A painter's landscape depends upon his management of light and shade: if these be too smoothly blended with each other, the picture wants force; if too violently contrasted, it is called hard. The light and shade of natural landscape require no less to be studied than that of painting. The shade of a landscape gardener is wood, and his lights proceed either from a lawn, from water, or from buildings. If, on the lawn, too many single trees be scattered, the effect becomes frittered, broken, and diffuse; on the contrary, if the general surface of the lawn be too naked, and the outline of the woods form an uniform heavy boundary, between the lawn and the horizon, the eye of taste will discover an unpleasing harshness in the composition, which no degree of beauty, either in the shape of the ground, or in the outline of the woods, can entirely counteract. In this state, the natural landscape, like an unfinished picture, will appear to want the last touches of the master: this would be remedied on the canvas, in proportion as the picture became more highly finished; but, on the ground, it can only be effected by taking away many trees in the front of the wood, leaving some few individually and more distinctly separated from the rest: this will give the finishing touches to the outline, where no other defect is apparent.
