pretace vii 



suggestions are evoked, helpful to the artist, not only 

 because he recognizes excellences himself, but because 

 he is stimulated by the approval of respectable author- 

 ities and taught (if he has it in him) to do something 

 of similar value transfused by the peculiar genius of his 

 own mind and spirit. 



In order to work out landscape designs properly some 

 knowledge of good practice is necessary. Hints and 

 suggestions point the way and lighten the labour of 

 traversing it. The hints and suggestions of this feook 

 refer to both theory and practice and give as much 

 information as the space will allow. The student 

 should seek to dwell on the various features of land- 

 scape interest in gardens and parks or estates, a few of 

 which are here considered and illustrated. Especially 

 worthy of consideration are the features of small es- 

 tates. They show less evidence of the academic in- 

 fluences which naturally make the large places hardly 

 available as practical examples for general use. 



It is rather remarkable that one of the oldest of the 

 arts, landscape gardening, has had comparatively small 

 attention given to the exposition of examples, and the 

 ideas they evoke. In fact, among all the writers on 

 this subject, scarcely half a dozen have attacked this 

 particular phase of it; Whately, Repton, Prince Piick- 

 ler, A. J. Downing, and Edouard Andre have shown in 

 their writings that they have grasped the subject in a 

 large and competent way. The difficulty of late years 

 seems to have been that horticulture has developed so 

 rapidly that in the desire to display novel and beautiful 



