54 Xanbscape Hrcbitecture 



This idea has its value doubtless, but it can be easily 

 overworked. Truly, a special scene may suggest such 

 feelings in the beginning, and help from the landscape 

 gardener may readily increase their strength, and it 

 should be the aim of the designer or artist to recognize 

 this quality of a place, and to encourage in various ways 

 the feelings it naturally produces. But such a note 

 cannot be forced and may even come to make the effect 

 absurd. Imagination may add much to the pleasure of 

 a piece of landscape gardening, but too much in a 

 more or less vague way may easily be attempted, pro- 

 ducing unsatisfactory results. 



The condition of the mind at the time of experi- 

 encing the effects of the scene counts largely, and the 

 effect produced by the environment is not always simple 

 melancholy, gaiety, or awe. It has a larger compass 

 and may take the form indicated by the following 

 beautiful quotation from Maine de Biran: 



"I have experienced this evening in a solitary 

 walk taken during the finest weather, some instan- 

 taneous flashes of that ineffable enjoyment, which I 

 have tasted at other times and at such a season of 

 that pure pleasure that seems to snatch us away 

 from all that is of earth, to give us a foretaste 

 of heaven. The verdure had a new freshness and 

 took beauty from the last ray of the sinking sun, 

 all things were instinct with a soft splendoiu-, the 

 trees waved tenderly their majestic crests, the air 

 was full of balm, and the nightingales inter- 



