"but not very steep. The length of the house, "where the best rooms and of most use or plea"sure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden; "the great parlour opens into the middle of a "terrace gravel walk that lies even with it, and "which may lie, as I remember, about three "hundred paces long, and broad in proportion; "the border set with standard laurels and at large "distances, which have the beauty of orange trees "out of flower and fruit. From this walk are "three descents by many stone steps, in the middle "and at each end, into a very large parterre. "This is divided into quarters by gravel-walks, "and adorned with two fountains and eight statues "in the several quarters. At the end of the terras"walk are two summer-houses, and the sides of "the parterre are ranged with two large cloisters open to the garden, upon arches of stone, and ending with two other summer-houses even "with the cloisters, which are paved with stone, "and designed for walks of shade, there being "none other in the whole parterre. Over these "two cloisters are two terraces covered with lead 4 "and fenced with balusters; and the passage into "these airy walks is out of the two summer-houses "at the end of the first terrace-walk. The cloister facing the south is covered with vines, and "would have been proper for an orange-house, " and the other for myrtles or other more common

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greens,

and had, I doubt not, been cast for that 66 purpose, if this piece of gardening had been then "in as much vogue as it is now.

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"FROM the middle of this parterre is a descent by many steps flying on each side of a grotto "that lies between them, covered with lead and

flat, into the lower garden, which is all fruit"trees ranged about the several quarters of a wil"derness which is very shady; the walks here are "all green, the grotto embellished with figures of "shell rock-work, fountains, and water-works. "If the hill had not ended with the lower garden, " and the wall were not bounded by a common

way that goes through the park, they might have "added a third quarter of all greens; but this "want is supplied by a garden on the other side

"the house, which is all of that sort, very wild,

shady, and adorned with rough rock-work and "fountains.

"THIS Was Moor-park when I was acquainted "with it, and the sweetest place, I think, that I "have seen in my life, either before or since, at home or abroad."

'I WILL make no farther remarks on this description. Any man might design and build as 'sweet a garden, who had been born in and never

⚫ stirred out of Holborn. It was not peculiar to • Sir William Temple to think in that manner. 'How many Frenchmen are there who have seen our gardens, and still prefer natural flights of steps and shady cloisters covered with lead! Le 'Nautre, the architect of the groves and grottos ' at Versailles, came hither on a mission to improve our taste. He planted St. James's and • Greenwich Parks-no great monuments of his

⚫ invention.

To do farther justice to Sir William Temple, I must not omit what he adds. "What I have "said of the best forms of gardens, is meant only of "such as are in some sort regular; for there may "be other forms wholly irregular, that may, "aught I know, have more beauty than any of the "others; but they must owe it to some extraordi

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for

nary dispositions of nature in the seat, or some

great race of fancy or judgement in the contri"vance, which may reduce many disagreeing parts "into some figure, which shall yet, upon the whole, "be very agreeable. Something of this I have

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seen in some places, but heard more of it from "others, who have lived much among the Chinese, a people whose way of thinking seems to lie as "wide of ours in Europe as their country does. "Their greatest reach of imagination is employed "in contriving figures, where the beauty shall be

great and strike the eye, but without any order "or disposition of parts, that shall be commonly "or easily observed. And though we have hardly "any notion of this sort of beauty, yet they have a "particular word to express it; and where they "find it hit their eye at first sight, they say the Sharawadgi is fine or is admirable, or any such expression of esteem :-but I should hardly "advise any of these attempts in the figure of gardens among us: they are adventures of too "hard atchievement for any common hands; " and though there may be more honour if they "succeed well, yet there is more dishonour, if they fail, and it is twenty to one they will; whereas "in regular figures, it is hard to make any great "and remarkable faults.”

• FORTUNATELY Kent and a few others were 'not quite so timid, or we might still be going up ⚫ and down stairs in the open air.

'It is true, we have heard much lately, as Sir • William Temple did, of irregularity and imi⚫tations of nature in the gardens or grounds of the 'Chinese. The former is certainly true: they are as whimsically irregular as European gardens are formally uniform, and unvaried: but, with regard to nature, it seems as much avoided, as in ⚫ the squares and oblongs, and straight lines of our

ancestors. An artificial perpendicular rock, starting out of a flat plain, and connected with nothing, often pierced through in various places, ' with oval hollows, has no more pretension to be deemed natural, than a lineal terrace, or a par'terre. The late Mr. Joseph Spence, who had • both taste and zeal for the present style, was so persuaded of the Chinese Emperor's pleasureground being laid out on principles resembling ours, that he translated and published, under the ' name of Sir Harry Beaumont, a particular account of that inclosure from the Collection of the Letters "of the Jesuits. I have looked it over, and, except a determined irregularity, can find nothing in it

6

that gives me any idea of attention being paid to 'nature. It is of vast circumference, and contains * 200 palaces, besides as many contiguous for the eunuchs, all gilt, painted, and varnished. There ⚫ are raised hills from 20 to 60 feet high, streams ' and lakes, and one of the latter five miles round. These waters are passed by bridges:-but even ⚫ their bridges must not be straight-they serpen'tine as much as the rivulets, and are sometimes so long as to be furnished with resting places, ⚫ and begin and end with triumphal arches. Me'thinks a straight canal is as rational at least as a meandering bridge. The colonades undulate in ⚫ the same manner. In short, this pretty gaudy scene is the work of caprice and whim, and,