8 THE ART AND PRACTICE OF LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



around us, demonstrate the impossibility of denning the range of 

 this art. Its conceptions are more frequently to be felt than described ; 

 and the attempt to deduce from them a set of fixed principles 

 must be as futile as an endeavour to completely systematise the 

 ever varying yet constant manifestations of beauty that we encounter 

 in the vast field of Nature's operations which adorn the surface of 

 our country. Nature is the great exemplar that I follow. The 

 method I adopt I have endeavoured to describe in the several 

 divisions of this book. 



