ON ART IN A GARDEN. 35 



Gilbert White, each in his day testifying to the 

 inborn love of the English for woodland scenery, 

 their study of nature, and their taste in trees, shrubs, 

 and flowers. What a vindication is here of the' old- 

 fashioned garden and gardener ! What nonsense to 

 set up Kent and Brown as the discoverers of the 

 green world of old England, when, as Mr. Hamerton 

 remarks in " The Sylvan Year" (p. 173), Chaucer hardly 

 knows how or when to stop whenever he begins to 

 talk about his enjoyment of Nature. " Chaucer," he 

 says, " in his passion for flowers, and birds, and spring 

 mornings in the woods, and by streams, is hard to 

 quote, for he leads you down to the bottom of the 

 page, and over the leaf, before you have time to 

 pause." 



The question now before us " What ornament is 

 fit and right for a garden ? " of itself implies a ten- 

 dency to err in the direction of ornament. We see 

 that on the face of it the transposition of the simple 

 of Nature into the subtle of Art has its dangers. 

 Something may be put, or something may be left, 

 which were best absent. This may be taken as an 

 established fact. In making a garden you start with 

 the assumption that something must be sacrificed of 

 wild Nature, and something must be superadded, 

 and that which is superadded is not properly of this 

 real, visible world, but of the world of man's brain. 



The very enclosure of our garden-spaces sig- 

 nifies that Nature is held in duress here. Nature 

 of herself cannot rise above Nature, and man, seeing 

 perfections through her imperfections, capacities 



D 2 



