64 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



walks, temples, and even villages." Truly a Jardin 

 Anglpis ! 



We may well prefer Diderot's simile for the 

 English garden as "the sanctuary of a sweet and 

 placid pleasure " to the bustling crowd . of miscel- 

 laneous elements that took its name in vain in the 

 Petit Trianon ! 



For an English garden is at once stately and 

 homely homely before all things. Like all works of 

 Art it is conventionally treated, and its design con- 

 scious and deliberate. But the convention is broad, 

 dignified, quiet, homogeneous, suiting alike the charac- 

 teristics of the country and of the people for whom it 

 is made. Compared with this, the foreign garden 

 must be allowed to be richer in provocation ; there is 

 distinctly more fancy in its conceits, and its style is 

 more absolute and circumspect than the English. 

 And yet, just as Browning says of imperfection, that 

 it may sometimes mean " perfection hid," so, here 

 our deficiencies may not mean defects. 



In order that we may compare the English and 

 foreign garden we must place them on common 

 ground ; and I will liken each to a pastoral romance. 

 Nature is idealised, treated fancifully in each, yet 

 how different the quality of the contents, the method 

 of presentment, the style, the technique of this and 

 that, even when the design is contemporaneous ! 



A garden is, I say, a sort of pastoral romance, 

 woven upon a background of natural scenery. In 

 the exercise of his pictorial genius, both the foreign 

 and English artist shall run upon natural things, and 



