XCbe 3La^fng ®ut of a iparh or Estate 71 



of wealth on the modem estate has seemingly drawn 

 much of our attention from the better work like that 

 of the instances just cited. There has been, however, 

 a gradual evolution of the best ideas of landscape 

 gardening, — and the work of fifty years ago is better 

 in some places than it was fifty years before that time; 

 and some of our work is still better to-day than ever. 

 While it may be true, as Leibnitz says, that nature 

 never makes leaps, it must nevertheless be conceded 

 that at the present time, when we are more highly in- 

 structed than ever before, we do not seem to be able to 

 advance as rapidly and as persistently as we should, and 

 have not yet attained to the high standards which have 

 been so commonly professed. Perhaps we are too aca- 

 demic, too bound down by precedent, not always of the 

 best and simplest sort. Our work of this kind is not al- 

 ways worthy of our traditions. It may be indeed a period 

 of slack water, but it is nevertheless sure that there is 

 good work being done, the value of which will be evi- 

 dent as time goes on. "To an even greater extent, the 

 present assimilates the past, and can no longer remain 

 subject to the changing wishes and caprices of to-day; 

 the past is taking on a new meaning for us and we are 

 finding that amid all that was peculiar to their own 

 age, there was some element in them that transcended 

 time and could be transmitted to all times." Surely 

 we could not so link the landscape gardening of to-day 

 with that of former ages, if there were not " the same 

 eternal order operating there and here, an order in 

 which all that is deepest in human nature has its root," 



