Civil and Landscape Engineer, No. 89 Broadway, New York.

" The faculty of foreknowing effects constitutes the master in every branch of the polite arts.'7 - Humphrey Repton.

We are led to assume that a true and full knowledge of art is one of the essential requirements to high development of landscape beauty. We may without it reach a tolerable degree of success; a success, however, which can not be appreciated by a refined and cultivated taste. So long as we accept inferior works of art,a display of second-rate skill, the imperfect execution of those who do not know that there is a standard far beyond their education or abilities, just so long will we have an unsatisfactory production, and One that decreases in pleasure in the same proportion as our education in true art progresses.

There is another requisite in landscape adornment equally essential to success, and that is a thorough knowledge of construction; construction with conditions of a different character than those which usually mark the works of a civil engineer. There must be a refined taste united to the exquisite beauty of grade and alignment; the beautiful must blend with the practical. An imperfect knowledge or a smatter of civil engineering would be of no avail to him who aims high in landscape art. It is not enough to know little of that science; it is little enough to know all of its inexhaustible resources: they will never fail to unfold the hidden and unsuspected truths and beauties that are never noticed by an unprofessional eye, and he who discards its aid in carriage drives, walks, bridges, culverts, ornamental water, drainage, earthwork, etc, Ac, discards a principle in rural economy and a perfection in finish and elegance that the home-made and expensive manner of execution can never approach. The capabilities of a place will be overlooked or undeveloped by the pretender, while talent and ability will uncover a mine of gold or of beauty.

The man of taste will discover a new value in real estate, while those who have lived on it all their days can only regret the lack of that knowledge by which a new-comer readily commands a hundred per cent. advance on the price they accepted. The eye of an artist or an engineer will see further along the pathway of science and beauty, and readily perceive. both the apparent and concealed resources that belong to or go to make up the real merits of value or pleasure.

A different branch of construction, that of architecture, lapping over and appropriating a portion of the artist's and engineer's professions, is also necessary to successful practice in landscape improvement. A certain degree of folly may ignore its application, but art in construction we deem important to study. The draughtsman's art need not be enlarged on here. No profession in design or construction can rise above mediocrity .without a thorough knowledge of its principles: by it the fleeting thoughts of beauty are fixed, the plan of construction studied, and the principles of execution imparted. Success in landscape adornment can not be reached without its aid, any more than the artist, the architect, or the civil engineer can hope to be successful by casting aside the plans by which they study out the finished excellences of their great and enduring works.

There should be, we think, a distinction as well as a difference made in the execution of landscape work. There is one form of construction by the hand of man, a matter of science and skill, a certain foretold positive result. There is another form of construction in which the design of the artist can only be worked out by the silent changes of time:

" Harsh and cold the builder's work appears, Till softened down by long revolving years".

There is the preparation of the canvas, and then the production of the picture; a development of beauty in the high walks of art; and he who does not understand its appliances, as well as the habits and future development of the materials he deals with, will fall far short of true excellence. It is not to plant or cut down a tree; the gardener or wood-chopper can do that: but which and where to cut and plant will indicate the taste that designs, or the mind that controls.

A broad, bold, false statement is that made by those who know little or nothing of landscape art, when they 6ay its execution can not be represented by plans, the details of an artist's fancy not communicated; or, in other words, that landscape gardening must necessarily be a constant change; that digging, dumping, and planting must be carried on experimentally until the desired effect be produced; that landscape effects exist in such brains that can only discover and seize them when they make themselves apparent in the process of construction: those who have gold enough to gild thickly their broad acres may listen to such specious ignorance. The artist who can not illustrate his conceptions, show the effects he desires, and the manner of their production, ceases to be an artist. The architect or civil engineer who can not give the working drawings and lay out any form of construction, is deficient in the higher walks of his profession. That mind which is not large and broad enough, or of sufficient grasp to design a plan of improvement that can be carried out in all its minor details and accessories, betrays a lack of knowledge and ability in both departments of design and construction.

If the arts of design enable us to detail in advance the studied realizations of the artist, the sculptor, and the architect, are they not equally applicable to the art of landscape gardening? or, treating landscape gardening exclusively as a fine art, must we reason that during the execution of a work of art, its beauties and effects disclose themselves unexpectedly? or, rather, 6tate the positive fact that in such a blind method of procedure nothing beautiful or effective is disclosed, the more than tenfold ignorance existing on art in landscape adornment finding a sad realization in a disappointment only equaled by a wasteful and miserable expenditure?

We shall make the aesthetics of gardening the subject of a future article. This trade has by its followers been laboriously foisted on public notice as the basis of all the principles of the elegant art of landscape adornment, the lamentable results of which can not but be apparent to all those amateurs who have cut their expensive eye-teeth in its demonstrations.

[We watch the progress of Mr. Woodward's articles with much interest. He by no means claims too high a place for his beautiful profession. The art of Landscape Adornment is a Fine Art in the best sense of the term; conception and execution are alike essential to its true manifestation, and we are glad to perceive that Mr. Woodward so treats it. - Ed].