2 Xanfcscape Hrcbttecture 



"All man's activity rests upon a given natural 

 order; his work can only succeed when it strikes out 

 in the direction prescribed by nature; it becomes 

 empty and artificial if it tries to sever its connexions 

 or to act in opposition to nature/' 1 



"Let man turn where he will, undertake no matter 

 what, he will ever come back again to that path that 

 nature has mapped out for him. " 



When Goethe wrote the above words he doubtless 

 knew Prince Piickler's great work on landscape garden- 

 ing based upon his treatment of his estate at Muskau, 

 for he has left on record a most appreciative estimate of 

 Prince Piickler's ability and genius. 



As he paced the garden walks with the Prince whose 

 life had been devoted to landscape-gardening art, the 

 recollection of these words he had penned would have 

 seemed doubly true to him. Something also like the 

 quotation, "Time is not able to bring forth new truths, 

 but only an unfolding of a timeless truth," may well 

 have been remarked by either of these two men, when 

 the Prince told his companion his experience in travel- 

 ling in many countries. How he had found the best in 

 England, and yet perhaps quite as good here and there, 

 elsewhere, and how everywhere he found the nearer he 

 kept to nature the nearer he was to the true ideal of 

 landscape art. We can imagine his relating how he 

 revelled in an old rose garden of Damascus full of 



1 Rudolph Eucken's Problem of Human Life. 



