GROUND, ROCK, WATER 133 



must be led up to by converging lines, or supported by subordinate 

 masses, or given scale by a proper foreground, or enframed by nearer 

 hills or still nearer trees. Here the landscape architect, even with 

 the small means at his disposal, may produce considerable results by 

 so choosing the viewpoint and so disposing the foreground that the 

 form, the character, the effect of the mountain tell to greatest advan- 

 tage in the view offered to the observer. 



The working of natural forces in any particular locality will tend 

 to impose similar forms on similar materials. The compositional 

 appearance of hills or mountains and their intervening valleys may be 

 unified by the repeated parallelism of lines of strata, by the repeated 

 steplike outlines which these strata cause in erosion. The constant 

 angle of repose of a certain eroded material may cause a frequent 

 repetition of a certain line of slope, a parallelism of hillside with hill- 

 side throughout the composition, or a balance of hillside against hill- 

 side on opposite sides of the eroding stream. The work of a glacier 

 which has ground down one side of each hill in a series and left the 

 opposite side steep and craggy may produce a repetition of unbalanced 

 forms, a sequence, a tendency in one direction, which may be a very 

 strong governing condition in the composition. The completeness of 

 the pictorial composition of a number of hills and mountains as included 

 in any one view is largely a matter of accident ; but in some cases the 

 unity of form caused by natural forces in these mentioned and other 

 ways is so great that exceptionally it may be possible to choose a point 

 of view commanding a landscape unified not only in its consistent 

 character and in its effect, but also in its composition in form and color 

 and texture, in repetition, sequence, and balance, as completely as 

 though it had been constructed by some intelligence which had intended 

 primarily this result.* (See again the Frontispiece.) 



Man can seldom modify the shape of a hill, seen as a whole in the Modification 



landscape composition, but he may sometimes modify its effect on / T /, fct ~f 



i IT.- . T> "ill by Treat- 



closer approach by a consistent treatment of some of its parts. Par- men t of Local 



Details 

 * Cf. Hugo Marcus, Die Ornamentale Schonheit der Landschaft und der Natur. 



Note especially his remarks on composition illustrated in nature by mountain ranges 

 at the beginning of the chapter, Naturliche Versammlungsschonheit in der Land- 

 schaft . . . , and the figures at the back of the book. (See REFERENCES.) 



