General Principles 105 



contact, by interweaving their parts freely with each other 

 or separating them by something of an intermediate tone. 



Utility and convenience might be adjudged ahen to matters 

 of ornament. But there is no reason why they should be so. 

 A useful thing may likewise be an ornamental one. Taste 

 and tact will adorn the commonest processes of life, and make 

 them in the truest sense beautiful, — sometimes poetical. 

 So the useful and the necessary portions of a garden can be 

 brightened by art till they will seem intended solely for orna- 

 ment, though all the while accomplishing their primary pur- 

 pose with the utmost fidelity. 



No bread.th of lawn, some may be ready to urge, can be 

 procured at the same time with any degree of intricacy. Yet 

 nothing is more untrue. It is not a plain bare area, on the 

 scale of a moderately large garden, that can give the impres- 

 sion of size. It is the indefiniteness which complexity pro- 

 duces, — the partial revelations of side glades which the 

 imagination is left to ampUfy and lengthen, — that alone 

 impart any adequate notion of extent. Plainness reduces 

 the whole to a mere matter of fact, which is measured 

 at once. A little innocent deception, by supplying food 

 for the fancy, and preventing almost the possibility of esti- 

 mating the actual proportions, always operates in favor of 

 expansion. 



How, it may be further asked, are privacy and seclusion 

 to be gained, without sacrificing all open views into the sur- 

 rounding country? Nothing is easier, I reply. If a house 

 be on raised ground, as it should be, the planting of thickets 

 of low shrubs (principally evergreens) near the boundary, 

 where it is liable to be overlooked, at all such openings, will 

 produce the desired seclusion, and still allow the eye to range 

 over into the district beyond. Such thickets will also give a 

 pleasing foreground, and they can be kept sufficiently low, 



