Editor's Introduction xxix 



landscape gardening if some one, competent and 

 independent, would undertake to write a few let- 

 ters like those of Puckler. 



In order to see that he was little influenced 

 by what he saw of Brown's work at Blenheim, 

 it is only necessary to wander over the grounds 

 of the park at Muskau a few hours. The satiri- 

 cal lines of Peacock, said to refer to the art of 

 Brown, could hardly be applied to anything de- 

 signed by Puckler : — 



Here sweeps a plantation in that beautiful regular 

 curve; there winds a gravel walk; here are parts of the 

 old wood left in these majestical regular clumps dis- 

 posed at equal distances with wonderful symmetry; 

 there are some singular shrubs scattered about in ele- 

 gant profusion ; here a portugal laurel ; there a spruce 

 fir; here a juniper; here a lauristinus; there a spruce fir; 

 here a larch; there a lilac; here a rhododendron; there 

 an arbutus. The stream you see has become a canal : 

 the banks are perfectly smooth and green, sloping to the 

 water's edge." 



Puckler wrote also more than once in praise 

 of Repton's work, and even brought Repton's 



' Headlong Hall. The Prince's criticisms of the landscape garden- 

 ing of Germany are severe and the comparisons he makes with England 

 are much to the disadvantage of his Fatherland. However, he had great 

 hopes of the Royal Gardens at Potsdam, which were being laid out at 

 that time by the famous landscape artist Lenne, and which are to-day 

 the glory of Germany, and it should be said here that a few of the 

 strictures made by Puckler in the early part of the nineteenth century 

 would apply to much of the German landscape gardening of to-day. I 

 do not mean to imply that a large part of the landscape gardening of 

 Germany is not open to criticism viewed from a high artistic standpoint, 

 just as is that of England; but it may be fairly said that German 

 landscape gardening approaches that of England more nearly now than 

 it did in the time of Prince Puckler. 



