House & Garden 
on which to stand or walk, whether they be 
floors beneath a roof or terraces under the 
open sky. His sense of mastery over 
Nature is expressed in doing things not as 
Nature would do them. Nature upheaves 
and splits and tumbles down her rocks. 
Man hews them into blocks and sets them 
level and true and rears them into walls. So 
it always has been—so it ever will be. 
In every landscape, then, these two ele¬ 
ments must remain distinct. We cannot 
absolutely unite them nor deceive ourselves 
into thinking that we can. We cannot 
modify to any extent worthy of consideration 
the process of natural growth ; or at least, 
such modification can be but temporary. 
Nature is absolutely continuous and per¬ 
sistent. We must then regard ourselves 
only as intruders, invaders. It is true that 
we can interfere with Nature, but it is my 
purpose to point out that it is not as inter- 
ferers that we should regard ourselves. As 
invaders we may, for we could not avoid the 
position if we would, unless indeed we return 
to absolute savagery. 
About the middle of the century just 
passed, there grew up a school of landscape 
gardening, so-called, which was perhaps a 
natural reaction against the extreme and 
lifeless formalism into which architecture had 
descended. This school made a complete 
revolution in the principles which had always, 
before that time, governed all artificial 
interference with the face of nature. It did 
not propose to do merely what man had 
always been pleased to do in the way of 
laying out and building and planting, but, 
instead, proposed rather to imitate and follow 
Nature on the lines which she has always 
reserved to herself. This school still has its 
disciples ; and the results of its work are all 
about us and have caused, to my mind, a 
most deplorable subversion of the laws and 
the principles upon which beauty in landscape 
must depend. Nature is entirely able to do 
without the aid of man, and it is equally true 
THE PLACE DU CHATELET 
PARIS 
599 
