House £sf Garden 
that it is impossible for man to imitate 
Nature without making himself and his work 
more or less ridiculous. When he attempts 
it, he must cast to the winds all the methods, 
all the principles which he has developed in 
centuries past, and he must play at his game 
as a child would play at horse. But ever 
and again he has to leave his play to attend 
to the serious 
matters of life, 
to build a house 
or a flight of 
steps, and these 
he has to do on 
the same good 
old lines that 
have always 
prevailed in 
arc hitecture. 
He may build 
his silly little 
rockeries in 
would-be imi¬ 
tation of Na¬ 
ture and cut his 
mea n ing 1 es s 
winding walks, 
but he cannot 
cease to build 
civilized build¬ 
ings, he cannot 
be content to 
live in caves or 
in rude, shape¬ 
less huts. 
The moral of all this is : let Nature alone, 
except where* to satisfy your own practical 
needs, to satisfy your own ideals of the 
beautiful, you invade her sacred domain with 
works that are frankly and freely designed 
upon lines not imitative or in competition 
with her, but rather on lines which have 
commended themselves to man as necessary, 
reasonable and beautiful from his own par¬ 
ticular point of view, lines which embody all 
which he has ever developed as an expression 
of his own mastery over the earth. 
Can we then intrude upon Nature in 
anywise without destroying its charm ? 
Decidedly we can. We may invade Nature 
with our works and find the result all the 
more charming; and in the same manner, 
Nature may and does, invade our works only 
to increase their charm. But the source and 
reason of our invasion must announce itself 
frankly. We must feel that this space through 
the forest has been cleared and leveled in order 
to meet some human need, that it reminds us 
of the existence of man and enforces the 
human element, and so it serves as a foil or 
contrast to Nature’s work. To look at the 
other side, what 
can be more 
beautiful than 
the work of 
man overgrown 
by Nature— 
the ruined ab¬ 
bey wrapped in 
ivy, or the old 
Italian garden, 
where the bal¬ 
ustrades are half 
smothered i n 
vines and the 
vistas down the 
long paths and 
terraces are 
framed between 
giant cypresses, 
growing with¬ 
out restraint, 
long after the 
bu i 1 d e r s of 
those stately 
balustrades and 
fountains are 
forgotten! 
Nature in her own wildness and ruggedness 
and majesty, we cannot rival, and she, on her 
side, makes no attempt to rival us. The 
majesty and beauty of the lonely mountain¬ 
side we cannot create, but we may invade it 
without destroying its charm. Nay more, 
we may introduce the human element in a 
way only to heighten and increase that charm, 
and it is just where those two elements meet, 
each in its purity, its frankness, its directness, 
that we often find the very highest and keenest 
sense of the beautiful. Can anything be 
compared in beauty with the views from out 
the terraced gardens of the Italian lakes, 
across the deep, smooth surface of the water 
to the great mass of the Alps beyond ? Is a 
flower ever more beautiful than where it has 
grown in the crevices of a mouldering ruin ? 
A CASTLE ON THE RHTNE 
A striking example of the charm derived from the contrast bet ween the 
natural and the human element 
601 
