I THE FORMAL METHOD 3 



please ; in a word, you can so control and 

 modify 'the grounds as to bring nature into 

 harmony with the house, if you cannot brino[ 

 the house into harmony with nature. The 

 harmony arrived at is not any trick of imitation, 

 but an affair of a dominant idea which stamps 

 its impress on house and grounds alike. 



Starting, then, with the house as our datum, 

 we have to consider it as a visible object, what 

 sort of thing it is that we are actually looking 

 at. A house, or any other building, considered 

 simply as a visible object, presents to the eye 

 certain masses arranged in definite planes and 

 proportions, and certain colours distributed in 

 definite quality and quantitv. It is regular, it 

 presents straight lines and geometrical curves. 

 Any but the most ill-considered efforts in 

 building — anything with any title to the name 

 of architecture — implies premeditat(^d form in 

 accordance with certain limits and necessities. 

 However picturesque the result, however bravely 

 some chimney breaks the sky-line, or some 

 gable contradicts another, all architecture implies 

 restraint, and if not symmetry, at least balance. 

 There is order everywhere and there is no 

 escaping it. Now, suppose this visible object 

 dropped, let us say from heaven, into the 

 middle of a piece of ground, and this piece of 

 ground laid out with a studied avoidance of all 

 order, all balance, all definite lines, and the 

 result must be a hopeless disagreement between 



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