Now, the understanding is that every part of the
premises, every outdoor thing on the premises--path, fence, truck-patch,
stable, stable-yard, hen-yard, tennis or croquet-court--everything is
either a part of the garden or is so reasonably related to it that from
whatever point one views the place he beholds a single satisfactory
picture.
This, I say, is the understanding. I do not say that even among our
prize-winners anybody has yet perfectly attained this, although a few
have come very near it. With these the main surviving drawback is that
the artistic effect is each season so long coming and passes away so
soon--cometh up as a flower and presently has withered.
One of our most gifted literary critics a while ago pointed out the
poetic charm of evanescence; pointed it out more plainly, I fancy, than
it has ever been shown before. But evanescence has this poetic charm
chiefly in nature, almost never in art. The transitoriness of a sunset
glory, or of human life, is rife with poetic pathos because it is a
transitoriness which _cannot be helped_. Therein lay the charm of that
poetic wonder and marvel of its day (1893) the Columbian Exposition's
"White City"; it was an architectural triumph and glory which we could
not have except on condition that it should vanish with the swiftness of
an aurora. Even so, there would have been little poetry in its
evanescence if, through bad workmanship or any obvious folly, it had
failed to fulfil the transient purpose for which it was erected.
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