PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Ir is a salutary axiom, especially in this book-making age, that no volume should be sent before the public without something beyond a private reason for its appearance. It requires to be shown that other people have an interest to be served by it, and that the author's own pleasure or advantage is not alone consulted.

But even this plea, however well made out, will not be a sufficient or satisfactory excuse for publication, unless the work be very erudite or far in advance of the times, and calculated to benefit future generations. For an ordinary volume, on a common subject, the additional justification of being adapted and required for the use of large numbers of the people is demanded.

How far, then, these requirements can be substantiated in reference to the present unassuming little essay, the reader will easily be able to judge when its origin and purport are explained.

Having spent a good deal of time in passing through the suburbs of large towns, (particularly the metropolis,) the author, in common with many others whom he has had the opportunity of conversing with, has been very much impressed with the incongruity and dullness observable in the majority of small

gardens, and been led strongly to wish that the general appearance of such districts were more gratifying to the passers-by, and the arrangement of individual gardens more productive of pleasure to the several occupants. There is such a humanising and elevating influence about everything that is really beautiful, whether in Art or Nature, that it is almost impossible for the observant wayfarer to stumble upon such objects without being cheered and benefited; while their effect on those who have them daily beneath their eye is of a still deeper kind.

From the author's every-day intercourse with gentlemen who are either laying out new grounds, or are seeking to amend errors in design formerly committed, he is also enabled to perceive that sound and useful information is greatly wanted on the subject of landscape-gardening, and that to this defect is mainly attributable the deformities so lamentably frequent. He feels certain, moreover, that other landscape-gardeners will bear him out in the assertion, that their services are more employed to remedy irregularities which have been fallen into for want of due consideration and enlightenment, than to furnish entirely new designs. And the difficulty and expense of rectifying such errors can scarcely be over-estimated. It is wisely ordained that while a truly beautiful object will yield permanent and increasing delight, everything of a contrary nature is nearly sure, at some period or other, to pall and disgust the mind.

As far as the writer's own observation has extended,—and he has reason to believe that is a fair criterion of the real facts of the case, there is no want of appreciation, among the classes for whom this work is intended, of what is tasteful and elegant in gardening. Most persons are able to admire a chaste and beautiful garden when they see it. What is rather required is

something or some one to develop and guide their tastes, and direct them to fitting objects.

On all these accounts, then, and as a humble but earnest effort to supply these demands, the book now submitted has been written. It is clearly required by the multitude, for how few there are among the middle classes who do not possess a small garden. And the very extreme of smallness will not exclude a place from the beneficent influence of art; which is, perhaps, all the more necessary and powerful in proportion as the limits become more contracted. Still, a garden varying in extent from a quarter of an acre to four or five acres, and either wholly without an accompanying field, or having one that comprises from one to twenty-five acres, is what has been chiefly kept in view.

Nor will places of greater size and more pretension than have been actually contemplated in the outline of the work, be altogether beyond its range. Unambitious as it is in its title and leading object, it may not be without interest or use to the proprietor of a large domain. In its radical principles, Art is essentially the same, whether it apply to a great or a little object; and, relieved of whatever is peculiar in its reference to small places, (this being distinctly pointed out, where it is requisite to do so,) the points of which the book prominently treats are such as embrace both extensive and limited estates indiscriminately. The author's hope is, consequently, while writing for a large and particular section of the community, not entirely to shut out a smaller but higher or more wealthy class.

The work of the late indefatigable Mr. Loudon, on Suburban Gardening, being somewhat of the nature of the present more restricted production, may be mentioned with the greatest respect, as a voluminous and ample treatise on everything

relating to the subject. The book now submitted covers but a fragment of the same field, without, it is believed, at all trenching on the province of its predecessor; it having been the aim to avoid, as far as possible, travelling over beaten and frequented ground. The price and portableness of this volume will further place it at an immense distance from whatever has preceded it.

Such being, in brief, the nature, object, and occasion of the essay which follows, a few words only remain to be said on its materials and execution. There is nothing of egotism (certainly nothing intentional) in the remark that these pages have sprung out of the author's own reflection and observation, and have often been jotted down of an evening, or during a journey, as the result of daily experience. It is very likely that a more finished, and comprehensive, and readable book might have been produced by the use of frequent quotation and copious illustration from other and less easily attainable works. This, however, was no part of the original plan; though it should be added, that since its completion, the best books on the art have been glanced over, and a few valuable hints, which have been mostly acknowledged, gleaned from Sir Uvedale Price, Mr. Repton, and Mr. Loudon. The work of Sir U. Price on "the picturesque," is probably the most valuable thing of the kind in our language. To have collected more from these, or Mr. Gilpin, or any other authority, would have entirely altered the limits and intention

of the essay.

At the outset of his task, it was the author's purpose to have illustrated the volume with a number of woodcuts, showing how the various suggestions might be actually carried out, and supplying designs for a few gardens of different sizes in the two principal styles. Well-selected lists of the several tribes of