OBSERVATIONS on Modern Gardening, by the late Mr. Whateley, contain some remarks peculiarly applicable to the improvement of woods, and so clearly expressive of my own sentiments, that I beg to introduce the ample quotation inserted in the note, * especially as the annexed drawings [figs. 67 and 68] convey specimens of these rules, which require but little further elucidation. *[The outline of a wood may sometimes be great, and always be beautiful; the first requisite is irregularity. That a mixture of trees and underwood should form a long straight line, can never be natural, and a succession of easy sweeps and gentle rounds, each a portion of a greater or less circle, composing altogether a line literally serpentine, is, if possible, worse: it is but a number of regularities put together in a disorderly manner, and equally distant from the beautiful, both of art and of nature. The true beauty of an outline consists more in breaks, than in sweeps; rather in angles, than rounds; in variety, not in succession. The outline of a wood is a continued line, and small variations do not save it from the insipidity of sameness; one deep recess, one bold prominence, has more effect than twenty little irregularities: that one divides the line into parts, but no breach is thereby made in its unity; a continuation of wood always remains, the form of it only is altered, and the extent is increased: the eye, which hurries to the extremity of whatever is uniform, delights to trace a varied line through all its intricacies, to pause from stage to stage, and to lengthen the progess. The parts must not, however, on that account, be multiplied till they are too minute to be interesting, and so numerous as to create confusion. A few large parts should be strongly distinguished in their forms, their directions, and their situations; each of these may afterwards be decorated with subordinate varieties, and the mere growth of the plants will occasion some irregularity; on many occasions more will not be required. "Every variety in the outline of a wood must be a prominence or a recess; breadth in either is not so important as length to the one, and depth to the other; if the former ends in an angle, or the latter diminishes to a point, they have more force than a shallow dent or a dwarf excrescence, how wide soever: they are greater deviations from the continued line which they are intended to break, and their effect is to enlarge the wood itself. An inlet into a wood seems to have been cut, if the opposite points of the entrance tally, and that shew of art depreciates its merit: but a difference only in the situation of those points, by bringing one more forward than the other, prevents the appearance, though their forms be similar. Other points which distinguish the great parts, should, in general, be strongly marked; a short turn has more spirit in it than a tedious circuity; and a line, broken by angles, has a precision and firmness which in an undulated line are wanting: the angles should, indeed, be a little softened; the rotundity of the plant, which forms them, is sometimes sufficient for that purpose; but if they are mellowed down too much they lose all meaning. "Every variety of outline, hitherto mentioned, may be traced by the underwood alone; but, frequently, the same effects may be produced with more ease, and much more beauty, by a few trees standing out from the thicket, and belonging, or seeming to belong, to the wood, so as to make a part of its figure."]
