Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/210

136 circular design was not destroyed. George III. yielded to the rage for landscape, and invited "Capability Brown" to reconstruct the gardens; but he had the wisdom to decline the task. It would have been impossible to combine at Hampton Court the merits of the two schools. The architecture of Wren was made to combine with the gardening of Le Nôtre; and the "noble art of picturesque gardening, which has given, as it were, a new tint to the complexion of nature, and a new outline to the physiognomy of the universe"—to quote Peacock's happy creation "Mr. Milestone"—would have been singularly out of place between the classical east front and the Long Water. But the more modern fashion has unhappily not been without effect, and the mania for "bedding out" has infected even the conservatives of this ancient place. But what little has been done, can be, and is being undone. The House Park, as well as Bushey, may please to-day, as they pleased a century or two centuries ago. In the great fountain garden we may still very fairly see the design as William III. left it; while the private garden, with its pretty borders of old English flowers, its fine grass walks, and its terraces, shows at once the influence of earlier and later hands.