" Tet how cesthetic is Nature ! Every spot that is entirely 
uncultivated and wild^ however small it may be, if only the 
hand of ??ian remains absent, it clothes itself with plants, 
fowers and shrubs, whose unforced ?iature a?id natural 
grace bear witness that they have not grown up under the 
rod of correction of the great egoist, but that Nature has here 
moved freely. Upon this rests the principle of the English 
garden, which is to conceal Art, so that it may appear as if 
Nature had here moved freely ; for only then is it perfectly 
beautiful. 
#*##*# 
The great difference between the English garden and the 
old French, which still exists in a few magnificent examples, 
ultimately rests upon the fact that the former is planned in an 
objective spirit, the latter is a subjective. In the former the 
will of Nature, as it reveals itself in tree and shrub, mountain 
and waterfall, is brought to the purest possible expression oj 
these its Ideas, thus of its own inner being. In the French 
garden, on the other hand, only the will of the possessor of it 
is mirrored, which has subdued Nature, so that instead of its 
Ideas it bears as tokens of its slavery the forms which corre- 
spond to that will, and which are forcibly imposed upon it — 
clipped hedges, trees cut into all kinds of for 7ns, straight alleys, 
and arched avenues."" — Arthur Schopenhauer. 
