( 5»1 ) 



CHAPTER VL 

 The Luxembourg Garden. 



The garden here is niuler the sole control of an arcliitect, in whose 

 education horticulture has, naturally, formed no part. There 

 have been ahle horticulturists at the Luxembourg, but their 

 po^Yers for the improvement of the gardens may be estimated by the 

 fact that a dozen flower-pots could not be purchased by them with- 

 out first obtaining permission from the architect. No change 

 for good is possible under such a system. Horticulture is an art 

 which more than any other is concerned with living things in 

 infinite variety. Without long acquaintance with numbers of tliesc 

 living things under various conditions, no man can intelligently 

 know their wants and arrange them so that we may enjoy them. 

 The profession of an architect has no one thing in common with 

 that of horticulturist. Being wholly concerned with inorganic 

 matter, it is impossible that he could, if really an architect, ever 

 give the study necessary to master even one phase of horticulture. 

 It must surely be obvious that, if our object is to have beautiful 

 gardens, no more serious error can be made than by committing 

 the charge of a garden wholly to the care of men who know, and 

 still worse care, nothing about the art. If we are content with 

 stones and walls where there is no need for them ; with a posing 

 ground for the refuse of the studios ; with diseased and melan- 

 choly trees in formal lines ; with flowers drilled into set forms, 

 with false curves and railway-like slopes, with a leprosy of vases and 

 broken gravel instead of flowers and grass, then let us hold to the 

 engineer, the architect, or anyone else who bars the way. This 

 system also secures for us a garden as changeful in aspect from 

 year to year, as a piece of oilcloth. The cause is not difiicult to 



