extraordinary sensations; the middle part was merely planted with the lesser fruits, and dwarf trees, but on the opening of the door, the lofty trees of a fine grove appeared immediately over the opposite wall; the trees are still there, they are more distinctly and openly seen, but the striking impression is gone.Essay on the Picturesque, 1794. IN the public garden at Palermo, adjoining the road, I peacefully GOETHE passed the most pleasurable hours. It is the most marvellous (1749-1832). spot in the world. Though laid out in regular order, it is like fairy-land; planted no great time since, it sets us down amidst antiquity. Green parterres embrace foreign shrubs, lemon-espaliers arch themselves into comely leaf-shaded walks, lofty walls of oleander, gemmed with a thousand red clove-like blossoms, arrest the eye. Foreign trees entirely unknown to me, still leafless, probably from warmer climes, spread forth curious branches. A bench raised behind the level ground brings into view vegetation so wonderfully interwoven, and guides the gaze at last to great basins, wherein gold and silver fish dart fascinatingly about, now hiding under mossy reeds, now assembling again in shoals, lured by a bit of bread. Everywhere upon the plants appears a green that we are not used to see, now yellower, now bluer than with us. But that which threw over the whole the rarest grace was a hazy vapour, pervading everything uniformly with so striking effect, that objects but a few steps' distance behind one another, stood forth by a distinct shade of light blue from each other, so that their own colour was finally lost, or at least presented itself to the eye through a blue medium.-Italian Journey, (Sicily 1787).1 ADVANTAGES OF DILETTANTISM IN THE GARDEN-ART. Ideal in the Real. Striving after form in formless masses. 1 See Lewes's 'Life of Goethe,' for a charming description of his Garden. House at Weimar. Selection. Beautiful composition. To make a picture out of reality, in short, first entrance into art. A pure and completely beautiful surrounding always has a beneficial effect upon the company. HARM OF DILETTANTISM IN THE GARDEN-ART. The real is treated as a work of Fancy. Garden amateurism is pursuing something infinite :— 1. Because it is not definite and limited in idea. 2. Because the material, always accidental, is ever changing and ever resisting the idea. Garden-dilettantism often allows the nobler arts to serve it in an unworthy manner, and makes a plaything of their solid tendency. Furthers sentimental and fantastic Nullity. It dwarfs the sublime in Nature and neutralises it by imitation. It perpetuates the reigning degeneracy of the age by its desire to be unconditioned and lawless in Esthetics, to give way to arbitrary fancy, by not correcting itself like other arts and holding itself in check. The blending of Art and Nature. Its preference for appearances.-Ferneres über Kunst. RICHARD Greek scholar: 1784-1806, M.P. for Ludlow; 1814, Trustee of the British Museum, to which he bequeathed his collection of coins and ancient bronzes, and KNIGHT where his bust is placed; 1794, published The Landscape,' a didactic poem ; (1750-1824). united with Sir Uvedale Price in reacting against the extremes and exaggerations of the 'Landscape' School of Brown and Repton. June 26th, 1839.-Delbury. I rode to Dowton Castle on Monday-a gimcrack Castle and bad-house, built by Payne Knight, an epicurean Philosopher, who, after building the Castle went and lived in a lodge or cottage in the park there he died, not without suspicion of having put an end to himself, which would have been fully conformable to his notions. He was a sensualist in all ways, but a quiet and self-educated scholar. His property is : RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT 215 now in Chancery, because he chose to make his own will. The prospect from the windows is beautiful, and the walk through the wood overhanging the river Teme, surpasses any thing I have ever seen of the kind.-The Greville Memoirs. FOR this reason we require, immediately adjoining the dwellings of opulence and luxury, that every thing should assume its character; and not only be, but appear to be dressed and cultivated. In such situations, neat gravel walks, mown turf, and flowering plants and shrubs, trained and distributed by art, are perfectly in character; although, if the same buildings were abandoned, and in ruins, we should, on the same principle of consistency and propriety, require neglected paths, ragged lanes and wild uncultivated thickets; which are, in themselves, more pleasing, both to the eye and the imagination, but unfit accompaniments for objects, not only originally produced by art, but in which art is constantly employed and exhibited. . . On this account, I think the avowed character of art of the Italian Gardens preferable, in garden scenery, to the concealed one now in fashion; which is, in reality, rather counterfeited than concealed; for it appears in every thing; but appears in a dress that does not belong to it: at every step we perceive its exertions; but at the same time perceive that it has laboured much to effect little; and that while it seeks to hide its character, it only discovers it the more. In the decorations, however, of ground adjoining a house, much should depend upon the character of the house itself: if it be neat and regular, neatness and regularity should accompany it; but if it be rugged and picturesque, and situated amidst scenery of the same character, art should approach it with more caution: for though it be in itself an avowed work of art, yet the influence of time, with the accompaniments of trees and creepers may have given it a character of nature, which ought to be as little disturbed as is consistent with comfort: for, after all, the character of nature, is more pleasing than any that can be given by art. At all events, the character of dress and artificial neatness ought never to be suffered to encroach upon the park or the forest; where it is as contrary to propriety as it is to beauty; and where its intro duction by our modern landscape gardeners affords one of the most memorable instances of any recorded in the history of fashions, of the extravagant absurdity, with which an insatiate passion for novelty may infect a whole nation. By the old system of laying out ground, indeed, this incongruity was in a great degree obviated: for the house being surrounded by gardens, as uniform as itself, and only seen through vistas at right angles, every visible accompaniment was in union with it; and the systematic regularity of the whole discernible from every point of sight but when, according to the modern fashion, all around is levelled and thrown open; and the poor square edifice exposed alone, or with the accompaniment only of its regular wings and portico, amidst spacious lawns interspersed with irregular clumps or masses of wood, and sheets of water, I do not know a more melancholy object; it neither associates nor harmonizes with anything; and as the beauties of symmetry, which might appear in its regularity, are only perceived when that regularity is seen; that is, when the building is shown from a point of sight at right angles with one of the fronts, the man of taste takes care that it never shall be so shown; but that every view of it shall be oblique, from the tangent of a curve in a serpentine walk; from whence it appears neither quite regular, nor quite irregular, but with that sort of lame and defective uniformity which we see in an animal that has lost a limb. The view from one of these solitary mansions is still more dismal than that towards it: for, at the hall door, a boundless extent of open lawn presents itself in every direction, which the despairing visitant must traverse before he can get into any change of scenery and to complete the congruity of the whole, the clumps with which this monotonous tract is dotted, and the winding stream or canal, by which it is intersected, are made as neat and determinate as ever the ancient gardens were; which having been professedly a work of art, and an appendage to the house, the neatness and even formality of architecture were its proper characteristics; and when its terraces and borders were intermixed with vines and flowers (as I have seen them in Italian villas and in some old English gardens in the same style) the mixture of splendor, richness and neatness was beautiful and pleasing in the highest degree. But the modern art of landscape gardening, as it is called, takes away all natural enrichment, and adds none of its own; unless, indeed, meagre and formal clumps of trees, and still more formal patches of shrubs may be called enrichment. Why this art has been called landscape gardening, perhaps he, who gave it the title, may explain. I can see no reason unless it be the efficacy which it has shown in destroying landscapes, in which, indeed, it seems to be infallible; not one complete painter's composition being, I believe, to be found in any of the numerous, and many of them beautiful and picturesque spots, which it has visited in different parts of this island.—An Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste, 1805. I HOPE therefore that you will publish the system which I RT. HON. WILLIAM conceive you to have adopted, and vindicate to the art of WINDHAM laying out ground its true principles, which are wholly different (1750-1810). from those which these wild improvers (Payne Knight and Uvedale Price) would wish to introduce. Places are not to be laid out with a view to their appearance in a picture, but to their uses, and the enjoyment of them in real life; and their conformity to those purposes is that which constitutes their beauty: with this view, gravel walks and neat mown lawns, and in some situations, straight alleys, fountains, terraces, and for aught I know, parterres and cut hedges are in perfect good taste, and infinitely more conformable to the principles which form the basis of our pleasure in these instances, than the docks, and thistles, and litter and disorder, that may make a much better figure in a picture.Letter to Humphry Repton, on his controversy with Uvedale Price, 1794. -www |