4 THE ART AND PRACTICE OF LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



and sometimes dragged to an effect. Nature, it is true, is always 

 at work, and, as time goes on, clothes a neglected grave with 

 beauty, or makes an unsightly rubbish heap lovely with her gifts ; 

 and, in like manner, she gives venerableness to magnificently- 

 grown trees in stately parks, which compel admiration not entirely 

 due to the design of the planter. So natural beauty combines 

 with historical associations to give many old gardens an indescrib- 

 able charm especially valued in this land. Next, the influence 

 of pictorial artists was felt. They strove to modify the old con- 

 strained practice by the imposition of an almost equal artificiality of 

 picturesqueness. The resulting effect, as now appreciated, at all 

 events, is a feeling of unrest and stiffness. Nature seems still to 

 work in fetters. I shall endeavour now briefly to investigate some 

 of the conclusions which, in my estimation, form bases for a 

 better practice of the art, the method of which I have sought to 

 describe in this book. 



Water, by its constant gentle action, or by its sweeping directed 

 force, has, without question, been a principal agent in forming the 

 natural surface of our earth. It has scooped out valleys and modified 

 the hills ; in one place leaving their rounded sides and tops covered 

 with forest, in another bringing down loose earth till the hill-tops 

 and slopes show clear and perfectly curved outlines ; or, again, 

 leaving bare the rocks standing out in grand abruptness. With 

 the subsidence of the water, wide grassy valleys have been formed ; 

 wherein are seen long vistas of lawn running up till they are lost in 

 the obscurity of the forest. Then, through the middle of the hollowed 

 and widening fertile valley, runs the stream, that spreads into the 

 lake, giving an expression of the water's subsidence in the restricted 

 action of the stream or the subsided force of the more placid water. 

 Therefore it is right, in forming a restricted landscape, to bear 

 in mind Nature's grand agent in the formation of her greater land- 



