THE " LANDSCAPE GARDEN? 129 



threw up traditional methods as unworthy, but they 

 had not learnt their own Art according to Nature 

 before they began to practise it ; and they are still 

 in the throes of education. Their intentions are 

 admirable beyond telling, but their work exhibits in 

 the grossest forms the very vices they condemn in 

 the contrary school ; for the expression of their ideas 

 is self-conscious, strained, and pointless. To know 

 at a glance their position towards Art in a garden, 

 how crippled their resources, how powerless to design, 

 let me give an extract from Mr. Robinson. He is 

 speaking of an old-fashioned garden, " One of those 

 classical gardens, the planners of which prided them- 

 selves upon being able to give Nature lessons of 

 good behaviour, to teach her geometry and the fine 

 Art of irreproachable lines ; but Nature abhors 

 lines ; * she is for geometers a reluctant pupil, and if 

 she submits to their tyranny she does it with bad 

 grace, and with the firm resolve to take eventually 

 her revenge. Man cannot conquer the wildness of 

 her disposition, and so soon as he is no longer at 

 hand to impose his will, so soon as he relaxes his 

 care, she destroys his work " (p. viii., " English 

 Flower Garden"). This is indeed to concede every- 

 thing to Nature, to deny altogether the mission of 

 Art in a garden. 



* For which reason, I suppose, Mr. Robinson, in his model " Non- 

 geometrical Gardens " (p. 5), humbly skirts his ground with a path 

 which as nearly represents a tortured horse-shoe as Nature would 

 permit ; and his trees he puts in a happy-go-lucky-way, and allows them 

 to nearly obliterate his path at their own sweet will ! No wonder he 

 does not fear Nature's revenge, where is so little Art to destroy ! 



K 



