4 Hints on Landscape Gardening 



cause it is the fashion, or from Anglomania, but 

 from the firm conviction that England must for 

 a long time remain an unattainable model in the 

 art of a worthy, and, if the expression may be 

 permitted, a gentlemanly [gentlemanartigen), en- 

 joyment of life, especially with regard to coun- 

 try life, in general "comfort" combined with the 

 fullest appreciation of a noble sense of beauty in 

 every form, as far removed from effeminate, Asi- 

 atic voluptuousness as from Continental squalor 

 and dirt, which has its origin, not in poverty, 

 but in bad habits and neglected household arrange- 

 ments. 



In this higher cultivation of the pleasures of 

 life landscape gardening has also developed to an 

 extent that no period and no other country seem 

 to have known ; and, in spite of a generally 

 gloomy and sunless climate, England has devel- 

 oped it into the most delightful pursuit for the 

 friend of Nature, for the connoisseur who loves 

 her most when she appears in unison with the shap- 

 ing hand of man, as the raw jewel first obtains 

 its greatest beauty only through polish. I do not 

 by this wish to say that Nature at her wildest, 

 left alone to her simple, often sublime, and some- 

 time even awful, grandeur, may not evoke the 

 deepest, nay, the most religious, sentiments; but 

 for lasting welfare human care and intelligence 

 are indispensable. Even in painted landscape, we 

 demand something which reminds us of human 

 effort, — as we say, to animate it. Yet a far 

 greater variety is required in real, than in painted, 



