102 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



ideal of nature, — a miniature of a primal paradise, as we would 

 imagine it to have been by divine right ; in the other, the prodi- 

 gality of works of art, the variety of statues and vases, terraces and 

 balustrades, united with walks marked by the same studied symme- 

 try and artistic formality, and only mingled with just foliage enough 

 to constitute a garden, — all this suggests rather a statue gallery in 

 the open air, — an accompaniment to the fair architecture of the 

 mansion, than any pure or natural ideas of landscape beauty. 



The only writer who has ever attempted to account for this 

 striking distinction of national taste in gardening, which distin- 

 guishes the people of northern and southern Europe, is Humboldt. 

 In his last great work — Cosmos — he has devoted some pages to the 

 consideration of the study of nature, and the description of natural 

 scenery, — a pprtion of the work in the highest degree interesting to 

 every man of taste, as well as every lover of nature. 



In this portion he shows, we think, very conclusively, that cer- 

 tain races of mankind, however great in other gifts, are deficient in 

 their perceptions of natural beauty ; that northern nations possess 

 the love of nature much more strongly than those of the south; 

 and that the Greeks and Romans, richly gifted as they were with 

 the artistic endowments, were inferior to other nations in a profound 

 feeling of Jihe beauty of nature. 



Humboldt also shows that our enjoyment of natural landscape 

 gardening, which many suppose -to have originated in the -cultivated 

 and refined taste of a later age, is, on the contrary, purely a matter 

 of national organization* The parks of the Persian monarchs, and 

 the pleasure-gardens of the Chinese, were characterized by the same 

 spirit of natural beauty which we see in the English landscape gar- 

 dens, and which is widely distinct from that elegant formality of 

 the geometric gardens of the Greeks and Eomans of several centu- 

 ries later. To prove how sound were the principles of Chinese taste, 

 ages ago, he gives us a quotation from an ancient Chinese writer, 

 Lieu-tsoheu, which might well be the text of the most tasteful im- 

 prover of the present day, and which, we copy for the study of our 

 own readers, 



"What is it," says Lieu-tscheu, " that we seek- in the pleasures 

 of a garden ? It has always been agreed that these plantations 



