Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

Water, when accompanied by trees and bushes variously arranged, is often so imperceptibly united with land, that in many places the eye cannot discover the perfect spot and time of their union; yet is no less delighted with that mystery, than with the thousand reflections and intricacies which attend it. What is the effect, when those ties are not suffered to exist? You every where distinguish the exact line of separation; the water is bounded by a distinct and uniform edge of grass; the grass by a similar edge of wood; the trees, and often the house, are distinctly placed upon the grass; all separated from whatever might group with them, or take off from their solitary insulated appearance: in every thing you trace the hand of a mechanic, not the mind of a liberal artist.

I will now proceed to the particulars, and will beg the reader to keep in his mind

mixed with the higher parts of speech: our pages would then be a good deal like our places, when all the conjunctions, prepositions, &c. were cleared away, and the nouns and verbs clumped by themselves.

[blocks in formation]

the ruling principle I have just described, and of which I shall display the different proofs and examples.

No professor of high reputation seems for some time to have appeared after Kent, till at length, that the system might be carried to its ne plus ultra (no very distant point) arose the famous Mr. Brown; who has so fixed and determined the forms and lines of clumps, belts, and serpentine canals, and has been so steadily imitated by his followers, that had the improvers been incorporated, their common scal, with a clump, a belt, and a piece of made water, would have fully expressed the whole of their science, and have served them for a model as well as a seal*.

What Ariosto says of a grove of cypressess, has always struck me in looking at made places,

-che parean d'una stampa tutte impresse.

They seem "cast in one mould, made in one frame;" so much so, that I have seen places on which large sums had been lavished, so completely out of harmony with the landscape around them, that they gave me the idea of having been made by contract in London, and then sent down in pieces, and put together on the spot.

It is very unfortunate that this great legislator of our national taste, whose laws still remain in force, should not have received from nature, or have acquired by education, more enlarged ideas. Claude Lorraine was bred a pastry-cook, but in every thing that regards his art as a painter, he had an elevated and comprehensive mind; nor in any part of his works can we trace the meanness of his original occupation. Mr. Brown was bred a gardener, and having nothing of the mind, or the eye of a painter, he formed his style (or rather his plan) upon the model of a parterre; and transferred its minute beauties, its little clumps, knots, and patches of flowers, the oval belt that surrounds it, and all its twists and crincum crancums, to the great scale of nature*.

This ingenious device of magnifying a parterre, calls to my mind a story I heard many years ago. A country parson, in the county where I live, speaking of a gentlehan of low stature, but of extremely pompous manners, who had just left the company, exclaimed, in the simplicity and admiration of his heart, "quite grandeur in miniature, I protest!" This compliment reversed, would perfectly

We have, indeed, made but a poor progress, by changing the formal, but simple and majestic avenue, for the thin circular verge called a belt; and the unpretending ugliness of the strait, for the affected sameness of the serpentine canal: but the great distinguishing feature of modern improvement, is the clump; a name, which if the first letter were taken away, would most accurately describe its form and effect. Were it made the object of study how to invent something, which under the name of ornament should disfigure whole districts, nothing could be contrived to answer that purpose like a clump. Natural groups, being formed by trees of different ages and sizes, and at different distances from each other, often too by a mixture of those of the largest size with thorns, hollies, and others of inferior growth, are

suit the shreds and patches that are so often stuck about by Mr. Brown and his followers, amidst the uoble scenes they disfigure; where they are as contemptible, and as much out of character, as Claude's first edifices in pastry would appear, in the dignified landscapes he has painted.

full of variety in their outlines; and from the same causes, no two groups are exactly alike. But clumps, from the trees being generally of the same age and growth, from their being planted nearly at the same distance in a circular form, and from each tree being equally pressed by his neighbour, are as like each other as so many puddings turned out of one common mould. Natural groups are full of openings and hollows; of trees advancing before, or retiring behind each other; all productive of intricacy, of variety, of deep shadows, and brilliant lights. in walking about them, the form changes at each step; new combinations, new lights and shades, new inlets present themselves in succession. But clumps, like compact bodies of soldiers, resist attacks from all quarters: examine them in every point of view; walk round and round them; no opening, no vacancy, no stragglers*! but in the true military character, ils font face partout.

* I remember hearing, that when Mr. Brown was HighSheriff, some facetious person observing his attendants

« AnkstesnisTęsti »