HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE. 69 



of Art and Nature are always unequally yoked. 

 Nature is treated with sparse courtesy by Art, its 

 individuality is ignored, it sweats like a drudge 

 under its load of false sentiment. " Sike fancies 

 weren foolerie." 



But in England, though we hold Nature in dur- 

 ess, we leave her unbound ; if we mew her up for 

 cultivation, we leave her inviolate, with a chance 

 of vagrant liberty and a way of escape. Thus, 

 you will note how the English garden stops, as 

 it were, without ending. Around or near the house 

 will be the ordered garden with terraces and 

 architectural accessories, all trim and fit and nice. 

 Then comes the smooth-shaven lawn, studded and 

 belted round with fine trees, arranged as it seems 

 with a divine carelessness ; and beyond the lawn, the 

 ferny heather-turf of the park, where the dappled 

 deer browse and the rabbits run wild, and the sun- 

 chequered glades go out to meet, and lose them- 

 selves "by green degrees" in the approaching 

 woodland, past the river glen, the steep fields of 

 grass and corn, the cottages and stackyards and 

 grey church tower of the village ; past the ridge 

 of fir-land and the dark sweep of heath-country 

 into the dim waving lines of blue distance. 



So that however self-contained, however self- 

 centred the stiff old garden may seem to be, it never 

 loses touch with the picturesque commonplaces of 

 our land ; never loses sympathy with the green world 

 at large, but, in a sense, embraces and locks in its 

 arms the whole country-side as far as eye can see. 



