128 Frederick Law Olmsted 



them artists possibly in a certain way, as an ordinary house 

 furnisher may be trained to something of art in respect to 

 articles of furniture, pictures, books and bric-a-brac, but not 

 artists in respect to scenery, as scenery acts in the emotional 

 nature of some of us. That a training which is innocently 

 assumed to be a training in landscape gardening is a training 

 in fact away from it, I have often seen evidences. For ex- 

 ample, a man came to me with a letter of introduction in 

 which it was stated that he was a landscape gardener. As 

 the best feast that I could offer a visitor of this description 

 fresh from the old world, I dropped my business for 

 a day to take him up the Hudson. It was soon apparent 

 that he took less than ordinary interest in its natural scenery. 

 When we came near to the best of it I had to urge him to 

 move to a position on the boat where he could see it. Hav- 

 ing done so, in a minute or two he left it, and when near 

 West Point, I found him below sitting at a table with a bottle 

 of porter. Yet when I took him to the grounds of a friend's 

 country-seat he proved to be really an enthusiast in particular 

 matters of gardening. 



I have seen much of two of the most accomplished gar- 

 deners in the United States but I never saw either of them 

 look at anything a stone's throw away or show the slightest 

 interest in or understanding of landscape. There is nothing 

 to prevent them from presenting themselves in good faith 

 as landscape gardeners. In conversing with one previously 

 called a florist but who had offered himself and been ap- 

 pointed landscape gardener of an important work, I found 

 that he applied the term 'harmony,' with reference to the 

 grouping of trees, on the supposition that it meant botanical 

 kinship. In the gap between two masses of fine indigenous 

 foliage he had planted some Chinese curios not only in com- 

 plete discord with them but where, if they lived long, they 

 would screen off his finest distant view. 



Even of landscape gardening rightly so called, the prac- 

 tice of most has been at best upon small grounds or upon 



