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CHAPTER V.
Woods. -    Whateley's Remarks exemplified at SHARDELOES.-In-,
tricacY-Variet-A Drive at BU.LSTRODE traced, with Reasons
for its Course-Further Example from HEATHFIIELD PARK-
A  Belt-On thinning        Woods-Leaving Groups-Opening a
Lawn in great Woods-Example CHASHIOBURY.
"OBSRVATIONS          on  Modern    Gardening," by       the -late Mr.
Whateley, contain some remarks peculiarly applicable to the
improvement of woods, and so clearly expressive of my own
sentiments, that I beg to introduce the ample quotation inserted
in  the   note;   especially   as the    annexed    drawing    conveys a
"The outline of a wood may sometimes be great, and always be beautiful; the
first requisite is irregularity. That a mixture of trees and underwood should form a
long straight line, can never be natural, and a succession of easy sweeps and gentle
rounds, each a portion of a greater or less circle, composing altogether a line literally
serpentine, is, if possible, worse: it is but a number of regularities put together in a
disorderly manner, and equally distant from the beautiful, both of art and of nature.
The true beauty of an outline consists more in breaks, than in sweeps; rather in angles,
than rounds; in variety, not in succession.
"The outline of a wood is a continued line, and small variations do not save it from
the insipidity of sameness; one deep recess, one bold pronlinence, has more effect
than twenty little irregularities: that one divides the line into parts, but no breach is
thereby. made in its unity; a continuation of wood always remains, the form of it only
is altered, and the extent is increased: the eye, which hurries to the extremity of
whatever is uniform, delights to trace a varied line through all its intricacies, to pause
from stage to stage, and to lengthen the progress.