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ground. Any one going through St. James's Park will 

 be able to judge for himself whether anything is 

 gained by this distortion of the surface. It will be clear 

 that at least two things are lost. In the first place, 

 those who made these mounds have rarely any eye for 

 natural gradation, and therefore false lines and stiff banks 

 occur here and there and are very unsightly. Secondly, 

 piling mounds of earth around trees is a sure way of 

 destroying one of the most beautiful aspects of tree life, 

 and that is the way in which the stem arises from the 

 earth, often with a wide-spreading bole, or with a broad 

 buttressed effect. There is scarcely any place where 

 trees grow naturally in which one cannot see the beauti- 

 ful way in which their stems are built — a form of beauty 

 which should never be concealed by needless earthwork. 

 Such treatment of ground surface is common in France, 

 and some of its worst effects may be seen in the Champs 

 Elysees, which is full of false lines, stiff banks, and beds 

 made at impossible angles, and this poor result is ill con- 

 cealed by the beauty of the trees and the good planting. 

 In valleys like those of the Thames and the Seine we 

 only lose by altering the natural lie of the ground. There 

 is no planting, either of flower or shrub, that is one whit 

 advanced by the creation of artificial mounds in a valley 

 where the soil is generally good. The art of too many 

 present-day landscape gardeners consists very largely in 

 this artificial chopping and changing of surface, often at 

 great expense and with anything but a gain in effect. It 

 is true that where the ground is naturally broken a slight 

 change in surface may sometimes open up hidden beauty 

 and give better effect, but to create artificial mounds for 

 the mere sake of avoiding a flat surface is a false idea of 

 art. And whenever it is necessary, in grading for walks 



