The Artist 



modern European work is good in general 

 scheme, it is still more constantly marred 

 than our own by the mistaken management 

 of details. I have never seen a natural- 

 istic park in England or France as free as 

 is Central Park from ill-chosen, ill-placed 

 horticultural features. Almost everyone is 

 nearly as much defaced by them as the aver- 

 age large American cemetery. All kinds of 

 inartistic gardening devices which exist in 

 America exist in all parts of Europe, and 

 there are some European atrocities which 

 have not yet been imported — for instance, 

 those stiff flovrer-borders, stretched beneath 

 shorn-off shrubberies, to which I have al- 

 ready referred. 



When w^e find American clients, and some- 

 times American artists, confusing the sig- 

 nificance of the words landscape, park, 

 home-grounds, garden, lawn, and trying to 

 cram into one scheme the beauties proper to 

 all ; ^yhen we see tropical plants flaunting on 

 lawns which should bear nothing but grass 

 and quiet shrubs, or intruding themselves 

 into sylvan corners which should have a na- 

 tive, natural, simple air ; when we shudder 



365 



