1 68 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



that they be not distinguishable from clouds. Yet this mere effect 

 is what the vulgar value. 



Landscape should contain variety enough to form a picture 

 upon canvass ; and this is no bad test, as I think the landscape- 

 painter is the gardener's best designer. The eye requires a sort 

 of balance here ; but not so as to encroach upon probable nature. 

 A wood or hill may balance a house or obelisk ; for exactness 

 would be displeasing. . . . The eye should look rather down 

 upon water: customary nature makes this requisite. ... It is 

 not easy to account for the fondness of former times for straight- 

 lined avenues to their houses ; straight-lined walks through their 

 woods ; and in short every kind of a straight-line ; where the foot 

 is to travel over what the eye has done before. . . . 



By the way I wonder that lead statues are not more in vogue 

 in our gardens. Though they may not express the finer lines 

 of a human body, yet they seem perfectly well calculated, on 

 account of their duration, to embellish landscapes, were they 

 some degrees inferior to what we generally behold. 1 . 



It is always to be remembered in gardening, that sublimity or 

 magnificence, and beauty or variety, are very different things. 

 Every scene we see in nature is either tame and insipid, or 

 compounded of those. . . . 



Gardeners may be divided into three sorts, the landscape- 

 gardener, the parterre - gardener, and the kitchen - gardener, 

 agreeably to our first division of gardens. 



I have used the word landscape-gardeners, because, in 

 pursuance of our present taste in gardening, every good painter 

 of landscape appears to me the most proper designer. The 

 misfortune of it is that these painters are apt to regard the 

 execution of their work, much more than the choice of 

 subject. . . . 



Hedges, appearing as such, are universally bad. They dis- 

 cover art in nature's province. 



1 The taste for lead statues and vases in gardens is now being stimulated by 

 Mr W. R. Lethaby, Mr Inigo Thomas, and other Architects. See the former's 

 admirable monograph on " Leadwork." (Macmillan, 1893.) 



