108 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



eye and the purse. If a dead level were the thing needful to con- 

 stitute beauty of surface then all Holland would be the Arcadia 

 of Landscape Painters ; and while Claude, condemned to tame Italy, 

 would have painted the interior of inns, and groups of boors drink- 

 ing (vide the Dutch School of Art), Teniers, living in the dead level 

 of his beautiful nature, would have bequeathed to the world pictures 

 of his native land, full of the loveliness of meadows smooth as a 

 carpet, or enlivened only by pollard willows and stagnant canals. 

 It is not the less fearful to see, as we have often seen in this country, 

 where new places are continually made, a finely varied outline of 

 ground utterly spoiled by being graded for the mansion and its sur- 

 rounding lawn, at an expense which would have curved all the 

 walks, and filled the grounds with the finest trees and shrubs, if their 

 surface had been left nearly or quite as nature formed it. Not much 

 better, or even far worse, is the foolish fancy many persons have of 

 terracing every piece of sloping ground as a mere matter of orna- 

 ment, where no terrace is needed. It may be pretty safely said, that 

 a terrace is always ugly, unless it is on a large scale, and is treated 

 with dignity, so as to become part of the building itself, or more 

 properly be supposed to belong to it than to the grounds like the 

 fine, architectural terraces which surround the old English mansions. 

 But little gardens thrown up into terraces, are devoid of all beauty 

 whatever though they may often be rendered more useful or avail- 

 able in this way. 



The surface of ground is rarely ugly in a state of nature 

 because all nature leans to the beautiful, and the constant action of 

 the elements goes continually to soften and wear away the harshness 

 and violence of surface. What cannot be softened, is hidden and 

 rounded by means of foliage, trees and shrubs, and creeping vines, 

 and so the tendency to the curve is always greater and greater. But 

 man often forms ugly surfaces of ground, by breaking up all natural 

 curves, without recognizing their expression, by distributing lumps 

 of earth here and there, by grading levels in the midst of undulations, 

 and raising mounds on perfectly smooth surfaces ; in short, by re- 

 garding only the little he wishes to do in his folly, and not studying 

 the larger part that nature has already done in her wisdom. As a 

 common, though accidental illustration of this, we may notice that 

 the mere routine of tillage on a farm, has a tendency to destroy nat- 



