228 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND x 



its severity ; but instead we are offered narrow 

 winding roads and broken pillars under weep- 

 ing willows, everything that can suggest the 

 ghastly paraphernalia of the undertaker. Why 

 not have long walks of yew at once, with 

 cypress-trees or junipers ? But the landscape 

 gardener is nothing if not *' natural," and so he 

 gives us a bad copy of an ill -chosen subject. 

 Only nature left alone can create her own 

 particular beauty, and only in the churchyard 

 of some far-away village can her work be 

 judged, where the grass grows tenderly over 

 the dead, and the graves are shaded by im- 

 memorial yews, and the sun-dial patiently wears 

 away on its gray stone base while it counts the 

 silent hours. 



As was pointed out in an earlier chapter, 

 the landscape gardener attempts to estabhsh a 

 sort of hierarchy of nature, based on much the 

 same principle as that which distinguishes a 

 gentleman by his incapacity to do any useful 

 work. Directly it is proved that a plant or a 

 tree is good for food, it is expelled from the 

 flower garden without any regard to its intrinsic 

 beauty. The hazel-hedge has gone, and the 

 apple-tree has long been banished from the 

 flowers. Of all the trees an apple-tree in full 

 bloom, or ripe in autumn, is perhaps the 

 loveliest. Trained as an espalier it makes a 

 beautiful hedge, and set out as in an orchard 

 it lets the sun play through its leaves and 



