foliage regularly disposed, fall with a grace which it is impossible to describe, running up and down across the marble steps, and casting alternate statues into darkness; and checkering the white walls with a “method in their madness,” altogether unattainable by loose grouping of trees; and therefore, for the sake of this kind of shade, to which the eye, as well as the feeling, is attracted, the long row of cypresses or orange trees is allowable.

109.  But there is a still more important reason for it, of a directly contrary nature to that which its formality would seem to require.  In all beautiful designs of exterior descent, a certain regularity is necessary; the lines should be graceful, but they must balance each other, slope answering to slope, statue to statue.  Now this mathematical regularity would hurt the eye excessively in the midst of scenes of natural grace, were it executed in bare stone; but, if we make part of the design itself foliage, and put in touches of regular shade, alternating with the stone, whose distances and darkness are as mathematically limited as the rest of the grouping, but whose nature is changeful and varied in individual forms, we have obtained a link between nature and art, a step of transition, leading the feelings gradually from the beauty of regularity to that of freedom.  And this effect would not be obtained, as might at first appear, by intermingling trees of different kinds, at irregular distances, or wherever they chose to grow; for then the design and the foliage would be instantly separated by the eye, the symmetry of the one would be interrupted, the grace of the other lost; the nobility of the design would not be seen, but its formality would be felt; and the wildness of the trees would be injurious, because it would be felt to be out of place.  On principles of composition, therefore, the regular disposition of decorative foliage is right, when such foliage is mixed with architecture; but it requires great taste, and long study, to design this disposition properly.  Trees of dark leaf and little color should be invariably used, for they are to be considered, it must be remembered, rather as free touches of shade than as trees.

110.  Take, for instance, the most simple bit of design, such as a hollow balustrade, and suppose that it is found to look cold or raw, when executed, and to want depth.  Then put small pots, with any dark shrub, the darker the better, at fixed places behind them, at the same distance as the balustrades, or between every two or three, and keep them cut down to a certain height, and we have immediate depth and increased ease, with undiminished symmetry.  But the great difficulty is to keep the thing within proper limits, since too much of it will lead to paltriness, as is the case in a slight degree in Isola Bella, on Lago Maggiore; and not to let it run into small details:  for, be it remembered, that it is only in the majesty of art, in its large and general effects, that this