LANDSCAPE LINES AND GARDENING 273 



which he had carefully staked out, following a gentle 

 undulation of the slope and swinging in an open arc 

 to its upper base. Here was a man who could appre- 

 ciate pure line! A year later I passed again, purposely 

 to see the effect. The sod above now grew down and 

 covered the top of the wall, so that from the house you 

 were aware only of the natural undulations. But 

 from below, or from the road, the line of the wall was 

 visible, a sweet, gracious curve that might have been 

 sculptored by a full-flooded river, a line that was 

 Nature's own and subtly removed the taint of formal- 

 ity and tampering. Similarly, the sweep of trees and 

 shrubbery by a lawn-side, so often now either a matter 

 of ruled perspective or jagged, broken capes and prom- 

 ontories, might be planned to a sweeter curve, alike 

 on its ground and its summit line, and new emotional 

 values be secured. In such a border, for example, 

 sharp-topped trees would be out of place, but a swell and 

 dip and swell again of round-headed foliage, with some 

 great umbrella elm as the Moosilauke of the range, 

 would give a sky line of perpetual allure, with a hint 

 of the mountain mystery in its green bulwark. It is a 

 good deal to have cleared out from so many of our 

 estates the "specimen" trees which used to dot the 

 lawns and slopes like abandoned lunch boxes on the 

 beach at Coney Island. But need our conscious plan- 

 ning stop with the opened vista? We have cleared the 

 valley, but we can still arrange the walls. 



