156 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



gardening, perhaps he who gave the title may 

 explain. I see no reason, unless it be the efficacy 

 which it has shown in destroying landscapes, in 

 which indeed it is infallible ! " But, setting aside the 

 transparent shallowness of such a plea against the 

 use of Art in a garden, it argues little for the 

 scheme of effects to leave " nothing to impede the 

 view of the house or its windows but a refreshing 

 carpet of grass." To pitch your house down upon the 

 grass with no architectural accessories about it, to 

 link it to the soil, is to vulgarise it, to rob it of im- 

 portance, to give it the look of a pastoral farm, green 

 to the door-step. To bring Nature up to the win- 

 dows of your house, with a scorn of art-sweetness, 

 is not only to betray your own deadness to form, but 

 to cause a sense of unexpected blankness in the 

 visitor's mind on leaving the well-appointed interior 

 of an English home. As the house is an Art-produc- 

 tion, so is the garden that surrounds it, and there is 

 no code of taste that I know of which would prove 

 that Art is more reprehensible in the garden than in 

 the house. 



But to return. The old-fashioned country house 

 had its terraces. These terraces are not mere narrow 

 slopes of turf, such as now-a-days too often answer 

 to the term, but they are of solid masonry with 

 balustrades or open-work that give an agreeable 

 variety of light and shade, and impart an air of im- 

 portance and of altitude to the house that would be 

 lacking if the terrace were not there. 



The whole of the ground upon which the house 



