PARK AND CEMETERY. 
^5 
vidually attractive, and are on so large a scale as 
to make the landscape agreeable. Such a hill is 
not so agreeable as a view between hills where the 
eye is led into the distance. Now we look straight 
upon it and see no nook into which to search, no 
distance which we wish to discover. It is well 
known also that convexity permits less area to be 
seen than concavity which makes the hill seem 
smaller than it really is. 
It is to be regretted that the usefulness of this 
landscape requires the dotted planting on the hill- 
side. How much more agreeable it would be if 
the whole hillside were left in grass without a tree 
except to bound it. Its openness and simplicity 
would be its strength as a pastoral scene. Now it 
looks cramped and spotted. The eye asks also to 
be carried farther into the distance, and not be 
to be regretted that the Ashes at the left should 
have all been placed unmixed with other trees and 
so widely apart since they look like a cloud of 
skirmishers advancing from cover rather than a 
related group. 
Much is lost without a proper foreground. The 
quiet curve of the hillside finds no quietness in the 
foreground to re-echo it. There is too much of 
the spottedness of the hillside. In other words it 
does not harmonize. 
An agreeable feature is the skyline of the trees 
to the right in the background, that is, the manner 
in which it unites with the quiet curve of the hill. 
It is an observation among artists that lines har- 
monize when they approach at an acute angle. The 
real genius in the picture, however, if it was not 
an accident that produced it, was the retention of 
.\ STUDY IN THK ARNOLD ARHORKTUM. 
confined simply to the bounding growth. From 
this point of view the right of the two groups of 
pines and its adjacent trees were best removed and 
the lawn extended as far as can be seen. To some 
degree as well would we bring the lawn down to 
our very feet. 
But since the trees in this landscape are neces- 
sary we may say that the grouping itself is happy, 
and the trees and shrubbery at the top of the hill 
good, since they break the hardness of the outline, 
a hardness which is attractive only in the case of a 
mountain where hugeness and grandeur are pre- 
dominant characteristics. The group of ikshes 
midway up the hill at the left advance easily from 
the side of the picture and melt into the meadow. 
The smaller group of Catalpas at the centre repeat 
the idea without hardness. The latter, with the 
Elms scattered in front of the border at the right, 
carry the eye a short way into the distance. It is 
the two heavy framing groups of trees which occupy 
the same relative position from whatsoever point 
we look at the hill. 
But this is not an artist’s picture only a utili- 
tarian landscape. The trees of the Arboretum 
had to be shown as specimens and to the best ad- 
vantage. They are the Arboretum. They were 
grouped with the greatest care to produce both 
landscape effect and the orderliness of systematic 
botany. They were best exhibited and adorned by 
this beautiful lawn which now is secondary. This 
picture is chosen to show what compromises the 
landscape architect must make to utilitarian pur- 
poses to show how a mere collection of botanical 
specimens may become very like a picture, and to 
exhibit the possibilities of any piece of ground, 
large or small, when left to the genius of a true 
artist. In detail it is delightful, but it is not an 
artist’s picture, A. P. Wyi)ian. 
