IN PRAISE OF BOTH. 203 



scruples that could hinder the expression of his own 

 mind about Nature, or check him from fathoming 

 all her possibilities. Yet with all his seeming un- 

 scrupulousness the old gardener does not close his 

 eyes or his heart to Nature at large, but whether 

 in the garden sanctuary or out of it, he maintains 

 equally tender relations towards her. 



But the scruples of the earlier phase of the land- 

 scape school, about tampering with Nature by way 

 of attaining Art effects, are as water unto wine com- 

 pared with what is taught by men of the same school 

 now-a-days. We have now to reckon with an alto- 

 gether deeper stratum of antipathy to garden-craft 

 than was reached by the followers of Brown. We 

 have not now to haggle with the quidnuncs over the 

 less or more of Art permissible in a garden, but to 

 fight out the question whether civilisation shall have 

 any garden at all. Away with this "white man's 

 poetry!" The wild Indian's " intercourse with 

 Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest 

 independence of each. If he is somewhat of a 

 stranger in her midst, the gardener is too much of a 

 familiar. There is something vulgar and foul in the 

 latter's closeness to his mistress, something noble 

 and cleanly in the former's distance." " Alas ! " says 

 Newman, "what are we doing all through life, both 

 as a necessity and a duty, but unlearning the world's 

 poetry, and attaining to its prose ? " 



One does not fear, however, that the English 

 people will part lightly with their land's old poetry, 

 however seductive the emotion which we are told 



