Aims and Methods 
provided for in ways which do not detract 
from beauty ; and, while the eye asks noth- 
ing more, it can wish away no feature or 
detail from pictures as carefully tended as 
they have been carefully designed. 
This country-place is an example of crea- 
tive work in a very strict sense. Its beauty 
is almost altogether artificial. It does not 
even look natural to any trained eye; it 
merely looks naturalistic ; and, in truth, 
none of its features, except in one outlying 
tract of woodland, stand and grow accord- 
ing to a scheme of Nature’s devising. The 
soil has always been there, of course; but 
for two hundred years it had been put. to 
various human purposes ; its surface has now 
been a good deal altered, and over much the 
greater part of it everything it bears has been 
planted by man. So this place stands at 
one of the extremes of landscape-gardening 
art : it is an example of what, under certain 
conditions, the landscape - gardener ought 
to do. 
But I have in mind another American 
country-place which is very beautiful too, 
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