eminence, is understood. The garden of Alcinous, in modern language, was but a kitchen-garden. Architecture has run the same course it continued many ages a useful art merely, without aspiring to be classed with the fine arts. Architecture, therefore, and gardening, being useful arts as well as fine arts, afford two different views. The reader, however, will not here expect rules for improving any work of art in point of utility; it being no part of my plan to treat of any useful art as such but there is a beauty in utility; and in discoursing of beauty, that of utility must not be neglected. This leads us to consider gardens and buildings in different views: they may be destined for use solely, for beauty solely, or for both. Such variety of destination bestows upon these arts a great command of beauties, complex no less than various. Hence the difficulty of forming an accurate taste in gardening and architecture; and hence that difference and wavering of taste in these arts, greater than in any art that has but a single destination. 618. Architecture and gardening cannot otherwise entertain the mind, but by raising certain agreeable emotions or feelings; with which we must begin, as the true foundation of all the rules of criticism that govern these arts. Poetry, as to its power of raising emotions, possesses justly the first place among the fine arts; for scarce any one emotion of human nature is beyond its reach. Painting and sculpture are more circumscribed, having the command of no emotions but of what are raised by sight: they are peculiarly successful in expressing painful passions, which are displayed by external signs extremely legible. (See chapter xv.) Gardening, besides the emotions of beauty from regularity, order, proportion, color, and utility, can raise emotions of grandeur, of sweetness, of gayety, of melancholy, of wildness, and even of surprise or wonder.* In architecture, the beauties of regularity, order, * ["It cannot be denied that the tasteful improvement of a country residence is both one of the most agreeable and the most natural recreations that can occupy a cultivated mind. With all the interest, and to many, all the excitement of the more seductive amusements of society, it has the incalculable advantage of fostering only the purest feelings, and (unlike many other occupations of business men) refining instead of hardening the heart. "The great German poet, Goethe, says Happy the man who hath escaped the town, "With us, country life is a leading object of nearly all men's desires. The wealthiest merchant looks upon his country-seat as the best ultimatum of his laborious days in the counting-house. The most indefatigable statesman dates, in his retirement, from his 'Ashland,' or his 'Lindenwold.' Webster has his 'Marshfield,' where his scientific agriculture is no less admirable than his profound eloquence in the Senate. Taylor's well-ordered plantation is not less significant of the man, than the battle of Buena Vista. Washington Irving's cottage, on the Hudson, is even more poetical than any chapter in his 617. Gardening as an art.-The garden of Alcinous. Gardening and buildings considered under two views. and proportion, are still more conspicuous than in gardening; but as to the beauty of color, architecture is far inferior. Grandeur can be expressed in a building, perhaps more successfully than in a garden; but as to the other emotions above mentioned, architecture hitherto has not been brought to the perfection of expressing them distinctly. To balance that defect, architecture can display the beauty of utility in the highest perfection. Gardening indeed possesses one advantage, never to be equalled in the other art: in various scenes, it can raise successively all the different emotions above mentioned. But to produce that delicious effect, the garden must be extensive, so as to admit a slow succession; for a small garden, comprehended at one view, ought to be confined to one expression (see chapter viii.): it may be gay, it may be sweet, it may be gloomy; but an attempt to mix these would create a jumble of emotions not a little unpleasant. For the same reason, a building, even the most magnificent, is necessarily confined to one expression. 619. In gardening, as well as in architecture, simplicity ought to be a ruling principle. Profuse ornament hath no better effect than to confound the eye, and to prevent the object from making an impression as one entire whole. An artist destitute of genius for capital beauties, is naturally prompted to supply the defect by crowding his plan with slight embellishments: hence in a garden, triumphal arches, Chinese houses, temples, obelisks, cascades, fountains, without end; and in a building, pillars, vases, statues, and a profusion of carved work. Thus some women defective in taste, are apt to overcharge every part of their dress with ornament. Superfluity of decoration hath another bad effect; it gives the object a diminutive look: an island in a wide extended lake makes it appear larger; but an artificial lake, which is always little, appears still less by making an island on it. upon In forming plans for embellishing a field, an artist without taste employs straight lines, circles, squares; because these look best paper. He perceives not, that to humor and adorn nature, is the perfection of his art; and that nature, neglecting regularity, distributes her objects in great variety with a bold hand. A large field Sketch Book; and Cole, the greatest of our landscape painters, had his rural nome under the very shadow of the Catskills. "This is well. In the United States, nature and domestic life are better than society and the manners of towns. Hence all sensible men gladly escape, earlier or later, and partially or wholly, from the turmoil of the cities. Hence the dignity and value of country life is every day augmenting. And hence the enjoyment of landscape or ornamental gardening-which, when in pure taste, may properly be called a more refined kind of nature-is every day becoming more and more widely diffused."-Downing's Rural Essays, iii.] 618. How they entertain the mind.--Poetry, painting, sculpture, gardening, and archi tecture compered, as to power of raising emotions. laid out with strict regularity, is stiff and artificial.* Nature, indeed, in organized bodies comprehended under one view, studies regularity, which, for the same reason, ought to be studied in architecture: but in large objects, which cannot otherwise be surveyed but in parts and by succession, regularity and uniformity would be useless properties, because they cannot be discovered by the eye.t Nature therefore, in her large works, neglects these properties; and in copying nature, the artist ought to neglect them. 620. Having thus far carried on a comparison between gardening and architecture, rules peculiar to each come next in order, beginning with gardening. The simplest plan of a garden, is that of a spot embellished with a number of natural objects, trees, walks, polished parterres, flowers, streams, &c. One more complex comprehends statues and buildings, that nature and art may be mutually ornamental. A third, approaching nearer perfection, is of objects assembled together in order to produce not only an emotion of beauty, but also some other particular emotion, grandeur, for example, gayety, or any other above mentioned. The completest plan of a garden is an improvement upon the third, requiring the several parts to be so arranged as to inspire all the different emotions that can be raised by gardening. In this plan, the arrangement is an important circumstance; for it has been shown, that some emotions figure best in conjunction, and that others ought always to appear in succession, and never in conjunction. It is mentioned (chapter viii.), that when the most opposite emotions, such as gloominess and gayety, stillness and activity, follow each other in succession, the pleasure, on the whole, will be the greatest; but that such emotions ought not to be united, because they produce an unpleasant mixture. (Chapter ii. part iv.) For this reason, a ruin affording a sort of melancholy pleasure, ought not to be seen from a flower-parterre which is gay and cheerful. But to pass from an exhilarating object to a ruin, has a fine effect; for each of the emotions is the more sensibly felt by being contrasted with the other. Similar emotions, on the other hand, such as gayety and sweetness, stillness and gloominess, motion and grandeur, ought to be raised together; for their effects upon the mind are greatly heightened by their conjunction. 621. Regularity is required in that part of a garden which is ad * In France and Italy, a garden is disposed like the human body, alleys, like legs and arms, answering each other; the great walk in the middle representing the trunk of the body. Thus an artist void of taste carries self along into every operation. A square field appears not such to the eye when viewed from any part of it; and the centre is the only place where a circular field preserves in appearance its regular figure. 619. Remarks of Mr. Downing.-A peculiar advantage of gardening. -Simplicity in gardening and architecture.-Embellishment of a field. 620. Plans for a garden. jacent to the dwelling-house; because an immediate accessory ought to partake the regularity of the principal object; but in proportion to the distance from the house considered as the centre, regularity ought less and less to be studied; for in an extensive plan, it hath a fine effect to lead the mind insensibly from regularity to a bold variety. Such arrangement tends to make an impression of grandeur; and grandeur ought to be studied as much as possible, even in a more confined plan, by avoiding a multiplicity of small parts. (See chapter iv.) A small garden, on the other hand, which admits not grandeur, ought to be strictly regular. Milton, describing the garden of Eden, prefers justly grandeur before regularity: Flowers worthy of paradise, which not nice art Paradise Lost, b. iv. A hill covered with trees, appears more beautiful as well as more lofty than when naked. To distribute trees in a plain requires more art: near the dwelling-house they ought to be scattered so distant from each other, as not to break the unity of the field; and even at the greatest distance of distinct vision, they ought never to be so crowded as to hide any beautiful object. In the manner of planting a wood or thicket, much art may be displayed. A common centre of walks, termed a star, from whence are seen remarkable objects, appears too artificial, and consequently too stiff and formal, to be agreeable: the crowding withal so many objects together, lessens the pleasure that would be felt in a slower succession. 622. By a judicious distribution of trees, other beauties may be produced. A landscape so rich as to engross the whole attention, and so limited as sweetly to be comprehended under a single view, has a much finer effect than the most extensive landscape that requires a wandering of the eye through successive scenes. This observation suggests a capital rule in laying out a field; which is, never at any one station to admit a larger prospect than can easily be taken in at once. A field so happily situated as to command a great extent of prospect, is a delightful subject for applying this rule: let the prospect be split into proper parts by means of trees, studying at the same time to introduce all the variety possible. As gardening is not an inventive art, but an imitation of nature, or rather nature itself ornamented, it follows necessarily that every thing unnatural ought to be rejected with disdain. Statues of wild beasts vomiting water, a common ornament in gardens, prevail in those of Versailles. Is that ornament in a good taste? A jet d'eau, 621. In what part of garden regularity is most to be studied.-Arrangement of trees. being purely artificial, may, without disgust, be tortured into a thousand shapes; but a representation of what really exists in nature, admits not any unnatural circumstance. In the statues of Versailles the artist has displayed his vicious taste without the least color or disguise. A lifeless statue of an animal pouring out water, may be endured without much disgust; but here the lions and wolves are put in violent action, each has seized its prey, a deer or a lamb, in act to devour; and yet, as by hocus-pocus, the whole is converted into a different scene: the lion, forgetting his prey, pours out water plentifully; and the deer, forgetting its danger, performs the same work; a representation no less absurd than that in the opera, where Alexander the Great, after mounting the wall of a town besieged, turns his back to the enemy, and entertains his army with a song. * 623. In gardening, every lively exhibition of what is beautiful in nature has a fine effect; on the other hand, distant and faint imitations are displeasing to every one of taste. The cutting evergreens in the shape of animals is very ancient, as appears from the epistles of Pliny, who seems to be a great admirer of the conceit. The propensity to imitation gave birth to that practice, and has supported it wonderfully long, considering how faint and insipid the imitation is. But the vulgar, great and small, are entertained with the oddness and singularity of a resemblance, however distant, between a tree and an animal. An attempt in the gardens of Versailles to imitate a grove of trees by a group of jets d'eau, appears, for the same reason, no less childish.t In designing a garden, every thing trivial or whimsical ought to be avoided. Is a labyrinth then to be justified? It is a mere con * Ulloa, a Spanish writer, describing the city of Lima, says that the great quare is finely ornamented. "In the centre is a fountain, equally remarkable or its grandeur and capacity. Raised above the fountain is a bronze statue of Fame, and four small basins on the angles. The water issues from the trumpet of the statue, and from the mouths of eight lions surrounding it, which," in his opinion, "greatly heighten the beauty of the whole." The great mistake made by most novices is, that they study gardens too much, and nature too little. Now gardens, in general, are stiff and graceless, except just so far as nature, ever free and flowing, reasserts her rights in spite of man's want of taste, or helps him when he has endeavored to work in her own spirit. But the fields and woods are full of instruction, and in such features of our richest and most smiling and diversified country, must the best hints for the embellishment of rural homes always be derived. And yet it is not any portion of the woods and fields that we wish our finest pleasure-ground scenery to resemble. We rather wish to select from the finest sylvan features of nature, and to recompose the materials in a choicer manner, by rejecting any thing foreign to the spirit of elegance and refinement which should char acterize the landscape of the most tasteful country residence-a landscape in which all that is graceful and beautiful in nature is preserved-all her most perfect forms and most harmonious lines, but with that added refinement which high keeping and continual care confer on natural beauty, without impairing its innate spirit of freedom, or the truth and freshness of its intrinsic character."-Downing's Rural Essays, iv.] 622. Capital rule as to prospect.-Things unnstural.- Versailles. |
