[Downing] offers illuminating insights into landscape gardening in England in the early 19th century. His analysis of the relative merits of the beautiful and the Picturesque, his search for principles of landscape gardening derived from aristocratic models in the Old World but fit for a burgeoning democracy in the vast landscapes of the New World, are of enormous interest. The re-appearance of his Treatise is an event to be welcomed on both sides of the Atlantic.
-- Country Life