gardening in this really elegant essay. But though we cannot
but agree with almost every rule and warning that she lays down, the conviction is borne in upon us that gardeners, whether professional, amateur, artistic, naturalistic, formal, or any other variety, will pay but little attention to the words of wisdom. English gardens, some of the most beautiful and famous of them, have had no design in them ; they have grown slowly. It is not the English habit to make a serious business of gardening, but to make very few alterations and additions, and to make them slowly and cautiously. An Englishman dies perhaps before his garden is complete, but his successor adds beauties, and so on, till it becomes what we know it. This means that, formal or naturalistic, it has time to harmonise with its surroundings and the architecture of the house. But an American has not the patience for this, and, moreover, hates the principle embodied,—the hereditary principle, represented, as Charles Kingsley would say, by the House of Lords. Mrs. Van Rensselaer's remarks on the formal garden are of little use to a reader, because the formal
garden is susceptible of such infinite variations, and in England we have also an infinite variety of dwelling-houses, and for every aggressively formal guidon we have a hundred whose formality has been refined, softened, and touched till it is no longer stiff.
Mrs. Van Rensselaer objects to pruning in our moist climate. We must remember, too, that the standards differ. What we call a fair-sized country-house would seem huge to an American ; a shooting or hunting box would be a country-house to him. Per- haps Mrs. Van Rensselaer is most helpful on trees ; though here, again, for English readers, her chapter on "Four Trees" will appeal to few, as the Lombardy poplar, the weeping-willow, the copper-beech, and the white-birch are not seen in very many gardens. A word for the axe is well worth taking to heart, as its timely use would save many a beautiful tree, and in our climate we can use it freely.
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