CHAPTER IV. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH CONTINUED. 



THE STIFF GARDEN. 

 "All is fine that is fit." 



THE English garden, as I have just tried to 

 sketch it, was not born yesterday, the bombastic 

 child of a landscape-gardener's recipe. It epitomises 

 a nation's instincts in garden-craft ; it is the slow 

 result of old affection for, old wonder at, beauty in 

 forms, colours, tones ; old enthusiasm for green turf, 

 wild flower, and forest tree. Take it at its best, 

 it records the matured taste of a people of Nature- 

 readers, Nature-lovers : it is that which experience 

 has proved to be in most accord with the character 

 and climate of the country, and the genius of the race. 

 Landscape has been from the first the central 

 tradition of English art. Life spent amidst pictorial 

 scenery like ours that is striking in itself and rendered 

 more impressive and animated by the rapid atmos- 

 pheric changes, the shifting lights and shadows, the 

 life and movement in the sky, and the vivid intense 

 colouring of our moist climate, has given our tastes 

 a decided bent this way, and fashioned our Arts of 

 Poetry, Painting, and Gardening. Out-of-door life 



