14 Hints on Landscape Gardening 



maintained to the end. I would, to a large ex- 

 tent, recommend just the opposite; for even 

 if the main scheme comprehends many features 

 which may be considered from the start, in work- 

 ing it out, the artist must continually follow the 

 inspiration of his imagination. From time to 

 time the painter will alter his picture (which, 

 after all, is much less complicated than the pic- 

 ture the landscape gardener has to create), here 

 and there making a part more true to the gen- 

 eral effect or to Nature, here improving a tone, 

 there giving more accent, more power to a line. 

 Why, then, should the landscape gardener, who 

 works in material so refractory, so changeable, 

 and often so impossible to estimate in advance, 

 and who, moreover, has to unite many different 

 pictures in one, — why should he be expected 

 to succeed in hitting the mark at the first at- 

 tempt infallibly? Much will be discovered as 

 he goes on studying, observing, both within and 

 without the confines of the place, — the light 

 effects on his raw material (for light is one of 

 his chief assets), establishing cause and effect, 

 and thereby finding new ways of working out 

 in detail his early motives, or giving them up 

 altogether if other ideas for the treatment of 

 parts occur to him as being better. 



To leave, undisturbed, some particular feature 

 which has proved a failure, is pitiable. The rea- 

 son the blemish is left is because it has cost 

 so much time, so much money, and because a 

 change would add to the expense, costing as much 



