INTRODUCTION. 5 



scapes, wherein are presented endless varieties of form, of line, 

 and of colour, far-stretching even plains rich with herbage, hill- 

 sides and tops covered with foliage, as well as swelling downs 

 with their vast sweeping curves. These forms of beauty may exercise 

 their fascination on the most unlearned, or appeal with augmented 

 force to the most cultivated human nature. It is the province of 

 the Landscape Gardener, as I understand the art, to appreciate the 

 multitudinous means whereby Nature expresses her beauty, and so 

 to use those means artistically as to arrange their force for pro- 

 ducing the delightful result he desires to achieve. To servilely 

 copy Nature's forms is to incur the pettiness of mere reproduction 

 in little, with the penalty of a falsification. To utilise her means and 

 to let the spirit of her works influence our art in every practicable 

 way, is the true practice of the art of Landscape Gardening. 



And can we deduce principles of art from the effect of Nature's 

 picturesqueness, and the details of her action ? A loving student 

 of her, with an artistic spirit, does derive some principles ; but 

 he feels more than he can describe of them. He comes to know 

 the truth that he who feels best the infinitude of Nature's expressions 

 of beauty, receives their influence without consciousness of the 

 process. By observation of mankind, he notes how certain mental 

 processes become active when reason and the finer sympathetic spirit, 

 that we call feeling, are pleasantly excited by testimony of the eye. 

 He classifies such phenomena and calls them laws. The artist, 

 after all, can do little more than generalise the truths in this wise 

 he thinks he has discovered ; yet they are the means by which he 

 works, as with a gentle and practised method he designs to bring 

 the sweet influences to bear, with as little evidence as may be of 

 the shaping hand. For illustration, I shall very briefly indicate 

 some such deductions that seem to me to afford guidance for the 

 artist of Landscape Gardening. 



