i66 



ROYAL GARDENS 



a sort of compromise must be arrived at. And if one or other 

 object has to be foregone, perhaps the one to go, in this 

 particular case, should be beauty. Those who really love 

 gardens for their beauty will always be able to find it even 

 in a square plain-bordered expanse of level turf, but those who 

 think that amusement should come before everything else, 

 will have little eye and less pity for flowers and delicate shrubs 

 placed too near the boundary lines of their favourite games. 



Water Gardens. — Where the lie of the ground is favourable, 

 and other reasons do not forbid, no garden should be deprived 

 of that most beautiful feature, a water garden ; for nothing 

 adds so much to its charm and mystery, and few plants 

 better repay in gracefulness the cost and care of cultivation 

 than those which fringe a pond, or float upon its surface. It 

 is universally acknowledged that the sight of a sheet of water 

 fills the mind with a sense of beauty ; and any deep inquiry into 

 the causes which account for this is, therefore, unnecessary. 

 But it may be remarked, in passing, that there are two 

 practical reasons for artists being fond of introducing placid 

 water into their pictures, apart from romantic or emotional 

 grounds. They are : i. Water, according to a very old saying 

 among landscape painters, " brings light of the sky down into 

 the foreground of the picture," and 2. Reflections in still 

 water ' repeat ' both form and colour of surrounding objects. 

 As said before, repetition is a well-known means for increasing 

 a feeling of rhythmical repose in pictorial art. Both these 

 causes should have similar, and even better, results when real 

 trees and water are dealt with, than when only the compara- 

 tively poor symbols for them employed by painters are in 

 question. 



Water gardens may be classified under two heads, natural 

 and artificial. To take the former first : where a stream 

 passes through the grounds it is not difficult, by damming or 

 broadening, to make a pond or lake. The charm of a real 

 lake is so essentially due to its natural appearance, that the 

 very greatest care and forethought must be exercised to obey 



