Aims and Methods 
blemishes, are a great deal rarer than well- 
designed large buildings ; and we can find 
twenty good villas or cottages for one small 
stretch of ground which is in any degree an 
artistic picture. The more a man loves, in 
an unreasoning way, the works of Nature, 
the more likely he is to think that he can- 
not have too many of them in his grounds, 
and no error is so fatal as this to a good 
general result. And the stronger his horti- 
cultural passion, the more apt he is to care 
about novelties and eccentricities — about 
conspicuous plants as such ; and the profuse 
use of these gives a last fatal touch to the 
inartistic disorder of the usual overcrowded 
domain. 
No ; we want artists to help us with our 
grounds as much as to help us with our 
houses ; and we want them most of all be- 
fore our houses have been founded or even 
planned. But when we cannot have them 
we should try, in a reasoning, intelligent, 
systematic, and therefore artistic way, to 
conceive what their aims would be and to 
follow out their methods. We should de- 
cide upon some scheme of design, whether 
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