In any case the appropriateness of the Formal Garden has been proved (literally) down to the ground. As a matter of fact, no one ever thought of questioning it in England until some remarkable innovators, who called themselves Landscape Gardeners, thought they saw their way to work on a new system, and in doing so contrived to destroy many interesting features of the landscape. But really, landscape gardening has never been consistently defined. Its exponents have always been slovenly and inconsistent in stating their aims; so that while they claim to be all for giving what they call Nature the supreme place in their designs, it must appear to most people that the achievement of these designs entails treating Nature most unnaturally. The landscape gardeners of the early years of the cult seem to me to be in the position of the boy of whom the parents said, “Charlie is so very fond of animals that we are going to make a butcher of him.” To read their enunciation of the principles by which they professed to be inspired is to make one feel that they thought the butchery of a landscape the only way to beautify it. But, I repeat, the examples of their work with which we are acquainted show but a small amount of consistency with their professions of faith. When we read the satires that were written upon their work in the eighteenth century, we really feel that the lampooners have got hold of the wrong brief, and that they are ridiculing the upholders of the Formal Garden. So far as I was concerned in dealing with my insignificant garden home, I did not concern myself with principles or theories or schools or consistency or inconsistency; I went ahead as I pleased, and though Friswell shook his head--I have not finished with him yet on account of that mute expression of disagreement with my aims--I enjoyed myself thoroughly, if now and again with qualms of uneasiness, in laying out what I feel I must call the House Garden rather than the Formal Garden, where the lawn had spread itself abroad, causing the wing of the house to have something of the appearance of a lighthouse springing straight up from a green sea. As it is now, that green expanse suggests a tropical sea with many brilliant islands breaking up its placid surface. That satisfies me. If the lighthouse remains, I have given it a _raison d'etre_ by strewing the sea with islands. I made my appeal to Olive, the practical one. “Yes,” she said, after one of her thoughtful intervals. “Yes, I think it does look naturaler.” And I do believe it does. CHAPTER THE NINTH