Editor's Introduction 



HERMANN LUDWIG HEINRICH, 

 Prince von Piickler-Muskau, stood in the 

 first rank of landscape gardeners in his day and 

 generation, largely because of the time and 

 place in which the stage for his career was set. 

 His endowments were remarkable, but his op- 

 portunities were unique. He was the son of an 

 ancient house in Silesia, or Lusatia, as it was for- 

 merly called, whose authority on the great ances- 

 tral estates was supreme. Tradition and aristocratic 

 power gave the prestige of the house a peculiar 

 value. The despotic power of the highly placed 

 land-owners of Germany had not as yet changed 

 in spirit from that of the eighteenth century. In 

 the world of thought there had been an awaken- 

 ing. Goethe reigned in literature without a rival 

 in Europe and Schiller was a poetical inspiration 

 for all Germany. 



Puckler, the son of a Count and Privy Coun- 

 selor of the King of Saxony, was born in the 

 palace of his race in Muskau, a town older than 

 the Roman occupation, where his forbears had 

 ruled for a thousand years. In 1785, the year 

 of his birth, the French Revolution was not as 

 yet. New ideas, however, were in the air, and 

 Voltaire and Rousseau had succeeded in pro- 

 foundly modifying the spirit of the age. Yet the 



