House & Garden 
THE RELATION OF NATURAL TO ARTIFICIAL BEAUTY 
IN LANDSCAPE. 1 
BY WALTER COPE 
I N announcing this subject for discussion, I 
feel that I owe an apology for using such a 
broad, comprehensive title. Certainly, I do 
not intend to inflict on you a comprehensive 
discussion of the subject. It is too broad, 
and touches too many details for me to 
attempt anything like a thorough treatment 
in one paper. “The Relation of Natural to 
Artificial Beauty in 
Landscape” is, in 
fact, a subject on 
which volumes 
might be written. 
First, as to the 
word “landscape,” 
—I mean to use it 
in its widest sense 
as applying to any 
scene, whether that 
scene contain any 
element of man’s 
handiwork or not. 
At the present time 
the subject of 
“landscape garden¬ 
ing,” “ landscape 
design,” “ land¬ 
scape architec¬ 
ture,” or whatever 
it may be called, is 
receiving a great 
deal of attention, 
but in speaking 
of artificial inter¬ 
ference with nature, 
I should like to 
abolish the word 
“ landscape ” and use, instead, the words 
“outdoor design,” reserving “landscape ” for 
that broader meaning which would cover 
every scene, whether natural, artificial or 
partaking more or less of both: anything 
I An address delivered by the late Walter Cope before the Thirtieth 
Annual Meeting of the Fairmount Park Art Association, Philadelphia. 
Many lantern slides were used to illustrate the paper. Some of these 
illustrations are given here. Others have been added with the assist¬ 
ance of Mr. Frank Miles Day who accompanied Mr. Cope in various 
excursions he made while preparing an article on a kindred subject for 
House and Garden. This article was unfinished, at the time of Mr. 
Cope’s sudden death, October 31st, 1902. 
ENVIRONS OF ALEN^ON, FRANCE 
in short, which the eye may meet under the 
open sky. 
At this age, we are in the midst of great 
structural and engineering undertakings to 
meet the practical needs of our present civil¬ 
ization, with little thought as to their artistic 
expression. But times will change, and the 
practical developments of applied science will 
some day give way 
to more definite 
efforts to make the 
face of the earth 
more beautiful. It 
may be a question 
only of a genera¬ 
tion or two when 
the imagination of 
the multitude may 
cease to be moved, 
as it undoubtedly 
is to-day, by the 
great develop¬ 
ments in transpor¬ 
tation, the building 
of huge buildings 
and swift steam¬ 
ships, and by the 
constant improve¬ 
ments in electrical 
propulsion and 
communication. 
And when we shall 
have solved all 
these questions of 
applied science and 
are content with 
our achievements 
in that direction, we may turn our efforts to 
still greater achievements in an artistic way. 
To-day those in whom the artistic sense is 
dominant are in the minority; and this has 
always been so, and probably always will be. 
But to-day differs from past ages in this fact, 
that the great majority of people in this age 
do not really care for artistic expression, do 
not care as much for the beautiful as they do 
for what we commonly call “ the practical.” 
To-day the artist occupies a relation to the 
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