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CHAPTER XII.

Architecture and Gardening inseparable—Some Inquiry into theForms and Arrangements of different JEras—Situation andArrangement of Michel Grove — Singular Character of theHouse—Change in Customs and Manners alters Uses of Rooms—An extended Plan—Example GarnoisTs —A contractedPlan — Example Brentry Hill, $$ c .

It h as been objected to my predecessor Mr. Brown, that hefancied himself an architect. The many good houses built underhis direction, prove him to have been no mean proficient in anart, the practice of which he found, from experience, to beinseparable from landscape gardening: he had not early studiedthose necessary, but inferior branches of architecture, betterknown perhaps to the practical carpenter than to Palladio him-self: yet from his access to the principal palaces of this country,and his intercourse with men of genius and science, added to hisnatural quickness of perception, and his habitual correctness ofobservation, he became acquainted with the higher requisites ofthe art, relating to form, to proportion , to character , and, aboveall, to arrangement:

s Mr. Brown’s fame as an architect seems to have been eclipsed by his celebrity asa landscape gardener, he being the only professor of one art, while he had manyjealous competitors in the other. But when I consider the number of excellent works