Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

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HAMPTON COURT
circular design was not destroyed. George III.
yielded to the rage for landscape, and invited
" Capability Brown " to reconstruct the gardens; but
he had the wisdom to decline the task. It would
have been impossible to combine at Hampton Court
the merits of the two schools. The architecture of
Wren was made to combine with the gardening of
Le Notre; and the " noble art of picturesque gardening,
which has given, as it were, a new tint to
the complexion of nature, and a new outline to the
physiognomy of the universe" — to quote Peacock's
happy creation " Mr. Milestone "— would have been
singularly out of place between the classical east
front and the Long Water. But the more modern
fashion has unhappily not been without effect, and
the mania for "bedding out" has infected even the
conservatives of this ancient place. But what little
has been done, can be, and is being undone. The
House Park, as well as Bushey, may please to-day, as
they pleased a century or two centuries ago. In the
great fountain garden we may still very fairly see
the design as William III. left it; while the private
garden, with its pretty borders of old English
flowers, its fine grass walks, and its terraces, shows
at once the influence of earlier and later hands.