114 Hints on Landscape Gardening 



ever should expect to find in Muskau already a 

 completed, I mean a finished, work, would be 

 quite disappointed. Hardly a third of the plan 

 has so far been carried out, although perhaps 

 three-fourths of the work has been done ; for sel- 

 dom has a private person had to contend in such 

 undertakings with greater obstacles than I have. 

 Among others more than two thousand acres of 

 the needful terrain were the property of individ- 

 ual citizens of the town or the neighboring vil- 

 lages, and we know how difficult it is to acquire 

 such pieces of land, even at three or four times 

 their value. Moreover, a whole street in the 

 small town, which ran directly past my " Schloss " 

 or castle, had to be bought first, then removed 

 to suit my plan, and a lake had to be dug on the 

 spot. A number of large, and in part even magnifi- 

 cent, buildings belonging to me were so unfortu- 

 nately situated that they could not remain. Again, 

 the castle itself was surrounded by ancient fortifi- 

 cations, deep moats and walls eight to ten feet 

 thick, which last had been built in the solid old 

 times of our forefathers, and would have to be 

 blown up with powder.' 



But the work of destroying these fortifications 

 and filling up the moats was unavoidable, partly 

 because the stagnant standing water was detri- 

 mental to health and partly because the whole 



' I was compelled to make a regular assault with battering-rams 

 manned bv twenty or thirty men, and, in order to get rid of them, to 

 bury the pieces broken down which still stuck together. One does not 

 make such walls nowadays, neither common masons nor freemasons, nor 

 statesmen and nations, however anxious they are to build. 



