X CONCLUSION 227 



only good point in it is the one avenue, 

 and this leads to nowhere. If this park had 

 been planted out with groves and avenues 

 of limes, like the boulevard at Avallon, or the 

 squares at Vernon, or even like the east side 

 of Hyde Park between the Achilles statue 

 and the Marble Arch, at least one definite 

 effect would have been reached. There might 

 have been shady walks, and noble walls of 

 trees, instead of the spasmodic futility of 

 Battersea Park, and without pedantry the 

 principles of formal garden design should 

 be applied to public grounds and parks. 

 A dominant idea should control the general 

 scheme. Merely to introduce so many 

 statues or plaster casts is to begin at the 

 wrong end. These are the accidents of the 

 system, not the system itself, and this is why 

 the attempt at formal gardening at the head 

 of the Serpentine was such a failure. The 

 details were not particularly well designed, 

 but even if they had been, it was essentially 

 inartistic to plump them down in the midst of 

 incongruous surroundings. 



Perhaps of all the unsatisfactory public places 

 in England the worst is the public cemetery. 

 Here again one finds the same disregard of 

 decent order, the same hatred of simplicity, the 

 same meanness of imagination. Here, if any- 

 where, all pettiness, all banalities should be 

 avoided. We want rest, even if it is sombre in 



