But two formidable critics came into the field, Knight and Price. Their plan was to leave Nature as much as possible to herself, to let the stream wind about as a stream should, instead of being dammed into a canal, and to allow trees to grow as they liked. Price’s famous _Essay on the Picturesque_ is still full of interest, and shows good sense in the exceptions he allows to his general rule, as, for instance, where he admits “architectural ornaments” in the garden round the house. He speaks, too, with regret of having once destroyed a beautiful old garden, “sacrificed to undulations of ground only.” But he certainly seems to carry his general rule to very considerable length. He thinks that “many of the circumstances that give variety and spirit to a wild place might successfully be imitated in a dressed place;” and although he cannot advocate modelling a carriage-drive after a cart-rut, or having water-docks or thistles before one’s door, he still thinks the cart-rut and the thistles might furnish useful hints. In another chapter he discusses “the connection between picturesqueness and deformity,” and explains how large heaps of stones or mould may at first be considered as deformities and afterwards appear picturesque. It is impossible not to be reminded of Mrs. Rafferty’s description of her garden in Miss Edgeworth’s _Absentee_: “‘Yes,’ she said, ‘she hated everything straight; it was so formal and _unpicturesque_. Uniformity and conformity,’ she observed, ‘had their day, but now, thank the stars of the present day, irregularity and deformity bear the bell and have the majority.’” Another novelist, Miss Austen, in her _Mansfield Park_, preserves the name of Repton, who was the last of the noted landscape gardeners of the last century: “Repton, or anybody of that sort,” says a certain Mr. Rushworth, “would certainly have the avenue at Sotherton down; the avenue that leads from the west front to the top of the hill, you know.” And this is just what Repton would have done. He was for ever cutting down avenues, and out of the five beautiful lime avenues at Cobham, which must have given such a stately appearance to the place, no less that four fell victims to his axe. The idea was of course that avenues prevented the ground from being picturesque and natural, and Mason, in his _English Garden_, urges “the cruel task, yet needful,” of breaking “th’ obdurate line” of trees, though “A chosen few,—and yet, alas! but few— Of these, the old protectors of the plain, May yet be spared.” The next marked development in gardening refers more particularly to the flower-garden itself. It was between the years 1835 and 1840 that the mode which we call “bedding-out” began to came into general fashion. John Caie, who was gardener to the Duke of Bedford, and afterwards at Inverary Castle, is often said to have originated the system; but Mr. Frost, writing from Dropmore to the editor of the _Gardener’s Chronicle_, says: