LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS 



to the view; must drape the bride, and teach 

 us the piquant value of a "coy, reluctant, 

 amorous delay." 



Again, it should be a cardinal rule in land- 

 scape art (as in all other art, I think) not to 

 multiply means for producing a given efifect. 

 Where one stroke of the brush is enough, two 

 evidence weakness, and three incompetency. 

 If you can secure a graceful sweep to your 

 approach-road by one curve, two are an im- 

 pertinence. If a clump of half a dozen trees 

 will effect the needed diversion of the eye and 

 produce the desired shade, any additions are 

 worse than needless. If some old lichened 

 rock upon your lawn is grateful to the view, 

 do not weaken the effect by multiplying rocks. 

 Simple effects are the purest and best effects 

 as well in landscape art as in moral teaching. 



A single outlying boulder will often illus- 

 trate by contrast the smoothness of a lawn bet- 

 ter than the marks of a ponderous roller. 

 One or two clumps of alders along the side of 

 a brooklet will designate its course more ef- 

 fectively and pleasantly than if you were to 

 plant either bank with willows. A single 

 spiral tree in a coppice will be enough to bring 

 out all the beauty of a hundred round-topped 

 ones. Because some simple rustic gate has a 



197 



