Excerpt from Hints on Ornamental Gardening: Consisting of a Series of Designs for Garden Buildings, Useful and Decorative Gates, Fences, Railroads, &C. Accompanied by Observations on the Principles and Theory of Rural Improvement, Interspersed With Occasional Remarks on Rural Architecture

Although the love of rural scenery and the capacity to enjoy it, are universal and common to. Man, there seems to have existed from very early times, as general a desire, to controul the operations of nature when near the vicinity of his dwelling, and a zeal to apply the pictures of his fancy in substitution for its simple excellencies. The ancient records of gardening bespeak that its principles were not then sought in nature herself, nor was it the practice to assemble for its crea tion the chaster beauties of landscape, but rather, constraining them to assume fantastic arrangements, forms and effects, to treat nature as subservient to art, and so as to constitute features wholly unlike the surrounding scenery of the country. The gardens alluded to by classic authors were of this kind - and such of the ancients as prided themselves on excelling in the business of the garden, although not insensible to the beauties of nature when seated beyond the confines Of their abodes, rather founded their claims to admiration on the evidences of their geometrical skill in ornamenting their grounds, and in the labour and expense of perfecting them, than in cultivating the genuine materials of rural beauty; as if the profiision of graces with Which nature had surrounded them had created satiety, and that they were therefore no longer capable of estimating her charms.

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