A Garden of Peace: A Medley in QuietudeMoore, Frank Frankfort
General
A Garden of Peace: A Medley in Quietude
Moore, Frank Frankfort
Gardens -- Fiction
That is really the relative position of the two. I hold that there are
scores of forms of garden that may be espoused to a house; and I am not
sure that such a term as Formal is not misleading to a large number of
people who think that Nature should begin the moment that one steps out
of one's house, and that nothing in Nature is formal. I am not going to
take on me any definition of the constituent elements of what is termed
the Formal Garden, but I will take it on me to stand up against such
people as would have us believe that the moment you enter a house
you leave Nature outside. A house is as much a product of Nature as
a woodland or a rabbit warren or a lawn. The original house of that
product of Nature known as man was that product of Nature known as a
cave. For thousands of years before he got into his cave he had made his
abode in the woodland. It was when he found he could do better than hang
on to his bough and, with his toes, take the eggs out of whatever nests
he could get at, that he made the cave his dwelling; and thousands of
years later he found that it was more convenient to build up the clay
into the shape of a cave than to scoop out the hillside when he wanted
an addition to the dwelling provided for him in the hollows made by that
natural incident known as a landslide. But the dwelling-house of to-day
is nothing more than a cave built up instead of scooped out.
Whether made of brick, stone, or clay--all products of Nature--it
is fundamentally the same as the primeval cave dwelling; just as a
Corinthian column is fundamentally identical with the palm-tree which
primeval man brought into his service when he wished to construct a
dwelling dependent of the forest of his pendulous ancestors. The rabbit
is at present in the stage of development of the men who scooped out
their dwellings; the beaver is in the stage of development of the men
who gave up scooping and took to building; and will any one suggest that
a rabbit warren or a beaver village is not Nature?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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