Outside London 



so skilful, even those sure-handed Florentines Mr. 

 Ruskin thinks so much of, could ever draw that 

 intert angled mass of lines. Nor could you easily draw 

 the leaves and head of the great parsley commonest 

 of hedge-plants the deep indented leaves, and the 

 shadow by which to express them. There was work 

 enough in that short piece of hedge by the potato-field 

 for a good pencil every day the whole summer. And 

 when done, you would not have been satisfied with it, 

 but only have learned how complex and how thought- 

 ful and far reaching Nature is in the simplest of 

 things. But with a straight-edge or ruler, any one 

 could draw the iron railings in half an hour, and a 

 surveyor's pupil could make them look as well as 

 Millais himself. Stupidity to stupidity, genius to 

 genius; any hard fist can manage iron railings; a 

 hedge is a task for the greatest. 



Those, therefore, who really wish their gardens 

 or grounds, or any place, beautiful, must get that 

 greatest of geniuses, Nature, to help them, and give 

 their artist freedom to paint to fancy, for it is Nature's 

 imagination which delights us as I tried to explain 

 about the tree, the imagination, and not the fact of 

 the timber and sticks. For those white bryony leaves 

 and slender spirals and exquisitely defined flowers 

 are full of imagination, products of a sunny dream, 

 and tinted so tastefully, that although they are green, 

 and all about them is green too, yet the plant is quite 

 distinct, and in no degree confused or lost in the mass 

 of leaves under and by it. It stands out, and yet 

 without violent contrast. All these beauties of form 

 and colour surround the place, and try, as it were, to 

 march in and take possession, but are shut out by 

 straight iron railings. Wonderful it is that education 

 should make folk tasteless! Such, certainly, seems 

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