36 OLanbscape Hrcbitecture 



say, however, that the purposes of the designs of both 

 painter and landscape gardener are analogous, they 

 travel on similar and more or less parallel lines, and 

 both should look reverently to nature as their sole 

 mistress, 



Loudon justly observes that: 



"The recognition of art is a first principle in 

 landscape gardening, as in all other arts, and those 

 of its professors have erred who supposed that the 

 object of this art is merely to produce a facsimile of 

 nature that could not be distinguished from a wild 

 scene. " 



Mr. F. L. Olmsted recognized the justice of this 

 when he wrote in the Spoils of the Park: 



"What artist so noble as he, who with far-reach- 

 ing conception of beauty and designing power, 

 sketches the outlines, writes the colours, and directs 

 the shadows of a picture so great that nature shall be 

 employed on it for generations, before the work he 

 has arranged for her shall realize his intentions. " 



There has appeared a species of "natural" landscape 

 gardening in the nineteenth century that is, to say the 

 least, slightly specious and meretricious in its effect, 

 and there is today even more than a suspicion of a 

 tendency to 3deld to this desire to make the art of land- 

 scape gardening fine and exquisite rather than simple 

 and natural. 



