84 Landscape Gardening 



desirable change of surface may be, beauty must not be sacri- 

 ficed to variety. 



The slope of any elevation, therefore, however small, should 

 be so prolonged as imperceptibly to merge into the common 

 level (fig. 256) and by a concave Une of the gentlest possible 

 description. For the mere lengthening out of the slope will 

 produce ugliness rather than beauty, if some degree of con- 

 cavity be not expressly sought. After any ground line once 

 begins to reach the middle of its descent, it should then 

 almost immediately commence to curve under. 



More positive, because more sudden, variations of surface, 

 may be engendered by what is termed picturesqueness. In 

 this kind of scenery, the forms are all rugged, the lines broken, 

 the changes abrupt. Rough and tangled tufts of vegetation, 

 ground that has in no way been smoothed and leveled, jut- 

 ting masses or bold faces of rock, gnarled trunks and tortuous 

 branches of trees, and ruined buildings, half mantled with the 

 ivy, the wall-flower, the fern, and the pellitory, are illustra- 

 tions in point. Little, however, can be done in this way 

 with small gardens, which are too near the house — itself an 

 object of the highest art — to be capable of being rendered 

 picturesque. 



• In some retired parts of the garden, rockeries, collections 

 of ferns, rocky streams, waterfalls, or other picturesque 

 objects, can be easily added in many localities, and will be 

 most prolific in all the resources of variety. Rustic arbors 

 or seats — broken pillars, old vases or urns, partially covered 

 with some rude climber — baskets for flowers, made of rough 

 wood, with the bark on, or old trunks of trees, scooped out 

 with the necessary hollow in the center, — are a few of the 

 more architectural among picturesque decorations. 



14. Contrast is a characteristic which, though rarely 

 attainable to any extent in smaU places, must not be wholly 



