THE AMERICAN GARDEN 



took the exquisite waxen model of some piece of 

 goldsmithing she had commissioned him to exe- 

 cute for her. So deUghted was she with this 

 mere model that she longed to keep it and called 

 it the perfection of art, or some such word. But 

 Benvenuto said, No, he could not claim for it 

 the high name of art until he should have repro- 

 duced it in gold, that being the most worthy 

 material in which it would endure the use for 

 which it was designed. 



Unless the great Italian was in error, then, a 

 garden ought not to be so largely made up of 

 plants which perish with the summer as to be, 

 at their death, no longer a garden. Said that 

 harsh-spoken judge whom we have already once 

 or twice quoted — that shepherd's-dog of a judge 

 — at one of the annual bestowals of our Car- 

 negie garden prizes: 



"Almost any planting about the base of a 

 building, fence or wall is better than none; but 

 for this purpose shrubs are far better than an- 

 nual flowers. Annuals do not sufiiciently mask 

 the hard, offensive right-angles of the structure's 

 corners or of the line whence it starts up from 



71 



