42 Xan^scape Hrcbitecture 



"In landscape gardening violations of unity are 

 often to be met with, and they are always indicative 

 of the absence of correct taste in art. Looking upon 

 a landscape from the windows of a villa residence, 

 we sometimes see a considerable portion of the view 

 embraced by the eye laid out in natural groups of 

 trees and shrubs, and upon one side, or, perhaps, in 

 the middle of the same scene, a formal avenue lead- 

 ing directly up to the house. Such a view can never 

 appear a satisfactory whole, because we experience a 

 confusion of sensations in contemplating it. There 

 is an evident incongruity in bringing two modes of 

 arranging plantations, so totally different, under the 

 eye at one moment, which distracts, rather than 

 pleases the mind. In this example, the avenue, 

 taken by itself, may be a beautifiil object, and the 

 groups and connected masses may, in themselves, 

 be elegant, yet if the two portions are seen together, 

 they will not form a whole, because they cannot 

 make a composite idea. For the same reason, there 

 is something unpleasing in the introduction of fruit 

 trees among elegant ornamental trees on a lawn, or 

 even in assembling together, in the same beds, flower- 

 ing plants, and culinary vegetables — one class of 

 vegetation suggesting the useful, and homely, alone 

 to the mind, and the other, avowedly, only the 

 ornamental. 



"In the arrangement of a large extent of surface, 

 where a great many objects are necessarily presented 

 to the eye at once, the principle of unity will suggest 



