64 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



walks, temples, and even villages." Truly a Jardin 

 Anglois / 



We may well prefer Diderot's simile for the 

 English garden as " the sanctuary of a sweet and 

 placid pleasure " to the bustling crowd of miscel- 

 laneous elements that took its name in vain in the 

 Petit Trianon ! 



For an English garden is at once stately and 

 homely homely before all things. Like all works 

 of Art it is conventionally treated, and its design 

 conscious and deliberate. But the convention is 

 broad, dignified, quiet, homogeneous, suiting alike the 

 characteristics of the country and of the people for 

 whom it is made. Compared with this, the foreign 

 garden must be allowed to be richer in provocation ; 

 there is distinctly more fancy in its conceits, and its 

 style is more absolute and circumspect than the 

 English. And yet, just as Browning says of im- 

 perfection, that it may sometimes mean "perfection 

 hid," so, here our deficiencies may not mean defects. 



In order that we may compare the English and 

 foreign garden we must place them on common 

 ground ; and I will liken each to a pastoral romance. 

 Nature is idealised, treated fancifully in each, yet 

 how different the quality of the contents, the method 

 of presentment, the style, the technique of this and 

 that, even when the design is contemporaneous ! 



A garden is, I say, a sort of pastoral romance, 

 woven upon a background of natural scenery. In 

 the exercise of his pictorial genius, both the foreign 

 and English artist shall run upon natural things, and 



