328 APPENDIX 



touch with it as a layman can be. I believe that landscape- 

 gardening is not only one of the fine arts, but that it is one of 

 the greatest of them, and that it has possibilities of develop- 

 ment of which the others are absolutely incapable. 



Landscape art which includes landscape painting and 

 landscape gardening holds a unique and distinguished posi- 

 tion. It is the only one of the arts of design which in the nine- 

 teenth century made any progress beyond the achievements 

 of the great artistic periods of history. All of the others have 

 distinctly retrograded. Sculpture is now only the pale shadow 

 of the age of Pericles. The heroic style of painting which deals 

 with religious, historical, and ideal subjects has produced noth- 

 ing within a hundred years -which ranks with the work of the 

 Italian Renaissance. 



Architecture as a creative art has ceased to exist. In the 

 place of the mighty builders of the past we now have schools 

 of architecture which formulate rules based on their work; 

 and the best architects of our age are the most successful 

 copyists. When an attempt is made to depart from the formu- 

 las of the schools we have such "architectural aberrations" as 

 "L'Art Nouveau," of Paris, or the "Secession Styl," of Vienna. 



Landscape painting, however, has made great strides in 

 advance of Salvator Rosa, the best of the Italians, and of the 

 Poussins and Claude Lorrain, the best of the old French schools. 



Landscape gardening has made equal progress in the last 

 century and is even more in advance of earlier ages than the 

 Barbizon school of landscape painting is in advance of the 

 Renaissance. 



I believe that the explanation of this is not far to seek. A 

 love of nature for her own sake is distinctly modern. Even 

 the greatest of the Renaissance poets show less feeling than 

 those of the Victorian age for the charms and loveliness of 

 natural scenery. It is hardly more than a hundred years since 



