THE PRESIDENTS’ GARDENS 137 
yet stately and beautiful home would, in every part, 
reveal him to us. 
In the first place, there is its design: planned in 
1783, at a time when gardeners generally were making 
a ridiculous mess of things, with their extravagant 
efforts to beat Nature at her own game, it is a 
supremely simple and at the same time most interest¬ 
ing and rarely original scheme, which applies the best 
in the old ideas and the new, yet imitates nothing. 
Dignity and serenity pervade it throughout; there is 
certainty in every line and the most delightful and 
straightforward honesty. Yet it is all gracious and 
warm and inviting—and was all of this when its trees 
were young and the ancient box had just begun to 
grow; for it is not to Time that this garden must lay 
its charm. Even the curious little twist in the drive¬ 
ways as they approach the great circle before the Man¬ 
sion House, is made appropriate simply by repetition. 
If it were on one side of the lawn only, it would be 
meaningless and trifling; but duplicated opposite, it 
is immediately vindicated because it then serves to give 
definite form to the lawn itself, as this narrows to¬ 
wards the house. 
The symmetry—or to be more literally exact, the 
formality—of the general design is preserved with the 
scrupulous care which we should expect in so fastidious 
a man as Washington; but so splendid are the proper- 
