Chapter XIII 



Maintenance 



HAVING explained in the preceding chap- 

 ters how a landscape may be ennobled and 

 in a way created by art, I conclude with a few 

 words as to its maintenance. It is quite impos- 

 sible to plant a large, extensive park so that it 

 will present the same picture when full grown 

 as it did at the beginning, except on an altered 

 scale, and so • that the objects in it shall be for- 

 ever after in the right relation to one another ; 

 for Nature cannot be calculated so accurately 

 and it would also take too much time. 



Here we meet with the drawbacks of our art, 

 in a certain sense, though it may also be regarded 

 as an advantage. For it is impossible to create a 

 finished, permanent work of art in landscape 

 gardening, such as the painter, sculptor, and 

 architect are able to produce, because our ma- 

 terial is not inanimate, but living ; we can say 

 of the landscape gardeners' art, as of all Nature's 

 own pictures, as Fichte said of the German lan- 

 guage, " It is about to be, but never is " ; that 

 is, it never stands still, can never be fixed and 

 left to itself. Hence a skillful guiding hand is 

 always necessary for works of this kind. If the 

 hand is lacking too long, they not only deterio- 



