There is no department of Landscape Gardening which appears to have been less understood in this country than the management of water. Although there have not been many attempts made in this way, yet the occasional efforts that have been put forth in various parts of the country, in the shape of square, circular, and oblong pools of water, indicate a state of knowledge extremely meagre, in the art of Landscape Gardening. The highest scale to which these pieces of water rise in our estimation is that of respectable horse-ponds;-beautiful objects they certainly are not. They are generally round or square, with perfectly smooth, flat banks on every side, and resemble in tameness and insipidity, a huge basin set down in the middle of a green lawn. They are even, in most cases, denied the advantage of shade, except perhaps occasionally a few straggling trees can be said to fulfil that purpose; for richly tufted margins, and thickets of overhanging shrubs, are accompaniments rare indeed.* (* Simple and easy as would appear the artificial imitation of these variations of nature, yet to an unpractised hand and a tasteless mind, nothing is really more difficult. To produce meagre right lines and geometrical forms is extremely easy in any of the fine arts, but to give the grace, spirit, and variety of nature, requires both tasteful perception and some practice; hence, in the infancy of any art, the productions are characterized by extreme meagreness and simplicity;-of which the first efforts to draw the human figure or to form artificial pieces of water, are good examples. Brown, who was one of the early practitioners of the modern style abroad, and who just saw far enough to lay aside the ancient formal method, without appreciating nature sufficiently to be willing to take her for his model, once disgraced half of the finest places in England with his tame, bald pieces of artificial water, and round, formal clumps of trees. Mr. Knight, in his elegant poem, "The Landscape," spiritedly rebuked this practice in the following lines:- "Shaved to the brink, our brooks are taught to flow Where no obtruding leaves or branches grow: While clumps of shrubs bespot each winding vale Open alike to every gleam and gale: Each secret haunt and deep recess display'd, And intricacy banished with its shade. Hence, hence ! thou haggard fiend, however call'd, The meagre genius of the bare and bald; Thy spade and mattock here at length lay down, And follow to the tomb, thy favorite, Brown; Thy favorite Brown, whose innovating hand First dealt thy curses o'er this fertile land; First taught the walk in spiral forms to move, And from their haunts the secret Dryads drove; With clumps bespotted o'er the mountain's side, And bade the stream 'twixt banks close-shaven glide; Banish'd the thickets of high tow'ring wood Which hung reflected o'er the glassy flood.")
