Aims and Methods 



blemishes, are a great deal rarer than well- 

 designed large buildings ; and we can find 

 twenty good villas or cottages for one small 

 stretch of ground which is in any degree an 

 artistic picture. The more a man loves, in 

 an unreasoning way, the w^orks of Nature, 

 the more likely he is to think that he can- 

 not have too many of them in his grounds, 

 and no error is so fatal as this to a good 

 general result. And the stronger his horti- 

 cultural passion, the more apt he is to care 

 about novelties and eccentricities — -about 

 conspicuous plants as such ; and the profuse 

 use of these gives a last fatal touch to the 

 inartistic disorder of the usual overcrowded 

 domain. 



No ; we want artists to help us with our 

 grounds as much as to help us with our 

 houses ; and we want them most of all be- 

 fore our houses have been founded or even 

 planned. But when we cannot have them 

 we should try, in a reasoning, intelligent, 

 systematic, and therefore artistic way, to 

 conceive what their aims would be and to 

 follow out their mxCthods. We should de- 

 cide upon some scheme of design, whether 



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