ON ART IN A GARDEN. 



Gilbert White, each in his day testifyino;' to the 

 inborn love of the English for woodland scenery, 

 their study of nature, and their taste in trees, shrubs, 

 and flowers. What a vindication is here of the old- 

 fashioned garden and gardener ! What nonsc^nse to 

 set up Kent and Ih-own as the discoverers of the 

 ereen world of old Eno-land, when, as Mr Hamerton 

 remarks in "The Sylvan Year" (p. 173), Chaucer 

 hardly knows how or when to stop whenever he 

 begins to talk about his cnjo)ment of Nature. 

 "Chaucer," he says, "in his passion for flowers, and 

 birds, and spring mornings in the woods, and by 

 streams, is hard to quote, for he leads you down 

 to the bottom of the page, and over the leaf, before 

 you have time to pause." 



The question now before us — " What ornament is 

 fit and right for a garden ? " — of itself implies a ten- 

 dency to err in the direction of ornament. We see 

 that on the face of it the transposition of the simple 

 of Nature into the subtle of Art has its dangers. 

 Something may be put, or something may be left, 

 which were best absent. This may be taken as an 

 established fact. In making a garden you start with 

 the assumption that something must be sacrificed of 

 wild Nature, and something must be superadded, 

 and that which is superadded is not properly of this 

 real, visible world, but of the world of man's brain. 



The very enclosure of our garden-spaces signi- 

 fies that Nature is held in duress here. Nature of 

 herself cannot rise above Nature, and man, seeing 

 perfections through her imperfections, capacities 



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