NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 



(Plates LXXXIII to LXXXV), and in the Cornish place, Pen- 

 tillie Castle (Plates CX and CXI), all of which derive much of 

 their specific character from the help which nature has given to the 

 designer. These are in the best sense of the term landscape gardens 

 in which the ordering of details has been made to bear a direct 

 relation to the natural character of each place. The configuration of 

 the site has determined the plan, and the laying-out has been more in 

 the direction of a development of what was already there, an adapta- 

 tion of existing features, than in the direction of preconceived and 

 calculated formality. Nature has not been unduly chastened ; to a 

 large extent, indeed, she has had her own way and the gardener has 

 worked at her dictation and under her guidance. 

 As examples of the reversal of this process, of the use of nature to 

 complete an entirely definite plan, the gardens at Abbotsbury Castle 

 (Plates II and III) and Swaylands House (Plate CXIX) are 

 noteworthy. The effects here have been prearranged, and what 

 seems to be accidental wildness has been led up to by human 

 ingenuity. The Abbotsbury garden is as much a composition as 

 the most precise of the formal designs, and that at Swaylands — one 

 of the most elaborate rock gardens in England — has been built up 

 laboriously with a purely pictorial intention. Both show well what 

 an illusion can be obtained by clever artifice, and how the 

 naturalistic suggestion is possible in what is in principle formal 

 gardening. In work of this character precise methods are employed 

 to produce an informal result, but it is only by the preliminary 

 precision that the subsequent informality can be made credible. 

 There remain to mention the illustrations of bits in the gardens at 

 Kingston Lacy (Plate LXXXVII), Inwood House (Plate LXXXII), 

 and Walhampton Park (Plate CXXXII). The Kingston Lacy 

 and Inwood subjects show ways of treating that favourite garden 

 accessory, the sundial ; and the Inwood example in particular is 

 memorable because it is an unusually ingenious piece of work, an 

 instance of the clever use of the gardener's craft. The bit from 

 Walhampton Park illustrates the application of statuary, when 

 divorced from architectural surroundings, to the ornamentation of 

 open pleasure grounds. The figure has a certain pictorial effective- 

 ness in its relief against the dark foliage of the ilex-trees, and serves 

 as the high light in a tone arrangement which without some 

 such contrast might seem a little too ponderous. 

 The coloured plates in this number have a specific value as instances 

 of the adaptability of garden subjects to the painter's purposes, and 

 of the variety which is possible in the treatment of this class of 

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