Aims and Methods 



provided for in ways which do not detract 

 from beauty ; and, while the eye asks noth- 

 ing more, it can wish away no feature or 

 detail from pictures as carefully tended as 

 they have been carefully designed. 



This country-place is an example of crea- 

 tive work in a very strict sense. Its beauty 

 is almost altogether artificial. It does not 

 even look natural to any trained eye ; it 

 merely looks naturalistic ; and, in truth, 

 none of its features, except in one outlying 

 tract of woodland, stand and grow accord- 

 ing to a scheme of Nature's devising. The 

 soil has always been there, of course; but 

 for two hundred years it had been put to 

 various human purposes ; its surface has now 

 been a good deal altered, and over much the 

 greater part of it everything it bears has been 

 planted by man. So this place stands at 

 one of the extremes of landscape-gardening 

 art : it is an example of what, under certain 

 conditions, the landscape - gardener ought 

 to do. 



But I have in mind another American 

 country-place which is very beautiful too, 



39 



