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Page 139:-
"cottage is no more, and the sycamore grove is fled. The
present owner has modernized a fine slope in the bosom of
the island into a formal garden. (An unpleasing contrast to
the natural simplicity and insular beauty of the place.)
What reason he had for adopting such a plan I shall not
enquire; much less shall I treat him with abuse for
executing it to his own fancy. The want of choice might
justify his having a garden on this island; but since it is
now in his power to have it elsewhere, I hope it will be his
pleasure, when he re-visits the place, to restore the island
to its native state of pastoral simplicity and rural
elegance, by its removal."
The whole of this outcry against regularity seems to me to
have arisen from that cant style of painting which Gilpin
and some others have introduced into writing.Not a tree, a
shrub, or an old wall, but these gentlemen take measure of
by the painter's scale: A poor harmless cow can hardly go to
drink, but they find fault with a want of grace in her
attitude; or an horse drive away the flies with his tail,
but these critics immediately find fault with the too-great
quickness of his motions. Whoever examines those "abortive
nothings," which Mr Gilpin calls Landscapes, will hardly be
able to trace one view, how well soever he may by acquainted
with it: for my own part, they put me in mind of nothing so
much a those landscapes and figures which boys fancy they
see in the sky at sun-set, or in the fire on a frosty
evening.
With all that can be said against regular buildings, we must
consider their advantages: convenience is surely a material
one, and if we consider them in a picturesque light, I
cannot help thinking that an elegant mansion, just peeping
through the surrounding trees, is as beautiful an object as
any in a landscape. Besides, beauty is of many kinds, and
one of them consists expressly in regularity; for though a
street of houses, every one of which resembles another, is
no very striking scene; yet houses, some old, some new, some
lofty, and some low, all standing together, give us an idea
of nothing but the most unpleasing confusion. Mr English
might wish for both pleasure and kitchen-gardens on this
hermitage, whither he meant, when he first purchased it, to
retire from the bustling croud of the metropolis. Was he to
take boat and sail for a walk in his garden when he had ten
minutes to spare? Was he, when he wanted to read a few pages
in his garden, to travel two miles to do it? Was his
cook to fetch every handful of parsley, or other things of
that kind, cross the Lake, perhaps in a high wind? I have
with pleasure fed upon delicious fruit pulled upon that
island, the very spot where two years before grew nothing
but briers and thorns.
It is naturally a bad soil, being little else than sand;
except a small spot in the middle, which is an entire
peat moss, and used to have gale growing upon it. I
was at my last visit so very much disgusted, (to use
Mr Hutchinson's words) at not finding the fruit trees here,
that I heartily wish his pen, (which had been the sole
reason of their being destroyed) in the fire.
Had Mr Smith or any other painter who visited this place
before Mr English's improvements, seen it afterwards, he
would have found these alterations no detriment to the
landscape: the bird's eye-view was certainly much improved
by the variety thus introduced, as any one might at once
perceive who viewed it from the eminence behind, or
South-East of Bowness. Here the garden and house full in
front of the view made an agreeable contrast to the woody
and uncultivated scenes, where were every where else
displayed. All the other islands, and the whole shore on
both sides, are covered with wood, (Harrow Slack alone
excepted,) which is partly hidden by the great island. Can
there be any impropriety in varying this uniformity with one
single spot of cultivation? Surely not: beauty is of too
general a nature to be always confined within rules. Give me
leave to borrow a description of this delightful place: "If
one could conjure a city upon it, I should persuade myself
(however it might vary the character or deviate from certain
limited and rigid conceptions of rural elegance,)
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