ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
427 
our picture frames are small that our pictures are necessarily 
lacking in art, in finish, or in beauty ? By no means. The 
miniature, though less imposing, may be full as beautiful as the 
life sized portrait. And the landscapes of Turner, small 
though they be, are scarcely less valued than the larger ones 
of Claude. All that is necessary is, that we should harmon¬ 
ize, that we should be governed by the law of proportion— 
which law itself consists in harmonizing things of different 
proportions. ' There is no harmony in planting the lot surround¬ 
ing your house entirely with cabbages, or potatoes, and yet this 
is a common practice, nor does it show a particle more’ of taste 
to plant a forest of apple trees about your home, a practice al¬ 
most equally common. The reason is, that moderation is an 
attribute of beauty. Any error in this respect is an infraction 
of the laws of proportion without which beauty in art cannot 
be obtained. Want of moderation, from whatever cause it oc¬ 
curs, betrays at all times a want of proportion. Besides, every 
garden should have an expression, and that expression should 
be a reflection of nature, or of finished art, which is the same 
thing.. The absence of this strikes one as does the vacuity of 
idiocy. This want of it, or where it is found only in a too lim¬ 
ited extent, affects one as painfully as does the portrait of a 
friend where the same want is observable. It is this very 
feature of a garden—its expression—that denotes the master 
hand. It is with the spade in the garden as with the brush on 
the canvass, your color^may be all correct, your grouping to the 
life, your beds may be in perfect order and your plants in ex¬ 
act position ; but something more is wanted than either brush 
or spade. And that is intelligence^ right expression, which must 
be made to shine out as it does in the face of nature ; otherwise 
nature herself, at the best, is but beauty without light, without 
power of illumination. 
A garden is but a horticultural painting, and unless, like a 
painting, it is true to nature, it is only a false specimen of art, 
or a specimen of false art, as you like. A garden, then, is “ a 
thing of beauty,” it must be so in order to meet its first re-' 
quirement, that of pleasantness. In this requirement is in- 
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