294 On the term Natural, as applied to 



"vvell might one of our fashionable ladies hope to pass for a 

 shepherdess, by taking a crook in her hands and adding to her 

 costly gear a few green oak leaves. 



As the evidences of art and design are calculated to injure 

 the natural appearance of a landscape, the same effects are 

 produced by the evidences of cost. A landscape beautifully 

 decorated, in harmony with the general aspect of nature, may 

 have been laid out at a very great expense, yet if the taste 

 and ingenuity of the artist have concealed the palpable evi- 

 dences of cost, the whole scene appears to the beholder to be 

 one of those lovely places on which nature has lavished an 

 extraordinary portion of her favors. This art I conceive to 

 be the true secret of successful landscape gardening, — as the 

 perfection of eloquence consists in the attainment of the 

 highest graces of composition, combined with a charming 

 simplicity, that makes the whole seem to be the extempora- 

 neous outpouring of the mind. The designer of landscapes 

 has attained the perfection of his science in proportion as he 

 has learned to conceal the marks of .cost and design, while 

 adding to them all those charms which affect the visitor with 

 the highest emotions of pleasure. 



Hence it happens that landscape gardens so often fail in 

 producing that agreeable effect on the mind of the beholder, 

 which he derives from the sight of another similar place, 

 covered with a spontaneous growth of trees and shrubbery. 

 The proofs of the lavishment of a great deal of money, in 

 spite of the absence of straight lines and formal arrangements, 

 are too apparent in the clean gravelled walks, in the clearance 

 of wild shrubbery under the trees, and in the general symp- 

 toms of expensive labor, exhibited in a thousand different 

 ways.' One might say that everything about it is perfectly 

 natural, because the trees and other vegetation are the indig- 

 enous growth of the place, and in the very spot where nature 

 herself had planted them. I admit that everything seen 

 there is natural ; but the absence of other things which have 

 been cleared away, for the sake of elegance, destroys this 

 desirable effect. The very efforts which have been made to 

 give it a natural expression, if misdirected, may produce the 



