rade 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.

210. The florist may delight in this: the true lover of flowers never
will. He who has taken lessons from nature, who has observed the real
purpose and operation of flowers; how they flush forth from the
brightness of the earth's being, as the melody rises up from among the
moved strings of the instrument; how the wildness of their pale colors
passes over her, like the evidence of a various emotion; how the quick
fire of their life and their delight glows along the green banks, where
the dew falls the thickest, and the mists of incense pass slowly through
the twilight of the leaves, and the intertwined roots make the earth
tremble with strange joy at the feeling of their motion; he who has
watched this will never take away the beauty of their being to mix into
meretricious glare, or feed into an existence of disease. And the
flower-garden is as ugly in effect as it is unnatural in feeling: it
never will harmonize with anything, and if people will have it, should
be kept out of sight till they get into it.

211. But, in laying out the garden which is to assist the effect of the
building, we must observe, and exclusively use, the natural combinations
of