place was now become nearly alike. He saw that more variety might be introduced by copying Nature, and by assisting her operations. Under his guidance, a total change in the fashion of gardens took place; and as the Dutch style had superseded the Italian, so the English garden became the universal fashion. Under the great leader, Brown, or rather those who patronised his discovery, we were taught that Nature was to be our only model. He lived to establish a fashion in gardening, which might have been expected to endure as long as Nature should exist.

Nature: Brown's model.-Nature is alike the model to the poet, the painter, and the gardener, who all profess to be her imitators: but how few have genius or taste to avoid becoming mannerists! Brown copied Nature, his illiterate followers copied him; and, in such hands, without intending to injure his fame, or to depart from his principles, the fashion of English gardening was in danger of becoming more tiresome,

Some mention of the French style of gardening may here be expected; but as this was only a corruption of the Italian style, and was never generally adopted in England, it is purposely omitted; although, in practice, I have occasionally availed myself of its more massive Trellis, Boccages, and Cabinets de Verdure, to enliven the scenery of a flower garden.

insipid, and unnatural, than the worst style of Italian or Dutch examples.

Brown's style corrupted.-Mr. Brown, after his death, was immediately succeeded by a numerous herd of his foremen and working gardeners, who, from having executed his designs, became consulted, as well as employed, in the several works which he had entrusted them to superintend. Among these, one person had deservedly acquired great credit at Harewood, at Holkham, and other places, by the execution of gravel walks, the planting of shrubberies, and other details belonging to pleasure grounds, which were generally divided from the park by a sunk fence, or ha! ha! and happy would it have. been for the country, and the art, if he had confined his talents within such boundary. Unfortunately, without the same great ideas, he fancied he might improve by enlarging his plans. This introduced all that bad taste which has been attributed to his great master, Brown.

Extent mistaken for Beauty.-Hence came the mistaken notion, that greatness of dimensions would produce greatness of character: hence proceeded the immeasurable extent of naked lawn; the tedious lengths of belts and drives; the useless breadth of meandering roads; the tiresome monotony of shrubberies, and pleasure grounds; the naked expanse of waters, unaccompanied by trees; and all the unpicturesque features which disgrace modern gardening, and which have brought on Brown's system the opprobrious epithets of bare and bald. Yet such is the fondness for what is great by measurement, that the beauty of parks is estimated by the acre, and the perfection of walks and drives computed by the mile, although we look at them without interest, and fly from them to farms and fields, even preferring a common or a heath, to the dull round of a walk or drive, without objects and without variety.

Park Scenery.-When, by this false taste for extent, parks had become enlarged beyond all reasonable bounds of prudence and economy in the occupation, it then became advisable to allot large portions of land for the purposes of agriculture, within the belt or outline of this useless and extravagant inclosure; and thus great part of the interior of a park is become an arable farm. Hence arises the necessity

of contracting that portion of an estate, in which beauty, rather than profit, is to be considered.

Garden Scenery.- Much of the controversy concerning modern gardening seems to have arisen from the want of precision in our language. Gardening is alike applied to the park, the lawn, the shrubbery, and the kitchen garden; and thus the scenery of one is blended with that of another, when there is as much difference between garden scenery, park scenery, and forest scenery, as between horticulture, agriculture, and uncultivated nature. The first is an artificial object, and has no other pretence to be natural, than what it derives from the growth of the plants which adorn it: their selection, their disposition, their culture, must all be the work of art; and instead of that invisible line, or hidden fence, which separates the mown turf from the lawn fed by cattle, it is more rational to shew that the two objects are separated, if the fence is not unsightly; otherwise, we must either suppose that cattle are admitted to crop the flowers and shrubs, or that flowers and shrubs are absurdly planted in a pasture exposed to cattle, or, which is more frequently the case, we must banish flowers entirely from the windows of a house, and suppose it to stand on a naked grass field.*

By the avenues and symmetrical plantations of the last two centuries, the artificial garden was extended too far from the mansion; but, in the modern gardening, the natural lawn is brought too near.

Example from Woburn.-As there are few palaces in England that can vie in magnificence with that of Woburn, it may furnish an example of greatness in variety and character in its garden scenery, without making its dimensions the standard of its greatness. The mansion is connected with its appendages, such as the stables, riding-house, tennis-court, orangery, Chinese-pavilion, game-larder, &c. &c., by a corridor, or covered passage, of considerable length, which is

* Fences are not objectionable when they mark a separation, and not a boundary of property. Thus a park-pale marks the precise limits of the park, and a hedge before a wood renders it liable to be mistaken for a wood belonging to some other person, and, therefore, acts as a boundary: but the hurdle, which makes a temporary division of a lawn, or a light open fence that divides the garden from the park, can only offend the fastidious critic, who objects to all fences, without knowing or assigning any reason.