Chapter XIII 



Maintenance 



HAVING explained in the preceding chap- 

 ters how a landscape may be ennobled and 

 in a way created by art, I conclude with a few 

 words as to its maintenance. It is quite impos- 

 sible to plant a large, extensive park so that it 

 will present the same picture when full grown 

 as it did at the beginning, except on an altered 

 scale, and so that the objects in it shall be for- 

 ever after in the right relation to one another ; 

 for Nature cannot be calculated so accurately 

 and it would also take too much time. 



Here we meet with the drawbacks of our art, 

 in a certain sense, though it may also be regarded 

 as an advantage. For it is impossible to create a 

 finished, permanent work of art in landscape 

 gardening, such as the painter, sculptor, and 

 architect are able to produce, because our ma- 

 terial is not inanimate, but living ; we can say 

 of the landscape gardeners' art, as of all Nature's 

 own pictures, as Fichte said of the German lan- 

 guage, "It is about to be, but never is"; that 

 is, it never stands still, can never be fixed and 

 left to itself. Hence a skillful guiding hand is 

 always necessary for works of this kind. If the 

 hand is lacking too long, they not only deterio- 



