PARK AND CEMETERY. 
259 
PATHS AND PRINCIPLES. 
The elementary principles of Art and of the 
various arts have been so long taught, so widely 
learned, and have been the subjects of so various 
writings and so many text books, that any further 
rehearsing of them might seem to be superfluous. 
Yet the work of all kinds that is turned out 
shows ignorance far more pervading than know- 
ledge in spite of all the teachings and writings of 
those who know and those who do not. The 
things that are constructed or destroyed in empirical 
attempts or blind gropings, or in mere unguided 
whim, vastly outnumber the works of those who 
know the truth, or even of those who seek it with a 
single mind. Take for instance; Architecture. 
Flagrant instances of ignorance or disregard of its 
primary principles meet us at every street corner; 
and a book setting forth these primary principles 
has lately been published which has been found to 
fill a long felt want, not merely for the tyro, but 
for the experienced practitioner, to whom it Is so 
commended in a preface by Mr. Russell Sturgis. 
If this kind of writing is necessary in so widely 
practised an art as Architecture, still more is it in 
Landscape Gardening. That it is necessary, the 
schemes that are constantly seen complacently 
committed to paper or to the surface of the earth 
show plainly enough, and they must serve as 
apology for printed remarks on the rudimentary 
rules for making roads and paths. 
What is said here applies to Naturalistic 
gardening only. Roads and walks in the various 
phases of architectural or formal gardening are 
treated in a different spirit. They are often u^d 
mainly or entirely for their values as lines, or for 
the sake of balance or symmetry, or for some such 
purely aesthetic reason. In naturalistic gardening 
on the other hand, lines of travel are made almost 
entirely for utilitarian reasons, and in proportion 
as these reasons are not obvious, they lose their 
aesthetic value. The indefinite curves and contrary 
flexures of roads that follow the natural surface of 
the ground are beautiful in a way that is quite 
their own; but, so soon as they appear to be made 
for their own sake, they become inane and 
wearisome. When a strip of macadam demonstrates 
itself as leading to somewhere and for some special 
reason, we can abandon ourselves to all the 
pleasure that comes from its association with 
human uses (and especially with its uses by 
particular human beings) , its grace of curve, its 
obvious aptness to the ground, and its unity with 
the lawn, foliage, and buildings that surround it, 
and that it displays and connects. When it does 
not, the power of these things to give pleasure 
disappears with the sense of their utility. 
Then let it be repeated, that roads and paths 
are not beautiful until useful, and are likely to be 
beautiful in proportion as their usefulness is 
apparent. They should not be inserted to make 
elegant lines for the plan and make it look work- 
man like and impressive to these who know no 
better; they should not be made to provide work 
for the engineer nor the pavior, nor to increase the 
Landscape Architect’s commission, nor to make 
his employer think that something is really beino- 
done. They should not be straight, unless there 
is no reason for their being curved. When they 
ought to be straight, the reasons will usually be 
clear from the situation of the points to be connect- 
ed, and the grades of the ground. Compound 
curves should be avoided when po.ssible, and 
segments of circles ( except in rounding off corners ) 
are generally the least desirable of all curves. 
The general course will depend on the contours of 
the ground, and the easiest grades that they will 
allow, but the precise curve.s can only be settled 
by the aesthetic sense of the designer, and cannot 
be reduced to rule. The fixing of grades should 
not be left to the surveyor, for he will probably 
reduce them to one or more inclined planes, easy 
to calculate, but more or less awkward in appear- 
ance, and at variance with the spirit of naturalistic 
gardening, and advancing through uneven slopes 
with ruthless cuts and fills which might have been 
avoided, or adapted to existing surfaces, or to 
which existing surfaces might have been adapted. 
Grades of even inclination look well enough on 
short curves, but the longer the curve, the less 
likely are they to Iq^ well. Different grades 
should merge into one another by inclines as suave 
and gradual as possible. 
Some of these niceties are Imperceptible except 
to those wlio-^sh to perceive them; they may 
seem finicking and unpractical to the experienced 
roadbuilder. But let the experienced roadbuilder, 
like other experienced people, beware of falling 
into the snare of belief that his experience has 
taught him all there is to be known, and noihing 
that ought to be unlearned. Such details as I 
have spoken of may seem beneath the attention of 
those who can think on a large scale. But, let 
any who despise this kind of thinking, whether for 
the results it produces or its value as a mental 
training, remember the attention that must have 
been given by Dorus and Palladio to such apparent- 
ly slight and arbitrary matters as the exact 
proportions of echinus and taenia; and reflect that 
the settling of these things for the imitation of all 
their successors required no less genius than the 
determining the exact outline of the dome of Saint 
Peter’s. ll. a. Coparn. 
