The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



mand. She uses first that never-failing background 

 of cool green which absorbs so much of the con- 

 flicting colors that there is little left to offend the 

 eye. And then over all there pours the bright sun- 

 shine from heaven out of that warm and infinite 

 sky ; and that brilliant sunshine, while it makes the 

 individual colors more vivid, catches them up in 

 such a quantity of white light that they are all 

 brought into solution, as it were, and are effectively 

 blended in spite of all their antagonisms. So it 

 happens that color combinations which would seem 

 wild and savage in the subdued light of Millicent's 

 boudoir pass gloriously unchallenged out in the 

 white sunlight under the open sky and against that 

 quiet background of green. 



Even at that, I am often tempted to feel that our 

 super-civilization has made us too finicky about 

 colors. A whole lot of the rules and regulations 

 which are supposed to govern colors seem very arbi- 

 trary, and are the invention of man rather than a 

 wise interpretation of nature. After some years 

 of impeccable existence amongst the most delicate 

 and refined color modulations we suddenly find an 



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