THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 



details were to them supremely important. 

 It would be easy to press this story further 

 back, and to show how an earlier generation 

 exhibited a more narrowed and inartistic 

 appreciation of details; but we are not 

 making a complete analysis of this matter, 

 and we are confining ourselves arbitrarily 

 to what has taken place in America within 

 our own knowledge. 



2. Then came Olmsted and the su- 

 premacy of the mass. Mass planting has 

 been the watchword ever since. Instead of 

 cultivating one Japanese magnolia, Olmsted 

 planted a carload of roadside dogwood in 

 a single group. While the important prin- 

 ciple herein involved has been very imper- 

 fectly applied, even by Olmsted's most 

 careful followers — as Manning and Eliot — it 

 has, nevertheless, gained general recogni- 

 tion, at least among professional landscape 

 architects. 



3. Where, when, how and from whom 

 shall we see the spiritual treatment of 

 landscape? Music, literature, painting and 

 sculpture are spiritualized. Even utilitarian 

 architecture, in some hands, takes on this 

 higher expression. Shall we not some day 

 see the landscape treated with a touch so 



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