A straight-lined avenue that is widened in front, and planted there with ewe trees, then firs, then with trees more and more fady, till they end in the almond-willow, or silver osier, will produce a very remarkable deception of the former kind; which deception will be encreased, if the nearer dark trees are proportionable and truly larger than those at the end of the avenue that are more fady. Shenstone’s work was certainly based on the most elaborate art but his whole purpose was so to use art as to conceal it. “Art,” he said, “should never be allowed to set a foot in the province of nature, otherwise than clandestinely and by night.” “Whatever thwarts nature is treason.” Whenever art is allowed to appear, “night, gothicism, confusion and absolute chaos are come again.” One of the earliest poetical champions of the picturesque development of landscape gardening is William Mason, author of “The English Garden,” a long didactic poem, begun in 1767 but not published till 1772, and then in an incomplete form. The purpose of the book is to apply “the rules of imitative art to real nature.” Folly and Wealth are called “the cruel pair” who, “borrowing aid from geometric skill,” strive by line, plummet, and unfeeling shears, to deform the fair surface of mother earth. Claude Lorraine, Salvator Rosa, Ruysdael, are called upon as the true law-givers in gardening. Much credit for the banishment of false taste is accorded to Addison and Pope. Of the latter he says, With bolder rage Pope next advances; his indignant arm Waves the poetic brand o’er Timon’s shades, And lights them to destruction; the fierce blaze Sweeps thro’ each kindred vista; groves to groves Nod their fraternal farewell and expire.