1458. With respect to the modern style, considered as including what belongs to the conveniences of a country residence, as well as the art of creating landscapes, Pope has laid down the three following principles: 1st. To study and display natural beauties; 2d. To conceal defects; and 3d. Never to lose sight of common sense. Whately concurs in these principles, stating the business of a landscape-gardener to be 'to select and to apply whatever is great, elegant, or characteristic' in the scenery of nature or art; 'to discover and to show all the advantages of the place upon which he is employed; to supply its defects, to correct its faults, and to improve its beauties.' Landscape-gardening, he observes, 'is as superior to landscape painting, as a reality to a representation: it is an exertion of fancy, a subject for taste; and being released now from the restraints of regularity, and enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic convenience, the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble scenes of nature are all within its province: for it is no longer confined to the spots from which it borrows its name, but regulates also the disposition and embellishment of a park or extensive pleasure-grounds; and the business of a gardener is to select and to apply whatever is great, elegant, or characteristic in any of them; to discover and to show all the advantages of the place upon which he is employed; to supply its defects, to correct its faults, and to improve its beauties. For all these operations, the objects of nature are still his only materials. His first inquiry, therefore, must be into the means by which those effects are attained in nature which he is to produce, and into those properties in the objects of nature which should determine him in the choice and arrangement of them.' (Observations on Modern Gardening, p. 1.)
