The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



will learn to love the farm landscape and to realize 

 its deeper spiritual significance. 



The student and lover of the landscape must not 

 only cultivate its acquaintance, he must especially 

 seek what is beautiful in this outdoor world. He 

 must discriminate. He must find the best and give 

 his chiefest homage to that. 



It is one of the first requirements in art, though 

 often overlooked, that one must find the best and 

 associate with it chiefly. The beginner spends too 

 much time criticizing what is bad or trying to im- 

 prove what is indifi^erent. The artist will find 

 beauty in many places where thoughtless or un- 

 trained persons overlook it; but wherever he may 

 have to search, he will look only for what is good, 

 dismissing from his attention as quickly as possi- 

 ble everything squalid or disorderly or ugly. 



Now this exercise of seeking out whatever is best 

 in the landscape and fixing the attention on that, 

 is a perfectly simple undertaking and can be 

 practiced by children. For some years I have ex- 

 perimented with this method of instruction in the 

 public schools. The method is of enough impor- 



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