April i, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



133 



landscape-gardeners, who prescribe curves for paths and 

 other approaches as being- more "natural" than straight 

 lines, and then propose plantations to fit or account for the 

 curves. These gentry talk much about Nature and affect 

 to consider formal treatment of ground and planting a sort 

 of profanation. They are of many schools, for some will 

 urge the planting of Purple Beeches, Blue Spruces and all 

 manner of exotics, while others say, "You will do well to 

 use few but wild native shrubs. What can be lovelier than 

 this wayside group of Red Cedar, Bayberry and Wild 

 Rose?" Thirdly, come the modern American architects, 

 whose technical training has been acquired at the Parisian 

 Ecole des Beaux Arts. These hold up their hands in holy 

 horror at the landscape-gardeners of all schools, and say to 

 the inquiring public, " Let us show you how wrong these 

 men are ! What you really need to make your surround- 

 ings beautiful are straight avenues, terraces and balus- 

 trades, a 'rampe douce' at your door and a sun-dial in an 

 old-fashioned garden." 



This is no fanciful picture of the strange conflict of mod- 

 ern doctrine concerning beauty in the surroundings of daily 

 life. It is no wonder that the inquiring public is bewil- 

 dered. Controversial papers and books are continually 

 appearing. Bad language is employed by all parties, but 

 the modern architects appear to be decidedly the most 

 skilled in its use. Such adjectives as asinine, silly and 

 ridiculous are not uncommon in the writings of Messrs. 

 Blomfield, Thomas and Seddings, who, however, are 

 English and not American controversialists. 



How absurd all this quarreling seems when once a 

 moment can be obtained for sober reflection. Is beauty, 

 as a matter of fact, often won by following shifting fads or 

 fashions, by heaping up decorations, by gathering archi- 

 tectural or botanical specimens, however remarkable or 

 even lovely? On the contrary, it is by wrong-headed 

 attempts to win beauty in these impossible ways that the 

 ignorant rich and their imitators so often succeed in put- 

 ting pretentious ugliness in place of simple loveliness and 

 charm ; witness the greater part of Newport and many 

 another once pleasing region now sophisticated and de- 

 stroyed. 



Little or no thought being given to the fundamental 

 arrangement of lands and buildings for convenience and 

 beauty, an attempt is often made to retrieve the situation 

 by adding decorations, such as statues, fountains and 

 bridges, or, more generally, a selection from the marvelous 

 products of modern nursery gardens. In those rarer cases 

 where some real attention is devoted to the all-important 

 fundamental arrangement, the design is apt to be strictly 

 limited by the supposed requirements of the particular style 

 of treatment which may be selected. The picturesque, 

 the gardenesque and the formal styles are soberly dis- 

 cussed ; but selection is apt to be made according to fancy 

 merely, and the results, as in the first-mentioned class of 

 cases, are generally amusing or striking rather than beau- 

 tiful. A house scene filled with irrationally curved paths 

 is seldom lovelier than one which is decked with a collec- 

 tion of contrasting specimens. A private country house 

 approached by an unnecessary triple avenue and fitted 

 with steps and terraces broad enough for a state capitol is 

 equally amusing in its way. 



The cause of the failure to attain to beauty in these and 

 all similar cases is doubtless the same ; it is (is it not ?) the 

 common lack of rationality at the foundation. 



How is it that so much of the natural scenery of the 

 world is beautiful and that so many myriad kinds of living 

 things are lovely? The fact may not be explicable, but "it 

 is one of the commonplaces of science that the form which 

 every vital product takes has been shaped for it by natural 

 selection through a million ages, with a view to its use, 

 advantage or convenience, and that beauty has resulted 

 from that evolution." 



How is it that so much of the humanized landscape of the 

 world is lovely? Is not the same natural law at work here 

 also? The generations who by their arduous labor made 



the scenery of Italy, England and the valleys of New 

 England what each is to-day 



wrought with a sad sincerity. 



Themselves from God they could not free, 



They builded better than they knew, 



The conscious (earth) to beauty grew. 



In New England, for example, the hard-worked men of 

 the last century cleared and smoothed the intervales, left 

 fringes of trees along the streams and hanging woods on 

 the steep hillsides, gathered their simple houses into vil- 

 lages and planted Elms beside them, for "use, advantage 

 and convenience" merely, and yet beauty is the result. 

 Truly, 



this is an art 

 Which does mend nature, change it rather ; 

 But the art itself is nature. 



The moral to be taken to heart by the sophisticated and 

 self-conscious seekers after beauty in our present day is 

 obvious. Success in achieving the beautiful is to be hoped 

 for only when we bow to the law of nature and follow in 

 the appointed way. Special purpose is the root, and fitness 

 for purpose the main stem, of the plant of which beauty is 

 the flower. As William Wyndham wrote to Humphrey 

 Repton, "lands should be laid out solely with a view *o 

 their uses and enjoyment in real life. Conformity to these 

 purposes is the one foundation of their true beauty." 



Thus, the right planning of the arrangement of lands for 

 private country-seats or suburban houses, for public squares, 

 playgrounds or parks, for villages or for cities, is not a 

 question of "the gardenesque" or "the picturesque," "the 

 artificial " or 'the natural," "the symmetrical," or "the 

 unsymmetrical." Whoever, regardless of circumstances, 

 insists upon any particular style or mode of arranging land 

 and its accompanying landscape, is most certainly a quack. 

 He has overlooked the important basal fact that, although 

 beauty does not consist in fitness, nevertheless all that would 

 be fair must first be fit. True art is expressive before it is 

 beautiful ; at its highest it is still the adornment of a service. 



The modern practitioners of renaissance architecture 

 need especially to be reminded that they have not a 

 monopoly of the lovely. " Symmetry is beautiful, but so, 

 also, is the unsymmetrical relation of the parts to a whole 

 in Nature." Since all natural landscape, save that of the 

 plains and the oceans, is unsymmetrical, it follows that 

 humanized landscape is also generally and fittingly infor- 

 mal. Such landscape properly becomes symmetrical or 

 formal only occasionally and for good reasons. The roads 

 of a hilly park rightly curve to avoid obstacles or to secure 

 easy grades ; but a particular spot within that park, 

 intended for the gathering place of crowded audiences at 

 band concerts, is rightly graded evenly and symmetrically 

 and shaded by trees set in rows. Again, the fields and 

 woods of a country-seat are rightly disposed picturesquely, 

 while those outdoor halls and rooms of the mansion called 

 the terrace and the flower-garden are just as rightly treated 

 formally and decoratively. The naturalists are justified in 

 thinking formal work often impertinent and out of place. 

 The formalists and the decorators are justified so long as 

 their work is rooted in usefulness and adaptation to pur;' 

 " Each has its proper situation ; and good taste will make 

 fashion subservient to good sense," wrote Humphrey Rep- 

 ton. It is to be hoped that our quarreling faddists may 

 take to heart this saying, and may turn themselves to the 

 advancement of Repton's real and much needed art of 

 arranging land, vegetation, buildings and the resultant 

 landscape for the use and delight of men. 



Brookline, Mass. Chalks Eliot. 



Salt and Sugar in Washingtonia lilamcntosa. 



RECENTLY, while examining- this Palm for tannin, I 

 was impressed by the sweet and salt taste of the 

 fresh tissue. Less than one per cent, of tannin was found, 

 but, as the specimen contained 6S.97 per cent. <>f moisture, 

 this raised the amount of tannin to 2.73 per cent, when cal- 

 culated for absolutely dry substance. The quantity is too 



