THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING. 149 



delightfulness of the details, we are apt to forget 

 that it is the first business of any work of Art to be 

 a unit. There is nothing of single specimen, or 

 group of intermingled variety, or adroit vista that 

 we may miss and not be a loser ; the only draw- 

 back is that we see what we are expected to 

 see, what everyone else sees. Here is greenery 

 of every hue ; every metallic tint of silver, gold, 

 copper, bronze is there ; and old and new favour- 

 ites take hands, and we feel that it is perfect ; 

 but the things blush in their conscious beauty every 

 prospect is best seen "there!" England has few 

 such beautiful gardens as Highnam, and it has all the 

 pathos of the touch of "a vanished hand," and ideals 

 that have wider range now. 



As to this matter of scenic effects, it is of course 

 only fair to remember that a garden is a place meant 

 not only for broad vision, but for minute scrutiny ; 

 and, specially near the house, intricacy is permissible. 

 Yet the counsels of perfection would tell the artist 

 to eschew such prettiness and multiplied beauties as 

 trench upon broad dignity. Sweetness is not good 

 everywhere. Variations in plant-life that are over- 

 enforced, like variations in music, may be inferior to 

 the simple theme. A commonplace house, with 

 well-disposed grounds, flower-beds in the right place, 

 a well-planted lawn, may please longer than a fine 

 pile where is ostentation and unrelieved artifice. 



Of lawns. Everything in a garden, we have said, 

 has its first original in primal Nature : a garden is 

 made up of wild things that are tamed. The old masters 



