HISTORICAL NOTICES. 547 



scape Gardening. This we attributed to the fact 

 that, while an Architect was employed to build the 

 house, no professional artist was employed to arrange 

 the grounds, and great errors and mistakes constantly 

 occurred in many cases so gross, as to destroy the en- 

 tire effect of what would be otherwise a very fine and 

 attractive place. 



Although there has been great expenditure of money 

 in country houses and costly glass-buildings, during the 

 past ten years, yet, in a great many cases, very inferior ar- 

 rangement and planting has been exhibited in the grounds. 

 Landscape Gardening is just as much a picture, though a 

 living one, made by trees, as a painted landscape is made 

 by the pencil or brush ; both require long years of study, 

 artistic perceptions, and a knowledge of how to handle 

 the tools. It would be quite as unreasonable, we think, 

 to expect one of our merchants or lawyers, in active 

 business, to make a landscape, as to paint one. How 

 can a person who lias passed his life in the whirl and 

 excitement of active business, or professional occupa- 

 tions, be suddenly transferred to the country and be 

 expected to make a garden ? It would be just as ab- 

 surd as to expect that a gardener can be transferred to 

 the counting-room, and become, the next day, a merchant. 

 It is quite as necessary in the one case as in the other 

 to be educated up to whatever you are to succeed in. 



It requires more and different qualities to make a 

 country-place than are required for any other profession. 

 For while industry, knowledge, prudence, sagacity, are 

 generally all that are necessary for a merchant, or law- 

 yer, or doctor, the Landscape Gardener must have not 

 only these but also taste a knowledge of the beautiful, 

 and a perception of the harmony of form and color ; in 

 other words, he must be an artist. 



The fashion of living in the country has not existed long 

 enough (though rapidly increasing) for this knowledge or 

 taste to have been very widely extended ; for every good 



