72 THE PARKS AND GARDENS OF PARIS. [Cnw. IV. 



a professorship of any of the important branches of horticulture 

 never entered into its scheme. In France it is somewhat 

 different. There the state and the municipal authorities teach 

 the useful arts betimes. And Paris would greatly help progress 

 in horticulture by founding a school of gardening, through which 

 she might eventually obtain garden-artists who would adorn and 

 not deface her gardens. With true art and good examples in the 

 national gardens, every private garden, even to the smallest, would 

 benefit greatly ; just as now nearly every blemish may be traced to 

 the expensive puerilities of Versailles, the ugliness of the Garden 

 of Plants, and the stony dreariness of many other national 

 gardens. Numbers of persons interested in horticulture, especially 

 those who have not travelled or gained experience, look to public 

 gardens as models of all that is worth imitation. It is most 

 unfortunate that with us this influence can rarely be anything 

 but injurious to all the true interests of garden-design. Most of 

 our public gardens and parks are planned in direct violation of 

 the very essentials of the art of laying out grounds ; many of 

 them show precisely what to avoid, and though this merit is not 

 alluded to in their guide-books, it may, to one who rightly uses 

 it, be of greater importance than any other feature. Kew, for 

 example, in some respects superior to any botanic garden or 

 botanical establishment in the world, is in jDoint of design no 

 higher than a chess-board. That breadth — i.e., an open spread 

 of lawn here and there — is the most essential princij)le in garden- 

 design one would think known to anybody arranging or planting 

 a public garden or park. Without this we cannot get anything 

 but a confused effect — we cannot see the beauty and dignity of 

 our now rich arboreal flora ; without this we may have a thousand 

 kinds of noble trees, and get little better effect than in an 

 unthinned plantation. It is, in fact, as impossible to make a 

 really beautiful garden or park without open turfy lawns as it 

 is to make a lake without water. At Kew, both in general 

 design and in the arrangement of details, this principle is com- 

 pletely ignored, arid the good old one adopted of putting in a 

 tree wherever there is room for it. The result is that the largest 

 botanic garden in the world is devoid of any picturesque beauty. 

 As to the Paris botanic garden it is infinitely worse ; there not 

 only is there no breadth, but even the very turf has disai)peared. 



