MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE 



man upon a fair sheet of Bristol board. But 

 it is a very different matter to establish the 

 same graces upon the land itself. Unlimited 

 expenditure may indeed make any surface con- 

 form itself to the curvatures and devices of 

 a drawing. But the art of arts in landscape 

 gardening is to make outlay illustrate the beau- 

 ties of the land, and not to cramp and deplete 

 the land to illustrate the charms of the draw- 

 ing. 



Particular curves or undulations of surface, 

 which may have a most attractive look in a 

 finished landscape, may lack very many of the 

 essentials of grace if transferred to paper, 

 after the ordinary manner of topographical 

 drawing. If we looked at landscape effects 

 always from a balloon — if the hills were all 

 fore-shortened, and the curves of walks or 

 drives all determinable at a glance, a ground 

 map would be a very fair guide by which to 

 determine artistic effects. But the truth is 

 that in nature the hills have their perspective ; 

 the scattered trees or coppices are not mere 

 woolly blotches, but slant their shadows upon 

 the surface and toss their tops into the sky- 

 line; curves are not cognizable in their length, 

 or ease, or abruptnesses at a glance — we steal 

 upon them by degrees; they please by their 



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