Art Out-of-Doors 



. The mind of man comprehends her 

 effort and, though the skill of man cannot 

 compete with her in the production of par- 

 ticulars, man is able by art to anticipate her 

 desires, and to exhibit an image of what she 

 was intending." But the landscape-garden- 

 er is Nature's rival, does create things like 

 her own, can compete with her in perfect 

 workmanship, for she herself works with 

 him while he is re-uniting her scattered ex- 

 cellences and obliterating her defects. What 

 he cannot do she does for him, from the 

 building of mountains and the spreading of 

 skies to the perfecting of those ''particu- 

 lars " which turn the keenest chisel and 

 blunt the subtilest brush — to the curling of 

 a fern-frond and the veining of a rose. Of 

 course she will not everywhere do every- 

 thing. If part of her work is in completing 

 man's, part is in preparing for it, and he 

 must respect the canvas and frame which she 

 furnishes for his picture, the general scheme 

 which she prescribes. He cannot ask her 

 to build him mountains in a plain, to change 

 a hill-side rivulet to a river, or to make trop- 

 ical trees grow under northern skies. But 



lO 



