In this lecture, we continue to explore how the Chinese Garden was appropriated into Chambers’ landscape theory with an aim to mould moral fear and reverence. We shall focus on the relations among three descriptions: Chinese gardens in Chambers’ “Dissertation on Oriental Gardening”, Burke’s theory of the sublime, and Chambers’ design for Kew Gardens. In his “Dissertation on Oriental Gardening”, Chambers emphasized that an open space would appear mysterious by hiding the boundaries and thus exciting the imagination. For example, in dealing with flat ground, instead of leaving the middle area entirely open, “as it is too often done by the Europeans”, Chambers suggested that the Chinese use objects to frequently break in upon the open space, and thus hide many parts from the spectator’s eye. Chambers wrote: “These projections produce variety, by altering the open space from every point of view; and constantly hiding parts of it, they create a mystery which excites the traveller’s curiosity.” This discussion resonates with the Chinese garden design principle of cang, that is, hiding, avoiding the visual effect of yilan wuyu, that is, showing everything at a glance. For these ideas, Chambers might have drawn from his traveling experience in China. But these ideas also resonated with Burke’s discussion of obscurity in his “Enquiry”, with which Chambers was familiar. For Burke, obscurity in general is necessary to make something terrible. This is because when we know the full extent of any danger, or when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes. In particular, Burke stressed that dark, confused and uncertain images have greater power on our imagination to form greater passions than those, which have more discernible limits or form. Similarly, objects of which “the eye not being able to perceive the bounds“ “seem to be infinite”; and “infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect, and the truest test of the sublime.” On such occasions, the imagination was limited by its incapacity to grasp objects and subsequently it was trapped in confusion and ignorance, leading to astonishment, fear, or reverence. Chambers also discussed the Chinese designs of lakes and the rivers, which he found most capable of enchanting the imagination. He described how sometimes the terminations of rivers were hidden in woods, or behind hills and buildings. And at some time, these terminations were turned under bridges, directed into caverns, or lost amongst the rocks and shores. The same principle of imitating nature, Chambers noticed, was also applied to lakes by the Chinese. These lakes are shaped in a certain way that the viewer can’t see all their terminations from a single point of view. This way, the viewer is kept in ignorance of their extent. The Chinese also intersperse many islands in the lakes, which serve “to give intricacy to the form, to conceal the bounds, and to enrich the scenery.” Although the “Dissertation on Oriental Gardening” was written in 1772, these ideas of concealment were already embodied in Chambers’ design of the lake and certain views at the Kew Gardens in the 1760s. Under Chambers’ design, the L-shaped lake, now no longer existent, spanned the Kew Gardens from east to west and narrowed towards the north east. At the northeast end of the lake was the House of Confucius. Re-sited by Chambers, the building blurred one’s sight of the termination of the body of water. The lake was broader at the west end. An island was inserted in the middle of the lake, creating more layers within a single view and thus producing the illusion of the water as a larger lake with the ends out of sight. Trees, small hills, and various decorative buildings further concealed the physical bounds of the garden and fed the imagination with variety: The Temple of Victory, a monument to the Seven Years War, crowned the hilltop to the east, the temple of Arethusa, a nymph in Greco-Roman mythology, was tucked away in the woods to the west, the little Palladian bridge, a reminiscence of the Italian Renaissance, in the center of the image, extended to the south and pointed towards the lofty Chinese Pagoda in the far distance. Despite a seemingly pleasing effect to our modern eyes, the hidden boundaries of the garden and the lake challenged 18th century viewers’ imaginations that were accustomed to visions of clarity and certainty in the Age of Enlightenment. Their imaginations might also have been confounded by the pastiche of architecture of separate times and geopolitical spaces, resisting any logical, clean-cut classification. The pagoda in the distance, as the empire of China itself, remains obscure and mysterious. Instead of occasioning “pleasing astonishment”, leading the viewer to an experience of self-exaltation above nature, as celebrated by the “philosophers”, these scenes evoked uncertainty, unease, and reinforced a sense of mystery being distanced from the human imagination. Introducing the pagoda from the East to the royal garden in London, Chambers exposed spectators not only to a grand object, but also to the associated values of iconic Chinese architecture: the infinite, sublime forces that the Oriental empire and its religions were known to command. In a liberal society like Britain, where the once absolute power and the values of the ancient régime had been expelled, the sublime, as Burke and Chambers understood, represented the the absolute power transmuted into a psychological force that is amenable to suspend reasoning and to constrain unbridled liberty. At the core of the landscape of Kew was a classical vision that the man is, after all, the creature of the omnipotent God. Man is thus a creature capable of feeling fear, awe, or reverence in the face of that omnipotence.