20 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
like everything else within the influence of Louis XIV. 
Switzer refers to these gardens as works so stupendously 
great as became the pocket and ambition of one of the 
greatest and most aspiring geniuses of the world. It was 
Le Notre who understood the value of a limitless per- 
spective. He prolonged the vista through great avenues 
of trees, accompanied by lines of statues, in all direc- 
tions from a great central space, or upon immense sheets 
of water, to destroy itself at the distance. It is true that 
there is a certain monotony in his works due to formality 
and balance, but it seems to largely come from the char- 
acter of the style rather than the designer. In fact, it 
was his masterhand that unified these monotonous de- 
tails and overcame this blemish so far as it was possible. 
The French garden, as transformed by Le Notre and 
his disciples, is the Italian garden adapted to a flatter 
and more expanded country and made to express the 
grandiose ideas of Louis XIV. While nature was begin- 
ning to be thought of in some degree the more con- 
scious thought was to prefer art to nature, and to make 
a suitable background for beautiful costumes and fine 
forms. In fact, the picture of gardens of this character 
remind one wonderfully of the gaudiness and hollow- 
ness of stage scenery. The French garden of Le Notre 
differs from its predecessors in the following respects: 
That it had a purpose, a development upon an aesthetic 
basis for itself; that it was of large size, two hundred 
acres at least, large in contrast with Bacon’s ideal gar- 
den of thirty acres; and, that it introduced a magnifi- 
cent perspective. The construction was still symmet- 
rical, complicated pastures and geometrical flower plots 
were placed at balance, canals followed straight lines, 
trees were clipped and at rectangular intervals arches, 
columns, balustrades and statues gave richness to the 
design, but through all this was a magnificent taste, 
which bound together these endless details and gave to 
order harmony. It is not strange that this type of gar- 
dening, the best then known, should spread at once 
through civilized Europe, and the influence of Le Notre’s 
gardens amount almost to tyranny. In fact, such was 
the effect that it was not long before every garden in 
France was required to be laid out according to fixed 
rules, so much as to be a matter of ridicule. In Eng- 
land, from whence our gardening is derived, this style 
prevailed for half a century to be supplanted by an- 
other modification of the Italian garden, brought over 
with William III., the Dutch style. This is the one, 
closely resembling the French, at which Pope flung his 
sarcasm: 
“Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, 
And half the platform just reflects the other.” 
This in turn gave way to the natural or landscape 
style of to-day. 
In a study of this kind it is interesting to look into 
the reasons for certain developments. The gardens of 
the east were used for indolent recreations as places to 
secure coolness and pleasure. The square form was the 
simplest, rows of trees allowed a continuity of shade, 
open plots gave air and artificial objects added variety. 
Transported to Italy, the garden was enlarged for the 
sake of allowing exercise and giving greater splendor. 
Something was wanted different from the country out- 
side, which could readily be seen from the mounds of 
earth and towers built within or at the boundaries of 
the garden for that purpose. Of its kind there was 
beauty enough without. They wanted something that 
told of man. They were not interested in nature for its 
own sake, but in mankind. They wanted a theater of 
human drama, and were not satisfied with less than see- 
ing the human element in everything. France and Eng- 
land copied the gardens of Italy because they were 
agreeable and suited to offset the wildness of the outside 
world, as it then was. Art and nature were both 
indeed present, but art was everywhere avowed. At a 
later day, when these countries had become great gar- 
dens in themselves, the natural style came in to satisfy 
the love of nature in the midst of artificiality. Again, 
the separation of details and the dislike of obscurity as 
shown in uniform rows of clipped trees and other feat- 
ures may be accounted for, according to Olmsted, by the 
fact that “to the minds of our savage ancestors any con- 
fused or undefined scene was suggestive of hidden dan- 
gers, and hence unfavorable to a tranquil state of mi id. 
This mental attitude decreased with the increase of 
civilization, but even toward the Middle Ages men 
looked with aversion upon all intricate and obscure 
scenery. Especially did they want eveiything seen from 
their dwellings to appear clearly defined.” Lastly, a rea- 
son for the development of the French garden may lie 
seen in the love of great monarchs for splendor, and in 
the tendency of the people to copy everything the mon- 
arch does. Louis XIV. used the garden as he did the 
salon, as a setting for his court, while the needs of his 
people were not in his thoughts. As his court was the 
envy and model of that of every petty prince in Europe 
his gardens were imitated also with all the arrangements 
for the same selfish drama of human action. This being 
the tendency of the age, it is evident that the genius of 
Le Notre appeared at the right time. With his syste- 
matic mind, his love for the grandiose and his taste for 
the elegant he gave to Europe an art developed in ac- 
cordance with its own political aims. 
Ithaca, N. Y. A. Phelps Wyman. 
THE TERM LANDSCAPE GARDENER. 
In line with these remarks it may be well to 
consider the term landscape architect, which is now 
pretty generally used in place of the older and truer 
term, landscape gardener. The title landscape gar- 
dener arose over a century ago to designate the 
new art which aimed to give landscape-like effects to 
gardens. The term explains the art precisely. It 
signifies the enlargement of mere gardening into 
complete harmony and sympathy with nature, 
whereby a handcraft becomes a fine art. Before the 
introduction of the landscape-like garden gardens 
were formal or geometrical in their dominant feat- 
ures, and were for the most part but the extension 
of the ideas of building. In other words, they were 
architectural, and the revolution to more artistic 
