What to Avoid 41 



conducive to that impartation of pleasure to others which 

 all seek or profess to wish for, to keep only in the beaten 

 track and strive after excellences which are sufficiently known 

 and acknowledged. Enough of freshness and originahty to 

 satisfy any reasonably active mind may easily be attained 

 by new combinations of the ever-varying materials of nature, 

 without striving to jumble together things that can have no 

 possible correspondence or relationship. 



Everything partaking of the nature of a sham, also what- 

 ever is wanting in real excellence, will be discarded by persons 

 desiring to obtain credit for correct taste. Artificial ruins, 

 mere fronts to buildings, figures to represent animals, bridges 

 that have no meaning or for which there is no necessity, or 

 any other merely artificial representations of natural or other 

 objects, where the aim and intention are to induce the belief 

 that they are really natural, will commonly be despised when 

 the trick is discovered. 



12. Formality. — The problem of how to treat a very 

 small place is an exceedingly difficult one. On the one hand 

 a large formal treatment is apt to appear pretentious, while 

 on the other hand, the natural style is sure to seem cramped. 

 Whatever is attempted must be carried out with extreme 

 simpHcity. In general modern taste leans toward very simple 

 compositions in geometrical lines, avoiding both the incon- 

 gruity of flowing lines and the ambitiousness of complicated 

 formal work. 



13. Large geometrical figures, unless they embrace the 

 whole garden, are never satisfactory, even when kept ex- 

 tremely simple. The more their parts are multiplied, the 

 more destructive they are to dignity, breadth, and repose. 

 Flower gardens, therefore, and other separate parts of a 

 place, when geometrically laid out in close beds, and put in 

 the front of the house, should bear but a small proportion 



