In a park of this kind, particularly in modern examples of such, everything is, on the one hand, intended to hold intact the freedom of Nature, while, on the other, it is artificially elaborated and constructed and conditioned by the locality where it is situated. This involves a contradiction which is never satisfactorily disposed of. In this respect, for the most part, it is impossible to instance an example of worse taste than such an attempt to make visible in all directions a studied purpose in that which is without purpose, and to force that which refuses to be compelled. Add to this the fact that here the genuine character of what is strictly a garden disappears, in so far, that is, as a garden is primarily adapted for strolling about in at pleasure and conversation within a certain place, which is no longer simply Nature, but a Nature remodelled by man to meet his desire for an environment created by himself. A huge park, on the contrary, particularly if it be garnished with Chinese temples, Turkish mosques, Swiss châlets, bridges, hermitages, and any other conceivable foreign importation, makes an independent claim on our interest as spectator. It offers an independent pretension of being and signifying something. A charm of this sort disappears as soon as it arises; we do not care to see it twice, for an addition like this spreads before our sight no suggestion of infinity, nothing that possesses a really existent vitality[110], and is further only wearisome and tedious for conversation as we pass through it.
A garden, strictly speaking, should be only a cheerful environment and simply an environment, which will not pass for something independently valid and withdraw men from their own life and concerns. It is here that architecture, with its scientific lines, order, regularity, and symmetry, is in its proper place and co-ordinates natural objects themselves architectonically. The art of the Mongols on the other side of the great wall, in Tibet, the paradise of the Persians, already adapt themselves more closely to this type. They are no parks in the English sense, but halls with flowers, springs, courts, and palaces, which have in the form of a retreat in Nature been arranged on a splendid, grandiose, and extravagant scale for the needs of mankind and their convenience. But we find the architectural principle most thoroughly carried out in the French art of gardening, which, as a rule, borders upon great palaces, plants trees in the strictest conformity of line in long avenues, prunes them, builds up straight walls from trimmed fences, and in this way converts Nature herself into a broad dwelling beneath the open sky.
[34] Simply as a physical object.
[35] That of symbolic architecture.
[36] Als Momente eines Subjektes. That is as the constituent parts of the mind of one individual.
[37] Herod. I, c. 181.
[38] I, c. 98.
[39] I, p. 469.
[40] As in obelisks, Memnons, etc.