Page:Alexis de Chateauneuf - The Country House.djvu/42

 in the German language, on the subject of landscape gardening. "If due care be taken to distribute the masses of light and shade, so that they shall judiciously relieve and balance each other, satisfactory effect, as regards the general grouping and composition of the scenery, can hardly fail to be secured. Grass, water, and level lawns, which throw no shadow upon other objects, but merely receive those which the latter cast upon them, are to be considered as lights in landscape gardening, while trees, woods, buildings, and rocks, (should there be any) afford the artist his shadows and darker tints. In making use of these contrary elements, care must be taken lest breadth of effect be destroyed, and a disagreeable spottiness substituted for it; in consequence of there being too many separate and partial effects independent of each other; or else by there being too great a proportion of unbroken light. On the other hand an equal fault is committed, if a few dark masses of shadow are allowed so to predominate, as to overpower all besides; or again, if lawn and water exhibit naked unbroken surfaces of light too harshly defined; whereas they ought to be left partially to lose themselves in indistinctness, or the shadow of deep vegetation; or to detach themselves from a darker background as brilliant lights opposed to it. With respect to buildings, these ought never to stand perfectly isolated, because in that case they become spots, and look as if they had no business there, nor belonged to any of the rest. Besides, a partial concealment is always advantageous to every kind of beauty, and it is highly desirable that the imagination should be interested by there being something for it to exercise itself upon, and to divine. The eye frequently rests with more satisfaction upon a chimney peeping out in the distance, and emitting a gray volume of smoke from amidst the dense foliage of trees that embower and exclude from sight the building whose presence is so indicated, than it does upon a large formal mansion standing fully exposed to view, with no shelter or skreen [sic] on any side, with nothing to break its outline, with nothing to render it an appropriate and consistent feature in the general scene." From the beginning of what I have here extracted, you perceive that this writer treats the subject in a masterly manner, taking a comprehensive view, and is guided by such sound theoretical principles, as to be able to determine beforehand, the results of his art with almost as much certainty as an architect can judge of an intended building from its ground plan.