48 GARDEN DESIGN 



picturesque landscape like the Emperor 

 of Austria's stately garden at Laxenberg, 

 near Vienna, and the gardens in the same 

 city formed of miserable clipped trees 

 in lines ! Grass as an " artistic quantity " 

 is finely visible at Laxenberg ; in the 

 old clipped gardens gravel and distorted 

 trees are the only things seen in quantity 

 — we cannot call it " artistic." 



" Landscapist " is used throughout the 

 book as a term of contempt. The 

 authors take some of the worst work 

 that is possible, and condemn all in the 

 same opprobrious terms, as if we were to 

 condemn the noble art of the builders of 

 the Parthenon on seeing a "jerry " build- 

 ing in London. They may be quite 

 sure that there is a true and beautiful 

 art of landscape gardening, notwithstand- 

 ing their denunciations, and it is none 

 the less real because there is no smug 

 definition of it that pleases the minds of 

 men who declare that it does not exist. 



