66 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



the distant plain, the fringe of purple hills, the 

 gorgeous panorama of the Alps with its background 

 of glowing sky. With such a radiant country to 

 conjure with, we may truly say " The richly provided, 

 richly require." 



If we may speak our mind of the French and 

 Dutch gardens, they in no wise satisfy English taste 

 as reeards their relation to Nature. Diderot has 

 said that it is the peculiarity of the French to judge 

 everything with the mind. It is from this stand- 

 point that the Frenchman treats Nature in a garden. 

 He is ever seeking to unite the accessory portions 

 with the ensemble. H e overdoes design . H e gives you 

 the impression that he is far more in love with his 

 own ideas about Nature than with Nature herself; 

 that he uses her resources not to interpret them or 

 perfect them along their own lines, but express his 

 own interesting ideas. He must provide stimulus 

 for his imaeination ; his nature demands food for 

 reverie, point for ecstasy, for delicious self-abandon- 

 ment, for bedazzlement with ideal beauty, and the 

 garden shall supply him with these whatever the 

 cost to the materials employed. Hence a certain 

 unscrupulousness towards Nature in the French 

 garden ; hence the daring picturesqueness, its leger- 

 demain. Nature edited thus, is to the Englishman 

 but Nature in effigy. Nature used as a peg for 

 fantastical attire, Nature with a false lustre that 

 tells of lead alloy — Nature that has forgotten what 

 she is like. 



In an Enolish crarden, as Diderot notes, Nature 



