INTERFERENCE WITH DESIGNED EFFECTS. 223 



colours_, but how ineffective and untractable are these 

 when compared with the pigments on the painter's 

 palette ! And his processes are only in a slight degree 

 tentative, at least so far as he has immediately to do with 

 them. He can alter his plans, indeed, while they exist 

 in his own mind or on paper, or even while he is tracing 

 his ontlines on the gronnd. Bnt it is to be remembered, 

 that the outline, or ground plan as it is called, is only 

 the skeleton, if it be so much, of scenery which is to 

 appear in relief in the form of trees and other elements 

 of landscape. The process is only begun when the out- 

 lines are staked out: many other agencies and influ- 

 ences must operate before the contemplated result is 

 realized. Other artists, if we may so call them, have to 

 take up the brush and palette — ^the processes of nature, 

 to sum many activities under one term, — and the axe of 

 the woodman must have had free play, before the effect 

 designed by the prophetic eye of taste can be accom- 

 plished. The aspect of woodland scenery changes more 

 or less perceptibly every successive year. Suppose that 

 the rudimentary appearance of a park, ten years from 

 planting, could be accurately compared with its fidl- 

 grown aspect fifty years from the same date, the differ- 

 ence woidd be striking indeed. Possibly the designer 

 has never seen it since its first formation ; probably his 

 plans, in regard to the distribution of trees, were only 

 very imperfectly executed in the first planting ; it may 

 be assumed as almost certain, that his aims respecting 

 the thinning of masses, the feathering of outliries, and 

 the defining of groups, have been either neglected or 

 imperfectly attained ; but meanwhile nature has steadily 

 pursued her course, and, from a variety of causes, which 

 can be more readily imagined than wondered at, has 

 most inadequately realized the fair ideal of the artist j 



