INTRODUCTION.

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will be able either to adopt the style or school best cal-culated for the situation, climate, and circumstances in whichhe is placed, or to adopt and combine such parts of differentstyles and schools as may best attain the object in viewin the given locality. This we consider to be the mosteffectual mode of preventing mannerism, or the adoption ofone style, school, or system, as better than all the others,and employing it indiscriminately in every situation, thoughunder widely different circumstances. This last mode wasalways adopted in the time of Kent and Brown; and hencethat sameness which characterizes the artificial features ofall the places laid out by those artists. The only safeguardagainst the continuance of this system, especially amonggardeners, is the dissemination of a knowledge of differentstyles and schools; by which the idea that any one of themis better than another will be neutralized, and the true artof laying out grounds shewn to consist in the choice andapplication of a school, or of parts of different schools,adapted to the particular case under consideration. Art andNature would thus be more harmoniously combined, andcountry residences produced of a more distinctive and in-teresting character.

Such is the plan and the intention of our series of fivevolumes ; which, if carried into execution, with such im-provements as may from time to time suggest themselves,will form, we think, as complete an Encyclopaedia of Land-scape Gardening as the present state of our knowledge, inthat art, will admit.

After this slight outline of our general design, itremains only to say a few words respecting the arrange-ment of that part of it which constitutes the presentvolume. The reader is first presented with a systematic