GARDEN DESIGN— COMPARATIVE, HISTORICAL, AND ETHICAL. 363 



In order to maintain the broad lines stated above, I am not inclined 

 to draw any hard and fast line between those gardens of which we have 

 extant remains, and those of which we only have decipherable records to 

 guide us, such as the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Grecian gardens. 

 Breadth does not preclude thoroughness because it does not magnify 

 details. It is in accord with principles of thoroughness that I have 

 refrained from taking the different periods of garden history at a rush. 



It has been said that the real object of education is nut so much to 

 give a certain amount of knowledge, as to awaken faculties which slumber 

 within us, and to open people's minds to broader uses and their eyes to 

 more extended vision ; and that one book, learnt by a man who knows 

 how to assimilate it thoroughly, is worth more than libraries as usually 

 read. It is not therefore imperative that much should be taught, but that 

 what is taught should be taught philosophically, profoundly, and lovingly. 

 Once let a person learn to read a single history thus, and he has the key to 

 all histories, he is better educated by the comparison than he would be by 

 all the histories of the world as commonly taught. This is most true in 

 respect to the study of garden design. 



If I wished to read the history, or get at the current of prevailing 

 thought of any people, a few representative examples of their archi- 

 tecture and their gardens would be quite sufficient index for me to 

 secure a fairly accurate survey of their ideals and qf their inherited 

 traditions, and this way has the additional advantage of being an 

 interesting avenue of approach— a great desideratum with the garden 

 designer. 



Suppose we wish to get an idea of an early Egyptian garden, we are 

 compelled to avail ourselves of this relative principle in order to judge 

 of the merits it possesses and its suitability to its environments. We 

 cannot transport it to another clime and judge it side by side with 

 other gardens. Here all gardens must be wholly artificial produc- 

 tions ; of this our knowledge assures us by one glance at the con- 

 figuration of that domain of fierce sunlight and no rain, which otherwise 

 must remain an expanse of sterile sand were it not for the irrigation 

 devised, and the annual mud deposit of the lordly Nile. As we enter 

 we are impressed, as well as soothed and charmed, in this inset 

 enclosure of cool water, foliage, and fruitfulness. I gather that the 

 Egyptian gardens were not by any means small, but they must have 

 appeared so in comparison with the scale of the surround of huge- 

 ness : for truly, if the ancient Egyptians excelled in anything, it 

 was in the way they impressed the senses with a feeling of awe at 

 beholding the appalling vastness displayed in their severely monumental 

 architecture. 



I was once made conscious, by the sight of a picture with the simple 

 title "1812," of this awe-inspiring sense of vastness, wherein the 

 Egyptian type of civilization revelled, and of its superiority in this 

 respect over everything modern that aspires to the grand. Napoleon and 

 his staff, mounted on their chargers, were gazing intently at the mighty 

 immobile Sphinx amidst the speaking silence of league upon league of 

 desert sand. Before the Emperor's eyes was the presentment of a 

 majestic awe which made all his attempts but a flash in the pan, and his 



