Art Out-of-Doors 
We are not likely to have in America 
many country houses so large and stately 
that they would justify a return to the 
grand ideals of Le Notre — that they would 
look beautiful and appropriate surrounded 
by vast formal parks. Nor are such parks 
suited to American rural surroundings, to 
the ideals of a democratic nation, or to the 
manners of living of even our idlest and 
wealthiest people. But the great excuse for 
a formal manipulation of Nature’s materials 
is, we know, the dominance of other formal 
elements in the given locality ; and this fact 
proves that formal gardening may rightly be 
applied to our smallest types of pleasure- 
ground, although it would be unsuited to our 
largest types. In many American towns, 
and many American summer colonies of cot- 
tages or villas, formal gardens might pro- 
duce a very beautiful effect, and a very much 
more appropriate effect than is now achieved 
by our attempts at landscape-gardening on a 
miniature scale. 
In a really rustic colony where the houses 
are very simple and the character of the en- 
circling landscapes has not been much al- 
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