xxxvi Editor's Introduction 



of his estates at Muskau. It is, in part, a disser- 

 tation occupying itself with many things be- 

 sides landscape architecture, but it is full of 

 sound ideas and suggestions. It does not devote 

 itself chiefly to the discussion of trees and shrubs, 

 as do many books of a similar kind, but it gives 

 you the underlying rules of the art. You will 

 readily excuse the digressions, which Piickler 

 himself deplores, when you come to study the 

 system of practice and the details of the plan by 

 means of journeys in the book which take you 

 miles around the park. It is doubtful whether 

 so extended a study of a great park was ever 

 written before by the man who designed the 

 entire scheme. The Prince did not undertake to 

 instruct the reader fully and completely. He 

 claimed to have had "a fairly long practical 

 experience, much careful study of practical ex- 

 amples combined with a passionate love of the 

 art of gardening in the widest sense," all of which 

 enabled him, he thinks, "to give some valuable 

 hints and to draw up some useful rules." 



His philosophy, his art, and his poetry do 

 seem at times, however, to render his treatise 

 hardly scientific in the ordinary sense of the 

 term, and yet his advice is almost always sound 

 and sensible; moreover, with it all, he not infre- 

 quently drops into the frame of mind of the man 

 who, as the old phrase has it, "talks as he walks 

 and thus to himself says he." It is simply Prince 

 Puckler with all that goes to make Prince Piick- 

 ler. He is a prince and, at the same time, some- 



