The Relation of Natural to Artificial Beauty in Landscape 
beautiful because they bear long, feathery 
sprays of flowers, has no excuse. It is 
generally from last year’s wood that the 
dower-bearing shoots spring, and to cut these 
off each winter means little bloom in the 
following spring or summer. We need 
waking up in some of these things. All 
about Philadelphia this is the practice among 
To sum up: I would urge simply that we 
take Nature more thoroughly as we find her 
and as she would be if we let her alone, that we 
treat her with more respect and allow her free 
sway where we acknowledge her right to exist 
at all; and that in all we do of artificial work, 
whether it be to build houses, to level and open 
roads, to lay out walks and gardens, we do all 
AN AVENUE OF GUM-TREES AT BISKRA, ALGERIA 
the gardeners. People who believe that they 
have beautiful places, and have set out plants 
to grow, allow their gardeners to sweep over 
them every spring and trim these feathery 
shrubs into round buttons ; it is senseless, 
aimless, ugly, unheard of! I do not know 
where it came from, but it certainly pervades 
in the districts around Philadelphia. If 
flowering shrubs must be cut down, well and 
good, but take them down entirely, just as 
you pick out a fern from the midst of a group 
without marring the beauty of the rest. Trim¬ 
ming a flowering shrub is as absurd as trim¬ 
ming a maiden-hair fern with a pair of shears. 
with an eye to the eternal fitness of things, not 
hoping to improve upon Nature, but merely 
to make beautiful works of our own. These 
cannot, if they are really beautiful and reason¬ 
able, ever interfere or mar to any extent the 
beauty of the landscape, but will only serve 
in the long run to heighten its interest 
and charm. If this country should ever 
become depopulated in future ages, let 
the stranger wandering over it feel not only 
the beauty of its natural hill and forest 
and river, but, as well, the beauty and per¬ 
fection and dignity of all that we have left 
behind us. 
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