OF THE OBJECTS OF GARDENING, AND Or TILE PLES BY WHICH THESE OBJECTS ARE ATTAINED.
From the remarks in the preceding chapter, the reader will be prepared to include under the objects of gardening, as a generic term, all the various purposes, useful as well as ornamental, of a country residence : Gardens and build ings, (Lord Karnes observes,) may be destined for use sole ly, for beauty solely, or for both. Such variety of destination bestows upon these arts a great command of beauties, complex not less than various. Hence the difficulty of forming an accurate taste in garden ing, and architecture ; and hence, that difference or wavering of taste in these arts, greater than in any art that has but a single destination•" (Elements of Criti cism, 4th edit. vol. ii. 431.) Not to consider the subject with a view to these different beauties, but to treat it mere ly as "the art of creating landscapes," would thus embrace only a small part of the art of laying out grounds, and leave generic term gardening, we shall first consider its prin ciples as an inventive or mixed, and secondly, as an imita tive art.
incomplete a subject, which contributes to the immediate comfort and happiness of a great body of the enlightened aid opulent in this and in every country ;—an art The ancient authors on architecture and gardening have rarely attempted to lay down any general principles of com position. Vitruvius hints obscurely, that the different parts of buildings should hear some proportion among them 5elves, like that which subsi,ts between the different mem bers of the human body ; that the quantities constituting the magnitudes of temples should have certain ratios to one another ; and he lays down canons for the individual proportions, and collective arrangement of the columns of the different orders. These, however, are not principles, but mechanical rules formed on very limited associations. The same remarks will apply to the directions respecting the walks, walls, hedges, and borders of the ancient style, laid down by D'Argenville, Clarici, and Switzer. It is in the writings of modern authors therefore, and chiefly from the enlightened investigations of Mr. Alison, that we are to draw our information as to the principles by which the artists of the ancient style were instinctively guided in their pro ductions.
With respect to the modern style, considered as including what belongs to the conveniencies of a country residence, as well as the art of creating landscapes, Pope has in cluded the principles under, I. The study and display of natural beauties ; 2. The concealment of defects ; and 3. Never to lose sight of common sense.
Wheatley concurs in these principles, stating the business of a gardener to be, " to select and to apply whatever is great, elegant, or characteristic," in the scenery of nature or art ; " to discover and to show all the advantages of the place upon which he is employed ; to supply its defects, to correct its faults, and to improve its beauties." Mr. 1Zepton, whose works on landscape gardening bear on the title page, " written with a view to establish fixed princi ples in these arts," enumerates congruity, utility, order, symmetry, scale, proportion, and appropriation, " if," as he observes in one place, 44 there are any principles." Mr.
G. Mason places the secret of the art in the " nice distinc tion between contrast and incongruity ;" Mason, the poet, invokes simplicity," probably intending that this beauty should distinguish the English from the Chinese style; simplicity is also the ruling principle of Lord Karnes ; Gi rardin includes every beauty under " truth and nature," and every rule " under the unity of the whole, and the connec tion of the parts ;" and Shenstone states " landscape, or picturesque gardening," to " consist in pleasing the imagi nation by scenes of grandeur, beauty, and variety. Con venience merely has no share here, any further than as it pleases the imagination." Congruity, and the principles of painting, arc those of Mr. Price and of Mr. Knight. From these different theories, as well as from the general objects or end of gardening, there appear to be two principles which enter into its composition ; those which regard it as a mixed art, or an art of design, and which are called the principles of relative beauty ; and those which regard it as an imitative art, and are called the principles of natural or universal beauty. The ancient or geometric gard • • gardening is guided wholly by the former principles ; landscape garden ing, as an imitative art, wholly by the latter ; but as the art of forming a country residence, its arrangements are influenced by both principles. In conformity with these ideas, and with our plan of including both styles under the Works of art, Mr. Alison observes, may be considered, either in relation to their design or intention—to the nature of their construction for the intended purnose—or to the nature of the end they are destined to serve ; and their beauty accordingly will depend, either upon the excellence or wisdom of the design, the fitness or propriety of the con struction, or the utility of the end. The considerations of design, and of utility, therefore, may be consider ed as the three great sources of the beauties of works of inventive art. They have been called relative beauties, in opposition to those of native and imitative art, which are hence denominated natural or independent beauties. There is a third source of beauty conmoon both to arts of inven tion and imitation, which is that of accidental beauty, or such as is produced by local, arbitrary, or temporary asso ciations. The beauties of ohjects, whether natural, relative, or accidental, are conveyed to the senses by the different qualities of matter, sounds, colours, smells, forms, and motion ; but form is the grand characteristic of matter, and constitutes in a great degree its essence to our senses. In our remarks, therefore, on the beauties of inventive art, we shall chiefly consider design, fitness, and utility, in re gard to form.