Now, I venture to agree with all this advice generally. Fond as I am of statuary, whether stone or lead, I am sure that it is safest in or about the House Garden; and no figure that I possess is in any other part of my ground; but this is only because I do not possess a single Faun or Dryad or Daphne. If I were lucky enough to have these, I should know where to place them and it would not be in a place of formality, but just the opposite. They have no business with formalities, and would look as incongruous among the divinities who seem quite happy on pedestals as would Pan in modern evening dress, or a Russian _danceuse_ in corsets, or a Polish in anything at all.
If I had a Pan I would not be afraid to locate him in the densest part of a shrubbery, where only his ears and the grin between them could be seen among the foliage and his goat's shank among the lower branches. His effigy is shown n its legitimate place in Gabe's Picture, "Fête Galante." That is the correct habitat of Pan, and that is where he would be shown in the hall of the Natural History Museum where every "exhibit" has its natural _entourage_. If I had a Dryad and had not a pond with reeds about its marge, I would make one for her accommodation, for, except with such surroundings she should not be seen in a garden. I have a Daphne, but she is an indoor one, being frailly made, and with a year's work of undercutting, in Greek marble--a precious copy of Bernini's masterpiece. But if I had an outdoor Daphne, I would not rest easy unless I knew that she was within easy touch of her laurel.
That is why I do not think that any hard and fast rule should be laid down in the matter of the disposal of statuary in a garden ground. But on the general principle of "the proper place," I certainly am of the opinion expressed by the writer to whom I have referred--that this element of interest and beauty should be found mainly in connection with the stonework of the house. In any part of an Italian garden stone figures seem properly placed; because so much of that form of garden is made up of sculptured stone; but in the best examples of the art you will find that the statuary is placed with due regard to the "feature" it is meant to illustrate. It is, in fact, part of the design and eminently decorative, as well as being stimulating to the memory and suggestive to the imagination. In most of the English gardens that were planned and carried out during the greater part of the nineteenth century, the stone and lead figures that formed a portion of the original design of the earlier days were thrown about without the least reference to their fitness for the places they were forced to occupy; and the consequence was that they never seemed right: they seemed to have no business where they were; hence the creation of a prejudice against such things. Happily, however, now that it is taken for granted that garden design is the work of some one who is more of an architect than a horticulturist, though capability in the one direction is intolerable without its complement in the other, the garden ornamental is coming into its own again; and the prices which even ordinary and by no means unique examples fetch under the hammer show that they are being properly appreciated.
