GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
The phrase “landscape-gardening” is quite legitimate. 
These old designers, Bridgeman, Kent, “ Capability” Brown, 
and the rest, werc true artists, though the pigments they juggled 
with were trees, rivulets, brown earth and green grass; and the 
canvas they worked upon was frequently an estate of fifty, eighty, 
or one hundred acres in extent. They had faith in their art, 
perfect selflessness, and the prophetic vision: and hence they 
industriously delved, and sowed, and planted, and schemed for 
posterity ; looking forward with complete confidenee and content, 
to a future that they themselves could never hope to see; and 
now they rest from their labours and their work speaks for them. 
I have said all this before—I may say it again, for in studying the 
inception and development of gardens, the consciousness that we 
owe our present. pleasure in them to the industry and forethought 
of past generations, is ever present—or it ought to be. And the 
question arises: “* Are we in our turn doing as much for those who 
will come after us ?”’ 
If we regard landseape gardening as a liberal art, then the words 
of Walter Pater are peculiarly applicable to it. ‘‘ The sensuous 
material of each art,”’ he says, “‘ brings with it a special phase or 
quality of beauty untranslatable into the form of any other art, 
an order of impressions distinct in kind.’ He further reminds us 
that “ each art having, therefore, its own peculiar incommunicable 
sensuous charm, has its own special mode of reaching the imagination, 
tts own special responsibilities to its material.’ Kent realized this, 
and neglected nothing that might be likely to stimulate the fancy, 
and unconsciously excite pleasurable or solemn emotions in the 
spectator. Walpole says of him “that he was painter enough 
to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionated enough 
to dare to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great 
system from the twilight of imperfect essays.” 
He had a fine eye for proportion, and fully appreciated the 
fascination of vistas, and long perspectives. Having banished 
the horrors of the topiary art, he knew how so to dispose of 
his masses of foliage—whether evergreen or deciduous—so that 
m all the circling hours of the day, and in every month of 
the year, they remained broad and effective. He made great 
play with cedars and yews; he knew both the preciousness of 
harmony, and the importance of {contrast, in the colour and 
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