The qualities to aim at in a flower-garden are beauty, animation, variety, mystery. A garden's beauty, like a woman's beauty, is measured by its capacity for taking fine dress. Given a fine garden, and we need not fear to use embellishment or strong colour, or striking device, according to the adage "The richly provided richly require."
PLAN SHEWING ARRANGEMENT OF FOUNTAIN, YEW WALK, AND FLOWER BEDS FOR A LARGE GARDEN.]
Because Art stands, so to speak, sponsor for the grace of a garden, because all gardening is Art or nothing, we need not fear to overdo Art in a garden, nor need we fear to make avowal of the secret of its charm. I have no more scruple in using the scissors upon tree or shrub, where trimness is desirable, than I have in mowing the turf of the lawn that once represented a virgin world. There is a quaint charm in the results of the topiary art, in the prim imagery of evergreens, that all ages have felt. And I would even introduce _bizarreries_ on the principle of not leaving all that is wild and odd to Nature outside of the garden-paling; and in the formal part of the garden my yews should take the shape of pyramids or peacocks or cocked hats or ramping lions in Lincoln-green, or any other conceit I had a mind to, which vegetable sculpture can take.
[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF GARDEN IN PLAN FOLLOWING.]
As to the other desirable qualities--animation, variety, mystery--I would base my garden upon the model of the old masters, without adopting any special style. The place should be a home of fancy, full of intention, full of pains (without showing any); half common-sense, half romance; "neither praise nor poetry, but something better than either," as Burke said of Sheridan's speech; it should have an ethereal touch, yet be not inappropriate for the joyous racket and country cordiality of an English home. It should be
"A miniature of loveliness, all grace Summ'd up and closed in little"--
something that would challenge the admiration and suit the moods of various minds; be brimful of colour-gladness, yet be not all pyramids of sweets, but offer some solids for the solid man; combining old processes and new, old idealisms and new realisms; the monumental style of the old here, the happy-go-lucky shamblings of the modern there; the page of Bacon or Temple here, the page of Repton or Marnock there. At every turn the imagination should get a fresh stimulus to surprise; we should be led on from one fair sight, one attractive picture, to another; not suddenly, nor without some preparation of heightened expectancy, but as in a fantasy, and with something of the quick alternations of a dream.