xxxviii Editor's Introduction 



were of prime importance. Some things he says 

 about construction of roads and paths and the 

 management of plants, trees, and shrubs, etc., 

 might well be revised in the light of the im- 

 provements that necessarily come with the ex- 

 perience of nearly a hundred years, but it is 

 astonishing, at the same time, to find how much 

 of his advice agrees with the best practice of 

 modern days. 



Indeed, when all is said that can be said about 

 Puckler's limitations, the question is still in 

 order, where else, except in his pages and those 

 of Whately, can be found an equally fine pres- 

 entation of the great art of landscape architec- 

 ture? Others writing on the same subject will 

 even seem to some, by comparison, dry and aca- 

 demic. Frederick Law Olmsted, almost alone, 

 has written passages that emit a like sparkle of 

 genius. Poetically inspired words and wit and 

 wisdom continually emerge from Prince Piick- 

 ler's strange, mystical meditations. He cannot 

 help writing in this vein even on what would be 

 ordinarily considered quite prosaic subjects, as 

 shown by the following quotation: — 



What the gold backgrounds of the old masters, which 

 set out the sweet, lovable faces of madonnas and saints 

 in so ideal a manner, are to religious pictures, green, 

 luxuriant grass spaces are to a landscape. 



Here, too, is a quotation, illustrative of what 

 I mean, which is decidedly quaint and original 

 and certainly poetical, far and away different 



