Continuing, the Essayist adds: “Writers who have given us an account of China tell us the inhabitants of that country laugh at the plantations of our Europeans, which are laid out by the rule and line; because they say, anyone may place trees in equal rows and uniform figures. They choose rather to show a genius in works of this nature, and therefore always conceal the art by which they direct themselves. They have a word, it seems, in their language, by which they express the particular beauty of a plantation that thus strikes the imagination at first sight, without discovering what it is that has so agreeable an effect. Our British gardeners, on the contrary, instead of humouring nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes, and pyramids. We see the marks of the scissors upon every plant and bush. I do not know whether I am singular in my opinion, but for my own part, I would rather look upon a tree in all its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and branches, than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure; and cannot but fancy that an orchard in flower looks infinitely more delightful than all the little labyrinths of the most finished parterre. But, as our great modellers of gardens have their magazines of plants to dispose of, it is very natural for them to tear up all the beautiful plantations of fruit trees, and contrive a plan that may most turn to their own profit, in taking off their evergreens, and the like movable plants, with which their shops are plentifully stocked.” It will be perfectly obvious that when Addison found it necessary to draw comparisons between a free and natural style of gardening, and the artificial methods carried out with mathematical precision in his time, to the distinct advantage of the former system, that geometric gardening, coupled with the excessive use of Topiary work, had made English gardens dreadfully monotonous. Essays were fashionable in the early years of the eighteenth century, and, remembering that their publication was extended over a considerable period, it must be presumed that they were freely read and discussed, and thus exerted a very considerable influence upon public opinion, just as a well thought out and carefully written leading article does in our own time. We may take it, then, that the gardeners of his time were considerably impressed by Addison’s quiet denunciation of the existing style, and no doubt a revolution had already commenced in the minds, if not in the gardens, of the wealthy, when, a little more than a year later, Pope published in the _Guardian_ (Tuesday, September 29, 1713), his famous essay on “Verdant Sculpture.”