And it was about this time that Batty Langley, also of Twickenham, wrote his _New Principles of Gardening, or the Laying-out and Planting Parterres, Groves, Wildernesses, Labyrinths, Avenues, Parks, &c., after a more Grand and Rural manner than has been done before_. This “grand _and_ rural manner” expresses pretty clearly the confusion we find all through his book. He must have known Pope’s villa, and probably the poet himself, and it is evident that he too intended to consult nature and the “genius” of a place. He says there is not “anything more _shocking_ than a _stiff regular garden_, where, after we have seen one quarter thereof, the very same is repeated in all the remaining parts, so that we are tired, instead of being further entertained with something new as expected.” He thinks “our gardens much the worst of any in the world, some few excepted,” and is severe on the late Mr. London and Mr. Wise for having laid out gardens for the nobility “in a regular, stiff, and stuft-up manner,” with crowded evergreens and “trifling flower-knots.” But the compliments which he pays to nature are, after all, not much more than lip-homage. His principles seem very right, but his designs, of which we have very many, show that the “grand” had quite got the better of the “rural.” Even the design of “a rural garden after the new manner” consists of “a fine large plain parterre, environed with an easy, agreeable slope,” and “adorned with Apollo, Minerva, and Pallas (_sic_), the Seven Liberal Arts, Mercury, and Pytho;” then there is an octagon basin, with Neptune, and avenues and canals and more statues, and “we can never know when we have seen the whole.” And now the period of the so-called “landscape gardeners” began, though in reality their business was rather with the _grounds_ than with the garden proper.