This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1773 edition. Excerpt: ... ever-greens, some fruit-trees, and the few shrubs and flowers which blossom late in the year; placing amongst them decayed trees, pollards, and dead stumps, of picturesque forms, overspread with moss and ivy. The buildings with which these scenes are decorated, are generally such as indicate decay, ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1773 edition. Excerpt: ... ever-greens, some fruit-trees, and the few shrubs and flowers which blossom late in the year; placing amongst them decayed trees, pollards, and dead stumps, of picturesque forms, overspread with moss and ivy. The buildings with which these scenes are decorated, are generally such as indicate decay, being intended as mementos to the passenger. Some are hermitages and alms-houses, where the faithful old servants of the family spend the remains of life in peace, amidst the tombs of their predecessors, who lie buried around them: others are ruins of castles, palaces, temples, and deserted religious houses; or half buried triumphal arches and mausoleums, with mutilated inscriptions, that once commemorated the heroes of antient times: or they are sepulchres of their ancestors, catacombs and cemeteries for their favourite domestic animals; or whatever else may serve to indicate the debility, the disappointments, and the dissolution of humanity: which, by co-operating with the dreary aspect of autumnal nature, and the inclement temperature of the air, fill the mind with melancholy, and incline it to serious reflections. Such is the common scenery of the Chinese Gardens where the ground has no striking tendency to any particular character. But where it is more strongly marked, their artists never fail to improve upon its singularities: their aim is to excite a great variety of passions in the mind of the spectator; and the fertility os their imaginations, always upon the stretch in search of novelty, furnishes them with a thousand artifices to accomplish that aim. The scenes which I have hitherto described, are chiefly os the pleasing kind: but the Chinese Gardeners have many forts, which they employ as circumstances vary; all which' they range...
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