since the object of the preceding part of this book has been to treat of the influence of this principle generally and particularly, under an abstract point of view, and under that of application.

CHAPTER V.

PRINCIPLE OF VARIETY.

(906.) WHENEVER man seeks distraction from without, whether the pleasures of meditation are unknown to him, or thought fatigues him for a time, he feels the necessity of seeing a variety of objects. In the first case, he goes in quest of excitement, in order to escape from ennui; in the second, he is desirous of diverting his thoughts, at least for a time, into another channel. In both cases man flies monotony; a variety of external objects is what he desires. Finally, the artist, the enlightened amateur, and less cultivated minds, all seek variety in works of art and nature.

(907.) It is to satisfy this want that various colours in objects please more than a single colour, at least when these objects occupy a certain space; that our monuments have many accessory parts which are only ornaments; that in furniture we use many things which, without being useful, strictly speaking, please by their elegance of form, their colours, their brilliancy, &c. Assuredly, as I have endeavoured to show, it is the principle of variety which forms the essential distinction between landscape gardening and French gardening; for, as I have before said (819.), whoever walks in the former will notice objects disposed so as to excite in him, as far as possible, new sensations; whilst in the latter, he will find himself affected by a single and continuous impression; but I will add that, if this garden is of large and fine proportions, an idea of grandeur, perhaps even of sublimity, will be excited rather than by the landscape garden, which produces, especially on Frenchmen, an idea of the beautiful. In fact, the idea of the grand and of the sublime, determined by the eye, always reposes upon an idea of noble

and majestic grandeur, and hence a succession of other ideas is engendered, which only connect themselves with the external and actually visible world through the medium of the first. Such are the ideas of immensity, of boundless space, of the infinite, which are awakened in us by the view of the heavens sprinkled with brilliant stars in a dark night; such are also the idea of space suggested by the sight of the sea; the idea of force or power which gives motion to its waters; the idea of time or of succession, presented by the sight of waves which, each in its turn, break on the shore; the ideas relating to astronomy, and to navigation. Finally, such is the affinity even of these great ideas with the weakness of the being who, however, is able to conceive them!

The idea of the beautiful, determined by sight, results from a certain ensemble of varied and harmonious ideas, always more or less immediately connected with the objects that have occasioned them, so that this idea, resting on the contemplation of a certain number of affinities, which the eye perceives in a completely finished object, the mind is no longer under the impression of a single quality, or of a spectacle which, while vast, but little varied, suggests the idea of infinity. It is assuredly this idea of the infinite springing up in a solitude at the sight of a ruin, which renders such a sight more attractive to many minds than the finest modern structure; in fact, the sight of the latter does not, like the former, transport the imagination back to those distant times when this solitude was covered with structures, to lead it on to the conception that a day may perhaps arrive when the great edifices of the nation will be ruins!

I am not astonished that a man given up to meditation, and admiring the age of Louis XIV. (938.), should prefer those masses of trees at Versailles, so skilfully arranged at a suitable distance from the palace, to the bestarranged landscape garden elsewhere, which can never offer to the sight the imposing harmony of Lenôtre's composition. For, seen from the western façade, these gardens possess a grandeur which results from the fact of the eye discovering only dependent portions of a vast and unique composition. The space to the right and left of the spectator may perhaps appear confined, but by masses of vegetation in front it has all the vastness that may be desired, since the surface of the

ground is bounded only by the horizon. If the lover of variety should blame the monotony of this view, and should discover some truth in the Duc de St. Simon's opinion of Versailles, in despite of the very evident bias of its intelligent author, the lover of the grand will always admire the aspect of a powerful unity, which agrees so completely with all that we know of the court and of the person of Louis XIV. While I attach so much importance to the French garden, I must avow a preference for landscape gardening in every, or nearly every, case in which a private person wishes to lay out his grounds. It is also in this point of view that the interior of a gothic church with painted windows, admitting of fewer varied ornaments than the interior of churches with plain glass windows (573.), seems to me more favourable than the second to the power and unity of religious contemplation.

(908.) If the principle of variety recommends itself because it is contrary to monotony, it should be carefully restrained in its applications, because, even without falling into confusion, effects may be produced far less agreeable than if they had been more simple. One thing with which I have been forcibly struck, and which I have had frequent occasions of remarking in the associations of colours I have made, is, that although I employed coloured circles of an equal size placed in rectilineal series at the same distance from one another, that is to say, in conditions the most favourable to a distinct view (933., and following), I have observed that in employing more than three different colours, exclusive of white, black, and grey, the effect of the series was less satisfactory than when only two colours, properly combined with black or white, were employed; such is the reason for my preference of two colours to three in military uniforms.

It is also for this reason that plants composing a single line should not be much varied, and that everything which tends to group different objects, so as to render them more easy to be grasped, exercises a happy influence upon optical effects.

CHAPTER VI.

PRINCIPLE OF SYMMETRY.

(909.) It is very probable that our organisation, combining as it does two parts paired as identically as is possible in an organised being, enters very much into the pleasure that we obtain from the sight of symmetrical objects.

(910.) There are objects which it is necessary to present to the eye perfectly symmetrical, either because they are so essentially, as a vertebrated animal (mammal, bird, reptile, fish), a radiated animal (star-fish, sea-urchin), or because symmetry pleases us in the form of an object of art which we see isolated, as a column, a pyramid, a triumphal arch, a temple, &c.; and I may here remark that gothic churches are, for the most part, constructed upon a symmetrical plan.* Symmetry pleases also in a circular or elliptical border of flowers, the whole of which the eye takes in at a single glance (755. [A. b.], page 303).

Finally, a symmetrical disposition should be observed in the arrangement of many objects grouped around or before a principal object, as the arrangement of such a garden as that of the Tuileries, which has a breadth equal to the façade of the palace, or the arrangement of a much vaster garden which is co-ordinate to a great palace, such as that at Versailles.

(911.) When a whole is subdivided into symmetrical parts of a definite extent, we can, in many cases, without injury to the whole, vary each part without going beyond the point at which discord would arise between them. This is what has been done in the park at Versailles, with a portion called le miroir, a charming garden, when it is planted with flowers properly assorted.

* See the Chevalier Wiebeking's work, Les Cathédrales de Reims, de Yorck et les Plans exacts de quarante autres Eglises remarquables, &c., published at Munich in 1825.

(912.) The principle of symmetry appears to me valuable for obtaining a general effect from many objects analogous, but differing amongst themselves, like the varieties of one species, or co-general species, or even species of neighbouring genera, belonging to the same family.

(913.) If there are objects to which a symmetrical form is suited, to the exclusion of every other-if there are grounds which must be laid out symmetrically, in order to connect vegetable nature with a grand architectonic composition,there are also objects to which the symmetrical form is not so essential but that it can be dispensed with; and there are grounds which it is more suitable to lay out on the system of landscape gardening than according to the principle of symmetry, even when they are not designed for the sake of gratifying a taste for variety.

For example, whenever a mass of objects cannot be embraced at a single glance, because it occupies too much space, -or when ground which is made of planes differently placed in regard to one another, also even when this ground, being flat, is very irregular, and the buildings upon it are not placed as they should be, in a symmetrical composition,-it is convenient to throw aside the principle, not to carry out a system of irregularity, but to attain a pleasing distribution of objects, and even to have parts which, considered in detail, will appear less irregular than they would have done as a whole, if confined to a single plane.

(914.) It is in conformity with these ideas that we have subordinated the planting of masses in landscape gardening to principles which are very distinct from those absolute ideas of irregularity which some people maintain.

CHAPTER VII.

PRINCIPLE OF REPETITION.

(915.) THE repetition of an object, or of a series of objects, produces greater pleasure than the sight of a single object, or of a single series; but it must be clearly understood that we