Nature is idealised, treated fancifully in each, yet
how different the quality of the contents, the method
of presentment, the style, the technique of this and
that, even when the design is contemporaneous !

A garden is, I say, a sort of pastoral romance,
woven upon a background of natural scenery. In
the exercise of his pictorial genius, both the foreign
and English artist shall run upon natural things, and



HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE. 65

transcribe Nature imaginatively yet realisably ; each
composition shall have a pastoral air, and be rustic
after its fashion. But how different the platform,
how different the mental complexion, the technique
of the artists ! How different the detail and the
atmosphere of the garden. The rusticity of the
foreign garden is dished up in a more delectable
form than is the case in the English, but there is
not the same open-air feeling about this as about
that ; it does not convey the same sense of unex-
hausted possibilities — not the same tokens of living
enjoyment of Nature, of heart-to-heart fellowship
with her. The foreign garden is over-wrought, too
full : it is a passionless thing — like the gaudy birds
of India, finely plumed but songless ; like the prize
rose, without sweetness.
Of the garden of Italy, who shall dare to speak
critically. Child of tradition : heir by unbroken de-
scent, inheritor of the garden-craft of the whole
civilised world. It stands on a pinnacle high above
the others, peerless and alone : fit for the loveliest of
lands —

"Woman-country, wooed not wed.
Loved all the more by Earth's male-lands.
