September 9, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



423 



us, and some Pines on the hill-side to relieve its dreariness, 

 were in our programme, as well as the Willows along the 

 street, but we felt that we had twice as much land as we 

 needed, and should probably part with a lot on each side of 

 us before very long, instead of wishing, as we now do, for a 

 few acres more. 



As in everything else that one begins in an amateurish way, 

 we looked no further along the road we were to travel than 

 the end of its first enticing curve, and little we recked where 

 it was to lead us. To get rid of barrenness was our obvious 

 business, but there was no method in our endeavor beyond 

 the mere putting in of all the trees and shrubs we could 

 muster from the resources of the place, or through the kind- 

 ness of our friends. 



For the first two years it required our best energies to make 

 these live, and there was not much thought beyond digging 

 around them, watering them when dry, and pruning them 

 into shape. But the third summer, when the bare poles 

 began to have perceptible tops on them, and the little shrubs 

 to occupy a substantial space of the earth's surface, we began 

 to be conscious of defects of arrangement, of a lack of mean- 

 in°- and purpose in the picture, and to feel the necessity of a 

 more artistic disposition of our forces. The needs of the place, 

 too, became apparent. The trees that had been planted for 

 shade either showed that they would throw no shadows at all 

 within the next ten years, at the proper hours, or else would 

 throw them where they were not particularly needed. The 

 shrubs in groups looked crowded, the single ones gave a 

 spotty appearance to the lawn that was not to be borne, the 

 drive-ways were too wide and their curves unsatisfactory, 

 while the expanses of turf were too brief for beauty. 



Each effort at improvement seemed but to make us the 

 more conscious of our lacks, and while our neighbors were 

 complimenting us upon the improved appearance of the farm, 

 which no longer looked like an abandoned sand-hill, we our- 

 selves were taking counsel together, and coming to the con- 

 clusion that the place was a schoolmaster to bring us unto 

 knowledge by the painful road of ignorance and failure. 



The conviction that you know nothing is always a hopeful, 

 if a depressing, sign. When the painter feels that his finished 

 picture is a wretched daub, when the writer knows that his last 

 romance is but a thing of shreds and patches, it is a proof that 

 he is still growing, that he has a stronger note to strike, and 

 that his end is not yet. 



One of our leading novelists says that his stories are to him 

 like those tapestries wrought by the workman from behind, of 

 which the weaver sees only the wrong side, the knots and ends 

 of the worsted, the seams of the foundation, so that when the 

 public views his finished work with delight, recognizing its 

 sincerity and dramatic truth, the satisfaction of his readers is 

 to him a wonder, since from his own point of view he knows 

 not whether he has wrought well or ill. 



All great successes, I fancy, must be surprises to the men 

 who make them, for the discontent of the artist with his paint- 

 ing, of the poet with his verse, of the playwright with his 

 play, is a penalty exacted by the ideal for which men strive, 

 and which all the more surely eludes the greatest, whose 

 imagination is the most far-reaching. When a man is satis- 

 fied with what he has done he has reached his limit ; from that 

 point he goes down-hill, imperceptibly it may be at first, but 

 none the less surely. 



Our own discontent with our landscape-gardening convinces 

 me that we have a future before us for a good while to come. 

 Our picture will bear a lot of working on for many years yet, 

 and in the mean time we have room for a succession of de- 

 spairs that will serve to keep us properly humble. 



But that we have on the north of our house a landscape to 

 evolve that is a true picture no one can deny who looks out 

 upon the ever-changing meadow from the bowery veranda 

 from which we view it with never-failing joy. Not a far- 

 reaching view, but such a one as Englishmen like to paint, a 

 distant hill, a few clustering cottages, a level stretch of 

 meadow with a winding stream ; some Willows near at hand. 

 So far so good ; but the foreground is the puzzle. It is a mud- 

 dle at present, being a sacrifice to the utilities, and is more or 

 less disfigured with fruit-trees and vegetables, and piles of 

 sand that have been dumped upon the marsh. A good deal 

 veiled it is, fortunately, by the bending boughs of Pear and 

 Apple-trees laden with fruit, which is their plea for life, and 

 when one is seated, the balustrade of the veranda is an efficient 

 screen, so that one can freely enjoy the pleasing prospect. 



The French talk of the St. Martin des femmes which comes 

 to them after the beaute die diable has long gone by ; and our 

 meadow, too, has its fleeting glory of youth in early spring, 

 with Apple-bloom flush, and delicious verdancy to match, and 



then, after a common-place summer of good looks, it comes 

 to its Martinmas, and burns and glows and smiles with a rich- 

 ness and warmth that are the precursor of the 

 Hectic of the dying year. 



In this mature beauty, which is far more permanent than 

 the more exquisite spring loveliness, there is a great charm. 

 The monotony of July greens has yielded to the deeper tones 

 of the woodland in August. The declining sun casts longer 

 shadows in the afternoon. The grass, along the winding 

 strearh now at its lowest, stands up high from the surface of 

 the water, with darkly shaded edges the more apparent that 

 its prevailing tones are russet, with bright golden lights, 

 where the hay has not yet been cut. Here and there the 

 broad expanse shows a hay-cart and a few moving figures, the 

 one touch of life wanting at other seasons to the landscape. 

 The rounded hay-cocks in the distance are lightly shaded on 

 the side opposite the light. There are streaks of red-brown 

 where some of the grass is in blossom, and of vivid green 

 where masses of sedges line the low banks of the tiny winding 

 river, in which their reflections tone the blue through soft 

 gradations to the deepest shadow. A solitary heron floats 

 above the marsh, beating the air with slow strokes of his 

 broad wings. In the evening sometimes the clanging of the 

 wild geese is heard, the first deep tone in the knell of dying 

 summer. Now and then a white flight of gulls comes up from 

 the harbor searching for fish, pouncing down behind the 

 grass after some luckless perch in the water. The shadows 

 of the distant Oaks are darkest blue, and some far-off Elms 

 fleck the front of an orange-colored cottage and subdue it to 

 harmony. The gray roofs and red chimneys of the distant 

 houses and barns, half-buried in foliage, seem an essential of 

 the picture, giving it that touch of humanness without which 

 a landscape lacks its final charm. The veranda-rail, with its 

 drapery of Woodbine, gives a strong accent that brings out the 

 values of the middle distance, while the tops of two old Apple- 

 trees, laden with fruit, make a pleasing curve in contrast to 

 the level lines of the parti-colored marsh, elsewhere broken 

 by the ashy green foliage of some graceful Willows across the 

 invisible road. 



So much, at least, our landscape-gardening has accom- 

 plished ; the ugly line which killed our predecessor has been 

 obliterated by our border-plantation, and, to all intents and 

 purposes, the great stretch of grassy meadow, with its winding 

 stream and its bounding masses of Oak and Maple woods, is 

 our own park, for none of its owners get the good of it as we 

 do. For us it glows with sunshine, or frowns with a passing 

 cloud ; ours all this wealth of jasper and chrysoprase and tur- 

 quoise ; as much ours as the silver sheen of the Willows which 

 wave so softly gray against it, and rest the eye from the daz- 

 zling tints in which the old marsh arrays herself for the mow- 

 ers. But the problem that vexes our spirits is that unshaped 

 foreground, and how it may be made to blend more com- 

 pletely with the meadow into one harmonious whole. If the 

 great Apple-tree could but change places with a certain Elm 

 that is of no use in the landscape where it stands the matter 

 would settle itself. Two more Apple-trees to cut down, and 

 you have a composition. 



But a Seek-no-further, which bears several barrels of early 

 apples that are very good eating, is not easily to be sacrificed, 

 even to the demands of a landscape, to which it is also 

 advantageous from its height and mass, that could not be re- 

 produced by any planted tree in our day, unless, indeed, we 

 had the purse of Miss Catherine Wolfe to spend thousands in 

 moving giants. If it could be had for the asking, I think I 

 should choose a low, wide-spreading Oak rather than a stately 

 Elm, or possibly the view might be improved if we had no 

 tree at all, but that effect we have from an upper window 

 which may have its balcony some day. 



A whirlwind swept up the valley on the twelfth of August 

 and very nearly settled the question for us by making a clean 

 sweep, but, luckily, contented itself with two or three great 

 boughs full of apples, which are hanging now by a slip of 

 bark, in hopes that they may get sap enough through this 

 narrow channel to ripen, but it looks doubtful. 



The same storm made havoc in the garden with such tall 

 Hollyhocks and Poppies as had carelessly been left untied, 

 and then whisked a branch from off our great Elm, and split 

 in two a large Swamp Maple on the other side of the street. 

 A five-minute tornado it was, with pouring flood that swept 

 the main street of the village and littered it with fallen trunks 

 and limbs twisted off in its whirling flight ; as brief, but more 

 violent a gale I have seen in Maine, cutting a forest into wind- 

 rows as a mower would cut grass with his scythe. 



To make a landscape-garden one must live with it and study 

 it, putting in a touch here and there, as the painter treats his 



