THE USE OF GARDENS 



touch in the magenta of his choicest dahlia ? Would he plant them 

 in patterns of stars and lozenges and tadpoles ? Would he border 

 them with paths of asphalt ? Would he not rather fill his borders 

 with every kind of beautiful flower that he might delight in, and 

 set them off with grass or pleasant green ? It is impossible to 

 take his professions seriously when he so flies in the face of nature, 

 when he transplants exotics into impossible conditions, when rarity, 

 difficulty, and expense of production are his tests of the value of 

 a flower. The beauty that he claims for his garden is not his 

 but that of the flowers, the grass, the sunlight, and the cloud, 

 which no amount of bad design can utterly destroy." 

 This is true enough ; but the bad design remains bad to the end, 

 and the lost opportunities it implies are only emphasised by the 

 beauty of the flowers, the grass, the sunlight, and the cloud, because 

 this beauty, though not utterly destroyed, is made unconvincing 

 by being seen in unworthy surroundings. There is something 

 pathetic in nature's struggle to hide human mistakes, in her eager- 

 ness to cover up the traces of man's vulgarity, and in her never- 

 failing efforts to assist even the people who are least capable of 

 feeling gratitude for her intervention. The struggle becomes 

 almost hopeless when it is carried on against that type of garden- 

 making which is founded upon artificiality of motive and which 

 shows in all its details the domination of the artificial mind. When 

 the gardener is afflicted with the belief that he is " something 

 detached from nature " and that he knows better than his teacher, 

 he is, almost as a matter of course, insensible to her persuasions 

 and despises her work because it is, as he imagines, irregular, un- 

 disciplined, and inartistic. In his ignorance and self-sufficiency 

 he cannot arrive at any understanding of the system under which 

 she produces her effects ; and because he is so unimaginative he 

 cannot realise that what seems to him irregularity and want of 

 discipline is actually strict observation of laws the existence of 

 which he has not the wit to suspect. His own petty little conven- 

 tions satisfy his rudimentary sense of artistic propriety, and, knowing 

 nothing of the larger possibilities of his art, he looks upon his 

 narrow achievement as something inspired, something supremely 

 important in its magnificence of conception and mastery of 

 accomplishment. 



The position he takes up is, in fact, akin to that which has been 

 assumed by some modern schools of painting and sculpture. There 

 are at the present day many art workers who presume to call them- 

 selves advanced merely because they have chosen to break away 

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