f his mind and person as of his shrubberies
and his lawns.

A civilized country ought not to look like a savage one. We need not
have wild nature in front of our neatly finished porticos. Nothing can
be more strictly artificial than all architecture. It would be absurd to
erect an elegantly finished residence in the heart of a jungle. There
should be an harmonious gradation from the house to the grounds, and
true taste ought not to object to terraces of elegant design and
graceful urns and fine statues in the immediate neighbourhood of a noble
dwelling.

Undoubtedly as a general rule, the undulating curve in garden scenery is
preferable to straight lines or abrupt turns or sharp angles, but if
there should happen to be only a few yards between the outer gateway and
the house, could anything be more fantastical or preposterous than an
attempt to give the ground between them a serpentine irregularity? Even
in the most spacious grounds the walks should not seem too studiously
winding, as if the short turns were meant for no other purpose than to
perplex or delay the walker.[118] They should have a natural sweep, and
seem to meander rather in accordance with the nature of the ground and
the points to which they lead than in obedience to some idle sport of
fancy. They should not remind us of Gray's description of the divisions
of an old mansion:

Long passages that lead to nothing.

Foot-paths in small gardens need not be broader than will allow two
persons to walk abreast with ease. A spacious garden may have walks of
greater breadth. A path for one person only is inconvenient and has a
mean look.

I have made most of the foregoing observations in something of a spirit
of opposition to those Landscape gardeners who I think once carried a
true principle to an absurd excess. I dislike, as much as any one can,
the old topiary style of our remote ancestors, but the talk about free
nature degenerated at last into downright cant, and sheer extravagance;
the reformers were for bringing weeds and jungle right under our parlour
windows, and applied to an acre of ground those rules of Landscape
gardening which required a whole county for their proper
exemplification. It is true that Milton's Paradise had "no nice art" in
it, but then it was not a little suburban pleasure ground but a world.
When Milton alluded to private gardens, he spoke of their trimness.

Retired Leisure
That in _trim_ g