Much, however, need not be
said on this subject; for the taste of the public does not now prompt
them to such fettering of fair freedom, and we should be as sorry to see
the characteristic vestiges of it, which still remain in a few gardens,
lost altogether, as to see the thing again becoming common.
209. The garden of the Elizabethan villa, then, should be laid out with
a few simple terraces near the house, so as to unite it well with the
ground; lines of balustrade along the edges, guided away into the
foliage of the taller trees of the garden, with the shadows falling at
intervals. The balusters should be square rather than round, with the
angles outward; and if the balustrade looks unfinished at the corners,
it may be surmounted by a grotesque bit of sculpture, of any kind; but
it must be very strong and deep in its carved lines, and must not be
large; and all graceful statues are to be avoided, for the reasons
mentioned in speaking of the Italian villa: neither is the terraced part
of the garden to extend to any distance from the house, nor to have deep
flights of steps, for they are sure to get mossy and slippery, if not
superintended with troublesome care; and the rest of the garden should
have more trees than flowers in it. A flower-garden is an ugly thing,
even when best managed: it is an assembly of unfortunate beings,
pampered and bloated above their natural size, stewed and heated into
diseased growth; corrupted by evil communication into speckled and
inharmonious colors; torn from the soil which they loved, and of which
they were the spirit and the glory, to glare away their term of
tormented life among the mixed and incongruous essences of each other,
in earth that they know not, and in air that is poison to them.
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