XX Editor's Introduction 



There are many fine descriptions of Nature in 

 the letters of Puckler, and it might be well to 

 quote one more as a further illustration of the 

 distinction of his purely literary work: — 



Turn your imagination to a spot of ground so com- 

 mandingly placed that from its highest point you can 

 let your eye wander over fifteen counties. Three sides 

 of this vast panorama rise and fall in constant change 

 of hill and dale like the waves of an agitated sea, and 

 are bounded at the horizon by a strangely formed 

 jagged outline of the Welsh Mountains, which at either 

 end ascend to a fertile plain, shaded by thousands of 

 lofty trees, and in the obscure distance, where it blends 

 with the sky, is edged with a white misty line — the 

 ocean. 



The peculiarity of such a description is not 

 only its eloquence and poetical expression, but 

 its real value lies in its landscape conception. 

 Probably no other man of Piickler's time could 

 have brought together, in a single picture, just the 

 right elements, and grouped them in such a way 

 as to set before one a great landscape scene in so 

 fine a manner. It is a case, as may be seen over 

 and over again in reading Piickler's letters, of a 

 landscape architect developing a great landscape 

 and transfusing it with the vivifying glow of his 

 own trained imagination. In other words, Puckler 

 knew just what to select from the landscape to 

 present its truest and most valuable character. 



Prince Puckler was, however, a good deal 

 more than a lover of Nature in her higher moods 

 and a skillful artist in creating effects akin to 



