28 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



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 rubbish 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 sculp- 

 ture ; 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 either Piccadilly goddesses in lead or New 

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

 in the architect's own work we have but to look at the public build- 

 ings in London where it is used, mostly to spoil any architectural 

 grace such buildings should possess, as in the National Portrait 

 Gallery, the Natural History Museum, and the Home Office build- 

 ings, and then we may better judge how far we may go in our gardens 

 with such art. 



Real artists in sculpture are not concerned with garden design, and 

 sculpture is not the business of the builder or landscape gardener. A 

 statue or two of any artistic value may be placed in a garden with 

 good effect, never, however, forgetting that a garden is a place for 

 beautiful life, not death. It is not that we despise other arts than 

 our own, they may charm and even help us, as in the case of a 

 landscape painting by a man of genius or even serious student of 

 the actual beauty of things. Even a drawing of a tree or flower 

 may be a lesson in form and beauty ; but all debased " art " is as 

 harmful in the garden as it is anywhere else. 



