The Artist 
of our countrymen had Emerson’s catholic 
enthusiasm for beauty, if only because more 
of them might then determine upon this 
half-neglected art as the occupation of their 
lives. 
But in the practice of no art can all be 
poetry and pleasure, sentiment and a de- 
light in beauty ; and this one means much 
hard, practical, out-door work, and close ap- 
plication to preparatory office-tasks. Nat- 
ure fights in one way against her would-be 
improver as vigorously as in another she 
assists him, and human nature, in the shape 
of the client, is even more prone to hamper 
him than the architect; for, while some 
people realize that they know nothing of 
architecture, very few will confess that they 
know nothing of out-door beauty, even in 
its artistic forms. 
The student of this art will never gain a 
mastery of beauty if he does not begin with 
very serious study of prosaic things. He 
must learn about road-building and drainage, 
about soils and exposures, about plants and 
the growing of plants, about the useful and 
