8o LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



the objects beheld, that is, some means of determining their scale re- 

 lation with a man.* 



It is proverbially but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, 

 and it is true in landscape design that the sublimity of a great view may 

 be much injured by a mean and impertinent foreground, or by the 

 inclusion within the view of anything which would tend to rouse in the 

 beholder's mind a train of thought which is particularly commonplace. 

 The contrast of the two trains of thought in this case is almost as 

 violent as possible, and it is likely either to distract the attention from 

 the dignity of the view, or by its very incongruity to introduce a comic 

 element equally destructive to the sublimity of the landscape effect. 

 On the other hand, a man who perceives the essential unity of all nature, 

 who recognizes in the trickle from a melting snow-patch the manifes- 

 tation of the same forces that have shaped the mountains, — such a man 

 constantly finds himself contemplating the vast natural forces and 

 discovering expressions of their sublimity in commonplace and relatively 

 insignificant objects. 



The works of man may produce an effect of grandeur in their own 

 smaller way by their size and mass alone, but man can also enhance the 



* "The first sight of a group of such forms [giant palms], in their natural environ- 

 ment of tropical forest, is a magnificent surprise, — a surprise that strikes you dumb. 

 Nothing seen in temperate zones, — not even the huger growths of the Californian 

 slope, — could have prepared your imagination for the weird solemnity of that mighty 

 colonnade. Each stone-grey trunk is a perfect pillar, — but a pillar of which the 

 stupendous grace has no counterpart in the works of man. You must strain your head 

 well back to follow the soaring of the prodigious column, up, up, up through abysses 

 of green twilight, till at last — far beyond a break in that infinite interweaving of limbs 

 and lianas which is the roof of the forest — you catch one dizzy glimpse of the capital : 

 a parasol of emerald feathers outspread in a sky so blinding as to suggest the notion 

 of azure electricity. 



" One of the first elements of the emotion [that such a vision excites] to become 

 clearly distinguishable is the aesthetic; and this, in its general mass, might be termed 

 the sense of terrible beauty. Certainly the spectacle of that unfamiliar life, — silent, 

 tremendous, springing to the sun in colossal aspiration, striving for light against Titans, 

 and heedless of man in the gloom beneath as of groping beetle, — thrills like the rhythm 

 of some single marvellous verse that is learned in a glance and remembered forever." 



Lafcadio Hearn, Shadowings, 1907, p. 217-219 in essay, Gothic Horror. 



