What argument is offered in favor of observing the unities of time and place?

What was the origin of the Greek tragedy?

What improvement did Thespis make?-what did Eschylus? What part did the chorus perform?

Is the chorus continually on the stage?

Was the representation ever interrupted in the Grecian drama? What was the consequence with respect to the unities?

Why is it absurd to found rules for the modern on the Greek drama?

How are the moderns enabled to disregard the unities of time and place with propriety?

. How is this doctrine illustrated?

Can the unity of time be too much violated?

Give an example.

Is a great disregard of the unity of place so injurious?

Why is an unbounded license with respect to the unities of time and place, faulty?

Is a strict compliance with the unities of time and place a beauty?

Is it very important?

How was the representation of the ancient drama suspended? What was the effect of this suspension of the action?

What is the advantage of the pauses between the acts of a drama?

What advantage arose from the use of the chorus?

What is the use of music between the acts of a drama?

CHAPTER XXIV.

Gardening and Architecture.

GARDENING was at first an useful art: in the garden of Alcinous, described by Homer, we find nothing done for pleasure merely. But gardening is now improved into a fine art; and when we talk of a garden without any epithet, a pleasure-garden, by way of eminence, is understood. The garden of Alcinous, in modern language, was but a kitchen-garden. Architecture has run the same course: it continued many ages an useful art merely, without aspiring to be classed with the fine arts. Architecture, therefore, and gardening, being useful arts as well as fine arts, afford two

different views. The reader will not here expect rules for improving any work of art in point of utility; it being no part of my plan to treat of any useful art as such: but there is a beauty in utility; and in discoursing of beauty, that of utility must not be neglected. This leads us to consider gardens and buildings in different views they may be destined for use solely, for beauty solely, or for both. Such variety of destination, bestows upon these arts a great command of beauties, complex no less than various. Hence the difficulty of forming an accurate taste in gardening and architecture and hence that difference and wavering of taste in these arts, greater than in any art that has but a single destination.

Architecture and gardening entertain the mind, by raising agreeable emotions or feelings; with which we must begin, as the true foundation of all the rules of criticism that govern these arts. Gardening, beside the emotions of beauty from regularity, order, proportion, color, and utility, raises the emotions of grandeur, sweetness, gaiety, melancholy, wildness, and even of surprise or wonder. In architecture, the beauties of regularity, order, and proportion, are more conspicuous than in gardening; but architecture is inferior as to the beauty of color. Grandeur can be expressed in a building more successfully than in a garden; but as to the other emotions above mentioned, architecture has not been brought to the perfection of expressing them distinctly, To balance that defect, it can display the beauty of utility in the highest perfection.

Gardening possesses one advantage, never to be equalled in the other art: in various scenes, it can raise successively all the different emotions above mentioned. But to produce that delicious effect, the garden must be extensive, so as to admit a slow succession: for a small garden, comprehended at one view, ought to be confined to one expression; it may be gay, or sweet, or gloomy; but an attempt to mix these, would create a jumble of emotions not a little unpleasant.

For the same reason, a building, the most magnificent, is confined to one expression.

Architecture, as a fine art, instead of being a rival to gardening in its progress, seems not far advanced beyond its infant state. To bring it to maturity, two things are wanted. First, a greater variety of parts and ornaments than at present it seems provided with. Gardening here has the advantage; it is provided with plenty of materials for raising scenes without end, affecting the spectator with a variety of emotions. In architecture, the materials are so scanty, that artists hitherto have not been successful in raising any emotions but of beauty and grandeur: with respect to the former, there are plenty of means, regularity, order, symmetry, simplicity, utility; and with respect to the latter, the addition of size is sufficient. But though every building ought to have a certain character or expression suited to its destination, this refinement has scarce been attempted by any artist.

The other thing wanted to bring the art to perfection, is, to ascertain the precise impression made by every single part and ornament, as cupolas, spires, columns, carvings, statues, vases, &c.; for in vain will an artist attempt rules for employing these, either singly or in combination, until the different emotions they produce be distinctly explained.

In gardening as well as in architecture, simplicity ought to be a ruling principle. Profuse ornament hath no better effect than to confound the eye, and prevent the object from making an impression as one entire whole. An artist destitute of genius for capital beauties, is prompted to supply the defect by crowding his plan with slight embellishments: hence in a garden, triumphal arches, Chinese houses, temples, obelisks, cascades, fountains, without end; and in a building, pillars, vases, statues, and a profusion of carved work. Superfluity of decoration hath another bad effect; it gives the object a diminutive look: an island in a wide extended lake makes it appear larger; but an artifi-.

cial lake, which is always little, appears still less by making an island in it.

In forming plans for embellishing a field, an artist without taste employs straight lines, circles and squares, because these look best upon paper. He perceives not, that to humor and adorn nature, is the perfection of his art; and that nature, neglecting regularity, distributes her objects in great variety with a bold hand. A large field laid out with strict regularity, is stiff and artificial.

Having thus far carried on a comparison between gardening and architecture; rules peculiar to each come next in order, beginning with gardening. The simplest plan of a garden, is that embellished with a number of natural objects, trees, walks, polished parterres, flowers, streams, &c. One more complex comprehends statues and buildings, that nature and art may be mutually ornamented. A third, approaching nearer perfection, is of objects assembled together, to produce not only an emotion of beauty, but also some other particular emotion, grandeur, for example, gaiety, or any other above mentioned. The completest plan of a garden is an improvement upon the third, requiring the several parts to be so arranged, as to inspire all the different emotions that can be raised by gardening. In this plan, the arrangement is an important circumstance; for it has been shown, that some emotions figure best in conjunction, and that others ought always to appear in succession, and never in conjunction. When the most opposite emotions, such as gloominess and gaiety, stillness and activity, follow each other in succession, the pleasure, on the whole, will be the greatest: but such emotions ought not to be united, because they produce an unpleasant mixture. For this reason, a ruin, affording a melancholy pleasure, ought not to be seen from a flower parterre, which is gay and cheerful. But to pass from an exhilarating object to a ruin, has a fine effect; for each of the emotions is the more sensibly felt by be

ing contrasted with the other. Similar emotions, on the other hand, such as gaiety and sweetness, stillness and gloominess, motion and grandeur, ought to be raised together; for their effects upon the mind are heightened by their conjunction.

Kent's method of embellishing a field is admirable; which is to replenish it with beautiful objects, natural and artificial, disposed as they ought to be upon a canvas in painting.

A single garden must be distinguished from a plurality; yet it is not obvious in what the unity of a garden consists. The gardens of Versailles, properly expressed in the plural number, being no fewer than sixteen, are all of them connected with the palace, but have scarce any mutual connexion: they appear not like parts of one whole, but like small gardens in contiguity.

Regularity is required in that part of the garden adjacent to the dwelling-house; because an immediate accessory ought to partake the regularity of the principal object; but in proportion to the distance from the house considered as the centre, regularity ought to be less studied. A small garden, on the other hand, which admits not grandeur, ought to be strictly regular. A hill covered with trees, appears more beautiful as well as more lofty than when naked. To distribute trees in a plain requires more art: near the dwellinghouse they ought to be scattered so distant from each other, as not to break the unity of the field; and even at the greatest distance of distinct vision, they ought never to be so crowded as to hide any beautiful object.

In the manner of planting a wood or thicket, much art may be displayed. A common centre of walks, termed a star, from whence are seen remarkable objects, appears too artificial, stiff, and formal, to be agreeable: the crowding objects together, lessens the pleasure that would be felt in a slower succession.

An object terminating a narrow opening in a wood,