vi PREFACE.
gardener’s “open letter,” to take loose pages as fanciesoccurred. So have these errant thoughts, jotted down in thebroken leisure of a busy life, grown solid unawares andexpanded into a would-be-serious contribution to garden-literature.
Following upon the oviginal lines of the Essay on theFor and Against of Modern Gardening, I became the gore confirmed as to the general rightness of the old waysof applying Art, and of interpreting Nature the more T studied old gardens and the point of view of their makers ;until I now appear as advocate of old types of design, which,[ am persuaded, ave more consonant with the traditions ofEnglish life, and more suitable to an English homestead than some now in vogue.
The old-fashioned garden, whatever its failings in theeyes Of the modern landscape-gardener (great is the povertyof his invention), represents one of the pleasures of England,one of the charms of that quiet beautiful life of bygone times that I, for one, would fain see revived. And judgedeven as pieces of handicraft, apart from their poetic interest,these gardens ave worthy of careful study. They embodyideas of ancient worth ; they evidence fine aims and heroic efforts; they exemplify traditions that ave the net resultof a long probation, Better still, they vender into tangibleshapes old moods of mind that English landscape hasinspired ; they testify to old devotion to the scenery of our native land, and illustrate old attempts to idealise its pleasant traits.
