HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE. 69 



of Art and Nature are always unequally yoked. 

 Nature is treated with sparse courtesy by Art, its 

 individuality is ignored, it sweats like a drudge under 

 its load of false sentiment. " Sike fancies weren 

 foolerie." 



But in England, though we hold Nature in duress, 

 we leave her unbound ; if we mew her up for 

 cultivation, we leave her inviolate, with a chance 

 of vagrant liberty and a way of escape. Thus, 

 you will note how the English garden stops, as 

 it were, without ending. Around or near the house 

 will be the ordered garden with terraces and 

 architectural accessories, all trim and fit and nice. 

 Then comes the smooth-shaven lawn, studded and 

 belted round with fine trees, arranged as it seems 

 with a divine carelessness ; and beyond the lawn, the 

 ferny heather-turf of the park, where the dappled 

 deer browse and the rabbits run wild, and the sun- 

 chequered glades go out to meet, and lose themselves 

 " by green degrees" in the approaching woodland, 

 past the river glen, the steep fields of grass and 

 corn, the cottages and stackyards and grey church 

 tower of the village ; past the ridge of fir-land and 

 the dark sweep of heath-country into the dim waving 

 lines of blue distance. 



So that however self-contained, however self- 

 centred the stiff old garden may seem to be, it never 

 loses touch with the picturesque commonplaces of 

 our land ; never loses sympathy with the green 

 world at large, but, in a sense, embraces and locks in 

 its arms the whole country-side as far as eye can see. 



