On my arrival at Brighton, I found the same system already begun, by the preparation for a belt of shrubs close to the garden wall: and, in conformity to another fashion of modern gardening, there was to have been a coach-road, to enter by a pair of lodges, and to proceed to the house through a serpentine line of approach, as it is called. The principle on which this plan was suggested, arose from confounding the character of a garden* with that of a park; and it is hardly possible to give a more striking example of the absurdity of applying a general system to every situation. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that the acknowledged good taste of his Royal Highness should see the necessity of having recourse to new expedients; what these are, will appear in the following pages: but I shall candidly acknowledge, that, for many of them, I am indebted to the elegance and facility of the Prince's own invention, joined to a rapidity of conception and correctness of taste which I had never before witnessed.
*[This error is so common, that there are few places in which the character of a garden is preserved near the house; and, therefore, a detached place, called the flower garden, has been set apart, occasionally, at such an inconvenient distance, that it is seldom visited. Among those few in which the garden scenery has been admitted to form part of the landscape from the windows, I can only mention, Wilderness, Earl Camden; Bromley Hill, the Right Hon. Charles Long (now Colonel Long); St. Leonard's Hill, General Harcourt; Longleat, Marquis of Bath; and Ashridge, Earl Bridgewater. Out of some hundred places, these are all I can recollect where the views from the windows consist rather of garden than of park scenery.]
