CHAPTER VIII 

 THE BEAUTIFUL IN GROUND* 



WE have sketched, elsewhere, the elements of the 

 beautiful in a tree. Let us glance for a few mo- 

 ments at the beautiful in ground. 



\Ye may have readers who think themselves not devoid 

 of some taste for nature, but who have never thought of 

 looking for beauty in the mere surface of the earth, whether 

 in a natural landscape, or in ornamental grounds. Their 

 idea of beauty is, for the most part, attached to the foliage 

 and verdure, the streams of water, the high hills and the 

 deep valleys, that make up the landscape. A meadow is 

 to them but a meadow, and a ploughed field is but the 

 same thing in a rough state. And yet there is a great and 

 enduring interest, to a refined and artistic eye, in the mere 

 surface of the ground. There is a sense of pleasure awak- 

 ened by the pleasing lines into which yonder sloping bank 

 of turf steals away from the eye, and a sense of ugliness and 

 harshness, by the raw and broken outline of the abandoned 

 quarry on the hillside, which hardly any one can be so 

 obtuse as not to see and feel. Yet the finer gradations are 

 nearly overlooked, and the charm of beautiful surface in a 

 lawn is seldom or never considered in selecting a new site 

 or improving an old one. 



\Ye believe artists and men of taste have agreed that all 

 forms of acknowledged beauty are composed of curved 

 lines; and we may add to this, that the more gentle and 

 gradual the curves, or rather the farther they are removed 

 from those hard and forcible lines which denote violence, 

 the more beautiful are they. The principle applies as well 

 to the surface of the earth as to other objects. The most 



* Original date of March, 18f>2. 

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