THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 



seemed to be something really purposeful 

 about it. The authors of those books 

 evidently regarded my subject as outside 

 the reach of their inquiries. One writer, 

 indeed, did come squarely up to my subject 

 in a paragraph which I shall refer to again; 

 showing that he realized the pertinence of 

 it, but he promptly veered away to triter 

 things without even waiting to convince 

 one of the generalizations which he drew. 



The subject which I had in my mind 

 was landscape gardening. Now, I take 

 landscape gardening to be very obviously 

 entitled to a place among the fine arts. 

 It should be practiced and judged according 

 to the same principles which govern in 

 sculpture or music. The fundamental laws 

 of composition (if there be any such) would 

 apparently be alike for all the arts, — or, as 

 we might better say, for all forms of art. And 

 since every kind of art strives after beauty, 

 it is quite as important to landscape garden- 

 ing as to poetry or painting to understand 

 the nature of beauty and the conditions 

 under which it is realized. 



Now that beauty has been mentioned, 

 we may change the point of view just a 

 little and notice that the natural landscape 



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