THE PRESIDENTS' GARDENS 137 



yet stately and beautiful home would, in every part, 

 reveal him to us. 



In the first place, there is its design: planned in 

 1783, at a time when gardeners generally were making 

 a ridiculous mess of things, with their extravagant 

 efforts to beat Nature at her own game, it is a 

 supremely simple and at the same time most interest- 

 ing and rarely original scheme, which applies the best 

 in the old ideas and the new, yet imitates nothing. 

 Dignity and serenity pervade it throughout; there is 

 certainty in every line and the most delightful and 

 straightforward honesty. Yet it is all gracious and 

 warm and inviting — and was all of this when its trees 

 were young and the ancient box had just begun to 

 grow; for it is not to Time that this garden must lay 

 its charm. Even the curious little twist in the drive- 

 ways as they approach the great circle before the Man- 

 sion House, is made appropriate simply by repetition. 

 If it were on one side of the lawn only, it would be 

 meaningless and trifling; but duplicated opposite, it 

 is immediately vindicated because it then serves to give 

 definite form to the lawn itself, as this narrows to- 

 wards the house. 



The synimetry — or to be more literally exact, the 

 formality — of the general design is preserved with the 

 scrupulous care which we should expect in so fastidious 

 a man as Washington; but so splendid are the propor- 



