Knight's terrace at Downton Vale

This, I apprehend, is the result of an experiment made by the author near his own mansion, where large fragments of stone were irregularly thrown amongst briers and weeds, to imitate the foreground of a picture. Can anything more strongly prove, that a landscape in nature and a landscape in a picture, are very different things: and that LANDSCAPE GARDENING is not PICTURE GARDENING? This I may fairly give as my answer to page 214, which I cannot but suppose directed to me. "Why this art has been called Landscape Gardening, perhaps he who gave it the title may explain. I can see no reason, unless it be the efficacy which it has shewn in destroying landscapes, in which, indeed, it seems to be infallible; not one* complete painter's composition being, I believe, to be found in any of the numerous, and many of them beautiful and picturesque spots, which it has visited in different parts of the island."

[See Downton Castle]