xlii Editor's Introduction 



lent advice that he gives is disregarded in the 

 actual designs that he proposes to use, and actu- 

 ally used, in some cases, in his park. No one, it 

 must be remembered, however, is entirely con- 

 sistent in his ideas nor is it desirable he should 

 be so. Certainly Puckler with his peculiar genius 

 could not be expected to be a paragon of con- 

 sistency. What Puckler writes on Italian villas 

 shows how instinctively his good taste leads him 

 to right conclusions. He says: — 



In general, a certain irregularity is preferable in build- 

 ings in a park, as being more in conformity with Nature 

 and more picturesque. . . . This same principle ap- 

 pears in the designs of the ancient villas. . . • Traces of 

 this principle are also found in the Italy of the Renais- 

 sance, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries : buildings 

 half hidden by others, large and small windows on the 

 same face of the building, side doors, projecting and 

 receding corners, . . . cornice, roofs jutting out, and 

 balconies unsymmetrically placed, in short, everywhere 

 a great but by no means inharmonious irregularity, 

 which pleases the fancy because the reason for every 

 departure from regularity is evident or may be sur- 

 mised. The garden art of the Romans, which, through 

 the study of the classical writers, and especially through 

 the description which Pliny gives of his villa, again 

 came into practice in the fifteenth century in Italv, and 

 which has later, in the so-called French gardens, altered 

 into colder, less comfortable forms, deserves particular 

 consideration on this very point. This rich and sump- 

 tuous art, which may be called an extension of the art 

 of architecture from the house to the garden, — or, as 

 the English might say, the approach of the landscape 

 to the very doors of the house, — may be most suitably 

 applied to this purpose. 



