138 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 
tions and so skilful the planting, that there is none of 
the oppressiveness against which those who were rail¬ 
ing at formalism and stripping their gardens of it, 
complained. General Washington could no more 
have made a garden that was informal, however, than 
he could have descended to act the clown in cap and 
bells. His matchless poise and grave and beautiful 
majesty could only reflect in a creation of similar bal¬ 
ance and stateliness. And so I think by studying 
Mount Vernon, both in its plan and in its endless beau¬ 
tiful perspectives and vistas, we may come nearer to 
an understanding of that quality in him which made 
all men ever stand a little in awe of him, than in any 
other way. Here is that bigness of his mold, physical, 
mental and spiritual, that set him apart from all his 
kind, and yet made him to be so greatly loved. 
In his own plan for the place he calls both gardens, 
“kitchen gardens”—but as everyone very well knows, 
the enclosed garden on the north side of the lawn is 
the flower and famous garden of boxwood. The 
kitchen garden lies opposite on the south, back of its 
similar brick wall, topped with white palings. Sit¬ 
uated here, on the gentle slope where the land begins 
to fall away towards the river, this garden is terraced 
into two levels its entire length. The gate in the wall 
which leads in from the lawn is met by a walk that 
crosses the upper terrace to steps which descend to the 
