32 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



dotting of statues about both the public gardens of Paris and London 

 is destructive of all repose. If a place be used for the exhibition of 

 sculpture, well and good ; but let us not in that case call it a garden. 

 In Britain statues are often of plaster material, and those who use a 

 garden as a place to dot about such "works of art" do not think of 

 the garden as the best of places to show the work of Nature, and as 

 one in which we should see many fine natural forms. 



The earliest recollection I have of any large garden was one 

 strewn with the remains of statues, but as my evidence as to effect 

 and endurance might not be thought impartial, we may call as a 

 witness Victor Cherbuliez, of the French Academy. 



" It was one of those classical gardens the planners of which prided themselves 

 upon as being able to give Nature lessons in good behaviour, to teach her geometry 

 and the fine art of irreproachable lines ; but Nature is for geometers a reluctant 

 pupil, and if she submits to their tyranny she does it with an ill grace, and will 



take her revenge The large basin no longer held any water, and the 



dolphins which in days gone by spouted it from their throats looked as if they 

 asked each other to what purpose they were in this world. But the statues had 

 suffered most ; moss and a green damp had invaded them, as if some kind of 

 plague or leprosy had covered them with sores, and pitiless Time had inflicted on 

 them mutilations and insults. One had lost an arm, another a leg ; almost all had 

 lost their noses. There was in the basin a Neptune whose face was sadly damaged 

 and who had nothing left but his beard and half his trident, and further on a 

 Jupiter without a head, the rain water standing in his hollowed neck." 



As to the artistic value of much of our sculpture, Lord Rosebery, 

 in his speech at Edinburgh in 1896, said 



" If those restless spirits that possessed the Gadarene swine were to enter 

 into the statues of Edinburgh, and if the whole stony and brazen troop were to 

 hurry and hustle and huddle headlong down the steepest place near Edinburgh 

 into the deepest part of the Firth of Forth, art would have sustained no serious 

 loss." 



The Pall Mall Gazette, commenting on this speech, wishes for a 

 like rush to the Thames on the part of our " London monstrosities," 

 and yet this is the sort of " art " that some wish us to expose in the 

 garden, where there is rarely the means to be found to do even as 

 good work as we see in cities. If the politician and the journalist ask 

 to be delivered from the statues with which the squares and streets 

 of our cities are adorned, our duty as lovers of Nature in the garden 

 is clear. 



In its higher expression nothing is more precious in art than 

 sculpture ; in its lower and debased forms it is less valuable than 

 almost any form of art. The lovely Greek sculpture in the Vatican, 

 Louvre, or British Museum is the work of great artists, and those 

 who study it will not be led astray by goddesses in lead or New 

 Road nymphs in plaster. If we wish to see the results of sculpture 



