ON ART IN A GARDEN. 29 



and out of their combined cogitations sprang the 

 English garden. 



This, in brief, is what the landscape-gardener 

 and his adherents say, and would have you believe ; 

 and, to prove their point, they lay stress upon the style 

 of garden in vogue at the time Kent and Brown began 

 their experiments, when, forsooth, traditional garden- 

 craft was in its dotage and had lost its way in the 

 paths of pedantry. 



Should you, however, chance to have some 

 actual knowledge of old gardens, and some insight 

 into the principles which, consciously or unconsciously 

 governed their making, it may occur to you to ask 

 the precise points wherein the new methods claim to 

 be different from the old, what sources of inspiration 

 were discovered by the new school of gardeners that 

 were not shared by English gardeners from time 

 immemorial. Are there, then, two arts of garden- 

 ing? or two sorts of Englishmen to please? Is 

 not modern garden-craft identical with the old, so 

 far, indeed, as it hath art enough to stand any com- 

 parison with the other at all ? 



Let us here point to the fact, that any garden 

 whatsoever is but Nature idealised, pastoral scenery 

 rendered in a fanciful manner. It matters not what 

 the date, size, or style of the garden, it represents an 

 idealisation of Nature. Real nature exists outside 

 the artist and apart from him. The Ideal is that 

 which the artist conceives to be an interpretation 

 of the outside objects, or that which he adds to 

 the objects. The garden gives imaginative form 



