. Cassell's popular gardening. Gardening. GARDEN WALKS AND EOADS. straight, and there are facts and traditions referring tc their proceeding in direct lines from Kome to London and most of the other provinces of that vast empire. The same principle was exhibited in most of the older carriage-roads—straight lines from the nearest highway to the mansion; and these, overshadowed by over-arching trees, were the rule. Hence the origin of the avenue, with all its arboreal magnifi- cence and simple gran- deur, some grand relics of which may yet be found. But they were well - nigh imiversal imtil Capa
. Cassell's popular gardening. Gardening. GARDEN WALKS AND EOADS. straight, and there are facts and traditions referring tc their proceeding in direct lines from Kome to London and most of the other provinces of that vast empire. The same principle was exhibited in most of the older carriage-roads—straight lines from the nearest highway to the mansion; and these, overshadowed by over-arching trees, were the rule. Hence the origin of the avenue, with all its arboreal magnifi- cence and simple gran- deur, some grand relics of which may yet be found. But they were well - nigh imiversal imtil Capability Brown laid his .heavy and isharp axe to their roots during a period of wild and unreasoning re- action from the stiff and formal into mean- dering lines of beauty. Curved lines carried fashion and society so thoroughly with them, that grand avenues which had stood for centuries were levelled with as little compunc- tion as if they had been the mere upshoots of yesterday. But this is not the place to discuss the in- fluence of fashion on the art of road-makiug. No sooner, however, was the straight—that is, the shortest—route abandoned for the curved, than the dan- gers and difficulties of road-making vastly in- creased. Almost any one could design or choose the hest straight line between two objects—the entrance- lodge and house or mansion—but once deviate from this, and to many it would immediately seem that some rejected line was as good as the selected, or better; and no doubt it often is so. Laying Out.—Taste is capricious, but not des- potic, and were its laws more generally under- stood, possibly it would no longer be felt to deserve its character oven for caprice. Be that as it may, there are certain general principles that apply to the lines of carriage-roads, and the nearer they approach Fig. Carriage Entrances. to these the more satisfactory and pleasant they will be found. The first of these principles is that the road, at all points of its course,
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade18, booksubjectgardening, bookyear1884
