artift, except envy. Though his own defigns were more chafte and claffic than Kent's, he entertained him in his house till his death, and was more ftudious to extend his friend's fame than his own. He did not confine his munificence to his own houses and gardens, but fpent great fums in contributing to public works, and was known to chuse, that the expence should fall on himself, rather than that his country fhould be deprived of fome beautiful edifices.

• His enthusiasm, fays Mr. Walpole, for the works of Inigo Jones was fo active, that he repaired the church of Covent Garden becaufe it was the production of that great mafter, and purchased a gateway at Beaufort-garden in Chelfea, and tranfported the identical ftones to Chifwick with religious attachment. With the fame zeal for pure architecture, he affitted Kent in publishing the defigns for Whitehall, and gave a beautiful edition of the antique baths from the drawings of Palladio, whofe papers he procured with great coft. Befides his works on his own eftate at Lonfborough in Yorkshire, he new fronted his houfe in Piccadilly, built by his father, and added the grand colonade within the court. As we have few famples of architecture more antique and impofing than that colonade, I cannot help mentioning the effect it had on my felf. I had not only never feen it, be had never heard of it, at least with any attention, when foon after my return from Italy, I was invited to a ball at Burlington-house. As I paffed under the gate by night, it could not strike me. At day-break, looking out of the window to fee the fun rife, I was furprised with the viñion of the colonade that fronted me. It feemed one of those edifices in Fairy Tales that are raised by genii in a night's time.

His Lordship's houfe at Chifwick, the idea of which is borrowed from a well-known villa of Palladio, is a model of tafte, though not without faults, fome of which are occafioned by too ftrict adherence to rules and fymmetry. Such are, too many correfpondent doors in fpaces fo contracted; chimnies between windows, and, which is worfe, windows between chimnies; and veftibules, however beautiful, yet too little fecured from the damps of this climate. The truffes that fupport the cieling of the corner drawing-room are beyond measure maffive, and the ground apartment is rather a diminutive catacomb, than a library in a northern, latitude. Yet these blemishes, and Lord Hervey's wit, who faid the house was too small to inhabit, and too large to hang to one's watch, cannot depreciate the taste that reigns in the whole. The larger court, dignified by picturefque cedars and the claffic fcenery of the fmall court that unites the old and new house, are more worth feeing than many fragments of ancient grandeur, which our travellers vifit under all the dangers attendant on long voyages. The garden is in the Italian tafte, but divefted of conceits, and far preferable to every ftyle that reigned till our late improvements. The buildings are heavy, and not equal to the purity of the houfe. The lavish quantity of urns and sculpture behind the garden front should be retrenched.

Other works defigned by Lord Burlington were, the dormitory at Westminster fchool, the affembly-room at York, Lord Harring

ton's

ton's at Petersham, the Duke of Richmond's houfe at Whitehall, and General Wade's in Cork-ftreet. Both the latter were ill contrived and inconvenient; but the latter has fo beautiful a front, that Lord Chesterfield faid as the General could not live in at his eafe, he had better take a house over against it, and look at it. These are mere details relating to this illustrious perfon's works. better fecured in Mr. Pope's epistle to him.

His genuine praife is

I ought not to omit, that his Countess Lady Dorothy Saville, had no less attachment to the arts than her Lord. She drew in crayons, and fucceeded admirably in likeneffes; but working with too much rapidity, did not do juftice to her genius. She had an uncommon talent too for caricatura,'

The laft perfon of whom our Author gives an account in this chapter is William Kent, who was a painter, an architect, and the father of modern gardening. In the first character, we are told, he was below mediocrity; in the fecond, he was a reftorer of the science: in the laft, an original, and the inventor of an art that realifes painting, and improves nature. Mahomet, fays Mr. Walpole, imagined an Elyfium, but Kent crea

ted many.

To compenfate for his bad paintings,' continues our Author, he had an excellent tafte for ornaments, and gave defigns for most of the furniture at Houghton, as he did for feveral other perfons. Yet chafte as thefe ornaments were, they were often unmeafurably ponderous. His chimney-pieces, though lighter than thofe of Inigo, whom he imitated, are frequently heavy; and his conftant introduction of pediments and the members of architecture over doors, and within rooms, was disproportioned and cumbrous. Indeed, I much queftion whether the Romans admitted regular architecture within their houfes; at least the discoveries at Herculaneum tefiify, that a light and fantastic architecture, of a very Indian air, made a common decoration of private apartments. Kent's ftyle, however, predominated authoritatively during his life; and his oracle was fo much confulted by all who affected tafle, that nothing was thought complete without his afliftance. He was not only confulted for furniture, as frames of pictures, glaffes, tables, chairs, &c. but for plate, for a barge, for a cradle. And fo contemptuous was fashion, that two great ladies prevailed on him to make defigns for their birthday gowns. The one he dreffed in a petticoat decorated with columns of the five orders; the other like a bronze, in a copper-coloured fattin, with ornaments of gold.

Such of the drawings as he defigned for Gay's fables, have fome truth and nature; but whoever would fearch for his faults, will find an ample crop in a very favourite work of his, the Prints for Spenfer's Faery Queen. As the drawings were exceedingly cried up by his admirers, and difappointed the public in proportion, the blame was thrown on the engraver; but fo far unjustly, that though ill executed, the wretchednefs of drawing, the total ignorance of perfpective, the want of variety, the disproportion of the buildings, and the aukwardness of the attitudes, could have been the fault of the inventor only. There are figures iffuing from cottages not fo

high as their shoulders, caftles in which the towers could not contain an infant, and knights who hold their fpears as men do who are lifting a load fideways. The landscapes are the only tolerable parts, and yet the trees are feldom other than young beeches, to which Kent as a planter was accustomed.

But in architecture, his tafte was defervedly admired; and without enumerating particulars, the staircase at Lady Ifabella Finch's in Berkeley-fquare is as beautiful a piece of fcenery, and, confidering the fpace, of art, as can be imagined. The Temple of Venus at Stowe has fimplicity and merit, and the great room at Mr. Pelham's, in Arlington-street, is as remarkable for magnificence. I do not admire equally the room ornamented with marble and gilding at Kenfington. The ftaircase there is the leaft defective work of his pencil; and his ceilings in that palace, from antique paintings, which he first happily introduced, fhew that he was not too ridiculously prejudiced in favour of his own historic compofitions.

• Of all his works, his favourite production was the Earl of Leicefter's houfe at Holkam in Norfolk. The great hall, with the flight of Reps at the upper end, in which he propofed to place a coloffal Jupiter, was a noble idea. How the defigns of that house, which I have feen an hundred times in Kent's original drawings, came to be published under another name, and without the lightest mention of the real architect, is beyond comprehenfion. The bridge, the temple, the great gateway, all built, I believe, the two firft certainly, under Kent's own eye, are alike paffed off as the works of another; and yet no man need envy or deny him the glory of having oppreffed a triumphal arch with an Egyptian pyramid. Holkam has its faults, but they are Kent's faults, and marked with all the peculiarities of his ftyle.'

The laft chapter of this volume contains the history of modern gardening, and is the most entertaining part of a very entertaining work. Mr. Walpole appears to have taken great pains upon it, and it does no fmall honour both to his tafte and his judgment. He introduces it with obferving, that gardening was probably one of the firft arts which fucceeded to that of building houses, and naturally attended property and individual poffeffion;- that the word garden has at all times paffed for whatever was understood by that term in different countries; but that it meant no more than a kitchen-garden, or orchard, for feveral centuries, he thinks, is evident from thofe few defcriptions that are preferved of the most famous gardens of antiquity. That of Alcinous, in the Odyffey, is the most renowned in the heroic times; and yet that boafted paradife, when divested of harmonious Greek and bewitching poetry, was only a fmall orchard and vineyard, with fome beds of herbs, and two fountains that watered them, inclofed with a quickset hedge. The whole compass of this pompous garden inclofed-four acres; the trees were apples, figs, pomegranates, pears, olives, and vines. We are fure, therefore, our Author fays, that as late as Homer's age, an inclosure of four acres, comprehending orchard, vineyard, REV. March 1781.

and

and kitchen-garden, was a ftretch of luxury the world at that time had never beheld.

As to the hanging gardens of Babylon, though we are not acquainted with their difpofition or contents, we are very certain, our Author fays, of what they were not; he means they must have been trifling, of no extent, and a wanton inftance of expence and labour. In other words, they were what fumptuous gardens have been in all ages till the prefent, unnatural, enriched by art, poffibly with fountains, ftatues, balustrades, and fummer-houses, and were any thing but verdant and rural.

Our Author goes on to fhew how naturally and infenfibly the idea of a kitchen-garden flid into that which has for fo many ages been peculiarly termed a garden, and by our ancestors in this country diftinguished by the name of a pleafure-garden.

...

A fquare piece of ground, fays Mr. Walpole, was originally parted off in early ages for the ufe of the family.. to exclude cattle and afcertain the property, it was feparated from the fields by a hedge. As pride and defire of privacy increafed, the inclosure was dignified by walls; and in climes where fruits were not lavifhed by the ripening glow of nature and foil, fruit-t.zes were affifted and fheltered from furrounding winds by the like expedient; for the inundation of luxuries which have fwelled into general neceffities, have almost all taken their fource from the fimple fountain of reason.

• When the custom of making fquare gardens inclofed with walls was thus established, to the exclufion of nature and profpect, pomp and folitude combined to call for fomething that might enrich and enliven the infipid and unanimated partition. Fountains, firft invented for ufe, which grandeur loves to disguise and throw out of the queftion, received embellishments from coftly marbles, and at laft, to contradict utility, toffed their wafte of waters into air in spouting columns. Art, in the hands of rude man, had at firft been made a fuccedaneum to nature; in the hands of oftentatious wealth, it became the means of oppofing nature; and the more it traversed the march of the latter, the more nobility thought its power was demonftrated. Canals measured by the line were introduced in lieu of meandring streams, and terraffes were hoisted aloft in oppofition to the facile flopes that imperceptibly unite the valley to the hill. Baluftrades defended thefe precipitate and dangerous elevations, and flights of fteps rejoined them to the fubjacent flat, from which the terras had been dug. Vafes and sculpture were added to these unneceffary balconies, and ftatues furnished the lifelefs fpot with mimic reprefentations of the excluded fons of men. Thus difficulty and expence were the conftituent parts of thofe fumptuous and felfifh folitudes; and every improvement that was made, was but a step farther from nature. The tricks of water-works to wet the unwary, not to refresh the panting fpectator, and parterres embroidered in patterns like a petticoat, were but the childish endeavours of fashion and novelty to reconcile greatnefs to what it had furfeited on. To crown thefe impotent difplays of falfe tafte, the fheers were applied to the lovely wildness of form with which nature has diftinguished each va

rious fpecies of tree and Thrub. The venerable oak, the romantic beech, the useful elm, even the afpiring circuit of the lime, the regular round of the chefaut, and the almoft moulded orange-tree, were corrected by fuch fantastic admirers of fymmetry. The compafs and fquare were of more ufe in plantations than the nursery-man. The measured walk, the quincunx, and the etoile, impofed their unfatisfying famenefs on every royal and noble garden. Trees were headed, and their fides pared away; many French groves feem green chefts fet upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours, and fummer-houses, terminated every viflo; and fymmetry, even where the space was too large to permit its being remarked at one view, was fo effential, that, as Pope obferved,

each alley has a brother,'

And half the garden juft reflects the other. Knots of flowers were more defenfibly fubjected to the fame regularity. Leifure, as Milton expreffed it,

in trim gardens took his pleasure.

In the garden of Marshal de Biron at Paris, confifting of fourteen acres, every walk is buttoned on each fide by lines of flower-pots, which fucceed in their seasons. When I faw it, there were nine thou fand pots of Afters, or la Reine Marguerite.'

Were we to lay before our Readers whatever is curious in this hiftory of modern gardening, we must tranfcribe the wholes we shall content ourselves therefore with inferting part of what Mr. Walpole fays concerning Mr. Kent.

The great principles on which he worked were perspective, and light and shade. Groupes of trees broke too uniform or too extenfive a lawn; evergreens and woods were opposed to the glare of the champaign; and where the view was lefs fortunate, or fo much expofed as to be beheld at once, he blotted out fome parts by thick shades, to divide it into variety, or to make the richest scene more enchanting by referving it to a farther advance of the fpectator's step. Thus, felecting favourite objects, and veiling deformities by fcreens of plantation; fometimes allowing the rudeft wafte to add its foil to the richest theatre, he realized the compofitions of the greatest mafters in painting. Where objects were wanting to animate his horizon, his tafle as an architect could beflow immediate termination. His buildings, his feats, his temples, were more the works of his pencil than of his compaffes. We owe the restoration of Greece and

the diffufion of architecture, to his fkill in landscape.

But of all the beauties he added to the face of this beautiful country, none furpaffed his management of water. Adieu to canals, circular basons, and cafcades tumbling down marble fteps, that laft abfurd magnificence of Italian and French villas. The forced elevation of cataracts was no more. The gentle stream was taught to ferpentize, feemingly at its pleasure, and where difcontinued by dif ferent levels, its courfe appeared to be concealed by thickets properly interfperfed, and glittered again at a distance where it might be fuppofed naturally to arrive. Its borders were fmoothed, but preferved their waving irregularity. A few trees fcattered here and

O 2

there