Formal Water Gardens 



IT is matter for regret that often leaders of men, so 

 numerous and multifarious are their duties, have not 

 time to put upon paper the theories and valuable 

 experiences they have acquired. Thus much that would 

 be of infinite value to those who come after is transmitted 

 orally, and given to the world in a book written merely 

 by a past student or an admirer of the great man. We 

 do not get his exact words, but only a rendering of what 

 his exceptional brain-power was able to acquire. 



The garden designer who attempts the vast study of 

 water as connected with gardens, a study which a!one 

 would fill many books, is at the outset met by this obstacle. 

 If he could but conjure up the spirit of the great Le Ndtre, 

 it would not be so much of bosquets, terraces, parterres, 

 and hedges that he would talk with him : his questionings 

 would chiefly relate to one subject, that of water. 



Unfortunately there is but Le N6tre's mouthpiece, 

 d'Argenville, to tell cursorily what he learnt from his 

 master. The only way, therefore, to follow his teaching 

 is by careful personal observation of those works of his 

 which remain, and to piece together, from knowledge of 

 his life and his wanderings in other lands, whence the 

 pictures and ideas came which he was able so skilfully to 



107. 



