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UNIVERSITY Of aL,NO^L^RM;^^TUR^^*;^AMP^

J ' JUL 1 1 m

THE LIBRARY

OF THE

UHIVBSITY OF ILLIH0B

THE

MISE OF GARDENS

AN EPITOME OF THE LITERATURE OF
THE GARDEN -ART

WITH AN

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE

BY

ALBERT FORBES SIEVEKING, F.S.A.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
J. M. DENT & CO.
'\LDINE HOUSE, 29 & 30 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

1899

All rights reserved

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G^^^

^apli-c

Ul«

MARGARET AND MARGOT

555791

PROLOGUE

T SHOULD not perhaps venture now for the first time to set
adrift upon the flowing tide of garden literature, old and new,
a volume such as this ; but when the first edition of ' The Praise
of Gardens' made its appearance fourteen years ago, it might
almost have claimed to be a pioneer in the revival of old garden
books. Imperfect as it was in execution, it sought to bring
together a series of prose passages giving an historical survey of
their delightful subject ; to show lovers of gardens and literature
alike that the title of the volume was meant in the good old wide-
embracing sense of Elizabethan days, when to praise a subject
was also to appraise and appreciate it. If that aim more nearly
hits the mark in the present edition, by means of the many
passages omitted and added, which fourteen years' further famili-
arity with the sources have suggested, the collection may better
deserve the eulogy, ' a scholarly little book,' passed upon its
infancy in all too indulgent and encouraging conversation by my
friend and master, Walter Pater. At least I trust that the unity
of its subject, garden-art or design, will in some degree fuse and
harmonise the variety of voices joining in the choir of praise.

It is vain to expect that everyone will be satisfied with the
choice, and that all will find their favourite authors quoted or
their favourite gardens mentioned. Many will wonder why poetry
is so poorly represented, one reason perhaps being that poetry is
richer in flowers than in gardens, and it is with gardens as a
whole, rather than their contents, that this book is busy. Besides,

in a garden everyone is his or her own poet. Moreover, are

vii

viii PROLOGUE

there not verse Anthologies enough and to spare ? Of the gaps
in my garden-hedges I am only too conscious, marvelling how
I can have overlooked such obvious and striking claims. Where
are the Garland and Plant lore of Athenseus and Theophrastus,
and the Garden 'Points' of old Thomas Tusser? Where are
Bulleyn's ' Bulwarks of Defence,' Andrew Borde's * Dyetary of
Health,' and Bishop Grossteste's ' Boke of Husbandry ' ? Where
are the lines of the Poet-King James I. of Scotland on Windsor
Garden? And why is Gerarde preferred to his predecessor, Dr
Wm. Turner? Why find we no mention of Raleigh's Gardens
at Beddington, or at Sherborne, described by Pope ? Where are
Ralph Austen and Sir Hugh Piatt, John de Garlande (1081),
Jon Gardener (1440), John Rea, John Rose, John Tradescant,
John Reid (author of the 'Scots' Gard'ner,' 1683, the earliest
Scotch garden-book), John Dairy mple (are all gardeners
Johns ?), James Justice, and Gibson's ' Gardens about London,'
1691 ?

Well, some are to be found in the Epilogue, some are perhaps
too exclusively technical, and the absence of the others can only
be explained by the short word. Space !

And now to the real purpose of this Prologue, that of most
Prologues, Thanks !

Where all is borrowed it seems invidious to make distinctions
in gratitude. And so ' to the Great Men of the Past ' who un-
consciously lend their names and writings to the following pages
I offer my deepest and most reverent thanks. To the living
writers (and their publishers) who in this edition or the last have
allowed me to quote from their works, I repeat my sense of their
kindness and my obligation.

In regard to the Art contributions, first and foremost to Mr
George S. Elgood, R.L, for his liberality in allowing me to make

PROLOGUE ix

a selection from many of his beautiful and famous drawings, I am
most sincerely grateful.

To Mrs William Graham I am indebted for permission to copy
her lovely water-colour of ' The Lady in the Garden,' by Frederick
Walker, which makes so poetical a frontispiece, and Walker's own
comment strikes an admirable key-note to the book : ' The Garden
is the perfection of Peace and Loveliness.'

To Miss Ella Sykes, author of 'Through Persia on a Side-
Saddle,' I owe my thanks for leave to use *the Garden of
Fin, at Kashan ' ; and for the sixth photogravure, ' In a Scotch
Walled Garden,' I am indebted to the photographic skill of my
brother-in-law, Mr A. G. Campbell, as well as for the view of
the Inn Garden at Nara, Japan, taken upon his travels.

To Professor Brinckmann, Director of the Arts and Crafts
Museum at Hamburg, I am under deep obligation for the artistic
and altruistic impulse which prompted him to place at my disposal
and send to England a large case of rare engravings selected by
himself, at a sacrifice of great labour and time, from the fine and
perhaps unique historical collection of Garden Prints, which he
has formed for the Museum, and exhibited at the great Gardening
Exhibition in Hamburg, 1897.

I must further thank Mrs W. A. Wills for her photograph
of the Pond Garden, at Hampton Court; and Mr George
Clausen, A.R.A., for procuring me the photograph of the Pom-
peian Garden.

To the three chief Histories of Gardening in English, viz. : —
(i) The general one prefixed to J. C. Loudon's ' Encyclopaedia
of Gardening ' (1834), a masterly and exhaustive treatise,
which only requires to be brought down to date :
(ii) George W. Johnson's 'History of English Gardening'
(1829), which also strongly merits the honour of a second
edition : and

X PROLOGUE

(iii) Hon. Alicia Amherst's 'History of Gardening in
England' (1895)—
my obligations are none the less great that it is impossible to
express them every time they are incurred.

Finally, to my old friend Francis Henry Cripps-Day for general
and generous assistance given me unstintingly in revising the
book, as well as for the labour of preparing the Index {non solum
verborum, sed amicitice), I am heartily grateful.

And now a last word of egoistic reverie. Where may one in-
dulge in day-dreams, if not in a garden ? My dream is of a Library
in a Garden ! In the very centre of the garden away from house
or cottage, but united to it by a pleached alley or pergola of vines
or roses, an octagonal book-tower like Montaigne's rises upon
arches forming an arbour of scented shade. Between the book-
shelves, windows at every angle, as in Pliny's Villa library,
opening upon a broad gallery supported by pillars of ' faire
carpenter's work,' around which cluster flowering creepers, follow
the course of the sun in its play upon the landscape. ' Last
stage of all,' a glass dome gives gaze upon the stars by
night, and the clouds by day : ' les nuages . . . les nuages qui
passent ... la bas ... les merveilleux nuages ! ' And in this
BIBAIOKHIIOS — this Garden of Books — Sui et Amicorum, would
pass the coloured days and the white nights, ' not in quite blank
forgetfulness, but in continuous dreaming, only half-veiled by
sleep.'

A. FORBES SIEVEKING.

12 Seymour Street, Portman Square,
November 1899.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Prologue ...,..., vii
List of Illustrations ...... xiv

Hortorum Laudes ....... xvi

CHAPTER I

Ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, Persian, Syrian, Greek
AND Roman Gardens

Egyptian MS. {i^th Dynasty) — Solomon — Homer — Xenophon — Plato —
Aristotle — Theophrastus — Epicurus — Theocritus — Cato — Cicero —
Varro — Diodorus Siculus — Pliny the elder — Pliny the younger —
Plutarch — Columella — Tacitus — Seneca — Quintilian — Lucian —
Palladius ......... 1-22

CHAPTER II

Some Early Christian and Late Pagan Writers
on the Garden

St Jerome— T'Ao Yiian-ming—Longus—Tatius— Mohammad— Chou-tun-i

— Lien-tschen — William of Malmesbury . . . 23-29

CHAPTER III

Mediaeval, Renaissance and Tudor Gardens

Neckham — Petrarch — St Bernard — Brunetto Latini — Maundeville —

Boccaccio — Machiavelli — Erasmus — More — Luther — Gawen' Douglas - 1
— Baber — Fitzherbarde — Polydore Vergil — C. Estienne — Palissy — Du
Cerceau — Heresbach — Googe — Montaigne — Tasso — Treveris —
Leland — Coesalpinus — De Serres ..... 30-61

CHAPTER IV

Elizabethan and Stuart Gardens

Gerarde — Lyly — Sidney — Bacon — Hentzner — Drayton — Parkinson — Hill
{Dydymus Mountaine) — Maschal — Lawson — Laneham — Wotton —
Bishop Hall — Burton — Taylor [the Water Poet) — Comenius — Harrison
— George Herbert — Gassendi — Howell — Sir W. Waller . . 62-93

xi

xii TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER V

The Formal Garden in the Seventeenth Century under
French and Dutch Influence : Oriental Travellers on
Persian and Japanese Gardens

Sir T. Browne— Milton— Fuller— Cowley— Hartlib — Le Notre— Evelyn—
Shaftesbury — De la Quintinye— De Sdvign^—Bunyan— Ray— Meager
— Temple — Huet — Pepys — London and Wise — Mandelslo— Chardin
— Dufresny — Kaempfer — Worlidge ..... 94-13^

CHAPTER VI

Decline of the Formal and Indications of the Natural or
Landscape Garden in the First Half of the Eighteenth
Century

Defoe— Switzer— Swift— Addison— St Simon— Bolingbroke— Kent— Pope

Montesquieu— Miller— Voltaire— Chesterfield— Batty Langley . 131 -153

CHAPTER VII

The Sentimental, Landscape, and Park Schools of Garden-
ing, founded upon Painting ; and the Chinese and English
'Natural' Styles, at the End of the Eighteenth Century

Kames — Spence— Chatham — Johnson — De Brosses — Rousseau — Sterne —
Diderot — Shenstone — Brown {Capability) — Gray — Horace Walpole —
Watelet— Gilbert White— Adam Smith— W. Mason and Burgh— Sir
W, Chambers — Wilkes — Goldsmith — Kant — Bradley — Erasmus
Darwin — Cowper . . . . . . -154-193

CHAPTER VIII

Garden Design as a Liberal or Fine Art : The * Composition'
OF Nature or Landscape — Reaction of the ' Picturesque '
Writers — Eclecticism, Cosmopolitanism and Romanticism
in Garden Literature.

Whately — Prince de Ligne — Girardin — G. Mason — Gibbon — L'Abb6
Delille— Young— Uvedale Price— Goethe— Payne Knight— Windham
— Repton—Joubert— Alison —Schiller— Beckford—Cobbett—de Stael

^ —Maine de Biran— Isaac Disraeli— Alex, von Humboldt . . 194-232

TABLE OF CONTENTS xiii

PACE

CHAPTER IX

The Garden in the Nineteenth Century

Wordsworth — Scott — Southey — Sydney Smith — Lamb — Landor — Hallam
— Lord Campbell — Humphry Davy — Washington Irving — Leigh
Hunt — John Wilson [Chris. North) — Thomas Love Peacock — Byron
— Schopenhauer — Lamartine — Shelley — Thomas Arnold — Whewell —
Heine — Alcott — Newman — Victor Hugo — Bulwer Lytton — Douglas
Jerrold — George Sand — Benjamin Disraeli — Hawthorne — Alphonse
Karr — O, W. Holmes— Poe — Maurice de Gu^rin — Gautier — Kinglake
— Thoreau — Baudelaire — Amiel — de Goncourt — Renan — Mortimer
Collins — James {' Carthttsiati ') — ' Quarterly Review ' — Helps — Stirling
Maxwell — Watson — Ruskin — Matthew Arnold — William Morris —
Walter Pater — 'Vernon Lee' — Mrs Meynell — Henry Bright — George
Milner— Alfred Austin — Zola — R. Blomfield and Inigo Thomas —
Mrs J. F. Foster — William Robinson — Phil Robinson — Charles
Dudley Warner— D'Annunzio—' E. V, B.' . . . . 233-313

Historical Epilogue . . . . . • S^S

Index . . , . . . . . .415

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Lady in the Garden, Stobhall, Perthshire. Fred

Walker, A.R.A. . . . . . Frontispiece

PAGE

2. An Ancient Egyptian Garden (a//<?r^oj^//z«?) . . 2

3. Generalife, Granada, Spain. George S. Elgood, R.I. To face 86

4. The Garden of Fin, Kashan, Persia . . To face 127

5. Villa MuTi, Frascati, Italy. George S. Elgood, R.I. To face 161

6. Brockenhurst, Hampshire. George S. Elgood, R.I, To face 212

7. In a Scotch Wai-led Garden {from a Photograph by A. G.

Campbell) ...... To face 289

8. Inner Garden of the House of Aulus Vettius, recently

excavated at pompeii ..... 323

9. Plan of the Abbey Garden of St Gall, by a Monk of the

Ninth Century ...... 325

10. ' The Garden of Love.' From the earliest known

Flemish engraving {circa 1450), by ' Der Meister der
Liebesgarten ' . . . . . . 329

11. The Terraced Gardens of St Germain-en-Laye, 1523.

From G. Braun's * Civitates orbis Terrarum.' . . 333

12. The Tudor 'Pond Yard' or Garden, Hampton Court,

IN its Present State {from a Photograph by Mrs W. A,

Wills) 335

13. The Villa d'Este, Tivoli. After Piranesi, 1765 . . 339

14. • HoRTUs Penbrochianus.' From ' Le Jardin de Wilton,'

BY Isaac de Caus, 1640 . • . . . 344

15. A Garden, engraved by Crispin de Pass. From the

* Hortus Floridus,' Arnheim, 1614 . . . 347

16. The Title-Pageof Gerarde's * Herball,' ist Edition, 1597 349

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xt

PAGE

17. Portrait OF Sir Philip Sidney IN THE Garden AT Penshurst 353

18. Portrait of Le Notre. After Carlo Maratti . . 355

19. Perspective View of the Chateau and Gardens of

Versailles. Engraved by A. Perelle, after Israel
Sylvestre {circa 1688) ..... 359

20. ' Le Theatre d'Eau,' Versailles. From an Engraving by

Perelle {circa 1660) . . . . . .361

21. ' Les Bains d'Apollon,' Versailles. From an Engraving

BY J. RiGAUD ....... 365

22. ' La Salle DE Bal,' Versailles. After Cottel, 1688 . 367

23. Portrait of John Evelyn. After Nanteuil (with

autograph) ....... 371

24. View of the Dutch Garden at Jacobsdahl . . . 376

25. Bird's-Eye View of Hampton Court and Gardens. From

Kip's 'Britannia Illustrata' (1706-1710) . . 379

26. Parterre from Portico of House at Stowe, Bucks, as

Designed by Bridgman, 1714-1739 .... 381

27. Plan of Pope's Garden at Twickenham at the Time of

HIS Death, by his Gardener, John Serle . . 385

28. The Gardens of Trinity College, Oxford. From

Williams' ' Oxonia Depicta,' 1732-3 . . . 387

29. * The Garden of Gardens', Pekin, begun 1723 . . 391

30. Esher, as laid out by Kent for Henry Pelham (1725-1735).

From a Drawing by Woollet (1801) . . . 395

31. View of the Pavilion and ' Jeu de Bague ' in the Garden

OF Monceau(x), as laid out by Carmontelle . . 400

32. Japanese Mountain Garden in the * Shin ' or ' Finished

Style' ....... 406

33. Inn Garden at Nara, Japan {fro7n a Photograph by A. G.

Campbell) ....... 408

34. 'Le Bosquet de Bacchus.' Engraved by C. N. Cochin,

AFTER A Painting by Watteau , . . .411

HORTORUM LAUDES.

TOIS 'AnO TflN KHnftN TAYTA XAPIZOMAI.

*'2u TovTO irpos €/j.e iv t<^ K-qiri^ vtto rah dd(f>pais avrbs ^(prjada ipvevoijKevaW

— Plato to Dionysius.

"Cogito trans Tiberim hortos aliquos parare, et quidem ob hanc causam maxime : nihil
enim video quod tarn celebre esse ^ossit."— Cicero ad Atticuin.

" Hie mihi magis arridet, ut est sua cuique sententia, etiam in Hortis." — Erasmus.

" Adsis, nam Laudes nostri cantabimus Horti." — Gilbert Cousin^ 1552.

" Mio picciol orto,
A me sei vigna, e campo, e silva, e prato." — Baldi.

"In garden delights 'tis not easy to hold a mediocrity ; that insinuating pleasure is seldom
without some extremity-." — Sir Thomas Browne.

" And I beseech you, forget not to informe yourselfe as dilligently as may be, in things that
belong to Gardening."^/(7^« Evelyn.

" My Garden painted o'er
With Nature's hand, not Art's." — Cowley.

" Consult the Genius of the Place in all." — Pope.

" II faut cultiver notre Jardin." — Voltaire.

" Les Jardins appelaient les champs dans leur sdjour ;
Les Jardins dans les champs vont entrer a leur tour :

Chacun d'eux a ses droits ; n'excluons Tun ni I'autre

Je ne decide point entre Kent, et Le Notre." — L'Abbe De Lille.

"Peres de famille, inspirez \^ jardinoinanie a vos enfants." — Prince de Eigne.

,,@inc mit ®i\^t be^eelte unb burcti ^iin^t emltiertc ^\ai\ix.''—Schiiier.

" Nothing is more completely the child of Art than a Garden." — Sir Walter Scott.

" Laying out grounds may be considered as a Liberal Art." — Wordsworth.

" Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society." — Alfred Austin.

" What may be called the literary history of gardening shall be succinctly and impartially
attempted." — Dallaway.

" It is a natural consequence that those who cannot taste the actual fruition of a garden
should take the greater delight in reading about one. But the enjoyment next below actual
possession seems to be derived from writing on the topic." — Quarterly Review, 1851.

" Any book I see advertised that treats of Gardens I immediately buy."

" The Solitary Suvimer,'^ 1899.

*

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

CHAPTER I

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN, HEBREW, PERSIAN, SYRIAN, GREEK AND

ROMAN GARDENS

QHE led me, hand in hand, and we went into her garden to EGYPTIAN

^ converse together. J^S-

.r., , 1 r 11 . 1 (^9^^ Dynasty,

There she made me taste of excellent honey. b^c, 1300).

The rushes of the garden were verdant, and all its bushes flourishing.

There were currant trees and cherries redder than the ruby.^

The ripe peaches - of the garden resembled bronze,

and the groves had the lustre of the stone nashem.^

The 7ne7ini^ unshelled like cocoa-nuts they brought to us, '7

its shade was fresh and airy, and soft for the repose of love ;

' Come to me,' she called unto me,

'and enjoy thyself a day in the room of

a young girl who belongs to me,

the garden is to-day in its glory ;

there is a terrace and a parlour.'

' The Tale of the Garden of Flowers^ translated by M.
Francois Chabas {^^ Records of the Past^^ Egyptian Texts).

Cardens are frequently represented in the tombs of Thebes y
and other parts of Egypt, many of which are remarkable for '''
their extent. The one here introduced is shown to have been
surrounded by an embattled wall, with a canal of water passing
in front of it, connected with the river. Between the canal and
the wall, and parallel to them both, was a shady avenue of various
trees ; and about the centre was the entrance, through a lofty door

^ Fruits termed Kaion and Tipau, which probably had nothing in common
with cherries and currants except their colour.
- The Persea fruit, a species of sacred almond.

^ Green felspar, or Amazon stone. "* An unknown fruit.

A

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

whose lintel and jambs were decorated with hieroglyphic inscrip-
tions, containing the name of the owner of the grounds, who in
this instance was the King himself.

The vines were traced on a trellis-work, supported by transverse

fHm%m

im

»^

?W^f?

SJjUtSlS'

mi

m^^*immmmm\

An Ancient Egyptian Garden (after Rosellini).

rafters resting on pillars ; and a wall extending round it separated
this part from the rest of the garden. At the upper end were
suites of rooms on three different storeys, looking upon green
trees, and affording a pleasant retreat in the heat of summer.

SOLOMON 3

On the outside of the vineyard wall were planted rows of palms,
which occurred again with the doin and other trees, along the
whole length of the exterior wall : four tanks of water, bordered
by a grass plot, where geese were kept, and the delicate flower of
the lotus was encouraged to grow, served for the irrigation of the
grounds ; and small kiosks, or summer-houses, shaded with trees,
stood near the water, and overlooked beds of flowers. — Sir J.
Gardner Wilkinson, ' The Ancient Egyptia7is' ^

— -AhN^t—

A GARDEN enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut SOLOMON
^ up, a fountain sealed. ^^•^- ^°3^'

Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits ;
camphire, with spikenard.

Spikenard and saffron ; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees
of frankincense ; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices.

A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams
from Lebanon.

Awake, O north wind : and come, thou south ; blow upon my
garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come
into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits. — The Song of Solomon.

-^AAAr^—

A ND without the court-yard hard by the door is a great garden, HOMER (b.c.
-'*• of four plough-gates, and a hedge runs round on either side. 962-927).
And there grow tall trees blossoming, pear-trees and pomegranates,
and apple-trees with bright fruit, and sweet figs, and olives in
their bloom. The fruit of these trees never perisheth, neither
faileth winter or .summer, enduring through all the year. Ever-
more the West Wind blowing brings some fruits to birth and

^ From an interesting paper in the Mornmg Post by Mr Percy E. Newberry,
I gather, while correcting these proof sheets, that there is a Tomb at Thebes %^

of a man named Nekht, who, under Thotmes III. (about 1500 B.C.), held **«

the office of Head Gardener of the Gardens attached to the Temple of Karnak,
which there is good reason to suppose were designed by him as represented in
our illustration. This tomb was discovered first by Mr Robert Hay early in
the century, during a residence of thirteen years in the Nile Valley, and has
now been re-explored and excavated afresh by Mr Newberry, Lord Northamp-
ton, and Dr Spiegelberg.

4 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

ripens others. Pear upon pear waxes old, and apple on apple,
yea, and cluster ripens upon cluster of the grape, and fig upon
fig. There too hath he a fruitful vineyard planted, whereof the
one part is being dried by the heat, a sunny plot on level ground,
while other grapes men are gathering, and yet others they are tread-
ing in the wine-press. In the foremost row are unripe grapes that
cast the blossom, and others there be that are growing black to
vintaging. There too, skirting the furthest line, are all manner of
garden beds, planted trimly, that are perpetually fresh, and therein
are two fountains of water, whereof one scatters his streams all
about the garden, and the other runs over against it beneath the
threshold of the court-yard, and issues by the lofty house, and
thence did the townsfolk draw water. — These were the splendid
gifts of the gods in the palace of Alcinous. — Odyssey, VII. {Done
into English Prose by S. H. Butcher and A. lang.)

—'A/yw—

XENOPHON COCRATES. — But in some part of Persia there is a great
(B.C. 444-359). prince called Satrapa, who takes upon him the office both

of soldiery and husbandry.

Critobulus. — If the king acts as you inform me, he seems to
take as much delight in husbandry as he does in war.

Soc. — I have not yet done concerning him ; for in every country
where he resides, or passes a little time, he takes care to have
excellent gardens (such as are called Paradeisioi),^ filled with
every kind of flower or plant that can by any means be collected,
and in these places are his chief delight.

Crit. — By your discourse it appears also, that he has a great

1 * A Paradise seems to have been a large Space of Ground, adorned and
beautified with all Sorts of Trees, both of Fruits and of Forest, either found
there before it was inclosed, or planted after ; either cultivated like Gardens,
for Shades and for Walks, with Fountains or Streams, and all Sorts of Plants
usual in the Climate, and pleasant to the Eye, the Smell or the Taste ; or
else employed like our Parks for Inclosure and Harbour of all Sorts of Wild
Beasts, as well as for the Pleasure of Riding and Walking : And so they
were of more or less extent, and of differing Entertainment, according to the
several Humours of the Princes that ordered and inclosed them.' — {Sir WiUiam
Temple : Upon the Gardens of Epicurus.)

PLATO 5

delight in gardening; for, as you intimate, his gardens are
furnished with every tree and plant that the ground is capable
of bringing forth. ...

When Lysander brought presents to Cyrus from the cities of
Greece, that were his confederates, he received him with the
greatest humanity, and amongst other things showed him his
garden, which was called ' The Paradise of Sardis ' ; which
when Lysander beheld he was struck with admiration of the
beauty of the trees, the regularity of their planting, the evenness
of their rows, and their making regular angles one to another;
or, in a word, the beauty of the quincunx order in which they
were planted, and the delightful odours which issued from them.
Lysander could no longer refrain from extolling the beauty of
their order, but more particularly admired the excellent skill
of the hand that had so curiously disposed them ; which Cyrus
perceiving, answered him : ' All the trees which you here behold
are of my own appointment ; I it was that contrived, measured,
laid out the ground for planting these trees, and I can even show
you some of them that I planted with my own hands.' — ' (Econo-
micus^ translated by R. Bradley^ F.R.S.

COCRATES. Lead on then, and at the same time look out PLATO
for a place where we may sit down. v • -4 7-347J'

Phcedrus. Do you see that lofty plane-tree ?

Socr. How should I not.

Phce. There, there is both shade and a gentle breeze, and grass
to sit down upon, or, if we prefer it, to lie down on.

Socr. Lead on, then.

Socr. By Juno, a beautiful retreat. For this plane-tree is very
wide-spreading and lofty, and the height and shadiness of this
agnus castus are very beautiful, and as it is now at the perfection
of its flowering, it makes the spot as fragrant as possible. More-
over, a most agreeable fountain flows under the plane tree, of very
cold water, to judge from its effect on the foot. It appears from
these images and statues to be sacred to certain nymphs and to
Achelous. Observe again the freshness of the spot, how charm-

6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

ing and very delightful it is, and how summer-like and shrill it
sounds from the choir of grasshoppers. But the most delightful
of all is the grass, which with its gentle slope is naturally adapted
to give an easy support to the head, as one reclines. So that,
my dear Phsedrus, you make an admirable stranger's guide. —
' Phcedrus^^ tra?tslated by H. Carey. ^

Would a husbandman, who is a man of sense, take the
seeds, which he values and which he wishes to be fruitful,
and in sober earnest plant them during the heat of summer, in
some garden of Adonis,- that he may rejoice when he sees them
in eight days appearing in beauty ? — PJuedrus {Jowett).

Socrates. Of whom then are the writings and institutes relating
to gardening ?

Friend. Of gardeners.

Soc. Of those who know how to manage gardens ?

Fr. How not ? — Minos.

^ Popular tradition gives the name of Academy (Katliemnia) to a place
about three-quarters of a mile north-west of the Dipylum, in the broad belt
of olive-wood which stretches along both Banks of the Cephisus from its
source at the western foot of Mt. Pentelicus, nearly to the sea. Thus, though
no remains of buildings belonging to it have as yet come to light, the situation
of the Academy may be regarded as approximately ascertained. ' It is on
the lowest level, where some water courses from the ridges of Lycabettus are
consumed in gardens and olive plantations. These were the waters which,
while they nourished the shady groves of the Academy and its plane trees
remarkable for their luxuriant growth, made the air unhealthy. They still
cause the spot to be one of the most advantageous situations near Athens for
the growth of fruit and pot-herbs, and maintain a certain degree of verdure
when all the surrounding plain is parched with the heat of summer.' (Leake,
'Athens.') It is said that Plato taught at first in the Academy, but after-
wards in a garden of his own adjoining it, near Colonus Hippius. His house was
in the garden, and for house and garden he seems to have paid 3000 drachms.
He was so much attached to the place that though it was said to be unhealthy
and the doctors advised him to shift his quarters to the Lyceum he positively
refused to do so.—/. T. Frazer. Pausanias's * Description of Greece.''

- The Adonis gardens {Krj-nroL AoJivldos), so indicative of the meqjiing of the
festival of Adonis, consisted, according to Bockh, of plants in small pots,
which were no doubt intended to represent the garden, where Aphrodite
met Adonis. The Ancients frequently used the term Adonis gardens pro-
verbially, to indicate something which had shot up rapidly, such as .Lettuce,
fennel, barley, wheat. — Humboldfs ' Kosmos.'

ARISTOTLE 7

C OME plants are born and grow by means of nutriment well ARISTOTLE
•^ digested ; and others, on the contrary, spring from residues, ^^'^' 3M-322).
and materials quite different. Cultivation causes the nutriment
to digest, and fertilises it ; this it is which produces fruits good to
eat. The plants which arise from this tempering, are called tame
plants, because the art of cultivation has been profitable to them,
and has effected, to some extent, their education. Those, on the
contrary, which art has not been able to direct, and which are
derived from materials of which the conditions are contrary, re-
main wild and cannot shoot in a cultivated ground. For Nature
tames plants in rearing them ; but these other plants can only
come from corruption. The caper-tree is one of the plants of
this sort. . . .

Why is thyme in Attica so bitter, whilst all the other fruits are
so sweet ? Is it not because the soil of Attica is light and dry,
so that plants do not find in it much moisture ? . . .

Why do myrtles rubbed between the fingers seem to produce

a better scent, than when not rubbed ? Is it not the same as

with grapes, of which the bunches submitted to the vintage seem

sweeter than the ones gathered from the stock ? — ' T/ie Problems ' :

from the French of Barthelemy Saint- Hi I aire.

— WVVv^

Theophrastus attached himself to Plato and then to Aristotle^ and was the THEO-
master of the comic poet Alenander : his true name of Tyrtamus, Aristotle PHRASTUS
exchanged for Theophrastus, in allusion to the divine grace of his speech: after ^^ ^^tit- B.C.).
the death of Aristotle, Theophrastus possessed a garden of his own, in the
acquisition of which he was aided by Demetrius of Phale?-us, ruhose friendship
he enjoyed : he died at the age of eighty -five.

Diogenes Laertius gives anettormous list of works ^ all of which have perished
except his ' Characters ' {translated by La Bruyere), the History and Causes of
Plants, on Stones, the Seiises, and sevei-al fragments : the Lyceum, -under his
guidance, was attended by 2000 disciples.

There is no complete English translation of his work on Plants.

T GIVE to Callinus the land which I possess at Stagira, and all
■^ my books to Neleus. As to my garden, the walk, and the
houses adjacent to the garden, I give them in perpetuity to those

EPICURUS

(B.C. 342

8 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

of my friends mentioned below, who desire to devote themselves
in common to study and philosophy therein, for everyone cannot
always travel : provided that they shall not be able to alienate
this property ; it shall not belong to any of them individually ;
but they shall own it in common as a sacred possession, and
shall enjoy it peaceably and amicably as is just and fitting. I
admit to this common enjoyment Hipparchus, Neleus, Straton,
Callinus, Demotimus, Democrates, Callisthenes, Melantus,
Pancreon and Nicippus. Arist^^pson of Metrodorus and of
Pythias, shall enjoy the same rigFiTs, and shall share them with
these, if he desire to devote himself to philosophy ; in this case
the eldest shall take every possible care of him, to the end that
he may make progress in science. I .desire to be buried in the
part of the garden judged to be most fitting, and no excessive
expense shall be incurred for my funeral or my tomb. After the
last rites have been paid me according to my will, and the
temple, my tomb, my garden, and the walk have been provided
for, I direct that Pompylus, who inhabits the garden, shall keep
the custody of it, as before, and that he shall likewise have the
superintendence of all the rest. — Will of llieophrastus, preserved
by Diogenes Laeriius.

— ^aam—

i^US A S for myself, truly (I speak modestly, and therefore may be
270). r\ permitted) I am not only well content, but highly pleased
with the Plants and Fruits growing in these my own little
Gardens ; and have this Inscription over the door, ' Stranger,
Here, if you please, you may abide in a good condition ; Here,
the Supreme Good is Pleasure; the Steward of this homely
Cottage is hospitable, humane, and ready to receive you ; He
shall afford you Barley-broth, and pure water of the Spring,
and say, Friend, are you not well entertained ? For, these
Gardens do not invite hunger, but satisfie it ; nor encrease
your thirst with drinks, while they should extinguish it, but
wholly overcome it with a Natural and Grateful Liquor.' —
Epicurus' s Morals^ Englished by W. Char el to n^ M.D.^ 1655.

THEOCRITUS 9

SO, I and Eucritus and the fair Amyntichus, turned aside THEOCRITUS
into the house of Phrasidamus, and lay down with dehght ^^''^ <^^«^- ^-c-)-
in beds of sweet tamarisk and fresh cuttings from the vines,
strewn on the ground. Many poplars and elm-trees were waving
over our heads, and not far off the running of the sacred
water from the cave of the nymphs warbled to us : in the
shimmering branches the sun-burnt grasshoppers were busy with
their talk, and from afar the little owl cried softly out of the
tangled thorns of the blackM^; the larks were singing and
the hedge-birds, and the turtle-dove moaned; the bees flew
round and round the fountains, murmuring softly; the scent
of late summer and of the fall of the year was everywhere ;
the pears fell from the trees at our feet, and apples in number
rolled down at our sides, and the young plum-trees were bent
to the earth with the weight of their fruit. — Idyll VII.,
' Thalysia^ translated by Walter Pater.

Marcus Porcius Cato the Censor, called by Livy 'a man of alviost iron body M. PORCIUS
and soiiV — originally a Sabine farmer, he fought against Hannibal at the CATO (B.C.
battle of Metaurus : as 'a plant that deserved a better soiP he was trans- 234" 149)-
planted to Rome and became QutTstor, Consul and Censor. A gixat orator,
more than iS^ ^f l^^'^ orations having been long preserved, and one of the first
Roman -writers ' Be Re R its tied,'' or Farm Management— fragtnents of his
' Origines ' remain. At the age of eighty-fonr he condticteda law snit of his own.

PLANT the Mariscan Fig in a chalky and exposed soil : put,
on the contrary, into a rich and sheltered earth the sorts
from Africa, Cadiz, Sagonta, the black Telanus, with long stalks.
If you have a water-meadow, you will not want hay. If you
have it not, smoke the field, to have hay.

Near the city, you will have gardens in all styles, every kind
of ornamental trees, bulbs from Megara, myrtle on palisades,
both white and black, the Delphic and Cyprian laurel, the
forest kind, 'hairless nuts, filberts from Proeneste and Greece.
A city garden, especially of one who has no other, ought to
be planted and ornamented with all possible care. — De Re
Riistica. % VIII.

lo THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Who is there (says Atticus) Marcus, that, looking at these
natural falls, and these two rivers, which form so fine a
contrast, would not learn to despise our pompous follies, and
laugh at artificial Niles, and seas in marble; for, as in our
late argument you referred all to Nature, so more especially
in things which relate to the imagination, is she our sovereign
mistress. — De Legibus. {Introduction to 2nd Dialogue.)

■*i\i\[\f —

CICERO VI OR husbandry is onely pleasant and plenteous by reason of
(B.C. 10 -43). i>( corne and medowes and vyneyardes and trees joyned with
vynes : but also by reason of orchardes, gardynes, also fedynge
of cattell, and hyves of been : also the diversite of all maner
of floures. Nor the plantynge and settyng of trees delyteth
a man : but also graffynges than the which the husbande man
never invented thynge more crafty and excellent. . . .

And for as moche as some men desyre these thynges, let
us come in favour withe pleasure. For the wyne celler of the
good man of the house diligent is couched full ; also his oyle
celler, and his pantry, and all his house is full of rychesse,
it hath abundance of hogges, kydde, lambe, pultry ware, mylke,
chese and hony. Now husbandmen call their garden a seconde
larder. Also fowlyng, and huntyng, an exercyse at ydle tymes,
maketh these thinges more savouryng. That whiche I wyll
speke of the greennes of medowes, or the ordre of trees, or
of the vyneyardes, or of the maner of olyve trees I shall declare
brevely. The grounde well tylled and ordred, nothing may be
more plenteous in profyte, nor more clenly and comly in syght :
to the whiche grounde to be well cherysshed, olde age not
onely dothe not let a man, but also moveth hym and allureth
hym. For where may that olde age waxe so warme : or more
warme by reason of sonnynge place or fyre : or upon the other
parte by reason of covert, or waters be refresshed or cooled more
holsom. — ' Tullius de Senectute, dothe in Latyn and Englysshe
tonge. Translated by Robert Whitinson, Poete- Laureate^ i535-

M. TERENTIUS VARRO ii

M. T. Varro, the most learned of the Romans^ historian^ philosopher, M.TEREN-
naturalist, gramtnarian and poet, was entrusted by Ccesar to purchase the books XlV»oo
for, and to manage all the Greek and Latin Libraries at Rome. Later, . ttA ^7^

Augustus made him supennteiuient of the Library founded by Asinius Pollio :
he was a friend of Cicero, to whom he dedicated ' De Lingica Latina,^ his only
extant work besides ' De Re Rustled,' written at the age of eighty. His Villa
at Casinum was destroyed by Antony.

YOU know that I have in my villa of Casinum a deep and clear
stream, which threads its way between two stone margins.
Its breadth is 57 feet, and bridges must be crossed to com-
municate from one part of my property to the other. My study
(Museum) is situated at the spot where the stream springs ; and
from this point as far as an island formed by its junction with
another water-course, is a distance of 850 feet. Along its banks
a walk is laid out 10 feet broad, open to the sky; between this
walk and the country my aviary is placed, closed in left and
right by "high walls. The external lines of the building give it
some resemblance to writing tablets, surmounted by a Capitol.
On the rectangular side its breadth is 48 feet, and its length 72,
not including the semi-circular Capitol, which is of a diameter of
27 feet. Between the aviary and the walk which marks the lower
margin of the tablets, opens a vaulted passage leading to an
esplanade {ambidatio). On each side is a regular portico upheld
by stone columns, the intervals between which are occupied by
dwarf shrubs. A network of hemp stretches from the top of the
outside walk to the architrave, and a similar trellis joins the
architrave to the pedestal. The interior is filled with birds of
every species, which receive their food through the net. A little
stream supplies them with its water. Beyond the pedestal run
to left and right along the porticos two rather narrow fish-ponds,
which, separated by a small path, extend to the extremity of the
esplanade. This path leads to a thoius, a kind of Rotunda,
surrounded by two rows of isolated columns. There is a similar
one in the house of Catulus, except that complete walls replace
the colonnade. Beyond is a grove of tall brushwood encompassed
with walls, of which the thick growth only allows the light to
penetrate below. — ' Of Agriculture^ Book III.

12 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

DIODORUS n^HE Hanging Garden of Babylon was not built by Semiramis

SICULUS 1 ^jjQ founded the city ^ but by a later prince called Cyrus,
{About B.C. 50). - , , - ^' , . ^ . , ,

for the sake of a courtezan, who being a Persian, as they say, by

birth, and creating meadows on mountain tops, desired the king,

by an artificial plantation, to imitate the land in Persia. This

garden was 400 feet square, and the ascent up to it was to the

top of a mountain, and had buildings and apartments out of one

into another, like a theatre. Under the steps to the ascent were

built arches one above another, rising gently by degrees, which

supported the whole plantation. The highest arch, upon which

the platform of the garden was laid, was 50 cubits high, and the

garden itself was surrounded with battlements and bulwarks.

The walls were made very strong, built at no small charge and

expense, being 22 feet thick, and every sally port 10 feet wide.

Over the several storeys of this fabric were laid beams, and

summers of large massy stones, each 16 feet long and 4 broad.

The roof over all these was first covered with reeds daubed with

abundance of brimstone (or bitumen), then upon them were laid

double tiles, joined with a hard and durable mortar, and over

them all was a covering with sheets of lead, that the wet, which

drained through the earth, might not rot the foundation. Upon

all these was laid earth, of a convenient depth, sufficient for the

growth of the greatest trees. When the soil was laid even and

smooth, it was planted with all sorts of trees, which both for

beauty and size might delight the spectators. The arches, which

stood one above the other had in them many stately rooms of all

kinds, and for all purposes. There was one that had in it certain

engines, whereby it drew plenty of water out of the river Euphrates,

through certain conduits hid from the spectators, which supplied

it to the platform of the garden.

^ The Syrians are great Gardiners, they take exceeding paines, and bee
most curious in gardening ; whereupon arose the proverb in Greeke to this
effect, 'Many Woorts and Pot-hearbs in Syria.'— /"////j''^ ' Natural Ilistoiy'
{P. Holland).

—'A/V^/v^ %

PLINY THE ELDER 13

The elder Pliny perished in the eruption of Vesuvius^ a martyr to scientific PLINY
curiosity. Cuvier says of his ''Natural History^ : '■' Pliny's great work is THE
at the same time one of the most precious montiments left us by antiquity, and ifT" ■ nj- •
a proof of the astonishing learning of a warrior and a statesman, " Sectindus

Whewell writes: ''His work has, with great propriety, been called the a.d. 23-79).
Encyclopedia of A ntiquity. '

T N all the twelve tables throughout which containe our ancient
* lawes of Rome, there is no mention made so much as once of
a Grange or Ferme-house, but evermore a Garden is taken in that
signification, and under the name of Hortus (i.e. Garden) is com-
prised Hoeredium, that is to say, an Heritage or Domaine ; and
hereupon grew by consequence, a certain religious or ridiculous
superstition rather, of some, whom we see ceremoniously to
sacre and bless their garden and hortyard dores onely, for to
preserve them against the witchcraft and sorcerie of spightfull
and envious persons. And therefore they use to set up in
gardens, ridiculous and foolish images of Satyres, Antiques,
and such like, as good keepers and remedies against envie and
witchcraft ; howsoever Plautus assigneth the custodie of gardens
to the protection of the goddesse Ve?ius. And even in these our
daies, under the name of Gardens and Hortyards, there goe many
daintie places of pleasure within the very citie ; and under the
colour also and title of them men are possessed of faire closes
and pleasant fields, yea, and of proper houses with a good circuit
of ground lying to them, like pretie fermes and graunges in the
countrey : all which, they tearme by the name of Gardens. The
invention to have gardens within a citie came up first by Epicurus^
the Doctor and master of all voluptuous idlenes, who devised
such gardens of pleasance in Athens : for before his time, the
manner was not in my citie, to dwell (as it were) in the countrey,
and so to make citie and countrey all one, but all their gardens
were in the villages without. Certes at Rome, a good garden
and no more was thought a poor man's chievance ; it went (I
say) for land and living. The Garden was the poore commoner's
shambles, it was all the market-place he had for to provide himselfe
of victuals. . . .
• Certaine it is, that in old time, there was no market-place at

Si

14 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Rome yeelded greater impost unto the State than the Hearberie.
. . . Cato highly commendeth the garden Coules or Cabbages,
whereby we may know, that in his daies Gardens were in some
respect. . . . And hereupon it came, that Salads of hearbs were
called Acedaria,^ so little care and trouble went to the pro-
vision and making of them. . . . That quarter of the Garden
which serveth an house with poignant hearbs instead of sauce, to
give a commendable tast and seasoning to our meat, sheweth
plainly that the master and mistresse thereof were not woont to
run in the Merchants bookes for Spicerie, but chaunged the
Grocer or Apothecaries shop, for the Garden. . . . And as
for the other quarters set out with beds of floures and sweet
smelling hearbs, what reckoning was made of them in old
time may appeare by this. That a man could not heretofore
come by a commoner's house within the citie, but he should
see the windowes beautified with greene quishins (cushions),
wrought and tapissed with floures of all colours ; resembling
daily to their view the Gardens indeed which were in out-
villages, as being in the very heart of the citie, they might
think themselves in the countrey. . . . Let us give therfore
to Gardens their due honor ; and let us not (I say) deprive
things of their credit and authoritie, because they are common
and nothing costly : for I may tell you, some of our nobilitie,
yea, and the best of the citie, have not disdained to take their
surnames from thence ... in the noble house and lineage of
the Valerii, some were not abashed nor ashamed to be called
Lactuci7ii in regard of the best kind of Lectuce that they either
had in their gardens or affected most. And here I cannot chuse
but mention by the way, the grace that hath growne to our name
by occasion of some diligence employed and paines taken this
way ; whereby certain cherries beare our name and are called
Pliniana, in testimonie of our affection and love to that fruit. —
Pli7iie's '' Naturall Historie,'' Book XIX., chap. iv. Translated
by Philemon Holland, Doctor in Physicke (15 51-1636).

^ i.e. a sinecure : from a, not, and k-tj^os, care. " Acetaria " was the title
chosen by John Evelyn for his ' Discourse on Ballets. '

/

/

PLINY THE YOUNGER 15

JUIY villa 1 is so advantageously situated, that it commands a PLINY
^^^ full view of all the country round ; yet you approach it by yoUNGER

so insensible a rise that you find yourself upon an eminence, with- —Nephe'^i of ■
out perceiving you ascended. Behind, but at a great distance), Z'^^'^^' ^{^J^^'
stand the Apennine Mountains. In the calmest days we are^— *' ^ ^'
refreshed by the winds that blow from thence, but so spent, as
it were, by the long tract of land they travel over, that they are
entirely divested of all their strength and violence before they
reach us. The exposition of the principal front of the house is
full south, and seems to invite the afternoon sun in summer (but
somewhat earlier in winter) into a spacious and well-proportioned
portico, consisting of several members, particularly a porch built
in the ancient manner. In the front of the portico is a sort of
terrace, embellished with various figures and bounded with a
box-hedge, from whence you descend by an easy slope, adorned
with the representation of divers animals in box, answering alter-
nately to each other, into a lawn overspread with the soft — I had
almost said the liquid — Acanthus : ^ this is surrounded by a walk
enclosed with tonsile evergreens, shaped into a variety of forms.
Beyond it is the Gestatio,^ laid out in the form of a circus,"^
ornamented in the middle with box cut in numberless different
figures, together with a plantation of shrubs, prevented by the
shears from shooting up too high; the whole is fenced in by a
wall covered by box, rising by different ranges to the top. On
the outside of the wall lies a meadow that owes as many beauties
to nature, as all I have been describing wi'f/im does to art ; at
the end of which are several other meadows and fields inter-
spersed with thickets. At the extremity of this portico stands a

^ Pliny's favourite villa in Tuscany, knovi^n as the Tusculan, about 150
miles from Rome ; his Laurentine Villa is also described in his letters. Both
have been the subject of learned disquisition and restoration by Scamozzi,
Felibien, Schinkel and R. Castell in 'Villas of the Ancients.'

"^ Sir William Temple supposes the ' Acanthus ' of the ancients to be what
we call ' Pericanthe ' ; Mr Castell imagines it resembles moss.

^ Gestatio, a place for exercises in vehicles : ' the Row.*

"* Circus, set apart for public games.

i6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

grand dining-room, which opens upon one end of the terrace;^
as from the windows there is a very extensive prospect over the
meadows up into the country, from whence you also have a view
of the terrace and such parts of the house which project forward,
together with the woods enclosing the adjacent hippodrome.
Opposite almost to the centre of the portico stands a square
edifice, which encompasses a small area, shaded by four plane-
trees, in the midst of which a fountain rises, from whence
the water, running over the edges of a marble basin, gently
refreshes the surrounding plane-trees and the verdure underneath
them. ... In the front of these agreeable buildings lies a very
spacious hippodrome, entirely open in the middle, by which
means the eye, upon your first entrance, takes in its whole extent
at one glance. It is encompassed on every side with plane-trees
covered with ivy, so that while their heads flourish with their own
foliage, their bodies enjoy a borrowed verdure ; and thus the ivy,
twining round the trunk and branches, spreads from tree to tree,
and connects them together.

Between each plane-tree are planted box-trees, and behind
these, bay-trees, which blend their shade with that of the planes.
This plantation, forming a straight boundary on both sides of the
hippodrome, bends at the farther end into a semicircle, which,
being set round and sheltered witli cypress-trees, varies the
prospect, and casts a deeper gloom ; while the inward circular
walks (for there are several), enjoying an open exposure, are
perfumed with roses, and correct, by a very pleasing contrast,
the coolness of the shade with the warmth of the sun. Having
passed through these several winding alleys, you enter a straight
walk, which breaks out into a variety of others, divided by box-
hedges. In one place you have a little meadow, in another the
box is cut into a thousand different forms : ^ sometimes into
letters expressing the name of the master ; sometimes that of
thQ,2£U^G£X ; whilst here and there little obelisks rise, intermixed

^ Xystus. terrace (properly a large portico for athletic exercises).
^ Matins is said to have introduced the fashion of ' shaping ' trees, the
ars topiaria.

PLINY THE YOUNGER 17

alternately with fruit-trees : when, on a sudden, in the midst of
this elegant regularity, you are surprised with an imitation of the
negligent beauties of rural nature : in the centre of which lies a
spot surrounded with a knot of dwarf plane-trees.^

Beyond these is a walk planted with the smooth and twining
Acanthus, where the trees are also cut into a variety of names
and shapes. At the upper end is an alcove of white marble,
shaded by vines, supported by four small Carystian pillars.
From this bench, the water, gushing through several little pipes,
as if it were pressed out by the weight of the persons who repose
themselves upon it, falls into a stone cistern underneath, from
whence it is received into a fine polished marble basin, so artfully
contrived that it is always full without ever overflowing.

When I sup here, this basin serves for a table, the larger sort
of dishes being placed round the margin, while the smaller ones
swim about in the form of little vessels and water-fowl. Corre-
sponding to this, is a fountain which is incessantly emptying and
filling; for the water, which it throws up a great height, falling
back into it, is by means of two openings, returned as fast as
it is received. Fronting the alcove (reflecting as great an
ornament to it, as it borrows from it) stands a summer-house of
exquisite marble, the doors whereof project and open into a
green enclosure; as from its upper and lower windows the eye
is presented with a variety of diff"erent verdures. Next to this
is a little private recess (which, though it seems distinct, may be
laid into the same room) furnished with a couch ; and notwith-
standing it has windows on every side, yet it enjoys a very
agreeable gloominess, by means of a spreading vine which climbs
to the top and entirely overshades it. Here you may recline and
fancy yourself in a wood ; with this difl"erence only — that you are
not exposed to the weather. In this place a fountain also rises
and instantly disappears ; in different quarters are disposed marble
seats, which serve, no less than the summer-house, as so many
reliefs after one is wearied with walking. Near each seat is a
little fountain; and, throughout the whole hippodrome, several

^ The plane-tree was nourished on wine by the Romans.

B

1 8 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

small rills run murmuring along, wheresoever the hand of art
thought proper to conduct them ; watering here and there
different spots of verdure, and in their progress refreshing the
whole. — ' Letter to Apollinaris^ translated by William Melmoth.

PLUTARCH npISSAPHERNES, in all other cases savage in his temper, and
{isi Cent. A.D.). 1 the bitterest enemy that Greece experienced among the
Persians, gave himself up, notwithstanding, to the flatteries of
Alcibiades, insomuch that he even vied with and exceeded him
in address. For of all his gardens that which excelled in beauty,
which was remarkable for the salubrity of its streams and the
freshness of its meadows, which was set off with pavillions royally
adorned and retirements finished in the most elegant taste, he
distinguished by the name of Alcibiades ; and every one con-
tinued to give it that appellation. — ^ Life of Alcibiades.^ Lang-
hornets translation.

Cimon, too, first adorned the city with those elegant and noble
places for exercise and disputation, which a little after came to be
so much admired. He planted the forum with plane-trees ; and
whereas the Academy -^before was a dry and unsightly plat, he
brought water to it, and sheltered it with groves, so that it
abounded with clean alleys and shady walks. — ''Life of Cimon. ^

Beside these, Lucullus had the most superb pleasure-houses
in the country near Tusculum, adorned with grand galleries and
open saloons, as well for the prospect as for walks. ^ Pompey, on
a visit there, blamed Lucullus for having made the villa com-
modious only for the summer, and absolutely uninhabitable in
the winter. Lucullus answered with a smile, 'What then, do
you think I have not so much sense as the cranes and storks,
which change their habitations with the seasons ? ' — Life of
Lucullus.

For as these connynge gardiners thynke to make rosis and

^ Hortus Luculli, cujus villa erat in Tusculano, non floribus fructibusque,
sed tabiilis fuisse insignis. — Varro.

COLUMELLA 19

violettis the better, if they sowe oynyons and garlyke nere by
them, that what so ever sower savour be in them, it may be
purged into the tother : so an enmye receyvynge in to him our
envie and waywardnes, shal make us better and lesse grevous to
our frendis that have good fortune. — ^ Howe one may take profette
of his Enmyes.^ {De capiejtda ex ininiicis ufilitate.) Sir Thomas
Elyot (d. 1546).

— fAJSjV^ —

Columella^ native of Gades {Cadiz),wrote avoluminous and valuable work on COLUMELLA
Roman Agriculticre, in twelve books, of which the tenth is a poem on the vegetable {^^^ Cent. A.D.).
andfower garden, ineant as a supplement to the Georgics of Virgil. Columella
makes use of the work of his predecessors, Cato the Censor, Varro, Celsus and
Atticus, Grcecimis, and Mago the Carthaginian. He is quoted by Pliny the
Elder, Vegetius, and Palladius, the work of the latter superseding Columella's.
The writings of these three with Varro are generally found together as
'' Scriptores de Re Rustica.^ {English translation by Owen, 1803).

npHERE remains, therefore, the culture of gardens, notably
•'• neglected formerly by ancient Husbandmen, but now in
very great request. Though it is true, indeed, that, among
the ancients there was greater parsimony and frugality, never-
theless the poor were wont to fare better, and to be frequently
admitted to pubHc feasts. . . . Wherefore we must be more
careful and diligent than our ancestors were in delivering pre-
cepts and directions for the cultivation of gardens, because the
fruit of them is now more in use ; and I would have subjoined
them in prose to the preceding books, as I had resolved, unless
your frequent and earnest demand had overcome my purpose,
and prevailed with me to fill up, with poetical numbers, those
parts of the Georgic poem, which were omitted, and which even
Virgil himself intimated, that he left to be treated of by those
that should come after him. — ' Of the Culture of Gardens '
(^Preface).

IVii OREOVER, Nero turned the ruins of his country to his TACITUS
^^^ private advantage, and built a house, the ornaments of ^^'^^ ^^""7)-
which were not miracles of gems and gold, now usual in vulgar
luxuries, but lawns and lakes, and after the manner of a desert \

20 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

here groves, and there open spaces and prospects ; the masters
and centurions being Severus and Celer, whose genius and bold-
ness could attempt by art what Nature had denied, and deceive
with princely force.^ — Annals, lib. XV.

—'Al\f\f<f—

SENECA I IVE they not against nature that in winter long for a Rose,
{d. A.D. 65). i^ ^^^ i^y ^Y\Q nourishment of warme waters, and the fit change
of heat in winter time, cause a lily, a spring flower, to bloom ?
Live not they against nature that plant orchards on their highest
towers, that have whole forests shaking upon the tops and turrets
of their houses, spreading their roots in such places where it
should suffice them that the tops of their branches should touch.
Epistle 122. i^Lodge^s translation and U Estra7ige})

A shrub, although it be old, may be translated into another
place. This is necessarie for us to learne, who bee old men,
of whom there is none but planteth an Orchard of Olives for
another man. That which I have seene, this I speak ; namely,
that an Orchard of three or foure years old will, with a plentiful!
fall of the leafe, yeeld forth fruit ; yea, also that tree will cover

thee : which

Hath been slow to make a shade before

To yong nephewes and those that were unbore :

As our Virgil saith, (who beheld not what might be spoken most
truly, but most seemely ; neither desired he to teach husbandmen,
but to delight those that read. — Epistle ^6 : Of the Country House
of Africanus. (T. Lodge.)

Why now, Gardens and houses of pleasure? he had divers,
and differently bewtified. Juve7iall toucheth it, ' The Gardens
of most wealthy Seneca.' Hee himselfe likewise maketh mention
of his houses : Nomentanum, Albanum and Baianum, and
without question hee had manie. — '■Life of L. A. Seneca^ by
Justus Lipsius.

^ The striking similarity of this description to that of a modern park is too
obvious to escape notice. — {Loudon.)

QUINTILIAN 21

OUT is the garden that is for use to avail of no ornament ? QUINTILIAN

^ by all manner of means let these trees be planted in a^'^^^^"^- '^•^•^•

regular order, and at certain distances. Observe that quincunx,

how beautiful it is ; view it on every side ; what can you observe

more straight, or more graceful? Regularity and arrangement

even improves the soil, because the juices rise more regularly to

nourish what it bears. Should I observe the branches of yonder

OHve Tree shooting into luxuriancy, I instantly should lop it ;

the effect is, it would form itself into a horizontal circle, which at

once adds to its beauty and improves its bearing. ' Institutes of

Eloqtietice^^ Book VIII. Wju. Guthrii s translatio7i^ 1756.

TN the Island of the Blessed they have no night nor bright day, LUCIAN
-^ but a perpetual twilight; one equal season reigns throughout '^^'^- 120-200).
the year : it is always Spring with them, and no wind blows but
Zephyrus ; the whole region abounds in sweet flowers, and shrubs
of every kind ; their vines bear twelve times in the year, yielding
fruit every month, their apples, pomegranates, and the rest of our
autumnal produce, thirteen times, bearing twice in the month of
Minos : instead of corn, the fields bring forth loaves of ready
, made bread, like mushrooms ; there are three hundred and sixty-
I five fountains of water round the city, as many of honey, and
: five hundred rather smaller, of sweet scented oil, besides seven
rivers of milk, and eight of wine.

Their Symposia are held in a place without the city, which
they call the Elysian Field ; this is a most beautiful meadow,
skirted by a large and thick wood, affording an agreeable shade
to the guests, who repose on couches of flowers ; the winds
attend upon, and bring them everything necessary, except wine,
which is otherwise provided, for there are large trees on every
side, made of the finest glass, the fruit of which are cups of
various shapes and sizes ; whoever comes to the entertainment
gathers one or more of these cups, which immediately becomes
full of wine, and so they drink of it, whilst the nightingales, and

2 2 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

other birds of song, with their bills peck the flowers out of the
neighbouring fields, and drop them on their heads ; thus are they
crowned with perpetual garlands ; their manner of perfuming
them is this ; the clouds suck up the scented oils from the
fountains and rivers, and the winds gently fanning them, distil it
like soft dew on those who are assembled there ; at supper they
have music also, and singing, particularly the verses of Homer,
who is himself generally at the feast, and sits next above Ulysses,
with a chorus of youths and virgins : he is led in, accompanied
by Eunomus the Locrian, Arion of Lesbos, Anacreon and
Stesichorus, whom I saw there along with them, and who at
length is reconciled to Helen : when they have finished their
songs, another chorus begins of swans, swallows, and nightingales ;
and to these succeeds the sweet rustling of the Zephyrs, that
whistle through the woods, and close the concert. What most
contributes to their happiness is, that near the symposium are
two fountains, the one of milk, the other of pleasure ; from the
first they drink at the beginning of the feast, there is nothing
afterwards but joy and festivity.^ — ' True History ' {Dr Francklin's
Translatio7i).

PALLADIUS Palladiiis lived about time of Theodositis, wrote ' De Re Rustica ' in fourteen
KU 1 li^iUo books, a co7npilatio7i from writers like Columella or Gargilius : Book I. contains
r^^f A T^ \ general Jtiles about Agriculture — the next twelve are devoted to agricultural

work of each month — Book XIV. in elegiac verse, on grafting trees : much
used in Middle Ages, and the ' Speculum ' of Vincent de Beauvais borroxvs
largely front it.

ITH orchard, and with gardeyne, or with mede,
Se that thyne hous with hem be umviroune ;
The side in longe upon the south thou sprede,
The cornel ryse upon the wynter sonne.
And gire it from the cold West yf thou conne.

The Middle Efiglish traiislatio7i, ' Palladiiis on Husbori-
drie^ from the tmiqiie MS. of about 1420 a.d. /;/
Colchester Castle. English Text Society.

^ Bottiger sees in this hyperbole a parody on the prodigies of Homer's
Garden of Alcinous (' Racemazionen zur Gartenkunst der Alien ').

Cent. A.D.)-

w

CHAPTER II

THE GARDEN IN SOME EARLY CHRISTIAN AND LATE
PAGAN WRITERS

TN those days, through the vast and horrible solitude, Hilarion ST JEROME
-'• at length came to a very high mountain, having found there ^^•^' 345-420).
two monks, Isaac and Pelusianus, of whom Isaac had been the
interpreter of Anthony. And because the occasion presents
itself and we have reached that place, it appears worthy of our
subject to describe in a short account the dwelling of so great a man.
A rocky and high mountain presses forth its waters at its foot
for about a mile, of which waters the sands absorb some, and
others flowing to the lower regions make a river, over which on
both banks innumerable palm trees give much both of beauty
and convenience to the place. Here you might see the old man
going up and down with the disciples of the blessed Anthony.
Here, they said, he (Anthony) was accustomed to sing psalms ;
here to pray ; here to work ; here, when tired, to sit down. He
himself planted those vines, those shrubs. He settled this little
garden-bed. He it was who made with much labour this pond
for watering the little garden. He had for many years this little
rake for digging the earth. — T/ie Life of St Hilarion : his visit to
the cell of St Anthony.

HOMEWARDS I bend my steps. My fields, my gardens, are T'AO
choked with weeds : should I not go ? My soul has led a ]^^^q1_
bondsman's life : why should I remain to pine ? But I will waste Chinese
no grief upon the past: I will devote my energies to the future. Writer {\.^.
I have not wandered far astray. I feel that I am on the right ^

track once again.

23

24 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Lightly, lightly speeds my boat along, my garments fluttering
to the gentle breeze. I inquire my route as I go. I grudge the
slowness of the dawning day. From afar I descry my old home,
and joyfully press onwards in my haste. The servants rush forth
to meet me : my children cluster at the gate. The place is a
wilderness ; but there is the old pine-tree and my chrysanthemums.
Wine is brought in full bottles, and I pour out in brimming cups.
I gaze out at my favourite branches. I loll against the window in
my new-found freedom. I look at the sweet children on my knee.

And now I take my pleasure in my garden. I lean on my staft
as I wander about, or sit down to rest. I raise my head and
contemplate the lovely scene. Clouds rise, unwilling from the
bottom of the hills : the weary bird seeks its nest again. Shadows
vanish, but still I linger round my lonely pine. Home once
more ! I'll have no friendships to distract me hence. The times
are out of joint for me ; and what have I to seek from men ? In
the pure enjoyment of the family circle I will pass my days,
cheering my idle hours with lute and book. My husbandmen
will tell me when spring-time is nigh, and when there will be work
in the furrowed fields. Thither I shall repair by cart or by boat,
through the deep gorge, over the dizzy cliff, trees bursting merrily
into leaf, the streamlet swelling from its tiny source. Glad is this
renewal of life in due season : but, for me, I rejoice that my
journey is over. Ah, how short a time it is that we are here !
Why then not set our hearts at rest, ceasing to trouble whether
we remain or go ? What boots it to wear out the soul with
anxious thoughts ? I want not wealth : I want not power : heaven
is beyond my hopes. Then let me stroll through the bright
hours as they pass, in my garden among my flowers ; or I will
mount the hill and sing my song, or weave my verse beside the
limpid brook.

Thus will I work out my allotted span, content with appoint-
ments of fate, my spirit free from care. — Herbert A. Giles, ''Gems
of Chinese Literature.''

—WW' —

LONGUS 25

I(Paph7iis and Chloe) am that old Philetas, who have often LONGUS
sung to these Nymphs ; and often pip't to yonder Pan ; and ^r^\f^ ^^^\
have led many great herds, by the art of musick alone; and I
come to shew you what I have seen, and to tell you what I
have heard. I have a Garden which my own hands and labour
planted ; and ever since by my old age I gave over fields and
herds to dresse and trim it, has been my care and entertain-
ment; what flowers or fruits the season of the year teems,
there they are at every season. In the Spring there are Roses,
and Lihes, the Hyacinths, and both the forms of Violets.
In the Summer, Poppies, Pears, and all sorts of Apples. And
now in the Autumne, Vines and Fig trees, Pomegranats, Oranges,
Limons, and the green myrtles. Into this Garden, flocks of
birds come every morning; some to feed, some to sing. For
it is thick, spacious, and shady; and watered all by three
fountains; and if you took the wall away, you would think
you saw a Wood. As I went in there yesterday about noon,
a boy appear'd in the Pomgranate and Myrtle grove, with
myrtles and Pomgranats in his hand ; white as milk, and shining
with the glance of fire ; clean and bright, as if he had newly
washt himself in all the three transparent Fountains. Naked
he was, alone he was ; he play'd and wanton'd it about, and
cuU'd and pull'd, as if it had been his own garden. — Daphnis
and Chloe. A most Sweet and Pleasant Pastorall Romance fo?-
Yoimg Ladies, by Geo. Thornley, Gefit, 1657.

AFTER we had dispatcht his funerall rites, I ranne straightway ACHILLES
to Leucippe, who was then in our garden. There was J^'^^^^

^ ^^ , . ^ , . , - (5M Cent. A.D.

a grove of a most pleasant aspect, environed with a row 01

trees thinly set, and all of one height; whose foure sides,
for there were so many in all, were covered with a shelter, which
stood on foure pillars, the inner part was planted with all sorts of
trees, whose boughes flourisht, and mutually embrac'd each
other, growing so thicke, that their leaves and fruit were pro-
miscuously mingled ; upon the bigger trees grew ivie, some of

26 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

it on the soft plane trees, other some sticking to the pitch tree
made it tenderer by its embracements ; so by this meanes
the tree served to beare up the ivie, and the ivie was a crowne
to the tree ; on both sides many fruitfull Vines bound with reeds
spread forth their branches, which displaying their seasonable
blossomes through the bands, seemed Hke the curled lockes
of some young lover. The walkes which the trees hanging over
shaded, were here and there enlightened, whilst the leaves
driven this way and that way with the winde, made roome for
the sunne to shine through. Moreover, divers flowers strived
as it were to shew their beauty; the daffadilly and the rose,
whose beauties were equal, made the earth of a purple colour,
the upper part of the rose-leaves was of the colour of blood
and violets, the lower part white as milk ; the daffadilly differed
not at all from the lower part of the rose; the violets were of
the colour of the sea when it is calm ; in the midst of the
flowers sprang up a fountaine, which was first received in a
foure square bason, and running from thence it fed a little
rivulet made with hand : in the grove were birds, some used to
the house, and to bee fed by the hands of men, others more
free sported on the tops of trees, some of them being eminent
for their singing, as the grass-hopper and the swallow, some
of them againe for their painted wings, as the peacocke, the
swanne and the parrot. The grasshopper sang of Aurora's bed,
the swallow of Tereus table; the swan was feeding near the
head of the fountaine; the parrot hung on the bough of a
tree in a cage : the peacocke stretching forth his golden plumes
seemed to contend in beautie not onely with the rest of the birds,
but even with the flowers themselves, for to say truth, his
feathers were flowers : wherefore willing to give her a hint of
my intended love, I fell in talke with Satynis my Father's
man (who was at that time in the garden) taking the argument
of my speech from the peacocke, which by some chance spread
her wings just over against him. . . .

Concerning trees, now that they are in love one with another,
it is the common received opinion of Philosophers, which I

MOHAMMAD 27

should think fabulous, did not the experience of an husbandman
subscribe unto it that the palm trees are distinguished by sexes.
. . . While these love-stories were a-telling, I narrowly observed
how Leucippe was affected with them, who seemed to me to
heare them gladly; but let them say what they will Leucippe' s
countenance farre surpassed the rare and exquisite splendour
of the peacocke, nay the whole garden, for in her forehead were
daffadillies, in her cheekes roses, in her eyes violets, her locks
were more curled than the twining Ivie, and every part held
such correspondence with the Garden, that I may truly say
the best flowers were in her face. Not long after she departed,
being called to her Lute. — The Loves of Clitophori and Leucippe.
Englished fro?n the Greeke by Antho7iy Hodges, Oxford, 1638.

BUT for him who feareth the majesty of his Lord shall be MOHAMMAD
A (-'^•D. 571-632).

two gardens : - j/ j -

With trees branched over :

And therein two flowing wells :

And therein of every fruit two kinds :

Reclining on couches with linings of brocade and the fruit of the

gardens to their hand :
Therein the shy-eyed maidens neither man nor Jinn hath touched

before :
Like rubies and pearls :
Shall the reward of good be aught but good ?
And beside these shall be two other gardens :
Dark green in hue :
With gushing wells therein :
Therein fruit and palm and pomegranate :
Therein the best and comeliest maids :
Bright-eyed, kept in tents :
Man hath not touched them before, nor Jinn :
Reclining on green cushions and fine carpets :
Blessed be the name of thy Lord endued with majesty and honour.
' The Speeches of Mohammad^' by Stanley Lane Poole.

28

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

CHOU
TUN-I—

Chinese
Writer
(1017-1073).

I^OVERS of flowering plants and shrubs we have had by
scores, but T'ao Yiian-ming alone devoted himself to the
chrysanthemum.

Since the opening days of the T'ang dynasty, it has been
ashionable to admire the peony; but my favourite is the water-
hly. How stamless it rises from its sHmy bed ! How modestly
It reposes on the clear pool— an emblem of purity and truth t
Symmetrically perfect, its subtle perfume is wafted far and
wide; while there it rests in spotless state, something to be
regarded reverently from a distance, and not to be profaned
by familiar approach.

In my opinion, the chrysanthemum is the flower of retirement
and culture; the peony, the flower of rank and wealth: the
water-hly, the Lady Virtue sans pareille.

Alas ! it^v have loved the chrysanthemum since T'ao Yiian-
ming; and none like the water-lily like myself; whereas the peony
IS a general favourite with all mankind. —Herbert A. Giles ' Gems
of Chinese Literature.'' '

-~''AA/V- —

LIEN-
TSCHEN.

"pHE art of laying out gardens consists in an endeavour to
combine cheerfulness of aspect, luxuriance of growth, shade
solitude and repose, in such a manner that the senses may be
deluded by an imitation of rural nature. Diversity, which is the
mam advantage of free landscape, must, therefore, be sought in a
judicious choice of soil, an alternation of chains of hills and
valleys, gorges, brooks, and lakes covered with aquatic plants
Symmetry is wearying, and ennui and disgust will soon be excited
m a garden where every part betrays constraint and ^vt-Quoted
oy A. von Humboldt.

—M/\/W-

MitME^LuRYr f"""™'^ ^^^'^^ represents a very Paradise, for that in

(1095-1143). pleasure and deliglit it resembles Heaven itself These

marshes abound in trees, whose length without a knot doth

WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY 29

emulate the stars. The plain there is as level as the sea, which
with green grass allures the eye, and so smooth that there is
nought to hinder him who runs through it. Neither is therein
any waste place : for in some parts are apple trees, in other
vines, which are either spread on the ground or raised on poles.
A mutual strife is there between nature and art; so that what
one produces not, the other supplies.

CHAPTER III

MEDIAEVAL, RENAISSANCE AND TUDOR GARDENS

NECKAM^^^ ^/^x^/zo'^r Neckam, the earliest Englishmmt to write on Gardens, was
(1157-1217). ""^ ^^ ^^'^^'"' ''57, being the foster-brother of Richard Cceur de Lion

—his another ''fovit Ricardum ex mamilla dextra, sed Alexandrum fovit ex
mamilla sua sinistrd ''-at the age of twenty-three he became a professor at the
University of Paris, 1 180- 1 186. Hurt at the pun on his name by the
Benedictine Abbot of St Albans '^ Si bonus es venias ; si nequam, nequaquam "
(" Come if you are good, if naughty, by no means ") he became an Augustinian
monk at Cirencester, and Abbot 1213. Died 1217 near Worcester and was
buried in Cathedral. Author of a Latin poem, '' De Laudibus Diviner
Sapientice;' a metrical paraphrase of his own prose treatise '' De Naturis
re^-um " which was meant to be a manual of the scientific knowledge of
the time, with contemporary anecdotes a7id i-/^r/,?j-.— Thomas Wright, M.A.
Preface to Neckam's Works.

IT ERE the garden should be adorned with roses and lilies, the

turnsole (heliotrope), violets, and mandrake; there 'you

should have parsley, cost, fennel, southern-wood, coriander, sage,

savery, hyssop, mint, rue, ditanny, smallage, pellitory, lettuces]

garden-cress, and peonies.

There should also be beds planted with onions, leeks, garlic,
pumpkins and shalots. The cucumber growing in its lap, the
drowsy poppy, the daffodil and brank-ursine (acanthus) ennoble
a garden. Nor are there wanting, if occasion furnish thee, pottage-
herbs, beets, herb-mercury, orache, sorrel and mallows. Anise,
mustard, white pepper and wormwood (absynth) do good service
to the gardenlet.

A noble garden will give thee also medlars, quinces, warden-
trees, peaches, pears of St Riole, pomegranates, lemons (citron
apples), oranges (golden apples), almonds, dates, which are the
fruits of palms, and figs. I make no mention of ginger and
gariofllics, cinnamon, liquorice, and zttuala, and Virgo; Sabece dis-

PETRARCH 31

tilling incense, myrrh, aloe and lavender, resin, storax and balsaam,
and Indian laburnum.

Saffron and sandyx will not be absent, if thou wilt follow our
counsel. Who has not experienced the virtues of thyme and
pennyroyal? Who is ignorant that borage and purslain are
devoted to uses of diet ? . . . The myrtle, too, is the friend
of temperance ; whence it comes that it is wont to be offered to
the goddess who is named Cypris, for the same reason that the
tufted bird is slain to Nux, the goddess of night, that the goat
is devoted to Bacchus, and the swine to Ceres.

But those, whom such toil interests, distinguish between
heliotrope {solsequiuni) and our heliotrope, which is called
marigold (^calendula) ; and between wormwood, {artemisia) and
our wormwood, which is called centaury {febrtfugmm).

It is agreed, too, that the beard of Jove {Jovis barba) is one
grass, and Jove's beard {barba Jovis) is another.

The iris bears a purple flower, the marsh elder a white one ;
the gladiolus a yellow one \ but the foetid palm {Spatula fcetida)
has none.

The horehound, hound's tongue, the Macedonian rock, parsley,
the hoop writhe (snakewood), groundsel, ground ash, which is also
the queen, three kinds of milk-vetch {astrologia) are well-known
herbs. But Macer and Dioscorides and many others make
diligent inquiries into the properties of herbs. Whence let us
now pass to other matters. — Of the Natures of Things. {On
herbs J trees, a?id fioivers which grow in the garden.)^

T HAVE made two gardens that please me wonderfully. I do PETRARCH
■^ not think they are to be equalled in all the world. And I (1304-1374)-
must confess to you a more than female weakness with which I
am haunted. I am positively angry that there is anything so
beautiful out of Italy.

1 Mr T. Hudson Turner, in his "Observations on the State of Horticulture
in England in Early Times" {Archaological Journal, vol. v.), a paper full of
antiquarian research and of great interest, regards Neckam's description of a
" noble garden " as in a great degree rhetorical and untrustworthy. '

32 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

One of these gardens is shady, formed for contemplation, and
sacred to Apollo. It overhangs the source of the river, and is
terminated by rocks, and by places accessible only to birds. The
other is nearer my cottage, of an aspect less severe, and devoted
to Bacchus ; and, what is extremely singular, it is in the midst of
a rapid river. The approach to it is over a bridge of rocks ; and
there is a natural grotto under the rocks ; which gives them the
appearance of a rustic bridge. Into this grotto the rays of the sun
never penetrate. I am confident that it much resembles the place
where Cicero sometimes went to declaim. It invites to study.
Hither I retreat during the noontide hours ; my mornings are
engaged upon the hills, or in the garden sacred to Apollo. Here
I would most willingly pass my days, were I not too near Avignon,
and too far from Italy. For why should I conceal this weakness
of my soul ? I love Italy, and I hate Avignon. The pestilential
influence of this horrid place impoisons the pure air of Vaucluse,
and will compel me to quit my retirement. — Letter from Vaucluse,
1336. — ^ Life of Petrarch^ by Tho7nas Campbell.

ST BERNARD TF thou desire to know the situation of Clairvaux, let those

OF ,,„ * writings be to thee as a mirror. . . . Then the back part of

CLAIRVAUX . .

(1091-1153). ^^ Abbey terminates in a broad plain, no small portion of which

a wall occupies, which surrounds the Abbey with its extended

circuit. Within the enclosure of this wall many and various trees,

prolific in various fruits constitute an orchard resembling a wood.

Which, being near the cell of the sick, lightens the infirmities of

the brethren with no moderate solace, while it affords a spacious

walking place to those who walk and a sweet place for reclining

to those who are overheated. The sick man sits upon the green

sod, and while the inclemency of Sirius burns up the Earth with

his pitiless star, and dries up the rivers, he (the sick man) tempers

the glowing stars, under leaves of the trees, into security, and

concealment, and shade from the . heat of the day ; and for the

comfort of his pain, the various kinds of grass are fragrant to

his nostrils, the pleasant verdure of the herbs and trees gratifies

BRUNETTO LATINI 3;^

his eyes, and their immense delights are present, hanging and
growing before him, so that he may say, not without reason :
I sat under the shade of that tree, which I had longed for, and its
fruit was sweet to my throat. ^ The concert of the coloured birds
soothes his ears with their soft melody ; and for the cure of our
illness, the Divine tenderness provides many consolations, while
the air smiles with bright serenity, the earth breathes with fruitful
ness, and he himself drinks in with eyes, ears, and nostrils, the
delights of colours, songs and odours.

Where the orchard terminates, the garden begins, distributed
into separate plots, or rather, divided by intersecting rivulets ; for
although the water appears stagnant, it flows nevertheless with a
slow gliding. Here also a beautiful spectacle is exhibited to the
infirm brethren : while they sit upon the green margin of the huge
basin, they see the little fishes playing under the water, and repre-
senting a military encounter, by swimming to meet each other.
This water serves the double duty of supporting the fish and water-
ing the vegetables, — to which water, Alba, a river of famous name,
supplies nourishment by its unwearied wandering. — Description of
Clairvaux by a Contemporary of St Bernard.

—'A/\/\r\r—

\AAIS les Frangais ont maisons granz, et plenieres et peintes, et BRUNETTO
^^^ belles chambres pour avoir joie et delit sans guerre et LATINI

., • r • • (1230- 1294).

sans noise et pour ce savent ils mieux faire preaux et vergiers
et pommiers entre la manoir car ce est une chose qui molt
vaut a delit d'ome. — Libre I., pt. iv., chap. cxxx. Li Livres
dou Tresor. P. Chabaille.

— M/VW—

Maundeville was an early and imaginative traveller in Palestine^ ^^/z* SIR JOHN
and China, and resided three years at Pekin. His work is a pot-pourri of fact, MAUNDEVILLE
J- .• I'll J J (1300-1372).

fiction, chronicle, legend and romance. "^

NEAR the isle of Peutexoire, which is the land of Prester
John, is a great isle, long and broad, called Milsterak,
which is in the lordship of Prester John. That isle is very
1 See extract from Burton's ' Anatomy of Melancholy.'

C

34 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

rich. There was dweUing not long since a rich man, named
Gatholonabes, who was full of tricks and subtle deceits. He
had a fair and strong castle in a mountain, so strong and noble
that no man could devise a fairer or a stronger. And he had
caused the mountain to be all walled about with a strong and
fair wall, within which walls he had the fairest garden that
might be imagined ; and therein were trees bearing all manner
of fruits, all kinds of herbs of virtue and of good smell, and
all other herbs also that bear fair flowers. And he had also
in that garden many fair wells, and by them he had made fair
halls and fair chambers, painted all with gold and azure, re-
presenting many divers things and many divers stories.

There were also beasts and birds which sang full delectably,
and moved by craft, that it seemed they were alive.

And he had also in his garden all kinds of birds and beasts,
that men might have play or sport to behold them. And he
had also in that place the fairest damsels that might be found
under the age of fifteen years, and the fairest young striplings
that men might get of that same age ; and they were all clothed
full richly in clothes of gold ; and he said they were angels.
And he had also caused to be made three fair and noble wells,
all surrounded with stone of jasper and crystal, diapered with
gold, and set with precious stones and great Orient pearls.
And he had made a conduit under the earth, so that the
three wells, at his will, should run one with milk, another with
wine, and another with honey. And that place he called
Paradise. And when any good Knight, who was hardy and
noble, came to see this royalty, he would lead him into
Paradise, and show him these wonderful things for his sport,
and the marvellous and delicious song of divers birds, and
the fair damsels, and the fair wells of milk, wine, and honey,
running plentifully. — The Voyages and Travels of Sir J. M.
{The first English Edition was printed by IVinhyn de JVorde,
1499.)

— AJ\/\/V»—

BOCCACCIO

35

DOOKES (Courteous Reader) may rightly be compared to BOCCACCIO

^ Gardens \ wherein, let the painfull Gardiner expresse never ^^^^^"^375)'

so much care and diligent endeavour; yet among the very

fairest, sweetest, and freshest Flowers, as also Plants of most

precious Vertue ; ill savouring and stinking Weeds, fit for no

use but the fire or mucke-hill, will spring and sprout up. So

fareth it with Bookes of the very best quality; let the Author

bee never so indulgent, and the Printer vigilant : yet both may

misse their ayme, by the escape of Errors and Mistakes, either

in sense or matter, the one fault ensuing by a ragged Written

Copy; and the other thorough want of wary Correction. — The

Decameron {containing a hundred pleasant Novels.) {Preface to

the last five days), 1620.

On the morrow, being Wednesday, about breake of day, the
Ladies, with certaine of their attending Gentlewomen, and the
three Gentlemen, having three servants to waite on them, left
the City to beginne their journey, and having travelled about
a league's distance, arrived at the place of their first purpose
of stay ; which was seated on a little hill, distant (on all sides)
from any highway, plentifully stored with faire spreading Trees,
affording no meane delight to the eye. On the top of all stood
a stately Pallace, having a large and spacious Court in the
middest, round engirt with galleries, hals and chambers, every
one separate alone by themselves, and beautified with pictures
of admirable Cunning. Nor was there any want of Gardens,
Meadowes, and other pleasant walkes, with welles and springs
of faire running waters, all encompassed with branching vines,
fitter for curious and quaffing bidders, then women sober and
singularly modest. — Ibid.

'T^O be as brief as I can then, Fabrizio was regaled there with MACHIAVELLI

* all possible demonstrations of honour and respect : but (^69-1527)-
after the entertainment and usual formalities were over (which
generally are few and short amongst men of sense, who are
more desirous of gratifying the rational appetite), the days

36 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

being long, and the weather intensely hot, Cosimo, under a
pretence of avoiding the heat, took his guests into the most
retired and shady part of the gardens; and being all sat
down, some upon the grass (which is very green and pleasant
there), and some upon seats placed under the trees, Fabrizio
said it was a most delightful garden, and, looking earnestly at
some of the trees, seemed not to know the names of them ;
but Cosimo, being aware of it, immediately said, perhaps you
may not be acquainted with this sort of trees ; and, indeed, I
am not at all surprised at it, for they are very old ones, and
were much more in vogue amongst our ancestors than they
are at present. Having then told him the names of them,
and that they were planted by his grandfather Bernardo, who
was fond of such amusements : I thought so, replied Fabrizio ;
and both the place and the trees put me in mind of some
Princes in the Kingdom of Naples, who took much delight in
planting groves and shady arbours to shelter them from the
htSit—TAe Art of War.

— */\/VW—

ERASMUS p USEBIUS.—B\itvf\\2iX. if we should take the Cool of the Morning
(1467- 1 536). now to see the Gardens, while the Wench in the Kitchen pro-

vides us a Sallad ? Timotheus. Never was anything in better order.
The very Design of this Garden bids a Man welcome to't. . . .
Eu. Strangers are generally pleased with this Garden ; and hardly
a Man that passes by the place without an Ejaculation. Instead
of the Infamous Friapus, I have committed not only my Gardens,
but all my Possessions, both of Body and Mind, to the protection
of my Saviour. . . . You are loth, I perceive to leave this Place ;
but let's go on, and I'll show you a square wall'd Garden he;re
beyond, that's better worth your seeing . . . this Garden was
design'd for Pleasure ] but for honest Pleasure, the Entertainment
of the Sight, the Smell, and the Refreshment of the very Mind.
To have nothing here but sweet Herbs, and those only choice
ones too ; and every kind has its bed by itself. Ti. I am now
convinc'd that the Plants are not mute, as you were saying e'en

ERASMUS 2>^

now. Eu. You're in the right : as I have rang'd my several
Plants into several Troops, so every Troop has its Standard to
itself with a peculiar Motto. The Marjoram's Word is Abstine
Sus, non tibi spiro : My perfuine was never made for the Snout
of a Sow ; being a Fragrancy to which the Sow has a natural
Aversion. And so every other Herb has something in the Title
to denote the particular Virtue of the Plant. 7H. I have seen
nothing yet that pleases me better than this Fountain. It is the
Ornament, the Relief, and Security of the whole Garden. But
for this Cisterii (Bason) here, that with so much satisfaction to
the Eye, waters the whole Ground in Chanels, at such equal
Distances, that it shows all the Flowers over again, as in a
Looking-Glass ; ^this Cistern, I say, is it of Marble ? Eu.
Not a word of that, I prithee. How should Marble come
hither? 'tis only a Paste that's covered over with an arti-
ficial Counterfeit. . . . Ti. But how comes it that all your
Made-Hedges are Green too ? Eu. Because I would have
everything Green here. Some are for a Mixture of Red to
set off the other. But I am still for Green; as every Man
has his Fancy, though it be but in a Garden. Ti. The Garden
is very fine of itself, but these three Walks, methinks, take off
very much from the Lightsomness and Pleasure of it. Eu.
There do I either Study, or Walk, or Talk with a Friend, or Eat
a Dish of Meat, according as the Humour takes me. Ti. And
could you not content yourself with so neat and well-finish'd a
Garden in Substance, without more Gardens in Picture over and
above. Eu. First, one piece of Ground will not hold all sorts of
Plants. Secondly, 'tis a double Pleasure to compare painted
Flowers with the Life . . . and lastly, the Painting holds fresh
and green all the Winter, when the Flowers are dead and
wither'd. . . . Eu. These Walks serve me so many Purposes.
But if you please we'll take a View of 'em nearer Hand. See
how green 'tis under Foot ; and ye have the Beauty of painted
Flowers in the very Chequering of the Pavement. Here's a
Wood now in Fresco \ there's a strange Variety of Matter in't;
so many Trees, and but one of a sort ; and all exprest to the

38 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Life : and so for the Birds too, especially if any way remark-
able. . . . Eu. Here's an indifferent fair Garden cut into two :
the one's for the Kitchin, and that's my Wife's ; the other is a
Physick Garde7t. Upon the left hand, you have an open green
Meadow enclosed with a Quickset-Hedge, (septum est sepe
perpetua e spinis implexis, sed vivis contexta). There do I
take the Air sometimes, and divert myself with good Company.
Upon the right hand there's a Nursery (Orchard) of foreign
Plants, which I have brought by degrees to endure this Climate.
At the end of the upper Walk, there's an Aviary : at the further
end of the Orchard, I have my Bees, which is a sight worth your
Curiosity.

This Sujumer Hall, I suppose, you have had enough of. It
looks three ways, you see ; and which way soever you turn your
Eye, you have a most delicate Green before ye. . . . Here do I
eat in my House, as if I were in my Garden ; for the very Walls
have their Greens and their Flowers intermixt, and 'tis no ill
Painting. . . . You shall now see my Library : 'tis no large one,
but furnish'd with very good Books. ... To my Library there
belongs a Gallery, that looks into the Garden. Let's go those
three Walks now above the other, that I told you look'd into
the Kitchen-Garden. These upper Walks have a Prospect into
both Gardens, but only through Windows with Shutters. . . .
At eachXorner there's a Lodging-Chamber, where I can repose
myself, within sight of my Orchard, and my little Birds. —
CoUoqiiia : ^ Conviviiim Religiosiwi' {Translated by Sir Roger
L Estra?ige, Kt.)

—'Aj\/\/\r—

SIR

THOMAS

MORE

THEY set great store by their gardeins. In them they have
vineyardes, all manner of fruite, herbes and flowres, so
(1480- 1 535). pleasaunt, so well furnished, and so fynely kepte, that I never
sawe thynge more frutefuU, nor better trimmed in anye place.
Their studie and deligence herein commeth not onely of pleasure,
but also of a certen strife and contention that is between strete
and strete, concerning the trimming, husbanding, and furnishing

MARTIN LUTHER 39

of their gardens : everye man for his owne parte. And verelye
you shall not lightelye finde in all the citie anyethinge, that is
more commodious, eyther for the profile of the Citizens or for
pleasure. And therefore it maye seme that the first founder of
the citie mynded nothing so much as these gardens. For they
saye that Kinge Utopus hiraselfe, even at the first beginning,
appointed, and drewe furth the plattefourme of the city into
this fashion and figure that it hath nowe, but the gallant
garnishinge, and the beautifull settinge furth of it, whereunto
he saw that one mannes age would not suffice : that he left to
his posteritie. — Utopia {Of the cities and namely of Amaurote),
trafislated by Ralph Robinson.

I HOLD that the whole world was named a Paradise. Moses MARTIN
^ describes it according to Adam's sight, so far as hee could see: f*^*^^^^?
but It was called Paradise by reason it was all over so sweet and
pleasant. Adam was, and dwelled towards the East in Syria and
Arabia, when hee was created : but after hee had sinned, then it
was no more so delightful and pleasant.

Even so in our time hath God cursed likewise fruitful lands,
and hath caused them to bee barren and unfruitful by reason of
our sins : for where God gives not His blessing, there grows
nothing that is good and profitable ; but where He blesseth, there
all things grow plentifully, and are fruitful.^ — Colloquia {Table
Talk).

A ND bhssful blossoms in the blooming yard GAWEN

-'*' Submit their heads to the young sun's safe-guard. ? \A^f'V '

Ivy leaves rank o'erspread the barmkin wall, Dimkeld

The blooming hawthorn clad his pikis all. (1474-1522).

^ In the spring of 1538, Luther writes to Jonas that, instead of being forced
to carry on tedious and often fruitless business, he would much rather, as an
old and worn-out man, be delighting himself in his gardens with the wonders
of God — trees, plants, flowers, and birds ; but that he was fully conscious 01
having deserved these burdens by past sins.— ^iw/zW Koestlins ' Martin
Ltither.''

40 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Forth from fresh burgeons the wine-grapes ying

End-long the trellises did in clusters hing.

The locked buttons on the gemmed trees,

O'erspreading leaves of Nature's tapestries.

Soft gresy verdure after balmy showers

On curling stalk(y)s smiling to their flowers.

Beholding them so many diverse new

Some pers, some paille, some burnet, and some blue,

Some grey, some gules, some purple, some sanguine.

Blanched, or brown, some fawch, yallow many a one,

Some heavenly coloured in celestial (de)gree,

Some watery-hued as the deep wavy sea,

And some depart in freckles red and white,

Some bright as gold with aureate leavys light ;

The daisy spread abroad her crownet small,

And every flower onlappit in the dale.

In battle gear burgeons the banewort wild,

The clover, catcluke, and the cammamyld ;

The flower-de-luce forth spread his heavenly hue.

Flower Damasks, and Columbine white and blue,

Seyr downye small on Dent-de-lion sprang,

The young green blooming strawberry-leaves amang.

— Prologue to Twelfth Book of ^?ieid
{slightly modernised).

—'A/VS/v—

ZEHIR- Emperor of Hindustan, one of the descendants of Zengiskhan and of Tamer-

ED-DIN lane, extended his dominions by conquest to Delhi ajid the greater part of

MUHAMMED Hindustan; and transf?iitted to his famous descendants, Akber and Aureng-

—surnapied Baber ^^^^^ ^^^ viagnificent Empire of the Moguls. A desperate warrior, an

Ti 82 il^6^ elegant poet, a great admirer of beautiful prospects and fine flowers, a very

resolute and jovial drinker of wine. The following extracts are from a faithful

translation of his Journal and Narrative of his life and transactions. — (Lord

Jefifrey's Review of * Memoirs of Baber,' by Leyland & Erskine, 1827).

OPPOSITE to the fort of Adinaphftr (south of the Kabul
river), to the south on a rising ground, I formed a
charbagh (great garden), in the year 914 (= 15°^). It is called

ZEHIR-ED-DIN MUHAMMED 41

Bagh-e Vafa (the Garden of Fidelity). It overlooks the river,
which flows between the fort and the palace. In the year in
which I defeated Behar Khan, and conquered Lahore and
Dibalptir, I brought plantains and planted them here. They
grew and thrived. The year before I had also planted the Sugar-
cane in it, which throve remarkably well. I sent some of them
to Badakshan and Bokhara. It is on an elevated site, enjoys
running water, and the climate in the winter season is temperate.
In the garden there is a small hillock, from which a stream of
water, sufficient to drive a mill, incessantly flows into the garden
below. The four-fold field plot of this garden is situated on this
eminence. On the south-west part of this garden is a reservoir
of water ten gaz square, which is wholly planted round with
orange trees ; there are likewise pomegranates. All around the
piece of water the ground is quite covered with clover. This spot
is the very eye of the beauty of the garden. At the time when
the orange becomes yellow, the prospect is delightful. Indeed the
garden is charmingly laid out. To the south of the garden lies
the Koh-e-Sefid (the White Mountain) of Nangenhar, which
separates Bengash from Nangenhar. There is no road by which
one can pass it on horseback. Nine streams descend from this
mountain. The snow on its summit never diminishes, whence
probably comes the name of Kok-e-Sefid. No snow ever falls in
the dales at its foot. . . .

Few quarters possess a district that can rival Istalif. A large
river rdns through it, and on either side of it are gardens, green,
gay, and beautiful. Its water is so cold that there is no need of
icing it ; and it is particularly pure. In this district is a garden
called Bagh-e-Kilan (the Great Garden), which Ulugh Beg Mirza
seized upon. I paid the price of the garden to the proprietors,
and received from them a grant of it. On the outside of the
garden are large and beautiful spreading plane-trees, under the
shade of which there are agreeable spots finely sheltered. A
perennial stream, large enough to turn a mill, runs through the
garden ; and on its banks are planted plane and other trees.
Formerly this stream flowed in a winding and crooked course, but

42 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

I ordered its course to be altered according to a regular plan,
which added greatly to the beauty of the place.

—'A/VV'T—

MAYSTER Fitzherbarde is either Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, Judge of the Common
FITZHER- Pleas and author of the ' Grand Abridgment of the Covunon Law,' or his
BARDE brother John Fitzherbert {d. 1538).

OF bees is lyttell charge but good attendaunce ; at the time
that they shall cast the swarme, it is convenient that the
hyve be set in a garden, or an orchyarde, where as they maye
be kepte from the northe wynde, and the mouthe of the hyve
tovvarde the sonne.

To p las she or pleche a hedge.

If the hedge be of x or xii yeres growing sythe it was
first set, thanne take a sharpe hatchet, or a handbyll and cutte
the settes in a playne place, nyghe unto the erthe, the more
halve a-sonder ; and bend it downe towarde the erthe, and wrappe
and wynde them together, but alwaye so that the toppe lye hyer
than the rote a good quantytie, for elles the sappe wyll not runne
in-to the toppe kyndely, but in processe the toppe wyll dye ; and
than set a lyttel hedge on the backe-syde, and it shall need noo
more mendynge manye yeres after. The Boke oj Husbandry, 1 534
{edited by Skeat, 1882).

POLYDORE /// 1498, Polydore Vergil published ' Adagia ' before Erasmus, who was
VERGIL a?id remained his friend ; 1499, Dc Rerum Inventoribus ; 1503, setit to

(^- 1555)- England by Pope Alexander VI. to collect Peter-pence and stayed fifty years

there ; Rector of Church Langton, Leicestershire, and Archdeacon of Wells ;

his History of England in Latin finished 1533.

HAVE diligentlie noted at London, a cittie in the south partes
of the riolme, that the nighte is scarslie v houres in length in
soommer when as the sonne is at his highest reache. . . . The
grownde is luxurient and frutefuU; besides corne and pulse, of
the owne accorde bringing forthe all kinde of matter, saving firre
and (as Caesar saithe) beeche trees, with diverse other, as olives

I

CHARLES ESTIENNE 43

which are woonte to growe in whotter soyles ; but yt is well known
that nowe there are beeches eche where in the londe. Thei
plante vines in their gardins, rather for covert and commoditee
of shaddowe then for the fruite, for the grape seldom commeth
to ripenes excepte an hotte summer ensewe.— £!ng/isk History^
edited by Sir Henry Ellis, for Camden Society.

— vVVV-f—

Son of Henri Estienne ; Doctor of Medicine, Royal Printer and author ^CHARLES
seve7'al treatises on Medicine, Natural History, and Agriculture — ^ De re ESTIENNE
Hortensi Libelhis,' 1545, on the Antiquities of Gardening. (STEPHENS)

Collaborated with Jean Liebault, Medicin {d. 1596), to produce ^ La Maison U 504-1 5o4)-
Rustiqne' {Prcedium Rusticum), translated into English by R. Stirflet (1600),
and reprinted with additions frotn Olivier de Serrcs, Vinet and others, by
Gervase Alarkhatn in 16 16.

THE most pleasant and Delectable thing for recreation belong- Surjlet's
ing unto our French Fermes, is our Flower Gardens, as well translation.
in respect that it serveth for the chiefe Lord, whose the inheritance
is, to solace himselfe therein, as also in respect of their service, for
to set Bee-hives in. It is a commendable and seemely thing to
behold out at a window manie acres of ground well tilled and
husbanded, whether it be a Medow, a Plot for planting of Willowes,
or arable ground, as we have stood upon heretofore : but yet it is
much more to behold faire and comely Proportions, handsome and
pleasant Arbors, and, as it were. Closets, delightfuU borders of
Lavender, Rosemarie, Boxe, and other such like : to heare the
ravishing musicke of an infinite number of pretie small Birds,
which continually, day and night, doe chatter, and chant their
proper and naturall branch-songs upon the Hedges and Trees of
the Garden ; and to smell so sweet a Nose-gay so neere at hand ;
seeing that this so fragrant a smell cannot but refresh the Lord of
the Farme exceedingly, when going out of his bed-chamber in the
morning after the Sunne-rise, and whiles as yet the cleare and
pearle-like dew doth pearche unto the grasse, he giveth himself
to heare the melodious musicke of the Bees; which busying
themselves in gathering of the same, doe also fill the ayre with

44

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

a most acceptable sweet and pleasant harmonie : besides, the
Borders and continued Rowes of soveraigne Thyme, Balme,
Rosemarie, Marierome (Marjoram), Cypers, Soothernwood, and
other fragrant hearbes, the sight and view whereof cannot but
give great contentment unto the beholder.
This section And in this Garden of Pleasure you are verie much to respect
*9 "? T ^^ forme and proportion of the same : wherein, according to

translation oj the opinion of Serres and Uniett (Vinet), you must be much
1600, and IS ruled by the nature of the Soyle : which albeit you may, in
Markha'm. P^^^j t)y your Industrie and cost helpe, as touching the levelling,
raysing, abating, or enriching of the same ; yet, for the most
part, and especially touching the ayre, temperature, and clyme,
you must be governed by the Soyle in which you live. Now
for the general proportions of Gardens, they may at your
pleasure carrie anie of these foure shapes, that is to say, either
Square, Round, Ovall or Diamond. As for that which is more
long than broad, or more broad than long (neither of which
are uncomely), they are contained under the titles of Squares.
This is but the outward proportion ; or the Verge and Girdle
of your Garden. As for the inward proportions and shapes
of the Quarters, Beds, Bankes, Mounts and such like, they are
to be divided by Alleyes, Hedges, Borders, Rayles, Pillars, and
such like, and by these you may draw your Garden into what
form soever you please, not respecting what shape soever the
outward Verge carrieth ; for you may make that Garden which
is square without, to be round within ; and that which is round,
either square or ovall ; that which is ovall, either of the former
and that which is diamond, anie shape at all : and yet all exceed-
ingly comely. You may also, if your ground be naturally so
seated, or if your Industrie please so to bring it to passe, make
your Garden rise and mount by severall degrees, one levell
ascending above another, in such sort as if you had divers
gardens one above another, which is exceeding beautifull to
the eie, and very beneficiall to your flowers and fruit trees,
especially if such ascents have the benefit of the Sun-rising
upon them : and thus, if you please, you may have in one levell

BERNARD PALISSY 45

a square plot, in another a round, in a third a diamond, and in
the fourth an ovall, then alongst the ascending bankes which are
on either side the staires, you mount into your severall gardens,
you shall make your physicke garden or places to plant your
physicke hearbes upon, according as the modell is most bravely
set forth by Oliver de Serves^ and as the late King of France
caused his physicke garden to be made in the Universitie of
Montpellier,! being all raised upon bankes or heights one above
another, some round, some square, in the manner of a goodly,
large, and well-trimmed Theatre as may be scene at this day to
the great admiration thereof. — Maison Rustique^ or, the Coimtrey
Farme. Compyled in the French Tongue by Charles Stevens, and
John Liebault, Doctors of Physicke. And translated into English
by Richard Surflet, Practitioner in Physicke. Now newly Reviewed,
Corrected, and Augmented, with divers large Additions, out of the

(Serres, his Agriculture, '\

Vinet, his Maiso?i Champestre, j
Albyterio, in Spanish,
Grilli, in Italian, and other Authors.
And the Husbandrie of France, Italic, and Spaine, reconciled and
made to agree with ours here in England. By Gervase Markha7n,
london. Printed by Adam Islip for Joh^i Bill, 1616.

— r'hj\l\r' —

Potter, Glass- Painter, Chemist, Agriculturist and Engineer. BERNARD

He designed the rustic grotto for the Gardens of the Constable Montmorency PALISSY
at the Chateau d'Econen: was employed at the founding of the Tuileries by (i5o°"^5°9)-
Queen Catherine de Mddicis in 1566, Philibert de t Orme being the Architect.
In the Gardens here, of which the design by Androuet du Cerceau is in exist'
ence, Palissy constructed his famous Grotto, as described in the following
extract. The Park at Chaitlnes was laid out after a plan resembling the
' delectable Garden ' : Palissy was also employed at the Chateau de Nesle in
Picardy, Reux in Normandy, and possibly the Chateau de Madrid, in the Bois
de Boulogne. In the dedication of his book, ' Recepte Viritable,' to the Queen
Mother, he wrote : ^ II y a des choses escrites en ce livre qui pourront beau-
coup servir a V idification de vostre jardin de Chenonceux.''

' See illustration in de Serres's Thiatre (^Agriculture.

46 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Johi Evelyn wrote of him in the Preface to his ' Sylva '' : — ' It zvas indeed
a plain man (a Potter by trade), bnt let no one despise him because a Potter
(Agathocles and a King was of that craft), who, in tny opinion has given us
the true reason why Husbandry and particularly Planting is no more improved
in this age of ours — especially where persons are Lords and owners of much
land. '

ALSO, because you are a puissant and magnanimous Lord,
and of good judgment, I have found it good to design for
you the plan of a garden as beautiful as the world ever held,
except that of the Earthly Paradise, which design of a garden
I am assured you will find of good invention. ... I have not
put the portrait of the said garden in this book, because several
are unworthy to see it, and singularly enemies to virtue and
good etigin \ also my poverty and occupation in my art
would not permit it. I know that some ignorant people —
enemies to virtue and calumniators — will say that the design of
this garden is only a dream, and will perhaps compare it to
the 'Dream of Polyphilus,' ^ or say that it will be too costly,
and that a suitable place could not be found for the erection
of the said garden, according to the design. To this I answer
that there are more than four thousand noble houses in France,
in the neighbourhood of which are several suitable spots to erect
the said garden, according to the tenour of my design. — Dedica-
tion to the Mareschal de Montmorency of the ^ Recepte Veritable.^

Qitestion. — I prythee discourse to me on the plan of the garden
thou desirest to build.

A?iswer. — It is impossible to have a spot proper for a garden,
unless there be some fountain or stream passing through it : and
for this reason I wish to choose a level spot at the foot of some

1 The ' Hypnerotomachia Polyphili ' of Fra Francesco Colonna, (Aldus, 1499),
and better known in its French translation of ' Le Songe de Polyphile ' by
Beroalde de Verville, Paris, fol., 1600, of which the designs are said to be by
Jean Goujon ; there are numerous lovely woodcuts illustrating arbors, foun-
tains, trellises and garden scenes. Facsimiles of the woodcuts of the Venice
edition of 1499 have been reproduced, 1888.

BERNARD PALISSY 47

mountain or highland, with a view to take some spring of water
from the said land, to make it course at my pleasure through all
the parts of my garden.

Question. — Tell me, then, how you propose to adorn your
garden, after you have bought the ground.

Answer. — In the first place, I shall mark out the square of
my garden, of such length and breadth as I shall hold to be
requisite, and I shall form the said square in some plain which
may be encompassed by mountains, burrows or rocks, towards
the side of the North wind and of the West wind, in order
that the said mountains, burrows or rocks may serve me for
the purposes which I shall presently tell you. I shall be
careful, too, to place my garden near some spring of water
issuing from the said rocks, and coming from high ground,
and, this done, I shall make my said square , but, wherever
it may be, I mean to set up my garden in a place where there
may be a meadow beyond, to issue sometimes from the garden
into the meadow ; and this for the reasons which shall be
presently given. And having thus established the situation of
the garden, I shall next proceed to divide it into four equal
parts; and, for the separation of the said parts, there will be
a long alley, which shall cross the said garden, and at the
four ends of the said cross- way there will be at each end an
arbour {cabinet), and in the middle of the garden and cross-
way there will be an amphitheatre such as I shall presently
describe to you. At each of the four corners of the said
garden there will be an arbour, making eight arbours in all
and one amphitheatre, which will be set up in the garden ;
but you must understand that all the eight arbours will
be differently filled, and of such invention as has never
yet been seen or heard tell of. That is why I mean to
found my garden upon the Psalm civ., the one wherein
the prophet describes the excellent and wonderful works
of God, and in their contemplation he humbles himself
before Him, and bids his friend to praise the Lord in all
His wonders.

48 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

I intend also to set up this admirable garden in order to
give men an opportunity to make themselves lovers of the
cultivation of the earth, and to leave all vicious occupations
or delights, and evil commerce, to amuse themselves by cultiva-
tion of the earth.

Question. — I prithee, discourse to me of those beautiful cabinets,
which thou proposest thus to raise.

Answer. — In the first place, thou must understand that I
shall conduct the stream of water, or part of that from the
rock, to the eight cabinets aforesaid. This will be easy enough
to do ; for as soon as the water distils from the mountain
or rock, I shall lead its spring through all parts of the garden,
as shall seem good ; and give a portion to each cabinet, as
I shall find necessary, and shall build my cabinets with
such invention that from each shall issue more than a hundred
jets of water, and this by the means I shall discover to you,
in discoursing of the beauty of the cabinets. Let us now come
to the description of all my cabinets in turn.

OF THE FIRST CABINET.

The first, which shall face the North wind at the corner and
anglet of the garden, at the bottom and adjoining the foot of
the mountain or rock, I shall build of terra cotta {brigues cuites),
but they shall be formed in such a way that the cabinet shall
resemble the form of a rock hollowed out upon the very spot,
having inside several hollow seats within the wall, and between
every two seats there will be a column, and below this a pedestal,
and above the capitals to the columns there will be an archi-
trave, frieze and cornice, which shall prevail round the said
cabinet, and along the frieze will be certain antique letters
adorning the said frieze, and along it shall be written, Dieu ?i'a
prins plaisir en rien, sinon en Fhomme, auquel habite Sapience
(God has taken no pleasure in aught, save in Man, in whom
dwelleth Wisdom) : and thus my cabinet will have its windows
towards the South, and the said windows and entrance to the

BERNARD PALISSY 49

cabinet shall be in the shape of a rock : therefore the said
cabinet shall be on the sides of the North and West masoned
against the terriers or rocks, so that in descending from the
high land, one can come upon the said cabinet without
knowing there is any building below ; and to make the cabinet
pleasanter, I shall plant upon its vault several bushes bearing
fruits good to nourish birds, and also certain herbs, whose
seeds they love, to accustom the said birds to repose and
utter their songlets on the said bushes, to give pleasure to
those within the cabinet and garden, and on its outside will
be masonry of great stones of rocks, unpolished and rough-
hewn, in order that the outside of the cabinet may represent
no shape of building : and with the masonry I shall introduce
a canal of water, which I shall cause to pass within the wall,
and thus masoned in the wall, I shall distribute it in several
directions by jets, in such a way as shall appear that they
issued from the rock like water-falls . . . when the cabinet
is thus masoned I shall cover it with various colours of enamels
from the top of the vaults to the foot; this done I shall
make a great fire within the cabinet, until the said enamels
are melted or liquified on the masonry — and the enamels
liquifying will run and fuse, and in fusing will form very
pleasant figures and ideas, and the fire being put out, the
enamels will be found to have covered the joints of the bricks
in such a way that the cabinet will appear all of one piece —
and the cabinet will glow with such a lustre that the lizards
and langrottes entering will behold themselves as in a
mirror, and will admire the statues; and if any one surprises
them, they will not be able to ascend the wall of the cabinet
because of its polish, and in this way the cabinet will last
for ever, and will require no tapestry, for its decoration will be
of such beauty as if it were jasper or porphyry or well-polished
calcedony.

I have not found in this world a greater source of delight
than to possess a beautiful garden; thus God, having created
the earth for the service of man, placed him in a garden in

D

50 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

which were several kinds of fruits, which was the cause why,
when meditating the sense of Psalm civ., as I have told you
above, straightway there took hold of me so great a desire to
set up my said garden, that since that time I have done nought
but dream about the erection thereof, and very often in my
sleep me-seemed that my garden was already made in the same
shape as I have told you, and that I was already beginning
to eat the fruits, and to recreate myself therein, and methought
that passing in the morning through the said garden, I
came to consider the wonderful actions which the Sovereign
has commanded Nature to perform, and amongst other things
I gazed upon the branches of the vines, peas, and gourds
which seemed to have some feeling and knowledge of their
weakly nature ; for being unable to support themselves, they
threw out certain small arms, like threads, into the air, and
finding some small branch or bough, proceeded to bind and
attach themselves to it, without separating from it again, in order
to support the parts of their weakly nature. — ^Jardin Delectable.''

'The Archives of the History of Switzerland' (Zurich, 1864)
give an account of a visit of the Swiss Ambassadors to the
Tuileries, nth May 1555: —

'In the morning the Ambassadors set out for the garden of
the Queen, called the Tuillerie. The garden is very large
and very pleasant. A broad path divides it into two parts,
planted on each side with tall trees, elms and sycamores, which
afford shade to the walkers. There is a labyrinth designed
with such art, that, once inside, the exit is difficult. There are
tables made of branches and leaves, beds, etc. The astonishing
thing is that this labyrinth is almost entirely formed of bent cherry
trees. There are several fountains with nymphs and fauns,
holding urns from which the water flows. One is especially
remarkable. It is a rock over which run various reptiles,
serpents, snails, tortoises, lizards, frogs, and every kind of
aquatic animal. They also poured water — one would have
said the rock itself exuded water.'

M. Anatole de Montaiglon sees in this description the Grotto

ANDROUET DU CERCEAU 51

of Palissy, but M. Louis Audiat disagrees, and points out it
is a fountain not a grotto.

—'A/Vv^—

A great French Architect, whose book of Designs is invaluable : he began ANDROUET
building the Pont Neuf in 1578, and the Gallery of the Louvre in 1596 : DU

bein^ a Protestant^ he died in exile. L.iiKL.E.AU

{d. 1592).

OEHIND the seignorial mansion of Anet there is a terrace

^ from which you descend into the garden. Beneath the '^"^'•
terrace is a long vaulted gallery. The garden is of great size,
and richly girt with galleries all round about, the three sides
of which are as often with arched as with square openings ; the
whole rustic. The garden is ornamented with two fountains.
Behind it are two large places serving as parks, separated and
shut in. These places are fitted as enclosures {parquets), some
with meadows, others with clipped trees {taillis) others with
warrens, fruit-trees, fish-ponds, and those are separated by alleys
and canals.

Gaillon is fitted with two gardens — one of which is on a Gaillon.
level with the Castle, and between the two is a place in the
manner of a terrace. Now this garden is adorned {accofnpli)
with a beautiful and agreeable gallery, worthy to be so called
on account of its length, and of the manner in which it is erected,
with a view over the garden on one side, and on the other over
the said valley, towards the river. In the midst of the garden is
a pavilion, in which is seen a fountain in white marble. As to
the other garden, it is contained in this valley, over which the
gallery has a marvellously wide prospect, adjoining which is a
park of vines, dependent on the house — not enclosed. Beyond,
in the same valley, in the direction of the river, the Cardinal de
Bourbon has erected and built a lieu de Chartreuse, abounding
with every pleasure. Moreover there is in this place a Park,
which, if you wish to enter, either from the house or from the
garden above, you must often ascend, as well by alleys covered
with trees, as by terraces always looking over the valley; and

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS}
LIBRARY

52 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

continuing you reach a spot wherein is built a little chapel, and
a little house with a hermitage rock, situated in the middle of a
lake, with a square margin, and round this are little alleys for
walking, to enter which you must pass a small swing-gate. Near
to this is a small garden, and therein many pedestals, on which
are placed whole figures 3 or 4 feet high, and of every kind of
device ; therewith, some alleys (Bercees), covered with hazel-trees.
— ^ Les plus excellent s Bastiments de France,^ 1576-9.

CONRAD \1^^^ when Thrasybulus, travailing in the affayres of his prince,

HERESBACH i^ chaunced to come to the house of Marius, and carried by
U509-157 ) j^jj^ jj^^Q ^ Garden that he had, which was very beautifull, being

BARNABY led about among the sweet smelling flowres, and under the pleasant
GOOGE Arbours, what a goodly sight (quoth Thrasybulus) is heere : how

excellently have you garnished this paradise of yours with all
kinde of pleasures : your Parlers, and your banketting houses
both within and without, as all bedecked with pictures of beauti-
full Flowres and Trees, that you may not onely feede your eyes
with the beholding of the true and lively Flower, but also delight
yourselfe with the counterfait in the midst of winter, seeing in
the one, the painted flower to contend in beautie with the very
flower ; in the other, the wonderfuU worke of Nature, and in both
the passing goodness of God. Moreover, your pleasant Arbours
to walke in, whose shaddowes keepe off the heate of the sunne,
and if it fortune to raine, the cloisters are hard by. But specially
this little River, with most cleere water, encompassing the garden,
doth wonderfully set it forth, and herewithall the greene and goodly
quickset hedges, no chargeable kinde of enclosures, differeth it
both from Man and Beast. I speake nothing of the well ordered
quarters, whereas the Hearbes and Trees are severed every sort
in their due place, the Pot-hearbes by themselves, the flowers in
another place, the Trees and Impes ^ in another quarter, all in
just square and proportion, with Alleis and walkes among them.

^ Itnp, a graft or shoot.

MONTAIGNE 53

Among these goodly sights, I pray you, remember according to
your promise (for so the time requireth) to shew mee some part
of your great knowledge in Garden matters, sith you have upon
this condition heard me heretofore grabling, or rather wearying
you with the declaiming of my poore skill in the tilling of the
field. . . .

Marius. — Nature hath appointed remedies in a readinesse for
all diseases, but the craft and subtiltie of man, for gaine, hath
devised Apothecaries shops, in which a man's life is to be sold
and bought ; where for a little byle, they fetch their medicines
from Hierusalem, and out of Turkie, while in the meane time
every poore man hath the right remedies growing in his
Garden : for if men would make their Gardens their Phisitians,
the Phisitians craft would soone decay. You know what your
oldeYriend Cato saith, and what a deale of Phisicke he fetched
out of a poore Colwort. . . .

Thrasybulus. — Every thing liketh me passing well : Good Lord
what a pleasant ground, what a Paradise is this : methinks I see
the Orchards of Alcinous, the Trees are set Checkerwise, and so
catred, as looke which way you will, they lie levell : King Cyrus
himselfve never had better. If Lysander had ever seene this
Orchard, he would have wondred a great deal more than he
did at Cyrus his orchard. — ' The whole Art and Trade of
Husba7idry^ {Of Gardefis, Orchards^ and Woods), enlarged by
Barnaby Googe.

TTUSBANDRY is otherwise a very Servile Employment, as MONTAIGNE
^ ^ Salusi tells us ; though some parts of it are more excusable (^ 533- 1592).
than the rest, as the Care of Gardens, which Zenophon attributes to
Cyrus, and a mean may be found out betwixt Sordid and Homely
Affection, so full of perpetual Solitude, which is seen in Men
who make it their entire Business and Study, and that stupid
and extream Negligence, letting all things go at Random, we
see in others. — ' Of Solitude.^

54 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

When at home, I a little more frequent my library, from
whence I at once survey all the whole concerns of my Family :
'tis situated at the Entrance into my House, and I thence under
me see my Garden, Court and base Court, and into all the parts
of the building. Then I turn over now one Book and then
another, of various subjects, without method or design : one
while I meditate, another I record, and dictate as I walk to
and fro, such whimsies as these I present you here. — Essays:
Charles Cotfon^s Translation.

The house (of the Duke Cosimo, at Castello near Florence) is
nothing to speak of; but these different pieces of gardenage, the
whole situated on the slope of a hill, in such a way that the
straight alleys are all on a gentle and easy decline ; the cross-
alleys are straight and close. There are several galleries (berceaux)
to be seen very thickly interwoven and covered with all kinds
of aromatic trees, like cedars, cypresses, orange, lemon and
olive trees, the branches so mingled and interlaced, that it is
easy to see the sun at its greatest strength could not penetrate
them. The trunks of the cypresses and of those other trees are
planted in rows so close to one another, that only three or four
people could walk abreast. There is a large basin amongst
others, in the midst of which is to be seen a natural or artificial
rock, which seems all frozen over the top, by means of the same
material with which the Duke has covered his grottos at Prato-
lino ; and above the rock is a great copper medallion, repre-
senting a very old hairy man sitting down, his arms crossed, from
whose beard, forehead and skin, drips water incessantly drop by
drop, representing sweat and tears, and the fountain has no other
conduit but this. Elsewhere they had an amusing experience —
for walking through the Garden, and looking at its singularities,
the gardener having left them for the purpose, as they were
standing at a certain spot looking at the marble figures, there
issued under their feet and between their legs through infinite
small holes, jets of water so fine as to be almost invisible, and
representing sovereignly well the distillation of fine rain, with
which they were all spirted by means of some subterranean

TORQUATO TASSO 55

spring, which the gardener turned on more than 200 paces off,
with such art that he raised and depressed these ejaculations
at pleasure. . . . They saw too the head fountain issuing from
the Canal by two great bronze figures . . . there is also an
arbour (Cabinet) amid the branches of an ever-green tree, but
richer than any other they had seen — for it is all filled with the
living green branches of the tree, and all round the arbour is so
enclosed with this verdure that there is no view except through
certain openings, which must be made by separating the branches
here and there ; and in the middle, through a concealed pipe,
mounts a stream of water through the arbour, in the centre of
a small marble basin. There is heard too the water music. . . .
A beautiful grotto is also to be seen, where every kind of animal
is represented materially, emitting either by the beak, the wing,
the claw, the ear or the nostril, the water of those fountains.

At Rome I had always some occupation, if not so agreeable
as I could wish, at least sufiicient to stave off ennui : such as
visiting the Antiquities, the Vines, which are the Gardens and
pleasure-resorts, of singular beauty; and then I learnt how far
art could turn to advantage a woody, mountainous, and uneven
spot, for they draw inimitable graces from our levels, and elude
very artistically this diversity. Among the most beautiful are
those of the Cardinals d'Este at Monte Cavallo; Farnese
on the Palatine ; Ursino, Sforza, Medicis ; that of Pope Julius,
that of Madama (Marguerite, Duchess of Parma) ; the Gardens of
Farnese, and of Cardinal Riario at Transtevere, of Cesio, outside
the People's Gate. — Travels of Montaigiie in Germany and Italy.

CORTHWITH was the Table furnished with Fruits, as Mellons, TORQUATO
* Cytrons, and such like, which at the end of Supper were, at '^ASSO
a wincke of his, reserved and set up ; and then he began thus.
The good old man Coricius, the Gardener of whom I remember
I have reade in Virgill :

' Nocte domum dapibus mensas onerabat inemptis.'
Hyed home at night and fild his bord with delicats unbought ;

56 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

and in imitation whereof Petrarch speaketh, reasoning of his
Plowman :

' Epoi la mensa ingombra

Di povere vivande,

Simili a quelle ghiande

Le quai fuggendo tutto '1 mondo honora.'

And then he decks his boord about

With meats of meane esteeme,
Like to those Jayes whose flight contents

The world, cause faire they seeme.

So that you neede not mervaile if I after their fashion, fill your
Table with unbought viands, which, though they bee not such
as you are used to taste elsewhere, remember you are in a
Country town, and lodged in the house of a poore Host. I
hold it (quoth I) a happy thing to have no neede to send for
necessaries to the Cittie for the supply of good manners — I
meane not of good meate, for thereof, sir, me seemes heere
wants no store. It lightlie happeneth not (quoth hee) that I
send to y*^ Cittie for any thing necessarie or fit for the life of
a poore Gentleman, for (God be praised) I have aboundaunce
of every thing ministred unto me upon myne owne ground,
y* which I have devided into foure parts or formes, call them
what you will. The first and greatest part I plow and sowe
with wheate and all kind of graine. The seconde part I leave
for Trees and plants, which are also necessarie either for fire,
the use of Architecture, and other instruments of household,
as also in those places that are sowne are manie rewes of
Trees, whereupon the Vines, after the manner of our /^///
Countries, are laid and fastened. The third is Medowe ground,
whereon the Heards and little flocks I have are wont to graze!
The fourth I have reserved for hearbes, flowers, and rootes,
where also are some store of hyves for Bees, because beyond
this Orchard, wherein you see that I have gryft so many fruit-
full Plants, and which you see is somewhat separat from my
possessions, there is an other Garden, full of all sorts of sallet

PETER TREVERIS 57

hearbes and other rootes. — ' The Householder's Philosophie,
Urst written ift Italiaii by that excellent orator and poet, Signior
Torquato Tasso, and now translated by T. K' London, 1588.

WHEREFORE brotherly love compelleth me to wryte thrugh PETER
ve gvftes of the holy gost, shewynge and enformynge how TREVERIS

J c>j J <^ ' J y-> jj .{circa 1510;.

man may be holpen to grene herbes of the gardyn, and wedys ot
ye feldys as well as by costly receptes of the potycarys prepayred.

The grete herball
whiche geveth parfyt knowledge, and understandyng of all maner
of herbes c^' theyre gracyous vertues whiche god hath ordeyned for
our prosperous welfare and helth, for they hele a7id cure all manner
of dyseases afid sekenesses that fall or mysfortune to all manner of
creatours of god created, practysed by many expert and ivyse maysters
as Avicenna <^ other etc. Also it geveth full parfyte understandynge
of the booke lately printed by m,e {Peter Treveris) named the noble
experiens of the vertuous hafid warke of surgery. — Imprinted at
London in Southwarke. MDXXVI.

— fsr\j\l\f. —

Famous Antiquary to Henry VIII, who commissioned him to search «//^'' JOHN
England's antiquities and peruse the libraries of cathedrals, abbeys, colleges LELAND—
and other places, 'where records and the secrets of antiquity were deposited' or Laylonde

travelled through England and Wales for six or seven years and embodied ^^J° ' 55 ^

the results in his ' New Years Gift ' to the King. I/is ' Itinerary ' was pub-
lished by Thomas Hearne in nine vols., at Oxford 1 710- 12.

THE Gardens within the mote, and the orchardes without,
were exceeding fair. And yn the orchardes were mounts,
opere topiario} writhen about with degrees like the turnings in

1 According to Mr Hudson Turner, ' mounts ' in English gardens date
from the period of the connexion of England with Burgundy in the 15th
century. They were contrived to enable persons in the orchard to look
over the enclosure wall, and were formed of stone, or wood 'curiously
wrought within and without, or of earth covered with fruit trees,' as Lawson,
' the Isaac Walton of gardeners,' tells us.

The topiary art {opus topiarium) came into practice in this country at the
beginning of the i6th century. — Archceological fournal. Vol. V.

58

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

cokil shelles, to come to the top without payn. — '■Itinerary^
1540 A.D. ((9/" Wressel Castle^ near How den ^ Yorkshire^

-^j\j\i\jf

ANDREAS
CCESALPINUS
OF AREZZO

(1519-1603).

Cccsalpimis called by Linnaus ' P7'imiis Verus Systematicus' ; author of
' Be Plantis Libri X VI. ' Florence, 1 583.

TN this immense multitude of plants, I see that want which is
^ most felt in any other unordered crowd if such an assemblage
be not arranged into brigades like an army, all must be tumult
and fluctuation : for the mind is overwhelmed by the confused
accumulation of things, and thus arise endless mistake and alterca-
tion. . . . For many years I have been pursuing my researches
in various regions, habitually visiting the places in which grew the
various kinds of herbs, shrubs and trees ; I have been assisted
by the labours of many friends, and by gardens established for
the public benefit,^ and containing foreign plants collected from
the most remote regions. — Wheweirs History of the Inductive
Sciences.

— A/\y\jv^ —

OLIVIER
DE SERRES,
SEIGNEUR
DU PRADEL

(1539-1619).

Agrononie, called ' The Father of Agrictdture ' — he planted white mulberry
trees in the 7'uileries Gardens under Henry IV., and throughout France, and
practically re-introduced its silk industry. \^^(), published * Treatise on the
Silk-worm,' and 1600, ' Theatre d' Agriculture.' ^

I regarded the residence of the great parent of French agriculture (at
Pradel), who was undoubtedly one of the first writers on the subject that had
then appeared in the world, with that sort of veneration, which those only can
feel who have addicted themselves strongly to some predominant pursuit, and

^ One of the first gardens directed to the public study of Botany was that of
Pisa, in 1543, by order of the Grand Duke Cosmo I. : of this Coesalpinus was
the second Director.

^ For Flemish Garden-design contemporary with De Serres, the plates in
' Hortorum Vividariorumque elegantes Formae ' by Jan Vrederman de Vries,
Antwerp, 1583, 4to, are worth consulting.

OLIVIER DE SERRES 59

find it in such moments indulged in its most exquisite feelings. Two hundred
years after his exertions, let me do honour to his memory ; he was an excellent
farmer and a true patriot, and would not have been fixed on by Henry IV. as
his chief agent in the great project of introducing the culture of silk in France,
if he had not possessed a considerable reputation ; a reputation well earned
since posterity has confirmed it. The period of his practice is too remote to gain
any thing more than a general outline of what may now be supposed to have
been his farm. The basis of it is limestone ; there is a great oak wood near
the Chateau, and many vines, with plenty of mulberries, some apparently old
enough to have been planted by the hand of the venerable genius that has
rendered the ground classic. The estate of Pradel belongs at present to the
Marquis of Mirabel, who inherits it in right of his wife, as the descendant of
De Serres. Arthur Youngs ' Travels in France' August 1 789.

/^E sont les Jardinages, qui fournissent a Pornement utile de
^-^ nostre Mesnage, innumerables especes de racines, d'herbes,
de fleurs, de fruit avec beaucoup de merveille. Aussi merveilleux
en est le Createur, donnant a Thomme tant de sortes de viandes
differentes en matiere, figure, capacite, couleur, saveur, propriete,
qu'impossible est de les pouvoir toutes discerner ni com-
prendre . . . Le Jardin excelle toute autre partie de terre
labourable, mesmes en cette particuliere propriete, qu'il rend
du fruit chacun an et a toutes heures : la ou en quelque autre
endroit que ce soit, le fonds ne rapporte qu'une seule fois
I'annee ; ou si deux, c'est tant rarement, que cela ne doit estre
mis en ligne de compte. ...

A I'imitation de telles Nations, des plus excellentes du monde
toutes sortes de gens ont honore les jardinages. Empereurs Rois,
princes et autres grands seigneurs ont este veus travailler a
ordonner de leurs propres mains, leurs jardinages, eslisans telles
peines pour soulagement en leurs grandes affaires. Leurs noms
qu'ils ont engraves en plusieurs herbes et fruicts, pour en
perpetuer la memoire monstrent combien agreables leur ont este
tels exercises. Nous les lisons en I'herbe dicte lysimachie, du roi
Lysimachus : en la gentiane, du Gentius, roi d'lllyrie : en
I'armoise, d' Artemisia, roine de Carie : en I'achilleia, d'Achilles :
en Feupatoire, du roi Eupator : en scordium, autrement dicte
I'herbe mithridates, de Mithridates roi de Pont et de Bithinie, et
en plusieurs autres. Dont est venu, qu'aujourd'hui les jardinages

6o THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

sont en autant grand credit que jamais part oute I'Europe mesrae
en France, Alemagne, Angleterre, Italie, Espaigne, sont-ils cultive
avec beaucoup d'art et de diligence. . . .

Le jardinage se distingue en quatre especes, assavoir, en
potager, bouquetier, medecinal fruictier. Le Potager fournit
toutes sortes de racines, herbes, fruicts rempans sur terre destines
k la cuisine, et autrement bons a manger, cruds et cuits. Le
bouquetier est compose de toutes sortes de plantes, herbes, fleurs,
arbustes, ageances par compartiments es parterres, et esleves en
vou^eures et cabinets, selon les inventions et fantasies des seigneurs,
plus pour plaisir que pour profit. Pour la necessite est invente
le medecinal, encores que plusieurs herbes et racines pour remede
aux maladies se cueillent indifferemment sur toutes sortes de
possessions. . . . Le fruictier, autrement appelle', verger, est celui
qui estant complante de toutes sortes d'arbres, rapporte richement
avec grande delectation, des fruicts d'infinies especes. . . . Tous
lesquels jardins, contigus et mis ensemble, seront enfermes dans
un clos, entr'eux divises par allees descouvertes ou couvertes en
treillages, plats ou voutoyes, ou autrement, ainsi qu'on les voudra
disposer. . . . Plus grand sera le seul jardin potager que les
bouquetier et medicinal ensemble, estant en cet endroit plus
requis le profit, que la simple delectation, ... En sa figure n'y a
aucune subjection car toutes sont agreables, pourveu que le
jardin soit profitable : voire la plus bigearre (bizarre) est la plus
souhaittable pour le plaisir comme ceux qui estans en pente, et
retenus par bancs et murailles traversantes, sont fort prises, ainsi
qu'avec beaucoup de lustre, paroissent les jardins du roi a Sainct-
Gerraain en Laie. . . . Le bouquetier se taillera aux revenus et
plaisirs du seigneur, car puisqu'il est destine pour le seul con-
tentement, est raisonnable que ce soyent ces deux la, que y
plantent les limites. . . .

Et a ce que la Jardinier n' aille rechercher loin des desseins
pour ses Parterres, j'ai mis ici quelque nombre de Compartiments
de diverses fagons d'entre lesquels, y en a de ceux que la Roi a
fait faire a Sainct-Germain en Laie et en ses nouveaux Jardins
des TuillerieSj et de Fontainebleau au dresser desquels M. Claude

OLIVIER DE SERRES 6i

Mollet, Jardinier de sa Majeste, a fait preuve de sa dexterite.^ —
Le Theatre (T Agriculture. 1600.

1 Claude Mollet, Head Gardener to Henri IV. and Louis XHI, — predecessor
of Le Notre and de la Quintinye — was son of the Chief Gardener of Chateau
d'Anet, where he collected rare flowers and medical herbs and enjoyed the
confidence of its owner the Due d'Aumale.

Claude Mollet was the first, in 1582, in France to create the 'parterres a
compartiments et broderie,' after the designs of the Sieur du Perac, architect
to the King, of which Olivier de Serres gives examples.

In 1595, he laid out the gardens of Saint Germain-en-Laye,^ of Monceaux and
of Fontainebleau, where by 1607 he had planted 7000 feet of fruit trees, bearing
fruit existing half a century later. In the Tuileries he made fine plantations
of Cypresses, destroyed in the winter of 1608, when the hardier box and
yew were substituted.

His work ' Theatre des Plans et Jardinages' appeared in 1652 at Paris,
with twenty-two plates of designs of parterres, bosquets, labyrinths and
palisades, invented by himself and his sons Andre, Jacques and Noel, and
was several times re-printed and translated at Stockholm and London. The
translation is sometimes attributed to his son Andre, who helped him. Mollet
was the first to apply meteorology, which he calls * Astrology,' to gardening.
Near the Plotel de Matignon, where Claude Mollet lived, behind St Thomas
of the Louvre, he had raised white Mulberries, producing in 1606 12 lbs of
silk, which he sold at 4 crowns (40 francs) the lb.

^ See Illustration in Appendix.

CHAPTER IV

ELIZABETHAN AND STUART GARDENS

JOHN Edtuaied as a S2irgeo7i — siiperititended Lord Burghleys garden for twenty

GERARDE years — lived in Holborn, where he had a large physic garden — in his yotdh
(i545"^^°7)- took a voyage to the Baltic — he dixw up letter for Lord Burleigh to University
of Ca77ibridge^ reconwiending that a physic garden be established there, with
hi7nself at its head, to encourage ' the facultie of sijupling. ' 1 596, published
catalogue of his garden in Holborn, and itt 1 597, his 'Herbal,' the woodcuts
from Frankfiirt, having served for the ' Kreuterbuch ' of Taberncemontaitus
{folio, 1588).!

A MONG the manifold creatures of God (right Honorable and
''*■ my singular good Lord) that have in all ages diversly enter-
tained many excellent wits, and drawen them to the contemplation
of the divine wisedome, none hath provoked mens studies more,
or satisfied their desires so much, as plants have done, and that
upon just and woorthie causes : For if delight may provoke mens
labour, what greater delight is there than to behold the earth
apparelled with plants, as with a robe of imbroidered worke, set
with orient pearles, and garnished with great diversitie of rare
and costlie jewels ? If this varietie and perfection of colours may
affect the eie, it is such in herbes and flowers, that no Apelles, no
Zeuxis ever could by any art expresse the like : if odours, or if
taste may worke satisfaction, they are both so soveraigne in plants,
and so comfortable, that no confection of the Apothecaries can
equall their excellent vertue. But these delights are in the outward
senses : the principal delight is in the minde, singularly enriched
with the knowledge of these visible things, setting foorth to us
the invisible wisedome and admirable workmanship of almightie
God. The delight is great, but the use greater, and joyned often

^ See Illustration in Appendix.
62

JOHN GERARDE 63

with necessitie. In the first ages of the world they were the
ordinarie meate of men, and have continued ever since of neces-
sarie use both for meates to maintaine hfe, and for medicine to
recover health. The hidden vertue of them is such, that (as
Plinie noteth)i the very brute beasts have found it out : and
(which is another use that he observeth) from thence the Diars
took the beginning of their art.

Furthermore, the necessarie use of these fruits of the Earth
doth plainly appeere by the great charge and care of almost all
men in planting and maintaining of gardens, not as ornaments
onely, but as a necessarie provision also to their houses. And
here beside the fruit, to speake againe in a word of delight;
gardens, especially such as your Honor hath, furnished with
many rare simples, do singularly delight, when in them a man
doth behold a flourishing shew of sommer beauties in the middest
of winters force, and a goodly spring of Flowers, when abroade a
leafe is not to be scene.

Beside these and other causes, there are many examples of
those that have honored this science : for to passe by a multitude
of the philosophers, it may please your Honor to call to remem-
brance that which you knowe of some noble Princes that have
joyned this studie with their most important matters of state :
Mithridates the great was famous for his knowledge herein, as
Plutarch noteth : Euan also king of Arabia, the happie garden of
the world for principall simples, wrote of this argument, as Plinie
sheweth : Diocletian might he have his praise, had he not drowned
all his honor in the blood of his persecution. To conclude this
point, the example of Salomon is before the rest and greater,
whose wisedome and knowledge was such, that he was able to
set out the nature of all plantes, from the highest Cedar to the
lowest Mosse. — The Herball, or Generall Historic of Plantes^
gathered by John Gerarde of Lojidon^ Master in Chirurgie.
1597. {Dedication to Sir Williavi Cecill Knight, Baron of
Burgleih)

^ Pliny, lib. 8, cap. 27 ; and lib. 22, cap. 2.

64 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

I list not seeke the common colours of antiquitie ; when not
withstanding the world can brag of no more ancient monument
than Paradise, and the garden of Eden : and the fruits of the
Earth may contend for seignioritie, seeing their mother was the
first creature that conceived, and they themselves the first fruit
she brought foorth. Talke of perfect happinesse or pleasure, and
what place was so fit for that, as the garden place, wherein Adam
was set, to be the Herbarist? Whither did the poets hunt for
their syncere delights, but into the gardens of Alcifwus, of Ado?iis^
and the orchards of Hesperides ? Where did they dreame that
heaven should be, but in the pleasant garden of E/yshwi ?
Whither do all men walke for their honest recreation but thither,
where the Earth hath most beneficially painted her face with
flourishing colours ? And what season of the yeere more longed
for than the Spring, whose gentle breath inticeth foorth the kindly
sweetes, and makes them yeeld their fragrant smells ? — Ibid. Pre-
face ' to the courteous and well-ivilling Readers'

JOHN LYLY— /^NE of the Ladies who delighted much in mirth, seeing
'' the Enphiiisr ^J Philautus behold Cajnilla so stedfastly, saide unto him:
''^^^"^ Gentleman, what floure like you best in all this border, heere

be faire Roses, sweete Violets, fragrant primroses, heere wil be
Jilly-floures, Carnations, sops in wine, sweet Johns, and what
may either please you for sight, or delight you with savour : loth
we are you should have a Posie of all, yet willing to give you
one, not yat which shal looke best, but such a one as you shal
lyke best.

Philautus omitting no opportunitie, yat might either manifest
his affection, or commend his wit, answered hir thus :

Lady, of so many sweet floures to chuse the best, it is harde,
seeing they be all so good. If I shoulde preferre the fairest before
the sweetest, you would happely imagine that either I were stopped
in the nose, or wanton in the eyes ; if the sweetnesse before the
beautie, then would you gesse me either to lyve with sauours, or

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY ^6s

to have no judgement in colours; but to tell my minde (upon
correction be it sp6ken), of all flowers, I love a faire woman.

In deede, quoth Flavia (for so was she named), faire women
are set thicke, but they come up thinne ; and when they begin
to budde, they are gathered as though they wer blowne. Of such
men as you are, Gentleman, who thinke greene grasse will never
be drye Hay, but when ye flower of their youth (being slipped too
young) shall fade before they be olde, then I dare saye, you would
chaunge your faire flower for a weede, and the woman you loved
then, for the worst violet you refuse now.

Lady, aunswered Philautus, it is a signe that beautie was no
niggard of hir slippes in this gardein, and very enuious to other
grounds, seing heere are so many in one Plot, as I shall neuer
finde more in all I^aly, whether the reason be the heate which
killeth them, or the country that cannot beare them. As for
plucking them up soone, in yat we shew the desire we have to
them, not the malyce. Where you conjecture that men haue no
respect to things when they be olde, I cannot consent to your
saying ; for well do they know that it fareth with women as it
doth with the Mulbery tree, which the elder it is, the younger
it seemeth ; and therefore hath it growen to a Prouerb in Ifa/y,
where one seeth a woman striken in age to looke amiable, he
saith she hath eaten a Snake : so that I must of force follow mine
olde opinion, that I love fresh flowers well, but faire women better.
— ' Euphues and his England.^

— WVVv—

D UT Palladiiis having gotten his health, and only staying there SIR
^ to be in place, where he might hear answer of the ships set oyn^p^
forth: Kalaiider one afternoon let him abroad to a well-arrayed (1554- 1586).
ground he had behind his house, which he thought to show him
before his going, as the place himself more than in any other,
dehghted in. The backside of the house was neither field,
garden, nor orchard ; or, rather, it was both field, garden, and
orchard : for as soon as the descending of the stairs had delivered

E

66 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

them down, they came into a place cunningly set with trees of the
most taste-pleasing fruits ; but scarcely they had taken that into
their consideration, but that they were suddenly stept into a
delicate Green ; of each side of the Green a Thicket, and behind
the Thickets again new Beds of Flowers, which being under the
Trees, the Trees were to them a Pavilion, and they to the Trees
a Mosai'cal floor ; so that it seemed that Art therein would needs
be delightful, by counterfeiting his enemy Error, ard making order
in confusion.

In the midst of all the place was a fair Pond, whose shaking
Crystal was a perfect Mirror to all the other beauties, so that it
bare shew of two Gardens ; one indeed, the other in shadows ;
and in one of the Thickets was a fine Fountain made thus : a
naked Venus of white Marble, wherein the Graver had used such
cunning, that the natural blue veins of the Marble were framed in
fit places, to set forth the beautiful veins of her body. At her
breast she had her Babe .'F^neas, who seemed (having begun to
suck) to leave that, to look upon her fair Eyes, which smiled at
the Babe's folly, meanwhile the breast running. Hard by was
a house of Pleasure, built for a Summer retiring-place ; whither
Kala7ider leading him, he found a square room full of delightful
Pictures, made by the most excellent Workmen of Greece.

So Gyfiecia herself, bringing me to my Lodging, anon after I
was invited and brought down to sup with them in the Garden, a
place not fairer in natural ornaments than artificial inventions ;
where, in a Banquetting house, among certain pleasant Trees,
whose heads seemed curled with the wrappings about of Vine-
branches, the Table was set rear to an excellent Water-work;
for, by the Casting of the Water in most cunning manner, it
makes (with the shining of the Sun upon it) a perfect Rain-bow,
not more pleasant to the Eye than to the Minde, so sensible to
see the proof of the Heavenly Iris. There were Birds also made
so finely, that they did not only deceive the sight with their figure,
but the hearing with their Songs, which the watry Instruments did

FRANCIS BACON ^^

make their Gorge deliver. The Table at which we sate was round,
which being fast to the Floor whereon we sate, and that divided
from the rest of the Buildings, with turning a Vice (which Basilius
at first did to make me sport), the Table, and we about the Table,
did all turn round, by means of Water which ran under, and carried
it about as a mill. — ' The Coimtess of Pembi'oke's Arcadia^^ Book I.

— WWv—

GOD Almighty first planted a Garden ; and indeed it is the FRANCIS
purest of humane pleasure. It is the greatest refreshment ^^J^^^^^,,^
to the Spirits of Man, without which Buildings and Palaces (1561-1626).
are but gross Handy-works. And a Man shall ever see, that
when Ages grow to Civility and Elegancy, Men come to build
stately, sooner than to garden finely : as if Gardening were the
Greater Perfection. I do hold it in the Royal Ordering of
Gardens, there ought to be Gardens for all the Months in the
Year, in which, severally, things of Beauty may be then in season.

For December and January, and the latter part of November,
you must take such things as are green all Winter : Holly, Ivy,
Bays, Juniper, Cypress-Trees, Yews, Pine-Apple Trees, Fir-Trees,
Rosemary, Lavender, Periwinckle, the White, the Purple, and
the Blue, Germander, Flags, Orange-Trees, Limon-Trees, and
Myrtles, if they be stirred, and Sweet Marjoram warm set.

There foUoweth, for the latter part of January and February,
the Mezerion Tree, which then blossoms, Crocus Vernus, both
the Yellow and the Grey, Prim-Roses, Anemones, the Early
Tulippa, Hiacynthus Orientalis, Chamairis, Frettellaria.

For March, there come Violets, specially the Single Blue,
which are the Earliest, the yellow Daffadil, the Daisy, the
Almond-Tree in blossom, the Peach-Tree in blossom, the
Cornelian-Tree in blossom, Sweet Briar.^

In April follow the double White Violet, the Wall-Flower, the
Stock-Gilly-Flower, the Cowslip, Flower-de-Lices, and Lilies of
all natures, Rosemary-Flowers, the Tulippa, the Double Piony,
the pale Daffadill, the French Honey-Suckle, the Cherry-Tree

68 THE PRAISE 6f GARDENS

in blossom, the Dammasin and Plum-Trees in blossom, the
White Thorn in leaf, the Lelack Tree.

In May and June, come Pinks of all Sorts, specially the
Blush- Pink, Roses of all kinds (except the Musk, which comes
later), Honey-Suckles, Strawberries, Bugloss, Columbine, the
French Marygold, Flos Africanus, Cherry-Tree in fruit, Ribes,
Figs in fruit, Rasps, Vine-Flowers, Lavender in Flowers, the
Sweet Satyrion with the White Flower, Herba Muscaria, Lillium
ConvalUum, the Apple-Tree in blossom.

In July come Gilly-Flowers of all Varieties, Musk-Roses, and
the Lime-Tree in blossom. Early Pears and Plumbs in fruit,
Ginnitings, Quodlings.

In August, come Plumbs of all sorts in Fruit, Pears, Apricocks,
Barberries, Filberds, Musk-Melons, Monkshoods of all Colours.

In September come Grapes, Apples, Poppies of all Colours,
Peaches, Melo-Cotones, Nectarines, Cornellians, Wardens, Quinces.
In October and the beginning of November come Servises,
Medlars, BuUaces ; Roses Cut or Removed to come late. Holly-
oaks, and such like.

These particulars are for the climate of London : But my
meaning is perceived, that you may have Ver Perpetuum^ as
the place affords.

And because the Breath of Flowers is far Sweeter in the Air
(where it comes and goes, like the Warbling of Musick) than
in the Hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that DeHght, than
to know what be the Flowers and Plants that do best perfume
the Air. Roses, Damask and Red, are fast Flowers of their
Smells, so that you may walk by a whole Row of them, and
find nothing of their Sweetness ; yea, though it be in a morn-
ing Dew. Bays likewise yield no Smell as they grow, Rose-
mary little, nor Sweet-Marjoram. That, which above all others,
yields the sweetest smell in the Air, is the Violet, specially the
White double Violet, which comes twice a year, about the middle
of April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the Musk
Rose, then the Strawberry Leaves dying with a most excellent
Cordial Smell. Then the Flower of the Vines; it is a little

FRANCIS BACON 69

Dust, like the Dust of a Bent, which grows upon the Cluster
in the first coming forth. Then Sweet-Briar, then Wall-Flowers,
which are very delightful to be set under a Parlour, or lower
Chamber Window. Then Pinks, especially the Matted Pink,
and Clove Gilly-Flower. Then the Flowers of the Lime-Tree.
Then the Honey-Suckles, so they be somewhat afar off. Of
Bean-Flowers I speak not, because they are Field-Flowers. But
those which perfume the Air most delightfully, not passed by
as the rest, but being Trodden upon and Crushed, are three :
that is Burnet, Wild-Time, and Water-Mints. Therefore you
are to set whole Alleys of them, to have the Pleasure when
you walk or tread.

For Gardens (speaking of those which are indeed Prince-like,
as we have done of Buildings), the Contents ought not well to
be under thirty Acres of Ground, and to be divided into three
parts ; a Green in the entrance, a Heath or Desart in the going
forth, and the Garden in the midst, besides Alleys on both sides.
And I like well, that four Acres of Ground be assigned to the
Green, six to the Heath, four and four to either Side, and twelve
to the Main Garden. The Green hath two pleasures; the one
because nothing is more pleasant to the Eye than GreeA Grass
kept finely shorn ; the other because it will give you a fair Alley
in the midst, by which you may go in front upon a Stately Hedge,
which is to enclose the Garden. But because the Alley will be
long, and in great Heat of the Year or Day, you ought not to
buy the shade in the Garden, by going in the Sun through the
Green ; therefore you are, of either Side the Green, to plant a
Covert Alley upon Carpenter's Work, about twelve foot in Height,
by which you may go in shade into the Garden. As for the
making of Knots or Figures, with Divers Coloured Earths, that
they may lie under the Windows of the House, on that Side
which the Garden stands, they be but Toys, you may see as
good sights many times in Tarts. The Garden is best to be
Square, Encompassed on all the four Sides, with a Stately Arched
Hedge : the Arches to be upon Pillars of Carpenter's Work, of
some ten foot high, and six foot broad, and the Spaces between

70 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

of the same Dimension with the Breadth of the Arch. Over
the Arches let there be an Entire Hedge, of some four foot
high, framed also upon Carpenter's Work, and upon the Upper
Hedge, over every Arch, a little Turret with a Bell)^, enough
to receive a Cage of Birds ; and over every Space between the
Arches some other little Figure, with broad Plates of Round
Coloured Glass, gilt, for the Sun to play upon. But this
Hedge, I intend to be raised upon a Bank, not steep, but
gently slope, of some six foot, set all with Flowers. Also I
understand, that this Square of the Garden should not be the
whole breadth of the Ground, but to leave on either side Ground
enough for diversity of Side Alleys unto which the two Covert
Alleys of the Green may deliver you, but there must be no
Alleys with Hedges at either End of this Great Inclosure : not
at the Hither End, for letting your Prospect upon this fair
Hedge from the Green; nor at the Further End for letting
your Prospect from the Hedge through the Arches upon the
Heath.

For the ordering of the Ground within the Great Hedge, I
leave it to Variety of Device. Advising nevertheless, that what-
soever form you cast it into ; first it be not too busie, or full of
Work ; wherein I, for my part, do not like Images cut out in
Juniper, or other Garden-stuff; they are for Children. Little
low Hedges, round like Welts, with some pretty Pyramids, I
like well ; and in some places. Fair Columns upon Frames of
Carpenter's Work. I would also have the Alleys spacious and
fair. You may have closer Alleys upon the Side Grounds, but
none in the Main Garden.

I wish also in the very middle a fair Mount, with three Ascents
and Alleys, enough for four to walk abreast, which I would have
to be perfect Circles, without any Bulwarks or Imbossments, and
the whole Mount to be thirty foot high, and some fine Banquetting
House, with some Chimneys neatly cast, and without too much
Glass.

For Fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Refreshment, but
Pools mar all, and make the Garden unwholesome, and full of

.^1

FRANCIS BACON 71

Flies and Frogs. Fountains I intend to be of two Natures : the
one that sprinkleth or spouteth Water, the other a fair Receipt of
Water, of some thirty or forty foot square, but without Fish, or
Slime, or Mud. For the first, the Ornaments of Images Gilt, or
of Marble, which are in use, do well ; but the main matter is, so
to convey the Water, as it never stay, either in the Bowls, or in
the Cistern, that the Water be never by rest discoloured, Green,
or Red, or the like; or gather any Mossiness or Putrefaction.
Besides that, it is to be cleansed every day by the hand; also
some steps up to it, and some Fine Pavement about it, doth well.
As for the other kind of Fountain, which we may call a Bathing
Pool, it may admit much Curiosity and Beauty, wherewith we will
not trouble ourselves, as, that the Bottom be finely paved, and
with Images, the Sides likewise; and withal Embellished with
coloured Glass, and such things of Lustre; Encompassed also
with fine Rails of low Statua's. But the main point is the same,
which we mentioned in the former kind of Fountain, which is,
that the Water be in perpetual Motion, fed by a Water higher
than the Pool, and delivered into it by fair Spouts, and then
discharged away under Ground by some Equality of Bores, that
it stay little. And for fine Devices, of Arching Water with-
out spilling, and making it rise in Several forms (of Feathers,
Drinking Glasses, Canopies, and the like) they be pretty things
to look on, but nothing to Health and Sweetness.

For the Heath, which was the third part of our Plot, I wish it
to be framed, as much as may be, to a Natural Wildness. Trees
I would have none in it, but some Thickets, made only of Sweet-
Briar and Honey-suckle, and some Wild-Vine amongst ; and the
Ground set with Violets, Strawberries and Primroses : for these
are Sweet, and prosper in the Shade. And these to be in the
Heath, here and there, not in any Order. I like also little
Heaps, in the Nature of Mole-Hills (such as are in Wild-Heaths)
to be set, some with Wild-Thyme, some with Pinks, some with
Germander, that gives a good Flower to the Eye ; some with
Periwinkle, some with Violets, some with Strawberries, some with
Cowslips, some with Daisies, some with Red-Roses, some with

72 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Lilium Convallium, some with Sweet-Williams Red, some with
Bear's-Foot, and the Uke Low Flowers, being withall Sweet and
Sightly. Part of which Heaps, to be with Standards, of little
Bushes prickt upon their top, and part without ; the Standards
to be Roses, Juniper, Holly, Bear-berries, (but here and there,
because of the smell of their blossom). Red Currans, Goose-
berries, Rosemary, Bays, Sweet-Briar, and such like. But
these Standards to be kept with Cutting, that they grow not
out of course.

For the Side Grounds, you are to fill them with variety of
Alleys, private, to give a full shade, some of them, wheresoever
the Sun be. You are to frame some of them, likewise for shelter,
that when the wind blows sharp, you may walk as in a Gallery.
And those Alleys must be likewise hedged at both Ends, to keep
out the Wind, and these closer Alleys must be ever finely
Gravelled, and no grass, because of going wet In many of
these Alleys likewise, you are to set Fruit Trees of all sorts ; as
well upon the Walls, as in Ranges. And this would be generally
observed, that the Borders wherein you plant your Fruit-Trees
be fair and large, and low, and not steep, and set with fine
Flowers, but thin and sparingly, lest they deceive the trees.
At the end of both the side Grounds, I would have a Mount
of some pretty Height, leaving the Wall of the Enclosure breast-
high, to look abroad into the Fields.

For the Main Garden, I do not deny, but there should be some
fair Alleys ranged on both sides with Fruit-Trees, and some pretty
Tufts of Fruit-Trees and Arbors with Seats, set in some decent
Order ; but these to be by no means set too thick ; but to leave
the Main Garden, so as it be not close, but the Air open and free ;
for as for Shade I would have you rest upon the Alleys of the
Side Grounds, there to walk, if you be disposed, in the Heat of
the Year or Day : but to make account, that the Main Garden is
for the more temperate parts of the year, and in the Heat of
Summer, for the Morning and the Evening, or Over-cast
days.

For Aviaries, I like them not, except they be of that largeness,

PAUL HENTZNER ^

as they may be turfed, and have Living Plants and Bushes set in
them, that the Birds may have more scope, and natural Nestling,
and that no foulness appear in the floor of the Aviary. So I have
made a Plat-form of a Princely Garden, partly by Precept, partly
by Drawing, not a Model, but some general Lines of it, and in
this I have spared for no Cost.

But it is nothing for Great Princes, that for the most part taking
advice with Work-men, with no less Cost, set their things together,
and sometimes add Statua's and such things, for State and
Magnificence, but nothing to the true pleasure of a Garden. —
Essays : ' Of Garde?tsJ

— "''AAA^—

Jurisconsult and Traveller: author of ^ Itinerariiim Germanue, Gallia , PAUL

Italia:,' Nuremberg, i6i2. HENTZNER

(155S-1623).
npHE first was Theobalds, belongmg to Lord Burleigh the

* Treasurer : In the gallery was painted the genealogy of

the Kings of England ; from this place one goes into the

garden, encompassed with a ditch full of water, large enough

for one to have the pleasure of going in a boat, and rowing

between the shrubs ; here are great variety of trees and plants ;

labyrinths made with a great deal of labour; a jet d'eau, with

its bason of white marble ; and columns and pyramids of wood

and other materials up and down the garden : After seeing

these, we were led by the gardiner into the summer-house,

in the lower part of which, built semi-circularly, are the twelve

Roman emperors in white marble, and a table of touchstone;

the upper part of it is set round with cisterns of lead, into which

the water is conveyed through pipes, so that fish may be

kept in them, and in summer time they are very convenient

for bathing ; in another room for entertainment very near this,

and joined to it by a little bridge, was an oval table of red

marble.

Whitehall. '

In a garden joining to this palace, there is a Jet d'eau, with

74 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

a sun-dial, which while strangers are looking at, a quantity of
water forced by a wheel, which the gardiner turns at a distance,
through a number of little pipes, plentifully sprinkles those
that are standing round.

Oxford.

As soon as Grace is said after each meal, every one is at
liberty, either to retire to his own chambers, or to walk in
the College garden, there being none that has not a delight-
ful one.

Hampton Court.^

Afterwards we were led into the gardens, which are most
pleasant, here we saw rosemary so planted and nailed to the
walls as to cover them entirely, which is a method exceeding
common in England.

Nonesuch (a Royal Retreat in a place formerly called
CuDDiNGTON, a very healthful situation chosen by King
Henry VHI.).

The palace itself is so encompassed with parks full of deer,
delicious gardens, groves ornamented with trellis-work, cabinets
of verdure, and walks so embrowned by trees, that it seems
to be a place pitched upon by Pleasure herself, to dwell in
along with Health.

In the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and
pyramids of marble, two fountains that spout water one round
the other like a pyramid, upon which are perched small birds
that stream water out of their bills : In the grove of Diana
is a very agreeable fountain, with Actaeon turned into a stag,
as he was sprinkled by the goddess and her nymphs, with
inscriptions.

There is besides another pyramid of marble full of concealed

^ See Illustration in Appendix.

I

MICHAEL DRAYTON 75

pipes, which spirt upon all who come within their reach. —
A Journey {?ito England in the year 1598.^

-^AAA'^—

n OSAMOND'S Labyrinth, whose Ruins, together with her Well, MICHAEL
••^ being paved with square Stone in the bottom, and also /rrfi^ifi^r
her Tower, from which the Labyrinth did run (are yet remaining)
was altogether under ground, being Vaults Arched and Walled
with Brick and Stone, almost inextricably wound one within
another, by which, if at any time her Lodging were laid about
by the Queen, she might easily avoid eminent Peril, and if
need be, by secret issues take the Air abroad, many Furlongs
round about Woodstock in Oxfordshire, wherein it was situated.
Thus much for Rosamond's Labyrinth. — ''England's Heroical
Epistles.^ Annotations to ' The Epistle of Rosafnond to King
Henry II'

—fj\f\j\h- —

Apothecary to James I. ; for his " Theai7-e of Plants " Charles /. made him JOHN

" Botanicus Regius Primarius ; " he spent nearly /\.o years in travelling. PARKINSON

. (1567- 1 640).

A LTHOUGH many men must be content with any plat of

•'*' ground, of what form or quantity soever it be, more or
less, for their Garden, because a more large or convenient can-
not be had to their habitation : Yet I perswade myself, that
Gentlemen of the better sort and (juality, will provide such a
parcel of ground to be laid out for their Garden, and in such
convenient manner, as may be fit and answerable to the degree
they hold. . . . The orbicular or round form is held in its own

^ Horace Walpole, who reprinted the text of this work with the translation
at his private press at Strawberry Hill in 1757, remarks in his Advertisement :
' We are apt to think that Sir William Temple, and King William, were in a
manner the introducers of gardening into England. By the description of
Lord Burleigh's gardens at Theobalds, and of those at Nonsuch, we find
that the magnificent, though false taste, was known here as early as the
reigns of Henry VIIL, and his daughter. There is scarce an unnatural and
sumptuous impropriety at Versailles which we do not find in Hentzner's
description of the gardens above mentioned.'

76 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

proper existence to be the most absolute form, containing within
it all other forms whatsoever ; but few I think will choose such
a proportion to be joyned to their habitation, being not accepted
any where I think, but for the general Garden to the University
at Padua. . . . The four square form is the most usually accepted
with all, and doth best agree to any man's dwelling, being (as
I said before) behind the house, all the back windows thereof
opening into it. Yet if it be longer than the breadth, or broader
than the length, the proportion of walks, squares, and knots
may be soon brought to the square form and be so cast, as
the beauty thereof may be no lesse than the four square pro-
portion, or any other better form, if any be. To form it there-
fore with walks, cross the middle both wayes, and round about
it also with hedges, with squares, knots and trails, or any other
work within the four square parts, is according as every man's
conceit alloweth of it, and they will be at the charge : For
there may be therein walks either open or close, either publick
or private, a Maze, or Wildernesse, a Rock, or Mount, with a
Fountain in the midst thereof to convey water to every part
of the Garden, either in Pipes under the ground or brought by
hand, and emptied into large Cisterns, or great Turky Jars,
placed in convenient places, to serve as an ease to water the
nearest parts thereunto. Arbours also being both graceful and
necessary, may be appointed in such convenient places, as
the corners or elsewhere, as may be most fit, to serve both for
shadow and rest after walking. And because many are desirous
to see the forms of trails, knots, and other compartiments, and
because the open knots are more proper for these Out-landish
flowres ; I have here caused some to be drawn, to satisfy their
desires j . . . Let every man therefore, if he like of these, take
what may please his minde, or out of these or his own conceit
frame any other to his fancy, or cause others to be done, as
he liketh best, observing this decorum^ that according to his
ground he do cast out his knots, with convenient room for
alhes and walks ; for the fairer and larger your allies and walks
be, the more grace your Garden shall have, the lesse harm

THOMAS HILL 77

the herbs and flowers shall receive, by passing by them that
grow next unto the allies sides, and the better shall your Weeders
cleanse both the beds and the allies. — ' Paradisi in Sole Paradisiis
Terresti'is (= The Earthly Paradise of Park-in-Sim.), or a garden
of all sorts of pleasant flowers,' a^r., with engraved title-page, a
portrait and 109 woodcuts {iGig, folio).

A hack-writer on Dreams, Physiognomy, Mysteries, Astronomy and Gar- THOMAS HILL
dening ; author of ^ A most briefe and pleasaunt Treaty se teachyngc howe to ^^ DYDYMUS
Dress, Sowe, and Set a Garden,' London, Svo, 1563; and 'The profitable ^ }^ A l\c.

Arte of Gai'dening,' 1567 ; and under the Latinized ttame of ' Dydymns
Monntaine' he published ^ The Gardener's Labyrinth' (157 1, \to, ^Ijicll
^^ettcr), and ' The Second Part' in 1577. ' The Gardener's Labyrinth' was
re-edited by H. Dethycke his friend, in 1586.

"npHE husbandman or Gardener shal enjoy a most commodiouse
* and delectable garden, whiche bothe knoweth, can, and will
orderly dresse the same : yet not sufficient is it to a Gardener,
that he knoweth, or would the furtherance of the Garden, without
a cost bestowed, which the workes and labours of the same
require : nor the will againe of the workeman, in doing and
bestowing of charges, shall smally avayle, without he have both
arte and skill in the same. For that cause, it is the chiefest
ppynt in every facultie and busines, to understand and know
what to begin and follow : as the learned Columella out of
Vai-ronianus Tremellius aptly uttereth. The person which shall
enjoy or have in a readinesse these three, and will purposedly
or with diligence frame to him a well dressed Garden, shall after
obtayne these two commodities, as utilitie and delight : the
utilitie, yeeldeth the plentie of Herbes, floures, and fruytes
right delectable : but the pleasure of the same procureth a
delight, and (as Varro writeth) a jucunditie of minde. For
that cause a Garden shal workemanly be handled and dressed
unto the necessarie use and commoditie of man's life, next for
health, and the recoverie of strength by sicknesse feebled : as
the singular Palladius Rutilius hath learnedly uttered, and the
skilful Florentinus, that wrote cunningly of husbandry in the

78 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Greek tunge, certayne yeeres before him : Lastly by sight unto
delectation, and jucunditie through the fragrancie of smell : but
most of all, that the same may furnishe the owners, and husbande
mans table, with sundry seemely and dayntie dishes, to him of
small coste. The Garden grounde (if the same may be) ought
rather to be placed neere hande, whereby the owner or Gardener
may with more ease be partaker of such commodities growing in
the garden, and bothe oftner resorte and use his diHgence in the
same : So that this is the whole care and duetie required of every
owner and Gardener in their plot of ground. — The Gardener's
Labyrt?tth. a.d. 1577.

— "AA/Vj—

LEONARD C/erk of Kitchen in house of Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury: author of
MASCHAL < ^ Booke of the Arte and manerhowe to plant and graffe all sortes of Trees^^
{d. 1589). 1572; 'On the Government of Cattle'' {luith portrait), 1596, a later edition

(1680) being called " The Countryman's Jewel.''

WILLIAM Writer on gardenijig, whose book 'A new Orchard and Garden,'' he says
LAWSON ^as the result of df% years' experience. It appeared in 1618, and earned hiju
c. 1570-1618). ^^^ ^^^j^^ ^jr i fji^ j^aac Walton of Gardeners.'

THE very works of, and in an Orchard and Garden, are better
than the ease and rest of and from other laboures. When
God had made man after his owne Image, in a perfect state,
and would have him to represent himselfe in authoritie, tran-
quihtie, and pleasure upon the Earth, He placed him in Paradise.
What was Paradise 2 But a Garden and Orchard of trees and
hearbs, full of all pleasure? and nothing there but delights.
The gods of the Earth, resembling the great God of heaven in
authoritie. Majestic, and abundance of all things, wherein is
their most delight ? And whether doe they withdraw themselves
from the troublesome affayres of their estate, being tyred with
the hearing and judging of litigious Controversies? choked (as
it were), with the close ayres of their sumptuous buildings, their
stomacks cloyed with varietie of Banquets, their eares filled and
over-burthened with tedious discoursings. Whither? but into

WILLIAM LAWSON 79

their Orchards? made and prepared, dressed and destinated for
that purpose to renew and refresh their sences, and to call home
their over-wearied spirits. Nay, it is (no doubt) a comfort to
them, to set open their Cazements into a most delicate Garden
and Orchard, whereby they may not only see that, wherein they
are so much delighted, but also to give fresh, sweete, and pleasant
ayre to their Galleries and Chambers.

What can your eye desire to see, your eares to heare, your
mouth to taste, or your nose to smell, that is not to be had in
an Orchard ? with abundance and variety ? What more delight-
some than an infinite varietie of sweet smelling flowers ? decking
with sundry colours the greene mantle of the Earth, the universal!
Mother of us all, so by them bespotted, so dyed, that all the
world cannot sample them, and wherein it is more fit to admire
the Dyer, than imitate his workemanship. Colouring not onely
the earth, but decking the ayre, and sweetning every breath and
spirit.

The Rose red, damaske, velvet, and double double province
Rose, the sweet muske Rose double and single, the double and
single white Rose. The faire and sweet senting Woodbind,
double and single. Purple Cowslips, and double Cowslips,
Primrose double and single. The Violet nothing behinde the
best, for smelling sweetly. And 1000 more will provoke your
content.

And all these, by the skill of your Gardiner, so comely, and
orderly placed in your Borders and Squares, and so intermingled,
that none looking thereon, cannot but wonder, to see, what Nature
corrected by Art can doe.

When you behold in divers corners of your Orchard Mounts of
stone, or wood curiously wrought within and without, or of earth
covered with fruit trees : Kentish Cherry, Damsons, plummes, etc.
With stares of precious workmanship And in some corner (or
more) a true Dyall or Clock, and some Anticke works, and
especially silver s(o)unding Musique, mixt Instruments and
voyces, gracing all the rest : How will you be rapt with delight ?

Large walks, broad and long, close and open, like the Teftipe

8o THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

groves in Thessalte, raysed with gravell and sand, having seats and
banks of Camamile, all this delights the minde, and brings health
to the body.

View now with delight the works of your owne hands, your
fruit trees of all sorts, loaden with sweet blossomes, and fruit of
all tasts, operations, and coloures ; your trees standing in comely
order which way soever you looke.

Your borders on every side hanging and drooping with Feberries,
Raspberries, Barberries, Currens, and the roots of your trees
powdred with Strawberries, red, white, and greene, what a pleasure
is this?

Your Gardiner can frame your lesser wood to the shape of men
armed in the field, ready to give battell : or swift running Grey
hounds : or of well sented and true running Hounds, to chase the
Deere, or hunt the Hare. This kinde of hunting shall not waste
your corne, nor much your coyne.

Mazes well framed a man's height, may perhaps make your
friend wander in gathering of berries, till he cannot recover him-
selfe without your helpe.

To have occasion to Exercise within your Orchard : it shall be
a pleasure to have a Bowling Alley, or rather (which is more
manly, and more healthfull) a payre of Buttes, to stretch your
armes.

Rosemary and sweet Eglantine are seemly ornaments about a
Doore or Window, so is Woodbine.

Looke Chap. 5 and you shall see the forme of a Conduict. It
there were two or more it were not amisse.

And in mine opinion, I could highly commend your Orchard,
if eyther thorow it, or hard by it there should runne a pleasant
River with silver streames : you might sit in your Mount, and
angle a peckled Trout, or a sleightie Eele, or some other Fish.
Or Moats, whereon you might row with a Boat, and fish with Nets.

Store of Bees in a dry and warme Bee-house, comely made of
Firboords, to sing, and sit, and feede upon your flowers and
sprouts, make a pleasant noyse and sight. For cleanly and
innocent Bees, of all other things, love and become, and thrive in

WILLIAM LAWSON 81

an Orchard. If they thrive (as they must needs if your Gardiner
be skilful], and love them : for they love their friends, and hate
none but their Enemies) they will besides the pleasure, yeeld
great profit, to pay him his wages. Yea, the increase of tw^enty
Stocks, or Stooles with other fees will keep your Orchard. You
need not doubt their stings, for they hurt not, whom they know,
and they know their keeper and acquaintance. If you like not
to come amongst them, you neede not doubt them : for but neere
their store, and in their owne defence, they will not fight, and in
that case onely (and who can blame them ?) they are manly and
fight desperately. Some (as that Honourable Lady at Hack?ies^
Whose name doth much grace mine Orchard) use to make seats
for them in the Stone wall of their Orchard or Garden, which is
good, but wood is better. A vine over-shadowing a seat is very
comely, though her Grapes with us ripe slowly.

One chiefe grace that adornes an Orchard I cannot let slippe.
A broode of Nightingales, who with their several notes and tunes,
with a strong delightsome voyce, out of a weake body, will beare
you company night and day. She loves (and lives in) hots of
wood in her heart. She will help you to cleanse your trees of
Caterpillars, and all noysome wormes and flyes. The gentle
Robbin-red-brest will helpe her, and in Winter in the coldest
stormes will keepe a part.

Neither will the Silly Wren be behind in Summer, with her
distinct whistle (like a sweet Recorder) to cheere your spirits.

The Black-bird and Threstle (for I take it the Thrush sings
not, but devoures) sing loudly in a May morning, and delights
the Eare much (and you neede not want their company, if you
have ripe Cherryes or Berries, and would as gladly as the rest doe
you pleasure :) But I had rather want their company than my
fruit.

What shall I say? 1000 of delights are in an Orchard : and
sooner shall I be weary, then I can reckon the least part of that
pleasure, which one, that hath and loves an Orchard may finde
therein.

What is there, of all these few that I have reckoned, which

F

82 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

doth not please the eye, the eare, the smell and taste? And
by these sences, as Organes, Pipes, and Windovves, these
delights are carryed to refresh the gentle, generous, and noble
minde.

To conclude, what joy may you have, that you living to such
an age, shall see the blessings of God on your labours, while you
live, and leave behind you to your heires, or successors (for God
will make heires) such a worke, that many ages after your death,
shall record your love to your Country. And the rather, when you
consider, to what a length of time your worke is like to last. — ' A
New Orchard and Gardeti. ' 1 6 1 8 . ^

— -vaAAA' —

ROBERT ^0,3 Clerk of the Cowtcil- Chamber Door and Gentleman Usher, tender the

1^ANE,HAM patrona^'e of the Earl of Leicester. He is the author of a letter describing

(A 1575)' the ^ Entertainjuejit unto the Queens Majesty at Killingworth Castle in

Warwicksheer in this Somers Progress, 1575,' which is used by Sir Walter

Scott in ' Kenilworth ' and characte7'ised by hivi as ' A very diverting Tract,

written by as great a Coxcomb as ever blotted paper.'

UNTO this, his Honor's (the Earl of Leicester's) exquisite
appointment of a beautiful garden, an acre or more in
quantity, that lieth on the north there : Whereon hard all along
by the Castle wall is reared a pleasant terrace, ten feet high, and
twelve feet broad, even under foot, and fresh of fine grass ; as is
also the side thereof towards the garden : In which, by sundry
equal distances, with obelisks and spheres, and white bears, all of
stone upon their curious bases, by goodly shew were set ; To these,
two fine arbours redolent by sweet trees and flowers, at each end
one, the garden plot under that, with fair alleys, green by grass,
even voided from the borders on both sides, and some (for change)
with sand, not light, or too soft, or soily by dust, but smooth and
firm, pleasant to walk on, as a sea-shore when the water is availed.
Then, much gracified by due proportion of four even quarters ; in

1 This work usually forms part of Gervase Markham's ' A way to get
Wealth,' which went through many editions.

ROBERT LANEHAM 83

the midst of each, upon a base of two feet square, and high, seemly
bordered of itself, a square pilaster rising pyramidically fifteen feet
high. Symmetrically pierced through from a foot beneath to two
feet of the top : whereupon, for a Capital, an orb of ten inches
thick ; every one of these, with its base, from the ground to the
top, of one whole piece ; hewn out of hard porphyry, and with
great art and heed (think me) thither conveyed and there erected.
Where, further also, by great cast and cost, the sweetness of savour
on all sides, made so respirant from the redolent plants, and
fragrant herbs and flowers, in form, colour, and quantity so
deliciously variant ; and fruit-trees bedecked with apples, pears,
and ripe cherries. . . .

A garden then so appointed, as wherein aloft upon sweet
shadowed walk of terrace, in heat of summer to feel the pleasant
whisking wind above, or delectable coolness of the fountain-spring
beneath ; to taste of delicious strawberries, cherries, and other
fruits, even from their stalks ; to smell such fragrancy of sweet
odours, breathing from the plants, herbs, and flowers ; to hear such
natural melodious music and tunes of birds ; to have in eye for
mirth sometime these underspringing streams ; then, the woods,
the waters (for both pool and chase were hard at hand in sight),
the deer, the people (that out of the East arbour in the base
Court, also at hand in view), the fruit-trees, the plants, the herbs,
the flowers, the change in colours, the birds flittering, the fountain
streaming, the fish swimming, all in such delectable variety, order,
and dignity ; whereby, at one moment, in one place, at hand,
without travel, to have so full fruition of so many God's blessings,
by entire delight unto all senses (if all can take) at once ; for
etymon of the word worthy to be called Paradise : and though
not so goodly as Paradise, for want of the fair rivers, yet better
a great deal by the lack of so unhappy a tree. Argument most
certain of a right noble mind, that in this sort could have thus all
contrived. — Letter describing the Pageants at Kenilworth Castle,

1575-

84 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

SIR Was educated at Wmchestej' and Oxford, then travelled for nine years ^ one

HENRY y^ar in France, and at Geneva, where he was acquainted with Theodore Beza

/AC A \ '^^^ Isaac Casaubon ; three years in Germany and five in Italy, where

\ 3 6^)' {^(K^^ording to Isaac Walton), both in Ro7ne, Venice, and Florence he became

acquainted with the most eminent 7?ienfor learning, and all manner of arts, as

picture, sculpture, chemistry, architecture, and other manual arts: on his

return became Secretary to the Earl of Essex, upon whose apprehension he

returned to Italy. The Grand Duke of Ttcscany sent hi??i to James, King of

Scotland, to acquaint him with a plot upon his life, which %vas the beginning

of Wottons fortune. On the King's accession he was sent as Ambassador to

Venice — iti Augsburg he wrote his famous definition of an Ambassador

sent to ''lie abroad for his cotintry' — on his return he ^ was made Provost of

Eton.

His writings were collected in ^ Reliqtiicc Wottoniame' by I. Walton (1651),
containing his '■Elements of Architecture.' He is nozv remembered chiefiy
by his poems, and his epigram {I'ecorded on his tomb) ' Disputandi pruritus
ecclesiaru?n scabies. '

FIRST, I must note a certain contrariety between building and
gardening: for as Fabricks should be regular, so Gardens
should be irregular., or at least cast into a very wild Regularity.
To exemplifie my conceit, I have seen a Garden, for the manner
perchance incomparable, into which the first Access was a high
walk like a Tarrace, from whence might be taken a general view
of the whole Plot below, but rather in a dehghtful confusion, then
with any plain distinction of the pieces. From this the Beholder
descending many steps, was afterwards conveyed again by several
mountings and valings, to various entertainments of his sent and
sight : which I shall not need to describe, for that were poetical,
let me only note this, that every one of these diversities, was as
if he had been magically transported into a new Garden.

But though other Countreys have more benefit of Sun than we,
and thereby more properly tyed to contemplate this delight ; yet
have I seen in our own, a delicate and diligent curiosity, surely
without parallel among foreign Nations : Namely, in the Garden
of Sir Henry Fafishaw, at his Seat in Ware-Park ; where I well
remember, he did so precisely examine the tinctures and seasons
of his flowers, that in their settings, the inwardest of which that
were to come up at the same time, should be always a little darker

JOSEPH HALL 85

than the outf?iost, and so serve them for a kind of gentle shadow,
Hke a piece not of Nature, but of Art : which mention (incident
to this place) I have willingly made of his Name, for the dear
friendship, that was long between us: though I must confess,
with much wrong to his other vertues ', which deserve a more
solid Memorial, then among these vacant Observations. So
much of Gardens. — The Eletnents of Architecture.

— 'AJS/Vv —

T

( upon the sight of Tulipaes and Mary golds, etc., in his Garden) JOSEPH
HESE Flowers are true Clients of the Sunne \ how observant Bishop of

ExctCT CLtld

they are of his motion, and influence. Norwich

At even, they shut up, as mourning for his departure, without (1574- 1656).
whom they neither can nor would flourish in the morning ; they
welcome his rising with a cheerful! opennesse, and at noone, are
fully display'd in a free acknowledgment of his bounty : Thus doth
the good hart unto God ; When thou turnedst away thy face I
was troubled, saith the man after God's owne hart ; in thy pre-
sence is life ; yea the fullnesse of joy : thus doth the carnall hart
to the world; when that wathdrawes his favour, hee is dejected;
and revives with a smile : All is in our choyse ; whatsoever is our
Sun will thus carry us ; O God, be thou to mee, such as thou art
in thyselfe ; thou shalt bee mercifull in drawing me ; I shall be
happy in following thee. — Occasional Meditations.

— A/yvv. —

TO walk amongst orchards,^ gardens, bowers, mounts and arbours, ROBERT
artificial wildernesses, green thickets, arches, groves, lawns, (1^75. 1640).
rivulets, fountains, and such Hke pleasant places, like that Anti-
ochian Daphne, brooks, pools, fishponds, between wood and water,
in a fair meadow, by a river side, ubivarice aviu7n catitationes florti7n
park, run up a steep hill sometimes, or sit in a shady seat, must

1 Ambulationes subdiales, quas hortenses aurse ministrant, sub fornice viridi,
pampinis virentibus concameratse.

S6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

colores, pratonim fr^itices} etc.; to disport in some pleasant plain,
needs be a delectable recreation. Hortwn pri?tcipis et donius ad
delectationem facta, cum sylva, tnonte ef piscina, vulgo la Montagria :
the prince's garden at Ferrara Schottus^ highly magnifies, with
the groves, mountains, ponds, for a delectable prospect, he was
much affected with it ; a Persian paradise, or pleasant park, could
not be more delectable in his sight. St Bernard, in the descrip-
tion of his monastery, is almost ravished with the pleasures of it.
A sick man ^ (saith he) sits upon a green bank, and when the dog-
star parcheth the Plains, a?id dries up rivers, he lies in a shady
bow7'e ! Fronde sub arborea ferventia temperat astra, and feeds
his eyes with variety of objects, herbs, trees, to comfort his niisery,
he receives many delightso7ne smells, and fills his ears ivith that sweet
a?td various harmony of Birds : good God (saith he) what a com-
pa?ty of pleasures hast thou made for man! He that should be
admitted on a sudden to the sight of such a Palace as that of
Escjirial in Spain, or to that which the Moors built at Granado,
Fountenblewe in France, the Turks gardens in his seraglio, wherein
all manner of Birds and beasts are kept for pleasure ; Wolves,
Bears, lynces, Tygers, Lyons, Elephants, etc. or upon the banks
of that Thracian Bosphorus : the Pope's Belvedere in Rome ^ as
pleasing as those Horti pe?tsiles in Babylon, or that Indian King's
delightsome garden in jElian-/^ or those famous gardens of the
Lord Cantelow in France,^ could not choose, though he were
never so ill apaid, but be much recreated for the time; or
many of our Noblemens gardens at home. — The Attatomy of
Melancholy.

^ Theophylact.

2 Itinerar. Ital.

'^ Sedet agrotus cespite viridi, et cum inclementia Canicularis terras excoquit,
et siccat flumina, ipse securus sedet sub arborea fronde, et ad doloris sui
solatium, naribus suis gramineas redolet species, pascit oculos herbarum
amcena viriditas, aures suavi modulamine demulcet pictaram concentus avium,
etc. Deus bone, quanta pauperibus procuras solatia !

^ Diod. Siculus, lib. 2.

5 Lib. 13, De Animal, cap. 13.

« Pet. Gillius, Paul Hentznerus, Itinerar. Italise, 1617 ; lod. Sincerus,
Itinerar. Gallise, 161 7 ; Simp. lib. i, quest. 4.

JOHN TAYLOR 87

AMONGST the rest, the pains and industry of an ancient /«^^^XvATER
gentleman, Mr Adrian Gilbert, must not be forgotten: forpQET')
there 1 hath he (much to my Lord's cost and his own pains) used (1580-1654).
such a deal of intricate setting, grafting, planting, inoculating,
railing, hedging, plashing, turning, winding, and returning, circular,
triangular, quadrangular, orbicular, oval, and every way curiously
and chargeably conceited : there hath he made walks, hedges, and
arbours, of all manner of most delicate fruit-trees, planting and
placing them in such admirable art-like fashions, resembling both
divine and moral remembrances, as three arbours standing in a
triangle, having each a recourse to a greater arbour in the midst,
resembleth three in one and one in three : and he hath there
planted certain walks and arbours all with fruit-trees, so pleasing
and ravishing to the sense, that he calls it Paradise^ in which he
plays the part of a true Adamist, continually toiling and tilling.

Moreover, he hath made his walks most rarely round and
spacious, one walk without another (as the rinds of an onion
are greatest without, and less towards the centre), and withall,
the hedges betwixt each walk are so thickly set that one cannot
see through from the one walk, who walks in the other : that,
in conclusion, the work seems endless ; and I think that in
England it is not to be fellowed, or will in haste be followed. —
Of the Gardens at Wilton.

A Moravian Minister : settled in Poland, published ' Jamia Linguarum' JOHN AMOS
—was invited to England: travelled in Sweden and finally settled z« COMENIUS
Amsterdam: anthor of ^ Orbis Sensualium Pieties.'' V 59 • 7 ^

GARDENING is practised for food's sake in a kitchen garden
and orchard, or for pleasure's sake in a green grass-plot
and an arbour.

The pleacher {Topiarius) prepares a green plot of the more
choice flowers and rarer plants, and adorns the garden with
pleach-work ; that is with pleasant walks and bowers, etc., to
conclude with water-works. — ^ Ja^ina Trilmgnis.^

^ At Wilton, the seat of the Earl Pembroke. (See Illustration in Appendix.)

88 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

WILLIAM TF you looke into our gardens annexed to our houses, how

HARRISON 1 woonderfullie is their beauty increased, not onehe with
(1C93). ■'

floures, which Col(u)mella calleth Terrena sydera, saieng :

Pingit et in varies te^-restria syderajiores,

and varietie of curious and costUe workmanship, but also with
rare and medicinable hearbes sought up in the land within
these fortie yeares : so that in comparison of this present, the
ancient Gardens were but dunghils and laistowes to such as
did possesse them. How art also helpeth nature, in the dailie
colouring, dubling and inlarging the proportion of our floures,
it is incredible to report, for so curious and cunning are our
Gardeners now in these daies, that they presume to doo in
maner what they list with nature, and moderate hir course in
things as if they were hir superiours. It is a world also to
see how manie strange hearbs, plants, and annuall fruits, are
dailie brought unto us from the Indies, Americans, Taprobane
Canarie lies, and all parts of the world : the which, albeit that
in respect of the constitutions of our bodies they doo not grow
for us, because that God hath bestowed sufficient commodities
upon everie countrie for hir owne necessitie ; yet for delectation
sake unto the eie, and their odoriferous savours unto the nose,
they are to be cherished, and God to be glorified also in them,
because they are his good gifts, and created to doo man help
and service. . . .

For mine owne part, good reader, let me boast a little of
my garden, which is but small, and the whole At-ea thereof
little above 300 foot of ground, and yet, such hath beene my
good lucke in purchase of the varietie of simples, that notwith-
standing my small abilitie, there are verie neere three hundred
of one sort and other conteined therein, no one of them being
common or usuallie to bee had. If therefore my little plot,
void of all cost in keeping, be so well furnished, what shall
we thinke of those of Hampton Court, Nonesuch, Tibaults,
Cobham garden, and sundrie other apperteining to diuerse citizens

GEORGE HERBERT 89

of London, whom I could particularlie name, if I should not
seeme to offend them by such my demeanour and dealing. —
The Description of England, 1577 {in Hollifished'' s Chronicles).

—**\t\t\t*—

Y

OU may be on land, yet not in a garden. GEORGE

A noble plant suits not with a stubborn ground.
The charges of building and making of gardens are unknown.
Although it rain, throw not away thy watering-pot.
Fear keeps the garden better than the gardener.
A garden must be looked unto and dressed, as the body.

Jacula Prudenfum, or Outlandish Proverbs. 1640.

In the knowledge of simples, wherein the manifold wisdom
/ of God is wonderfully to be seen, one thing would be carefully
observed— which is, to know what herbs may be used instead
of drugs of the same nature, and to make the garden the shop ;
for home-bred medicines are both more easy for the parson's
purse, and more familiar for all men's bodies. So, where the
apothecary useth either for loosing, rhubarb, or for binding,
bolearmena, the parson useth damask or wliite roses for the
one, and plantain, shepherd's-purse, knot-grass for the other,
and that with better success. As for spices, he doth not only
prefer home-bred things before them, but condemns them for
vanities, and so shuts them out of his family, esteeming that
there is no spice comparable for herbs to rosemary, thyme,
savory, mints ; and for seeds to fennel and carraway-seeds-
Accordingly, for salves, his wife seeks not the city, but prefers
her garden and fields, before all outlandish gums. And surely
hyssop, valerian, mercury, adder's tongue, yarrow, melilot, and
St John's wort made into a salve, and elder, camomile, mallows,
comphrey, and smallage made into a poultice, have done great
and rare cures. — A Priest to the Temple ; or the Coimtry Parson,
his Character and Rule of Holy Life. 1652.

HERBERT

(1593-1632).

90 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

PIERRE One of the most distinguished naturalists, mathematicians and philosophers

GASSENDI of Prance. 1624, wrote his '■^ Paradoxical Exercises against the Aristotelians,^''
(1592-1055). Tj^hich earned him the influence of Nicolas Peiresc, President of the University
of Aix. He then studied Astronomy and Anatomy, and ivrote a treatise to
show that tnan was intended to be a Vegetarian. 1628, he visited Holland, and
wrote an Examination of Robert Fludd's Mosaic philosophy. 1631, he observed
the Transit of Mercury over the Stints disc, foretold by Kepler. 1641, he was
called to Paris, and wrote a 77ietaphysical Disquisition on Doubts tipon the
" Meditatio7is " of his frie^id Descartes : they became estranged a7id reco7iciled.
Gasse7idi's philosophy of Atojus a7td a Void was founded tipon the Doctrines of
Detnocritus and Epicurus. 1645, appoi7ited P7'ofessor of Mathe77iatics i7i the
College Royale de Paris by i7tfluence of Cardi7ial du Plessis. 1647, published
his chief wo7-k 07t " The Life and Morals of Epicurus,'" xuhich rehabilitated this
philosopher ; a7id itt 1653, the Lives of Tycho B7-ahe, Copernictis, and other
Astronomers.

Bayle styled hi77i '■^ the greatest philosopher a7nong scholars, a7id the g7-eatest
scholar a7nong philosophers.^^

AS concerning Plants, it may be expected that I should in this
place reckon up the principal of them ; yet I will not stand
to speak of such, which though accounted rare are to be seen
in other Gardens. I shall only touch at some of those which
Peireskius was the first, that caused to be brought into, and
cherished in Europe. Of which the Indian Gelsemine is one,
a wooddy plant, always green, with a clay-coloured yellowish
flower, of a most sweet smell.

This was first brought from China, planted at Beaugensier, and
from thence propagated into the King's and Cardinal Barlerine
his Gardens. . . . The next is a plant called Lifa, or the Gourd
of Meccha . . . also the true Papyrus y^gyptia or ^Egyptian
paper . . . also the Indian Coco Nuts. ... In the next place,
Ginger, which being brought out of India did wax green in his
Garden, from whence it was sent to Paris, to Vidus Brosseus, a
famous Physician, the chief storer of the King's Garden, and
principal shewer thereof. . . .

I say nothing of the broad-leaved Myrtle, with the full flower
of the Storax, and Lentise-Tree, which yields Mastick : and other
plants mentioned before. Much lesse shall I speak of the great
America?! Gelsemine., with the Crimson-coloured flower, not of the

PIERRE GASSENDI 91

Persian, with a violet-coloured flower, nor the Arabian with a full
flower : of the Orenge-Trees, with a red and particoloured flower ;
of the Medlar and soure Cherry without stones ; AdaitHs Fig-Tree,
whose fruit Peireskius conceived to be one of those which the
spies brought back, that went to view the Land of Canaan ; the
rare Vines which he had from Tunis, Smyrna, Sidon, Damascus,
Nova Francia, and other places. Least of all shall I stand to
speak of the care he took in ordering his Knots, and planting
his trees in such order, as to afford even walks every way between
them ; in bringing the water every where into his Gardens ; in
providing that the tenderer sort of Plants might receive no
dammage by the Winters cold, in sending for the most skilful
Florists, to furnish himself with all variety of Flowers : in a
word, omitting nothing that might beautifie and adorn his
Grounds. — The Mirrour of True Nobility and Ge7itility being
the Life of The Renoivned Nicolans Claudius Fabricius Lord of
Teiresk, Senator of the Parlianie7it at Aix, Englished by W.
Ra7id^ Doctor of Phy sick. Londofi^ 1657.^

^ Nicolas de Peiresc, born in ProveJice in 1580, was one of the greatest patrons
of letters. The friend of De Thou and Isaac Casaiibon^ he was called by Bayle
" Le Proc2iretir General de la Litte'ratnre." In 1605 he came to England in the
suite of La Boderie, the French Ambassador, and visited Oxford, where he
became intimate with Selden, Ca77iden, Sir Robert Cotton attd Sir Heniy
Saville. Scaliger, Holstensius and Saumaise were aided by hi7n with presents
of books, and at his instigation Grotitts wrote his great zvork " De fure Belli et
Pads.''

* ' He kept tip a noble traffic with all travellers^ supplying them with philo-
sophical instrujuents and recent inventions . . . it was the curiosity of Peiresc
which first embellished his own garden, and thence the gardens of Etirope with
a rich variety of exotic flowers and frtiits . . . The correspondence of Peiresc
branched out to the farthest bounds of Ethiopia, connected both Americas, and
had t otic hed the newly discovered extremities of the Universe.''^ — I. Disraeli.

He died in the artns of his biographer, Pierre Gassendi, on the 2\th fune

1637.

Isaac Disraeli thus speaks of this Biography: — "^ jnoving picttire of the
literary life of a man of letters, who was no atithor, would have been lost to us,
had not Peiresc fotind in Gassendi a twin spirit. ^^ When are we to have
a reprint of this Life ^^ of that incomparable Virtuoso,'^ as Evelyn called Peiresc ?

92 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

JAMES Educated at Oxfoj'd ; travelled abroad as agent for first glass manufactory

HOWELL established in England ; later M.P. and one of the Clerks of the Privy Council

(i595"i""o)- to Charles /. ; Secretary to British Ambassador in Denjna7'k ; iynprisoned in

Fleet and released by Cromwell ; Historiographer to Charles II. ; author of

" Dodonds Grove " and '■'■ Epistolce Ho-Eliancr.''' {Familiar Letters off. H.)

THE stables (at Lord vSavage's House in Long-Melford) butt
upon the Park, which for a cheerful rising Ground, for
Groves and Browsings for the Deer, for rivulets of water, may
compare with any for its highness in the whole land ; it is
opposite to the front of the great House, whence from the
Gallery one may see much of the Game when they are a-hunt-
ing. Now for the gardening and costly choice Flowers, for
Ponds, for stately large Walks, green and gravelly, for Orchards
and choice Fruits of all sorts, there are few the like in England :
here you have your Bon Cliristiaii Pear, and Berga7not in per-
fection, your Muscadel grapes in such plenty, that there are
bottles of Wine sent every year to the King; and one Mr
Daniel, a worthy Gentleman hard by, who, with him long
abroad, makes good store in his Vintage. Truly this House
of Long-Melford though it be not so great, yet it is so well
compacted and contrived with such dainty conveniences every
way, that if you saw the Landskip of it, you would be mightily
taken with it, and it would serve for a choice pattern to build
and contrive a House by. — iyLetter to Dan. Caldwell., Esq..,
2oth May 162 1).

SIR A Parliamentary Genei-al in the Civil Wars, originally of the same fajnily

WILLIAM as Edmund Waller the poet.

WALLER

(1597- 1668). LIE that walkes with God can never want a good 7valke, and

* ^ good covipajiy. There is 7to gai-den well contrived., but that

which hath an EnocKs walk 1 in it.

How cleanly are these Allies kept? and how o?'derly are the

Hedges cut, and the Trees pruned and nailed, and not an irregular

1 " Enoch walked with God 300 years." — Gen. v. 22.

SIR WILLIAM WALLER 93

Ttvig left ? there is no such care taken for the iveeds, and bushes
and brambles that grow abroad. God is careful to preserve the
Garden of his Church in all decency and order ; and will not suffer
it to be overgrown with errours or prophaness ; but is (like a good
Husbandman, if I may say so with all humbleness) ever at work
about it ; either weedifig out, what his heavenly hand hath not
planted; or if need be, lopping, and cutting off luxuriant branches,
that bear notfrnif; or purging those that do bear, that they may
bring forth moxQ fruit. — Divine Meditations {Upon the sight of a
pleasant Garden).

m

CHAPTER V

THE FORMAL GARDEN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY UNDER
FRENCH AND DUTCH INFLUENCE : ORIENTAL TRAVELLERS
ON PERSIAN AND JAPANESE GARDENS.

SIR pOR though Physick may plead high, from that medical act of

BROWNE God, in casting so deep a sleep upon our first Parent ; And

(1605-1682). Chirurgery find its whole Art, in that one passage concerning the
Rib of Adam : yet is there no rivality with Garden-contrivance
and Herbery. For if Paradise were planted the third day of
the Creation as wiser Divinity concludeth, the Nativity thereof
was too early for Horoscopie ; Gardens were before Gardiners,
and but some hours after the liarth. Of deeper doubt is its
topography and local designation ; yet being the primitive garden,
and without much controversy seated in the East it is more than
probable the first curiosity, and cultivation of plants, most
flourished in those quarters. . . .

However, the account of the pensile or hanging gardens of
Babylon, if made by Semiramis, the third or fourth from Nimrod,
is of no slender antiquity ; which being not framed upon ordinary
level of ground, but raised upon pillars, admitting under-passages,
we cannot accept as the first Babylonian gardens, — but a more
eminent progress and advancement in that art than any that went
before it ; somewhat answering or hinting the old opinion con-
cerning Paradise itself, with many conceptions elevated above the
plane of the Earth. ^ Nabuchodonosor (whom some will have to

1 Simon Wilkin, the editor of Browne's Works, quotes a passage from MS.
Sloan, 1847, which he thinks intended for this work, wherein Browne writes,
** We are unwilling to diminish or loose the credit of Paradise, or only pass it
over with (the Hebrew word for) Eden, though the Greek be of a later name.
In this excepted, we know not whether the ancient gardens do equal those of
late times, or those at present in Europe. Of the Garden of Hesperies, we
know nothing singular but some golden apples."
94

SIR THOMAS BROWNE 95

be the famous Syrian King of Diodoms) beautifully repaired that
city, and so magnificently built his hanging gardens,^ that from
succeeding writers he had the honour of the first. From whence,
overlooking Babylon, and all the region about it, he found no
circumscription to the eye of his ambition; till, over-delighted
with the bravery of this Paradise, in his melancholy metamor-
phosis he found the folly of that delight, and a proper punishment
in the contrary habitation — in wild plantations and wanderings
of the fields. The Persian gallants, who destroyed this mon-
archy, maintained their botanical bravery. Unto whom we
owe the very name of Paradise, wherewith we meet not in
Scripture before the time of Solomon, and conceived origin-
ally Persian. The word for that disputed garden, expressing,
in the Hebrew, no more than a field enclosed, which from the
same root is content to derive a garden and a buckler. — The
Garden of Cyrus^ or the QuinamciaV^ Lozenge, or Net-work
Plantations of the Ancients. Artificially, Naturally, Mystically
considered.'^

^ Josephus.

2 Quid quincunce speciosius, qui in quamcunque partem spectaveris, rectus
est. — Quintilian.

^ The Garden of Cyrus, though it ends indeed with a passage of wonderful
felicity, certainly emphasises (to say the least) the defects of Browne's literary
good qualities. His chimeric fancy carries him here into a kind of frivolous-
ness, as if he felt almost too safe with his public, and were himself not quite
serious or dealing fairly with it ; and in a writer such as Browne, levity must
of necessity be a little ponderous. Still, like one of those stiff gardens, half-
way between the medieval garden and the true ' English ' garden of Temple or
Walpole, actually to be seen in the background of some of the conventional
portraits of that day, the fantasies of this indescribable exposition of the
mysteries of the quincunx form part of the complete portrait of Browne
himself; and it is in connection with it that once or twice the quaintly
delightful pen of Evelyn comes into the correspondence in connexion with
the 'hortulane pleasure' — "Norwich" he writes to Browne, **is a place I
understand much addicted to the flowery poet." Professing himself a believer
in the operation "of the air and genius of gardens upon human spirits, towards
virtue and sanctity" he is all for natural gardens as against "those which
appear like gardens of paste-board and march-pane, and smell more of paint
than of flowers and verdure." — Walter Pater ^ * Appreciations.''

96 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

From the Epistle Dedicatory, to Nicholas Bacon, of Tillingham,
Esquire. —The Turks who past their days in gardens here, will
have also gardens hereafter, and delighting in flowers on earth,
must have lilies and roses in heaven. In garden delights 'tis not
easy to hold a mediocrity; that insinuating pleasure is seldom
without some extremity. The ancients venially delighted in
flourishing gardens; many were florists that knew not the true
use of a flower ; and in PHny's days none had directly treated of
that subject. Some commendably affected plantations of venemous
vegetables, some confined their delights unto single plants, and
Cato seemed to dote upon Cabbage ; while the ingenuous delight
of tulipists stands saluted with hard language, even by their own
professors.! That in this garden discourse, we range into
extraneous things, and many parts of art and nature, we follow
herein the example of old and new plantations, wherein noble
spirits contented not themselves with trees, but by the attendance
of aviaries, fish-ponds, and all variety of animals, they made their
gardens the epitome of the earth, and some resemblance of the
secular shows of old. . .

Since the verdant state of things is the symbol of the resurrection,
and to flourish in the state of glory, we must first be sown in
corruption : — besides the ancient practice of noble persons, to
conclude in garden-graves, and urns themselves of old to be
wrapt up with flowers and garlands.

— vVW-' —

JOHN A -^^ which is the worthiest work of these two, to plant as every

MILTON t\ minister's office is equally with the bishops, or to tend that

(1 60S- 1 674). ^,j^^(.j^ is planted, which the blind and undiscerning prelates call

Jurisdiction and would appropriate to themselves as a business of

higher dignity ?

Have patience therefore and hear a law-case. A certain man
of large possessions had a fair garden, and kept therein an honest
and laborious servant, whose skill and profession was to set or
1 " Tulipo-mania ; " Narrencruiid, Laurenberg. Pet. Hondius in lib. Belg.

JOHN MILTON 97

sow all wholesome herbs, and delightful flowers according to every
season, and whatever else was to be done in a well-husbanded
nursery of plants and fruits. Now, when the time was come that
he should cut his hedges, prune his trees, look to his tender slips,
and pluck up the weeds that hindered their growth, he gets him
up by break of day, and makes account to do what was needful
in his garden ; and who would think that any other should know
better than he how the day's work was to be spent ? Yet for all
this there comes another strange gardener that never knew the
soil, never handled a dibble or spade to set the least pot-herb
that grew there, much less had endured an hour's sweat or
chilness, and yet challenges as his right the binding or unbinding
of every flower, the clipping of every bush, the weeding and
worming of every bed, both in that and all other gardens
thereabout. The honest gardener, that ever since the day-peep,
till now the sun was grown somewhat rank, had wrought painfully
about his banks and seed-plots, at his commanding voice turns
suddenly about with some wonder ; and although he could have
well beteemed to have thanked him of the ease he proffered, yet
loving his own handywork, modestly refused him, telling him
withal, that for his part, if he had thought much of his own pains,
he could for once have committed the work to one of his fellow-
labourers, for as much as it is well known to be a matter of less
skill and less labour to keep a garden handsome, than it is to
plant it or contrive it, and that he had already performed himself.
No, said the stranger, this is neither for you nor your fellows to
meddle with, but for me only that am for this purpose in dignity
far above you ; and the provision which the Lord of the soil
allows me in this office is, and that with good reason, tenfold
your wages. The gardener smiled and shook his head ; but what
was determined, I cannot tell you till the end of this parliament.
— Animadversions upon the Re?nonstrattf s Defence against
Smectymnuus.

98 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

THOMAS 163 1, Fellow of Sidney Sussex College ; Lecturer at the Savoy. 162,9 , pub -
FULLER lished his 'History of the Holy War.' 1648, rector of Waltham Abbey ^ and
(1608-1661). f}^^ ^^jjj^ y^^^ published his ' Holy State.' 1653, joined the King at Oxford
and preached before hiju at St Alafy's Church. During his residence at Lincoln
College^ he was seqiiestered and lost all his books and MS. He attended the
Royal Army fi'om place to place as Chaplain to Lord Hopton., animated the
garrison of Basing House, and forced Sir William Waller to raise the siege.
1655, published ' Ch^irch History of Britain ' and ' History of the University
of Cambridge' 1660, created D.D. at Ca?nbridge ; chaplain extraordinary to
the King. 1662, his ' History of the Worthies of England,' which had
occupied hi/n through his life, was published posthtimously.

\ A /ITHIN this circuit of ground, there is still extant, by the
' ^ rare preservation of the owner, a small Scantlin of some
three Acres, which I might call the Tempe of Tempe, and re-
epitomiz'd the delicacies of all the rest. It was divided into
a Garde?i, in the upper Part whereof Flowers did grow, in the
lower, Hearts, and those of all sorts and kinds. And now in
the springtime earth did put on her new cloathes, though had
some cunning Herald beheld the same, he would have con-
demned her Coate to have been of no antient bearifig, it was
so overcharged with variety of Colours.

For there ^^dj^ yellow Marigolds, Wallflowers, Auriculusses, Gold
Knobs, and abundance of other namelesse Flowers, which would
pose a Nomeficlator to call them by their distinct denominations.
There was White, the Dayes Eye, white roses, Lilly es, etc.. Blew,
Violet, Irisse, Red Roses, Pionies, etc. The whole field was
vert or greene, and all colours were present save sable, as too
sad and dolefull for so merry a meeting. All the Children of
Flora being summoned there, to make their appearance at a
great solemnity.

Nor was the lower part of the ground lesse stored with herbs,
and those so various, that if Gerard himself had bin in the place,
upon the beholding thereof he must have been forced to a re-
edition of his Herball, to adde the recruit of those Plants, which
formerly were unseen by him, or unknown unto him.

In this solemn Randevouz of Flowers and Herbs, the Rose
stood forth, and made an Oration to this effect.

THOMAS FULLER 99

It is not unknown to you, how I have the precedency of all
Flowers, confirmed unto me under the Patetit of a double Sence,
Sight, smell. What more curious Colours'^ how do all Diers
blush, when they behold my blushing as conscious to themselves
that their Art cannot imitate that tincture, which Nature hath
stamped upon me. Smell, it is not lusciously offensive, nor
dangerously Faint, but comforteth with a delight, and delighteth
with the comfort thereof: Yea, when Dead, I am more Sover-
aigne then Living : What Cordials are made of my Syrups ?
how many corrupted Lungs (those Fans of Nature) sore wasted
with consumption that they seem utterly unable any longer to
cool the heat of the Heart, with their ve7itilatio7i, are with
Conserves made of my stamped Leaves, restored to their former
soundnesse againe : More would I say in mine own cause, but
that happily I may be taxed of pride, and selfe-flattery, who
speak much in mine own behalf, and therefore I leave the rest
to the judgment of such as hear me, and pass from this discourse
to my just complaint.

There is lately a Flower (shal I call it so ? in courtesie I will
tearme it so, though it deserve not the appellation) a Toolip, which
hath engrafted the love and affections of most people unto it;
and what is this Toolip ? a well complexion'd stink, an ill favour
wrapt up in pleasant colours ; as for the use thereof in Physick,
no Physitian hath honoured it yet with the mention, nor with a
Greek, or Latin name, so inconsiderable hath it hitherto been
accompted ; and yet this is that which filleth all Gardens, hundred
of pounds being given for the root thereof, whilst I the Rose, am
neglected and contemned, and conceived beneath the honour of
noble hands, and fit only to grow in the gardens of Yeomen, I
trust the remainder to your apprehensions, to make out that which
grief for such undeserved injuries will not suffer me to expresse.
— Antheologia, or The Speech of Flowers : partly Morall, partly
Mistical I (1660).

Gardening was first brought into England for profit about
seventy years ago, before which we fetched most of our

too THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

cherries from Flanders, apples from France, and had hardly a
mess of rathe-ripe pease but from Holland, which were dainties
for ladies, they came so far and cost so dear. Since, gardening
hath crept out of Holland to Sandwich, Kent, and thence into
this county (Surrey), where though they have given six pounds
an aker and upward, they have made their rent, lived comfortably,
and set many people on work. Oh, the incredible profit by
digging of ground ! — for though it be confessed that the plough
beats the spade out of distance for speed (almost as much as the
press beats the pen), yet what the spade wants in the quantity
of the ground it manureth, it recompenseth with the plenty of
the fruit it yieldeth, that is set multiplying a hundredfold more
than that which is sow7i. 'Tis incredible how many poor people
in London live therein, so that, in some seasons, the Gardens
feed more people than the field. — History of the Worthies oj
England (1662).

— A/W\A —

ABRAHAM 'T^HE three first men in the world, were a Gardiner, a Plough-
^9^V?y man, and a Grazier : and if any man object, that the second

(1618-I667). ^ , ' , X J • 1 1 11 -11

of these was a murtherer, 1 desire that he would consider that as
soon as he was so, he quitted our profession, and turned builder.
— Of Agriculture.

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetous-
ness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master
at last of a small house and large Garden, with very moderate
conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder
of my life only to the culture of them and study of nature,

* And there (with no design beyond my wall) whole and intire to lie,
In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty.'

Or as Virgil has said, shorter and better for me, that I might
there

' Studiis florere ignobilis otii ' :

ABRAHAM COWLEY loi

(though I could wish that he had rather said, ' Nobilis otii,' when
he spoke of his own). But several accidents of my ill fortune
have disappointed me hitherto, and do still, of that felicity ; for
though I have made the first and hardest step to it, by abandon-
ing all ambitions and hopes in this world, and by retiring from
the noise of all business and almost company, yet I stick still in
the inn of a hired house and garden, among weeds and rubbish ;
and without that pleasantest work of human industry, the im-
provement of something which we call (not very properly, but
yet we call) our own. I am gone out from Sodom, but I am
not yet arrived at my little Zoar. ' O let me escape thither (is
it not a httle one ?) and my soul shall live.' I do not look back
yet ; but I have been forced to stop, and make too many halts.
. . . Among many other arts and excellencies, which you enjoy,
I am glad to find this favourite of mine the most predominant ;
that you choose this for your wife, though you have hundreds of
other arts for your concubines ; though you know them, and beget
sons upon them all (to which you are rich enough to allow great
legacies), yet the issue of this seems to be designed by you to the
main of the estate. You have taken most pleasure in it, and
bestowed most charges upon its education : and I doubt not to
see that book which you are pleased to promise to the world,
and of which you have given us a large earnest in your Calendar,^
as accomplished as any thing can be expected from an extra-
ordinary wit, and no ordinary expenses, and a long experience.
I know nobody that possesses more private happiness than you do
in your Garden ; and yet no man, who makes his happiness more
public, by a free communication of the heart, and knowledge of
it to others. All that I myself am able yet to do, is only to
recommend to mankind the search of that felicity, which you
instruct them how to find and to enjoy. — The Garden. {To/.
Evelyn J Esq.)

1 Mr Evelyn's ' Calendarium Hortense,' dedicated to Mr Cowley.

I02

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

SAMUEL Friend of Milton; son of a Polish Merchant. \^2%. came to Ensrland. 1644,

HARTLTR • • • •

i!j ^ \ Milton addressed to him his treatise on Education, he having introduced the

^ ' ' '' writings of Comenizis. 1646, was pensioned by Parlia77tent for his works on

Husbayidry. 1655, Evelyn describes a visit to him.

He wrote many pamphlets on editcation and htisbandry, [inter alia) ' A

Discourse of Husbandry tised ?'« Brabant and Flanders ' ; ' An Essay for

Advancement of Husbandry Leai-ning or Propositio7is for errecting a Colledge

of Htisbandry ' ; ' The Reformed Husband??ian ' ; ' His Legacy ' ; ' Cornu Copia '

and ' The Compleat Htisband-man. '

A BOUT 50 years ago, about which time Ingenuities first began
-'*' to flourish in England \ this Art of Gardening, began to
creep into England, into Sandwich, and Surrey, Fulha??i, and
other places.

Some old men in Surrey, where it flourisheth very much at
present, report, That they knew the first Gardiners that came
into those parts, to plant Cabages, Colleflowers, and to sowe
Turneps, Garrets, and Parsnips, to sowe Raith or (early ripe)
Rape, Pease, all which at that time were great rarities, we
having few, or none in England, but what came from Holland
and Ela?iders. These Gardi?iers with much ado procured a
plot of good ground, and gave no lesse than 8 pound per
Acre; yet the Ge7ttlema?i was not content, fearing they would
spoil his ground ; because they did use to dig it. So ignorant
were we of Gardening in those dayes. — The Compleat Husband-
man (1659.)

—^AlVVJ—

ANDRE \ The Gi'and Gardener of the Grand Monarch.

LEN6TR5 Rueil, created by Richeliezi [or the Boboli gardens at Florence), said to have

(1612-1700). / suggested the Versailles gai-den to Le Notre ; the Pare de Vaux began his reputa-

/ tion ; he executed Versailles and Chantilly together for Coiidd ; the terrace at

__.---^ Fontainebleazi was his design. He worked at the Chateau de Metidoyi for the

Due de Chartres, at St Cloud for Fo liquet, and for Colbert at the ''Pare de

Scea^ix, '

O AINT SIMON wrote his epitaph :—

^ " After living 88 years in perfect health, with his intellect

untouched, and all his judgment and good taste undiminished, he

^ See Portrait of Le Notre and Illustrations and description of Versailles in
Appendix.

JOHN EVELYN 103

died, illustrious for having the first designed those beautiful gardens,
which decorate France. Le Notre possessed a probity, an exact-
ness and uprightness, which made him valued and loved by
every one. He worked for private individuals and for the King
with the same industry : his only thought was to aid Nature,
and to reduce the truly beautiful to the lowest cost. All he
did is still far beyond what has been done since, whatever
pains have been taken to copy him." — Me??ioirs.

\ A 7E visited the Haff or Prince's Court at the Hague, with JOHN
^ ^ the adjoining gardens, which were full of ornament, (J520-1706)
close-walks, statues, marbles, grotts, fountains, and artificiall
musiq, etc. . . .

From hence we walked into the Parke, which for being entirely Bruxelles.
within the walls of the city is particularly remarkable ; nor is it ^'■'^' ' ^^^^'
less pleasant than if in the most solitary recesses, so naturally is
it furnish'd with whatever may render it agreeable, melancholy,
and country-like. Here is a stately heronry, divers springs of
water, artificial cascades, rocks, grotts, one whereof is composed
of the extravagant rootes of trees cunningly built and hung
together. In this Parke are both fallow and red deare.

From hence we were lead into the Manege, and out of that
into a most sweet and delicious garden, where was another grott,
of more neat and costly materials, full of noble statues, and
entertaining us with artificial musiq; but the hedge of water, in
forme of lattice-worke, which the fontainer caused to ascend out
of the earth by degrees exceedingly pleased and supris'd me, for
thus with a previous wall, or rather a palisad hedge, of waters,
was the whole parterre environ'd.

There is likewise a faire Aviary, and in the Court next it are
kept divers sorts of animals, rare and exotic fowle, as eagles, cranes,
storks, bustards, pheasants of several kinds, a duck having four
wings, etc. In another division of the same close, are rabbits of
an almost perfect yellow colour.

I04 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Paris. I took coach and went to see the famous Jardine Royale, which

1644, Feb. 8. .g ^^ enclosure walled in, consisting of all varieties of ground for
planting and culture of medical simples. It is well chosen, having
in it hills, meadows, wood and upland, naturall and artificial and
is richly stor'd with exotic plants. In the middle of the Parterre
is a faire fountaine.

In another more privat garden towards the Queene's apart-
ment is a walk or cloister under arches, whose terrace is
paved with stones of a great breadth ; it looks towards the
river, and has a pleasant aviary, fountaine, stately cypresses,
etc. . . .
The _ I finished this day with a walk in the great garden of the

Thuillenes. xhuilleries, which is rarely contrived for privacy, shade, or
1644, Feb. 27. ' •'. r 11 • n 1 •

company, by groves, plantations of tall trees, especially that in

the middle, being of elmes, another of mulberys. There is a

labyrinth of cypresse, noble hedges of pomegranates, fountains,

fishponds, and an aviary. Here is an artificial echo, redoubling

the words distinctly, and it is never without some faire nymph

singing to it. Standing at one of the focus's, which is under a

tree, or little cabinet of hedges, the voice seems to descend from

the clouds ; at another, as if it were underground. This being at

the bottom of the garden, we were let into another which being

kept with all imaginable accuratenesse as to the orangery, precious

shrubes, and rare fruites seem'd a paradise. From a terrace in

this place we saw so many coaches, as one would hardly think

could be maintained in the whole City, going, late as it was in

the year, towards the course, which is a place adjoyning, of neere

an English mile long, planted with four rows of trees, making a

large circle in the middle. This course is walled about, neere

breast high, with squared freestone, and has a stately arch at the

entrance, with sculpture and statues about it, built by Mary di

Medices. Here it is that the gallants and ladys of the Court take

the ayre and divert themselves, as with us in Hide Park, the circle

being capable of containing an hundred coaches to turne com-

modiously, and the larger of the plantations for five or six coaches

a brest.

JOHN EVELYN 105

... By the way we alighted at St Cloes, where, on an St Cloud.
eminence neere the river, the Archbishop of Paris has a garden,
for the house is not very considerable, rarely watered and furnish'd
with fountaines, statues, and groves, the walkes are very faire ; the
fountain of Laocoon is in a large square pool, throwing the water
neere 40 feet high, and having about it a multitude of statues and
basins, and is a suprising object : but nothing is more esteem'd
than the cascade falling from the greate stepps into the lowest
and longest walke from the Mount Parnassus, which consists of a
grotto, or shell house, on the summit of the hill, wherein are
divers water-workes and contrivances, to wet the spectators ; this
is covered with a fayre cupola, the walls paynted with the Muses,
and statues placed thick about it, whereof some are antiq and
good. In the upper walkes are two perspectives, seeming to
enlarge the allys. In this garden are many other contrivances.

About a league further we went to see Cardinal Richelieu's Rueil.
villa at Ruell. The house is small, but fairly built, in form of
a castle, moated round. The offices are towards the road, and
over against are large vineyards walled in.

Though the house is not of the greatest, the gardens about
it are so magnificent that T doubt whether Italy has any ex-
ceeding it for all rarities of pleasure. The garden nearest the
pavilion is a parterre, having in the middst divers noble brasse
statues, perpetually spouting water into an ample bassin, with
other figures of the same metal ; but what is most admirable
is the vast enclosure, and variety of ground, in the large garden,
containing vineyards, cornefields, meadows, groves (whereof one
is one of perennial greens), and walkes of vast lengthes, so
accurately kept and cultivated, that nothing can be more agree-
able. On one of these walkes, within a square of tall trees, is
a basilisc of copper which managed by the fountainere casts
water neere 60 feet high, and will of itself move round so
swiftly, that one can hardly escape wetting. This leads to
the Citroniere, where is a noble conserve of all those rarities ;
and at the end of it is the Arch of Constantine, painted on a

io6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

wall in oyle, as large as the real one at Rome, so well don
that even a man skill'd in painting may mistake it for stone
and sculpture. The skie and hills which seem to be betweene
the arches are so naturall that swallows and other birds, think-
ing to fly through, have dashed themselves against the wall.
At the further parte of this walk is that plentiful though artificial
cascade which rolls down a very steepe declivity, and over the
marble steps and bassins, with an astonishing noyse and fury ;
each basin hath a jetto in it, flowing like sheetes of transparent
glasse, especialy that which rises over the great shell of lead,
from whence it glides silently downe a channell thro' the middle
of a spacious gravel walk terminating in a grotto. Here are
also fountaines that cast water to a great height, and large ponds,
2 of which have islands for harbour of fowles, of which there
is store. One of these islands has a receptacle for them built
of vast pieces of rock, neere 50 feet high, growne over with
mosse, ivy, etc., shaded at a competent distance with tall trees,
in this the fowles lay eggs and breede. We then saw a large
and very rare grotto of shell worke, in the shape of satyres
and other wild fancys : in the middle stands a marble table,
on which a fountaine plays in forms of glasses, cupps, crosses,
fanns, crownes, etc. Then the fountaineere represented a showre
of raine from the topp, mett by small jetts from below. At
going out two extravagant musqueteers shot us with a streme
of water from their musket barrells. Before this grotto is a
long poole into which ran divers spouts of water from leaden
escollop bassins.
1644, Mch. I. I went to see the Count de Liancourt's Palace in the Rue
de Seine, which is well built. Towards his study and bed-
chamber joynes a little garden, which tho' very narrow, by the
addition of a well painted perspective is to appearance greatly
enlarged ; to this there is another part, supported by arches,
in which runs a streame of water, rising in the aviary, out of
a statue, and seeming to flow for some miles, by being artifici-
ally continued in the painting, when it sinkes down at the
wall. It is a very agreeable deceipt. At the end of this

JOHN EVELYN 107

garden is a little theater, made to change with divers pretty
seanes, and the stage so ordered that with figures of men and
women paynted on light boards, and cut out, and, by a person
who stands underneath, made to act as if they were speaking,
by guiding them, and reciting words in diferent tones as the
parts require.

Having seen the roomes we went to the Volary, which has Fontainebleau.
a cupola in the middle of it, greate trees and bushes, it being ^^^'^' ^'

full of birds who drank at two fountaines. There is a faire
Tennis Court and noble Stables ; but the beauty of all are
the Gardens. In the Court of the Fountaines stand divers
antiquities and statues, especially a Mercury. In the Queenes
Garden is a Diana ejecting a fountaine, with numerous other
brasse statues.

The Greate Garden, 180 toises long and 154 wide, has in
the centre a fountayne of Tyber of a Colossean figure of Brasse,
with the Wolfe over Romulus and Rhemus. At each corner
of the garden rises a fountaine. In the Garden of the Fish
Pond is a Hercules of white marble. Next is the Garden of
the Pines, and without that a Canale of an English mile in
length, at the end of which rise 3 jettos in the form of a fleur
de lys, of a great height; on the margin are excellent walkes
planted with trees. The carps come famiUarly to hand (to be fed).

Hence they brought us to a spring, which they say being first
discover'd by a dog, gave occasion of beautifying this place both
with the Palace and Gardens. The rocks at some distance in
the Forest yeald one of the most august and stupendous prospects
imaginable. The Parke about this place is very large, and the
Towne is full of noblemen's houses.

I went to see more exactly the roomes of the fine Palace of Luxemburge.
Luxemburge, in the Fauxbourg St Germains, built by Mary de ^^"^^ ^^^^^ ^•
Medices, and I think one of the most noble, entire, and finish'd
piles, that is to be seen, taking it with the garden and all its
accomplishments.

io8 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

The Gardens are neere an English mile in compasse, enclos'd
with a stately wall, and in a good ayre. The parterre is indeed
of box, but so rarely designed and accurately kept cut, that the
embroidery makes a wonderful effect to the lodgings which front
it. 'Tis divided into 4 squares, and as many circular knots,
having in the center a noble basin of marble neere 30 feet
diameter (as I remember), in which a triton of brasse holds a
dolphin that casts a girandola of water neere 30 foote high,
playing perpetualy, the water being conveyed from Arceuil by
an aqueduct of stone, built after the old Roman magnificence.
About this ample parterre, the spacious walkes and all included,
runs a border of freestone, adorned with pedestalls for potts and
statues, and part of it neere the stepps of the terrace, with a raile
and baluster of pure white marble.

The walkes are exactly faire, long, and variously descending,
and so justly planted with limes, elms, and other trees, that
nothing can be more delicious, especially that of the hornebeam
hedge, which being high and stately, butts full on the fountaine.

Towards the farther end is an excavation intended for a vast
fish-pool, but never finish'd. Neere it is an enclosure for a
garden of simples, well kept, and here the Duke keeps tortoises
in greate number, who use the poole of water on one side of the
garden. Here is also a conservatory for snow. At the upper
part towards the palace is a grove of tall elmes, cutt into a starr,
every ray being a walk, whose center is a large fountaine.

The rest of the grotmd is made into severall inclosures (all
hedgeworke or rowes of trees) of whole fields, meadowes, boscages,
some of them containing divers acres.

Next the streete side, and more contiguous to the house, are
knotts in trayle or grasse worke, where likewise runs a fountaine.
Towards the grotto and stables, within a wall, is a garden of
choyce flowers, in which the Duke spends many thousand pistoles.
In sum, nothing is wanted to render this palace and gardens
perfectly beautifull and magnificent ; nor is it one of the least
diversions to see the number of persons of quality, citizens and
strangers, who frequent it, and to whom all accesse is freely

JOHN EVELYN 109

permitted, so that you shall see some walkes and retirements
full of gallants and ladys ; in others melancholy fryers ; in others
studious scholars ; in others jolly citizens, some sitting or lying
on the grasse, others running, jumping, some playing at bowles
and ball, others dancing and singing; and all this without the
least disturbance, by reason of the largeness of the place.

What is most admirable is, you see no gardners or men at
worke, and yet all is kept in such exquisite order as if they did
nothing else but work ; it is so early in the morning, that all is
despatched and don without the least confusion.

I have been the larger in the description of this Paradise, for
the extraordinary delight I have taken in those sweete retire-
ments. The Cabinet and Chapell neerer the garden front have
some choyce pictures. All the houses neere this are also noble
palaces, especially petite Luxemburge.

The next morning I went to the Garden of Monsieur Morine,
who from being an ordinary gardner is become one of the most
skilful and curious persons in France for his rare collections of
shells, flowers and insects.

His garden is of an exact oval figure, planted with cypresse
cutt flat and set as even as a wall; the tulips, anemonies,
ranunculus's, crocus's, etc., are held to be of the rarest, and
draw all the admirers of such things to his house during the
season. He lived in a kind of Hermitage at one side of his
garden, where his collection of purselane and coral, whereof
one is carved into a large Crucifix, is much esteemed. He has
also bookes of prints, by Albert (Durer), Van Leyden, Calot, etc.
His collection of all sorts of insects, especially of Butterflys, is
most curios ; these he spreads and so medicates that no corruption
invading them, he keepes them in drawers, so placed as to
represent a beautifull piece of tapistre.

I often went to the Palais Cardinal, bequeathed by
Richelieu to the King, on condition that it should be called
by his name; at this time the King resided in it, because of
the building of the Louvre. It is a very noble house, tho'
somewhat low; the gallerys, paintings of the most illustrious

no THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

persons of both sexes, the Queenes bathes, presence chamber
with its rich carved and gilded roofe, theatre and large garden,
in which is an ample fountaine, grove, and maille, are worthy of
remark.

Genoa. One of the greatest here for circuit is that of the Prince d'Orias,

1644, Oct. i-j, which reaches from the sea to the sum'it of the mountaines. ... To

this Palace belongs three gardens, the first whereof is beautified

with a terrace, supported by pillars of marble ; there is a fountaine

of eagles, and one of Neptune with other Sea-gods, all of the

purest white marble ; they stand in a most ample basin of the

same stone. At the side of this garden is such an aviary as Sir

Fra Bacon describes in his Sermones fidelium, or Essays, wherein

grow trees of more than two foote diameter, besides cypresse,

myrtils, lentises, and other rare shrubs which serve to nestle and

pearch all sorts of birds, who have ayre and place enough under

their ayrie canopy, supported with huge iron worke, stupendous

for its fabrick and the charge. The other two gardens are full

of orange trees, citrons and pomegranads, fountaines, grottos, and

statues ; one of the latter is a Colossal Jupiter, under which is the

Sepulchre of a beloved dog, for the care of which one of this

family received of the K. of Spaine 500 crownes a yeare during

the life of that faithfull animal. The reservoir of water here is a

most admirable piece of art ; and so is the grotto over against

it . . .

Monte Cavallo. The garden which is called the Belvedere di Monte Cavallo, in

1644, Nov. 10. emulation to that of the Vatican, is most excellent for ayre and

prospect, its exquisite fountaines, close walkes, grotts, piscinas, or

stews for fish, planted about with venerable cypresses, and refresh'd

with water musiq, aviaries, and other rarities.

Villa Borghesi. I walked to Villa Borghesi, a house and ample garden on Mons

1644, Nov. 17. pincius, yet somewhat without the Citty walls, circumscrib'd by

another wall full of small turrets and banqueting-houses, which

makes it appeare at a distance like a little towne. Within it is an

Elysium of delight, having in the centre a noble Palace ; but the

entrance of the garden presents us with a very glorious fabrick or

JOHN EVELYN iii

rather dore case adorn'd with divers excellent marble statues.
This garden abounded with all sorts of delicious fruit and exotig
simples, fountaines of sundry inventions, groves, and small rivulets.
There is also adjoining to it a vivarium for estriges, peacocks,
swanns, cranes, etc., and divers strange beasts, deare, and hares.
The grotto is very rare, and represents among other devices
artificial raine, and sundry shapes of vessells, flowers, etc., which
is effected by changing the heades of the fountaines.

I went with my brother Evelyn to Wotton to give him what Wotton.
directions I was able about his garden, which he was now desirous '^52, Mck.22.
to put into some forme ; but for which he was to remove a
mountaine overgrowne with huge trees and thicket, with a moate
within 10 yards of the house. This my brother immediately
attempted, and that without greate cost, for more than an
hundred yards South, by digging downe the mountaine and
flinging it into a rapid stream, it not onely carried away the
sand, etc., but filled up the moate, and level'd that noble area,
where now the garden and fountaine is. The first occasion of
my brother making this alteration was my building the little
retiring place betweene the greate wood Eastward next the
meadow, where some time after my father's death I made a
triangular pond, or little stew, with an artificial rock after my
coming out of Flanders.

I began to set out the ovall garden at Sayes Court, which was Sayes Court,
before a rude orchard and all the rest one intire field of 100 acres, 1653, /a//. 17.
without any hedge, except the hither holly hedge joyning to the
Bank of the mount walk. This was the beginning of all the
succeeding gardens, walks, groves, enclosures, and plantations
there.

I planted the Orchard at Sayes Court, new moone, wind W. 1653, /««. 19.

I went to Hackney to see my Lady Brooke's garden, which was 1653, May 8.
one of the neatest and most celebrated in England, the house well
furnish'd, but a despicable building. Returning visited one Mr
Lambs's garden ; it has large and noble walks, some modern
statues, a vineyard, planted in strawberry borders, staked at 10

I 12

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

foote distances ; the banqueting house of cedar, where the couch
and seates were carv'd a I'antique.
Wilton. In the afternoon we went to Wilton. . . . The Garden, hereto-

i654,/z^/j' 20. f-Qj-g esteemed the noblest in England, is a large handsom plaine,
with a grotto and water-works, which might be made much more
pleasant were the river that passes through cleans'd and rais'd, for
all is effected by a meere force. It has a flower garden not in-
elegant. But after all, that which renders the seate delightful is
its being so neere the downes and noble plaines about the country
contiguous to it. The stables are well order'd and yield a graceful!
front, by reason of the walkes of lime-trees, with the court and
fountaine of the stables adorn'd with the Caesar's heads.

Audley End. The gardens are not in order, tho' well inclos'd. It has also
a bowling-alley a noble well wall'd, wooded, and water'd park, full
of fine collines and ponds; the river glides before the palace, to
which is an avenue of lime trees, but all this is much diminish'd
by its being placed in an obscure bottome.

1655, y^M^. 22. I went to Box-hill to see those rare natural bowers, cabinets,
and shady walkes in the box copses : hence we walk'd to
Mickleham, and saw Sir F. Stidolph's seate environ'd with
elme trees and walnuts innumerable, and of which last he told
us they receiv'd a considerable revenue. Here are such goodly
walkes and hills shaded with yew and box as render the place
extreamely agreeable, it seeming from these ever-greens to be
summer all the winter.

Hampton
Court.
1662, June 9.

The Park formerly a flat naked piece of ground, now planted
with sweete rows of lime trees ; and the canall for water now
neere perfected ; also the hare parke. In the garden is a rich
and noble fountaine, with syrens, statues, etc., cast in copper
by Fanelli, but no plenty of water. The cradle-walk of home
beame in the garden is, for the perplexed twining of the trees,
very observable. There is a parterre which they call Paradise,
in which is a pretty banquetting-house set over a cave or cellar.
All these gardens might be exceedingly improved, as being too
narrow for such a palace.

JOHN EVELYN 113

Next to Wadham, and the Physick Garden, where were two Oxford,
large locust trees, and as many platana, and some rare plants ^^ ^' ^'*' ^^^
under the culture of old Bobart.

To Alburie to see how that garden proceeded, which I found Albury.
exactly don to the designe and plot I had made, with the crypta ^ ^°' ^^^^' ^^'
thro' the mountaine in the park 30 perches in length. Such
a Pausilippe ^ is no where in England besides. The canall was
now digging and the vineyard planted.

THERE stand in the garden two handsome stone pyramids. Nonesuch,
and the avenue planted with rows of fair elms, but the rest
of these goodly trees, both of this and of Worcester Park ad-
joining, were felled by those destructive and avaricious rebels in
the late war, which defaced one of the stateliest seats his Majesty
had.

For the rest, the fore-court is noble, so are the stables ; and Berkeley
above all, the gardens, which are incomparable by reason of the House.
inequality of the ground, and a pretty p'sa'na. The holly-hedges
on the terrace I advised the planting of.

Above all, are admirable and magnificent the several ample LordSunder-
gardens furnished with the choicest fruit, and exquisitely kept. ^{Jhorpe^* ^^
Great plenty of oranges and other curiosities.

After dinner I walked to Ham, to see the house and garden Ham.
of the Duke of Lauderdale, which is indeed inferior to few
of the best villas in Italy itself; the house furnished like a
great Prince's; the parterres, flower-gardens, orangeries, groves,
avenues, courts, statues, perspectives, fountains, aviaries, and
all this at the banks of the sweetest river in the world, must
needs be admirable.

The gardens are very rare, and cannot be otherwise, having Earl of Es-
se skilful an artist to govern them as Mr Cooke, who is, as to ^esc^s House
the mechanick part, not ignorant in mathematics, and pretends bury, Herts.

1 A word adopted by Mr Evelyn for a subterranean passage, from the famous
grotto of Pausilippo, at Naples.

H

114 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

to astrology. There is an excellent collection of the choicest
fruit.

Next morning I went to see Sir Thomas Browne (with whom
I had some time corresponded by letter, tho' I had never seen
him before). His whole house and garden being a paradise and
cabinet of rarities, and that of the best collection, especially
medails, books, plants, and natural things. — Diary.

Wotton. Concerning the Gardning and Husbandry of the Antients,

1696, Oct. 28. ^y|^i(.j^ ig your inquirie (especialy of the first), that it had
certainely nothing approaching the elegancy of the present age,
Rapinus (whom I send you) will aboundantly satisfie you. The
discourse you will find at the end of Hortorum, lib. 4° capp. 6, 7.
What they called their Gardens onely spacious plots of ground
planted with platans and other shady trees in walks, and built
about with Porticas, Xisti, and noble ranges of pillars, adorn'd
with Statues, Fountaines, Piscariae, Aviaries, etc. But for the
flowry parterre, beds of Tulips, Carnations, Auricula, Tuberose,
Jonquills, Ranunculas, and other of our rare Coronaries, we heare
nothing of, nor that they had such a store and variety of Exotics,
Orangeries, Myrtils, and other curious Greenes ; nor do I beHeve
they had their Orchards in such perfection, nor by far our furni-
true for the Kitchen. Pliny indeed enumerates a world of vulgar
plants and olitories, but they fall infinitely short of our Physic
gardens, books and herbals, every day augmented by our sedulous
Botanists and brought to us from all the quarters of the world.
And as for their Husbandry and more rural skill, of which the
same author has written so many books in his Nat. History,
especial hb. 17, 18, etc., you'l soone be judge what it was. They
tooke great care indeede of their Vines and Olives, stercorations,
ingraftings, and were diHgent in observing seasons, the course of
the stars, etc., and doubtlesse were very industrious, but when
you shall have read over Cato, Varro, Columella, Palladio, with
the Greek Geoponics, I do not think you will have cause to
prefer them before the modern agriculture, so exceedingly of
late improv'd, for which you may consult and compare our old

ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER 115

Tusser, Markham, the Maison Rustic, Hartlib, Walter Blith,
the Philosophical Transactions, and other books, which you
know better than my selfe.

DEHOLD the Disposition and Order of these finer sorts of ANTHONY
^ Apartments, Gardens, Villas ! The kind of Harmony to pnnppR
the Eye, from the various Shapes and Colours agreeably mixt, EARL OF
and rang'd in Lines, intercrossinsf without confusion, and SHAFTESBUF
fortunately co-incident. — K Parterre^ Cypresses, Groves, Wilder- ^^ ^^'^ ^^'
nesses. — Statues, here and there, of Virtue^ Fo?'titiide, Te7nper-
afice — Heroes-BusiSj Philosophers-Yiitd^d.'s, ; with sutable Mottos
and Inscriptions — Solemn Representations of things deeply
natural — Caves, Grottos, Rocks — Unis and Obelisks in retir'd
places, and dispos'd at proper distances and points of Sight :
with all those Symmetrys which silently express a reigning Order,
Peace, Harmony, and Beauty ! — But what is there answerable to
this, in the MINDS of the Possessors} What Possession or Pro-
priety is theirs ? What Co?2Sta7tcy or Security of Enjoyment ? What
Peace, what Harjuony WITHIN ? " — Miscellaneous Reflections.

—'AtsISt^—

The greatest fi'uit and kitchen gardener who ever lived was bom at Poictiers JEAN DE LA
1626; he gave tip sttidy of law to accompany son of M. Tainbonneau {whose QUINTINYE
garden he planned and directed) to Italy, to study plaiits ; Diade expe7-i7nents and (1626- 1 700).
discoveries on sap of plants. His *' Traite des Jardins Fruitier s et Potagers^'
{A?nste?'d. 1690), translated by Evelyn as '* Co7?ipleat Ga7'diner," and abridged
by London and Wise, Friend of Louis XIV. and Co7idd. Charles II. offered
hi7)i pe7isio7i. He 7)isited E7igla7id twice. Perraidt says his letters were published
in Lo7ido7i. He stayed with Evelyn, who had his po7-trait e7igraved for hit^t,
a7id Qtd7iti7iye i7npa7'ted to hi7)i his )/iode of ctdtivati7ig 77ielo7is. He was Di7-ecto7--
General of the Kings Fridt a7id Kitche}i Ga7-de7i at Versailles, which he laid ont,
coveri7ig thi7'ty ac7'es, of which he gives the pla7i. He7-e the Co7ifreres de Sai7it
Fiacre, the Tutelar Saitit of Ho7-tictdturists, still hold their Ga7'de7iers' Lodge.
He died \lQO, and Louis XIV. said to his widow, ^ I am as great a stiff erer by
his death as you, a7id I despair of ever siipplyiyig his loss. ' His system?! of p7'zi7ti7ig
a7id trai7ii7ig wall a7id espalier trees surpassed that of all previous writers.

T KNOW well enough that all Books of Gardening have usually
* begun with a Preface full of the praises given to it, and that
consequently it may be thought this ought to begin so too.

ii6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

But since I am far from presuming myself able to say anything
new, that may at all enhance the Esteem which is due to Gardens,
or to the Art that teaches their Construction, and therefore
cannot but think it very impertinent to go about to persuade
any one to study it ; when I observe the most part of Men
possess'd with a natural passion for so sweet and profitable an
Occupation, I shall wave those Complements, and fall down
right upon the pursuit of my Design, which is to instruct,
in case I can show myself really master enough of the Arf^
worthily to perform it.

And further, the affectation of Men to gratifie the Pleasures
of their Eyes, inciting them to push on things to more and
more Perfection ; there came first into the minds of Noble
Persons, some conceits of ranging those Flowers with a little
more agreeableness and Synwietry than was practised by the
first Curiosi^s, which gave the first beginnings to Parterres, or
Flower-Pots among Florisfs, the first of which, in all probability,
were but cut pieces (decoupez) shaped after but a plain and
gross manner. But afterwards there were some made of
another fashion, called Ftfibroidery Fashion which were better
contrived and more delightful than the other, with which two
sorts the World contented themselves for several Ages, so that
Gardens were not accompanied with any other Beauties than
those, till in these last times Curiosity, Good Judgfnent, and
Fancy, and Magnificence itself being grown by little and little,
to an extraordinary heighth, our Age, which excells in all that
Humane industry is able to invent, has given in particular
by the ingenious skill of the famous Mr Le Nostre the best
perfection to this part of Gardening, whicli appears by so many
Canals, Water-Works, Cascades, Spouting- Fountains, Labyrinths,
Bowlifig Greens, Terraces, etc., ornaments indeed that are new,
but such as in earnest do wonderfully set off the natural Beauty
of a Garden. — Preface to the Compleat Gardiner, translated by
John Evelyn {or his son).

k

MADAME DE SEVIGNE 117

MY little trees are of a surprisinsr beauty. Pilois raises them MADAME
up to the clouds with a wonderful adroitness : all the (1626-1696).
same, nothing is so beautiful as those alleys whose birth you
have seen. You know I gave you a kind of device which pleased
you : here is a motto I have written on a tree for my son who
has returned from Candia, Vago difama : is it not pretty although
so brief? Only yesterday I had written in honour of the idle,
Bella cosa far niente. Aux Rockers. 31 May, 167 1.

As to my labyrinth, it is neat, it has green plots, and the
palissades are breast-high ; it is a lovable spot ; but, alas ! my
dear child, there is scarcely a sign of my ever seeing you in it.

Di memoria midrirsi, piu che di speme.

It is indeed my true device. — Aux Rockers, 26 July, 1671.

I do not know what you have done this morning; for my
part, 1 have been in the dew up to my knees laying lines ; I
am making winding alleys all round my park, which will be
of great beauty ; if my son loves woods and walks, he will be
sure to bless my memory. — 28 October, 167 1.

There is the Palace of the Luxemburg belonging to Made-
moiselle,^ and we shall enter it soon. Madame had ordered
all the trees in the garden on her side to be cut down, out
of pure contradiction : this beautiful garden had become
ridiculous ; Providence has provided for it. Mademoiselle
will be able to have it cleared on both sides, and put Le
Notre in it, to make it like the Tuileries. — Farts. 6 April, 1672.

We were at Clagny . . . the building is growing visibly, the
Gardens are made. You know the manner of Le Notre ; he
has left a little dark wood, which does very well. There is a
grove of orange-trees in great tubs ; you walk there ; and they
form alleys in the shade ; and to hide the tubs there are two rows
of pallisades high enough to lean on, all aflower with tube-roses,
^ Marguerite de Lorraine, second wife of Gaston, Duke of Orleans.

ii8 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

roses, jasmines, carnations. It is assuredly the most beautiful,
the most surprising, and the most enchanted novelty imaginable.
7 A2/g., 1675. — Letters to Madame Grigjtan.

—^A/\/\fv—

JOHN A FTER this, he (the Interpreter) led them into his Garden,

(^628^1688? where was great Variety of Flowers : And he said. Do you see

all these ? So Christian said, Yes. Then said he again, Behold
the Flowers are divers in Stature, in Quality, and Colour, and
Smell, and Virtue ; and some are better than some : Also
where the Gardener hath set them, there they stand, and
quarrel not one with another. . . . When the Interpreter had
done, he takes them out into his Garden again, and had them
to a Tree, whose inside was all rotten and gone, and yet it
grew and had leaves. Then said Mercy, What means this?
This Tree, said he, whose Outside is fair and whose Inside
is rotten, it is, to which may be compared, that are in the
Garden of God : Who with their Mouths speak high in Be-
half of God, but in deed will do nothing for him; whose
Leaves are fair, but their Hearts good for nothing but to be
Tinder for the Devil's Tinder-Box. — The Pilgrim' s Progress.

JOHN RAY, One of the founders of modern Zoology and Botany : originally Greek Lecturer
(1627- 1705). at Catnbridge, where he was Fellow of Trinity with Sir Isaac Newton. He
published in 1660 A Catalogue of Plants around that town, and in 1673
' Observations made in a Journey throtigh the Low Countries^ Germany,
Italy and France,^ giving information of atiimals and plants seeji dtving thj-ee
years. 1667, elected Fellow of Royal Society. 1682, '■'■ Methodtis Plantarum
nova,''^ as altered by himself , formed the basis of the System of Jtissieu received
at present day. 1670, his ' Catalogus Plantaru7n Anglice,' the basis of all sub-
sequent Floras of this Country. 1686, his Historia Plantarum [Vol. I.
appeared) ; made j?iany researches in Vegetable Physiology.

Cuvier states, he was the model of the Systematists during the whole of the
iSth Century ( Whewell). Pay meditated a work to be entitled " Horti Anglice."
See his Letters. [Daijies Harrington).

UT whether there be such a constant circulation of the Sap
in Plants as there is of the blood in Animals, as they would
from hence infer, there is some reason to doubt.

B

LEONARD MEAGER 119

I might add hereto the pleasant and delectable, cooling and
refreshing Shade they afford in the Summer-time; which was
very much esteem'd by the Inhabitants of hot Countries, who
always took great delight and pleasure to sit in the open Air,
under shady Trees; Hence that Expression so often repeated
in Scripture, of every Man's sittifig U7ider his own Vi?ie, aitd
under his own Fig-tree^ where also they us'd to eat ; as appears
by Abrahafn's entertaining the Angels under a Tree, and stand-
ing by them whem they did eat, Gen. 18, 8. Moreover the
Leaves of Plants are very beautiful and ornamental. That
there is great pulchritude and comeliness of Proportion in the
Leaves, Flowers and Fruits of Plants, is attested by the general
Verdict of Mankind, as Dr More and others well observe. The
adorning and beautifying of Temples and Buildings in all Ages,
is an evident and undeniable Testimony of this : For what is
more ordinary with Architects than the taking in Leaves and
Flowers and Fruitage for the garnishing of their Work; as the
Roman the Leaves of Acanthus^ and the Jewish of Falm- Trees
and Pomegranets : and these more frequently than any of the
five regular Solids, as being more comely and pleasant to be-
hold.— The Wisdom of God in the Creation.

Gardener in service of P. Hohnlan of Warkworth : author of ' The LEONARD
English Gardener^' with engravings, ^to, 1670 ; 'The Neiv Art of Garden- MEAGER
itig, with The Gardener's Ahianack,' 1697, i2mo', and The Mystery «?/■( 1624?- 1704?)
Husbandry,' 1697.

— v\/\/Vv—

TN every Garden Four Things are necessary to be provided for, SIR

^ Flowers, Fruit, Shade, and Water, and whoever lays out a ^^hf^A^

Garden without all these, must not pretend it in any Perfection. (1628-17CX)).

It ought to lie to the best Parts of the House, or to those of

the Master's commonest Use, so as to be but like one of the

Rooms out of which you step into another. The Part of your

Garden next your House (besides the Walks that go round it)

should be a Parterre for flowers, or Grass-Plots bordered with

I20 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Flowers ; or if, according to the Newest Mode, it be cast all
into Grass-Plots and Gravel- Walks, the Driness of these should
be relieved with Fountains, and the Plainness of those with
Statues ; otherwise, if large, they have an ill effect upon the
Eye. However, the Part next the House should be open, and
no other Fruit but upon the Walls. If this take up one Half
of the Garden, the other should be Fruit-Trees, unless some
Grove for Shade lie in the Middle. If it take up a Third Part
only, then the next Third may be Dwarf-Trees, and the Last
Standard-Fruit; or else the Second Part Fruit-Trees, and the
Third all Sorts of Winter-Greens, which provide for all Seasons
of the Year. . . .

The perfectest Figure of a Garden I ever saw, either at Home
or Abroad, was that of Moor-Park^ in Hertfordshire, when I knew
it about thirty years ago. It was made by the Countess of Bed-
ford, esteemed among the greatest Wits of her Time, and cele-
brated by Doctor Do?ine ; and with very great Care, excellent
Contrivance, and much Cost ; but greater sums may be thrown
away without Effect or Honour if there want Sense in Propor-
tion to Money, or if Nature be not followed ; which I take to
be the great Rule in this, and perhaps in every thing else, as far
as the Conduct not only of our Lives, but our Governments.
And whether the Greatest of Mortal Men should attempt the
forcing of Nature may best be judged by observing how seldom
God Almighty does it Himself, by so few, true, and undisputed
Miracles, as we see or hear of in the World. For my own Part,
I know not three wiser Precepts for the Conduct either of Princes
or Private Men, than

Servare Modum, Finemque tueri,

Naturamque sequi.

Because I take the Garden I have named to have been in all
Kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the Figure and
Disposition, that I have ever seen, I will describe it for a model
to those that meet with such a Situation, and are above the
Regards of common Expence. It lies on the Side of a Hill,
(upon which the House stands) but not very steep. The Length

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 121

of the House, where the best Rooms and of most Use or Pleasure
are, Hes upon the Breadth of the Garden, the Great Parlour opens
into the Middle of a Terras Gravel- Walk that lies even with it,
and which may be, as I remember, about three hundred Paces
long, and broad in Proportion, the Border set with Standard
Laurels, and at large Distances, which have the Beauty of
Orange-Trees, out of Flower and Fruit : From this Walk are
Three Descents by many Stone Steps, in the Middle and at
each End, into a very large Parterre. This is divided into
Quarters by Gravel-Walks, and adorned with Two Fountains
and Eight Statues in the several Quarters ; at the End of the
Terras-Walk are Two Summer-Houses, and the Sides of the
Parterre are ranged with two large Cloisters, open to the Garden,
upon Arches of Stone, and ending with two other Summer-Houses
even with the Cloisters, which are paved with Stone, and
designed for Walks of Shade, there being none other in the
whole Parterre. Over these two Cloisters are two Terrasses
covered with Lead, and fenced with Balusters ; and the Passage
into these Airy Walks, is out of the two Summer-Houses, at
the End of the first Terras-Walk. The Cloister facing the South
is covered with Vines, and would have been proper for an Orange-
House, and the other for Myrtles, or other more common Greens ;
and had, I doubt not, been cast for that Purpose, if this Piece
of Gardening had been then in as much Vogue as it is now.

From the Middle of this Parterre is a Descent by many Steps
flying on each side of a Grotto, that lies between them (covered
with Lead, and flat) into the lower Garden, which is all Fruit-
Trees ranged about the several Quarters of a Wilderness which
is very Shady ; the Walks here are all Green, the Grotto em-
bellish'd with Figures of Shell-Rock-work, Fountains and Water-
works. If the Hill had not ended with the lower Garden, and
the Wall were not bounded by a common Way that goes through
the Park, they might have added a Third Quarter of all Greens ;
but this Want is supplied by a Garden on the other Side of the
House, which is all of that Sort, very Wild, Shady, and adorned
with rough Rock-work and Fountains. — Upon the Gardens of
Epicurus^ or of Gardenmg.

122 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

PIERRE 1670, appointed Tutor to the Dauphin, andfo7- twenty years published the
TTc> Edition of the Classics ^^ in usiim Delphini.''^ 1674, Member of the French

. r V Academy. 1685, Bishop of Avranches.

A LTHOUGH natural beauties are preferable to artistic ones,
''*' that is not the taste of this century. Nothing pleases, if
not costly. A fountain issuing in great cascades from the foot
of a rock, tumbling over a golden sand the clearest and freshest
water in the world, will not please the people at court as much
as a jet of foetid and muddy water drawn up at enormous cost
from a frog-marsh. A factitious parterre, composed of earth
brought together according to a plan of Monsieur Le Notre,
having for its whole decoration but a few rows of box, which
never distinguish the seasons by change of colour; surrounded
by vast sanded alleys, very compact and very bare ; such a
parterre forms the delight of polite society.

It leaves to small cits and peasants these rustic lawns, this
rural turf. It requires palissades erected with the line, and
at the point of the shears. The green shades of these tufted
birches, and of those great oaks which were found at the birth
of time, are in bad taste and worthy of the grossness of our
fathers. Is not to think thus to prefer a painted face to the
natural colour of a beautiful countenance ? But the depravity of
this judgment is discovered in our pictures and in our tapestries.
Paint on the one side a fashionable garden, and on the other
one of those beautiful landscapes, in which Nature spreads her
riches undisguised; one will present a very tedious object, the
other will charm you by its delight. You will be tired of the
one at first glance, you will never weary of looking at the other,
such is the force of nature to make itself beloved, in spite of
the pilferings and deceits of art. — Huetia7ia, '- Natural Beauties
preferable to Artistic ojtes ' (1722).^

I have no more approval for the gardens in fashion than
for iron-screens (clairvoyees). I mean those gardens, composed

^ Bottiger contends that the Bishop of Avranches has in these remarks
foreshadowed the modern landscape garden before the Spectator.

PIERRE DANIEL HUET 123

of large broad sand-strewn allies, of trellises, parterres, adorned
only with a few delicate beds, defined by strips of box and
edged with a few flowers, and a few stunted trees, and in which
you can scarce distinguish summer from winter.

M. le Nostre, who is quoted as the author of this sort of
garden, which it is asserted he brought back from Italy, did,
it is true, adapt it to the King's Gardens, but he did not adapt
it alone, for he added covered alleys, shaped woods, trees of
lofty trunk, pallisades, and green shades. The majority of
private persons, possessing neither sufficient ground, nor suffi-
cient means to give their gardens all these ornaments, and keep
them up, have only adopted its parterres, which require little
time and expense, but in which walking is out of the question
throughout the day, and in which ladies, regardful of their com-
plexion, would only venture to appear after sun-set.

Pere Rapin was not of this way of thinking, and has left very
different lessons in his agreeable Poem on gardening; and if
Virgil had been able to satisfy the desire he had to handle that
subject, he would not have been content to give precepts for
cultivating fruit- and kitchen-gardens ; but in imitation of the
good old man of Cilicia, whom he had seen at Tarentum, and
whose care and industry he describes so agreeably, he would
have painted in his verse the pleasures created by tall trees,
unfruitful though they may be, by their foliage, their shadows,
and their decoration. — Ibid: Of the gardens in fashion.

(Lord Paulet's garden at Hinton St George is) very different XVI Ith Century,
from the common style of English gardens; these are usually
walks of sand, made perfectly level, by rolling them with a stone
cylinder, through the axis of which a lever of iron is passed whose
ends being brought forward and united together in form of a
triangle, serve to move it backwards or forwards, and between
the walks are smooth grass-plats, covered with the greenest tuft,
without any other ornament. This of my Lord Paulet is a
Meadow divided into several compartments of brick-work, which
are filled with flowers. — Harleian Miscellanies^ vol. vii. p. 141.

124 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

SAMUEL '^HEN to Mr Evelyn's, to discourse of our confounded business
PEPYS 1 q£ pj-isoners, and sick and wounded seamen, wherein he
* and we are so much put out of order. And here he showed me
his Gardens, which are, for variety of evergreens, and hedge of
holly, the finest things I ever saw in my life. Thence in his
coach to Greenwich, and there to my office, all the way having
fine discourse of trees and the nature of vegetables. — 'Diary.'
^th October^ 1665.

By water to Deptford, and there made a visit to Mr Evelyn. . . .
He read to me very much also of his discourse, he hath been
many years and now is about, about Gardenage ; which will be
a most noble and pleasant piece. — 5 Novr,^ 1665.

22nd (Lord's Day). Walked to White Hall, where saw nobody
almost, but walked up and down with Hugh May, who is a very
ingenious man.

Among other things, discoursing of our present fashion of
gardens to make them plain, that we have the best walks of
gravell in the world, France having none nor Italy; and our
green of our bowling allies is better than any they have. So
our business here being ayre, this is the best way, only with a
little mixture of statues or pots, which may be handsome, and
so filled with another pot of such or such a flower or greene,
as the season of the year will bear. And then for flowers, they
are best seen in a little plat by themselves : besides, their borders
spoil the walks of another garden : and then for fruit, the best way
is to have walls built circularly one within another, to the South, on
purpose for fruit, and leave the walking Garden only for that use.
Thence walked through the House, where most people mighty
hush, and methinks, melancholy. — 22nd July ^ 1666.

— A/\/\/\^ —

GEORGE LONDON 125

London was a pupil of Rose, Gardener to Charles II., and founder of the GEORGE
Brompton Park Nursery. He and Wise were authors of * The Compleat LONDON
Gardener' {abridged from de la Quintinye), and of'' The Retir'd Gard'ner' in u'ctmwv'^^"^
two volumes. Vol. /., a Translation of ^ Le Jardinier Solitaire, or Dialogues VVISE
between a Gentleman and a Gardiner ^ {Fruit and Kitchen Garden). Vol. II.,
containing the manner of planting and cultivating all sorts of Flowers ....
beitig a translation from *Z<? Jardinier Fleuriste et Historiographer written
by the Sieur Liger of Atixerre.

Evelyn devotes the "Advertisement" of his translation of La Quintinye's
'Compleat Gardner ' to an eulogy of London and Wise, in which he commends
their industry, knowledge of Nature and genius of Soils, their powers of Design,
and their ample Collection at Brompton Park, near Kensington.

When Wise was appointed to the care of the Royal Gardens by Queen Anne,
London used to make riding Circuits of the principal Gardens of England.

Gard^ier.
npHE Distribution of Four acres for a fruit and kitchin garden,
*- according to the figure I here present you, is the most
approv'd of, both in regard to fruit-trees and legumes.

Gentleman.
Wherein does the beauty of it consist ?

Gard'ner.

You may observe it in the figure before you : you see 'tis more
deep than broad ; the Alleys are of a good size, adorn'd with
Borders Three Foot deep on each side, edged with several sorts
of Aromatick Herbs. ... In my Opinion there's nothing more
ingenious belonging to a Garden, than the different Ways of
marking our different Figures in a Parterre, especially when the
design happens to be well contrived, and the Execution of it
perform'd by a skilful Hand.

Formerly Gardens did not require so great Exactness as now,
and Art suffer'd Nature to bring forth her Productions as confus'd
as she pleas'd ; a Flower that should have been the chief Ornament
of the Garden lay hid, and languish'd among others of less Value,
which tarnish'd all its Beauty. It was not then known what was
meant by knots parted by Box, which had it been form'd in all the
figures Fancy could suggest, would have afforded a pleasure to the
Eye not easie to be express'd.

126 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

In former Times, the use of Box was not known, and the
Manner of using it, if we beUeve the Fable, was introduc'd by
the Goddess Flora, who believing it to be an Ornament prepared
for Gardens, order'd it to be made use of accordingly.

. . Some Parterres are said to be imbroider'd, others partly
imbroider'd, and partly Cut-work with Borders \ a Third Sort
compos'd of Grass-work only ; a Fourth made up of Imbroidery
and Grass-work ; a Fifth only Cut-work ; a Sixth nothing but
Cut-work and Turfs of Grass; a Seventh of Cut-work of Grass
and Imbroidery; an Eighth whose middle is all Cut-work, and
the Borders Imbroidery ; a Ninth, on the contrary, whose
Borders are all Cut-work, and the Middle Imbroidery; and
lastly another Sort, whose Middle is partly Imbroidery, partly
Cut-work and Green Turf, with Borders of Turf and Cut-work.

]s[OTE. — I?nb7'oidery = those Draughts which represent in Effect
those we have on our Cloaths, and look like Foliage ; in Gard'ners'
language call'd Branch-work. Below the Foliage certain Flowers
called Flouris kings. — Tke Retird Gard'?ier, chap. iii.

I

MANDELSLO A traveller ivho visited England in 1640 tktcs describes the Garden at
(1640.) Theobalds, the Palace of James /.—

T is large and square, having all its walls covered with sillery
and a beautiful jet d'eau in the centre. The parterre hath
many pleasant walks, many of which are planted on the sides with
espahers, and others arched over. Some of the trees are limes
and elms, and at the end is a small mount called the Mount of
Venus, which is placed in the midst of a labyrinth and is upon
the whole, one of the most beautiful spots in the world. — ' Voyages
de Mandelslo ' {quoted by Dames Barrington).

J-J\/\tV^—

SIR JOHN A FTER what I have said of the number and beauty of the

CHARDIN J\ flowers in Persia, one might easily imagine that the. most

(1643-1713).

beautiful gardens in the world are to be found there; but this

^

^^

1

^-

1^^

CHARLES DUFRESNY 127

is not at all the case. On the contrary, by a rule I find very
general where nature is fertile and aisee, art is coarser and more
unknown, as in this matter of gardens. This happens from the
fact that when Nature is so excellent a gardener, if I may so
express it, there is nothing for art to do. The Gardens of the
Persians consist commonly of a grand alley or straight avenue -
in the centre, planted with plane (the zinzar, or Chenar of the
East), which divides the garden into two parts. There is a '
basin of water in the middle, proportionate to the garden, and
two other lesser ones on the two sides. The space between
them is sown with a mixture of flowers in natural confusion,
and planted with fruit trees and roses; and this is the whole
of the plan and execution. They know nothing of parterres
and cabinets of verdure, labyrinths, terraces and such other
ornaments of our gardens. The reason of which is, that the
Persians do not walk in their gardens, as we do ; but content
themselves with having the view of them, and breathing the
fresh air. For this purpose they seat themselves in some part
of the garden as soon as they come into it, and remain there
till they go out. — Travels into Persia (1686).

" Of the older travellers (in Persia) the palm will be conceded,
nemi?ie contradicefite, to the French Huguenot, and English Knight,
Chardin. He is apt to exaggerate, and he cannot invariably be
relied upon, but he is always painstaking, frequently ingenious,
and not seldom profound." — ffo?i. George N. Ciirzon. ''Persia''
(1892).

— •A/\/\rv —

Said to be descended from a natural son of Henry IV. and the wife of a CHARLES
gardener ; a very irregular man in every way ; improviscr alike of gardetis and DUFRESNY
comedies ; the soi-disant rival of Lendtre ; laid oict the Gardens of Mignaux, near (^°4 -1724)-
Poissy, and of the Abbe Pajot, near Vincennes ; was valet de Chambre to Lonis
XIV. ; a ''man of ideas'' one of which Montesquieu adopted in his '■'Letters
Persanes"; collaborated with Regnard, and had so??iethingin him ofMarivaux—
(Brunetiere).

The first indications by the Jesuits of Chinese gardens (1690) had struck his
ardent and paradoxical hnagination. He loved to work upon an unequal and

128 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

irregular ground {Alphand). He wanted obstacles to overcome^ if there ivere
tiofie, he 7-aised a vioimtain on a plain.

His style had something of the 7nodern English manner., bnt his projects were
rarely carried into execution. Gabriel Thouin asserts {"■Flans Raisonnis")
that the first example of modern Landscape gardening was given by Dufresny
in the Faubourg St Antoine.

— v\/\/V\^—

ENGELBERT Doctor and Traveller. Born at Lemgow in Westphalia ; travelled while
KAEMPFER ^^^^//^ in North Germany, Holland and Poland ; at t^i joined Swedish Diplo-
(165 1 -17 16). ffiatic service and travelled through Russia and Tartary to Ispahan. Entered

Dutch East India Company as surgeon and sailed to Batavia (1688) and Japan
(1690), with which countries the Dutch were then the only traders. 1694,
returned to Etirope, first to Leyden then Lemgow where he wrote '-'History
of Japan'' (1727-8) and '' Amcenitates Exoticce" and practised as Fhysician.
Kdmpfer is called by Mr B. H. Chamberlain ""the scientific discoverer of
Japajiy

THE Garden is the only place we Dutchmen, being treated in
all respects little better than prisoners, have liberty to walk
into. It takes in all the room behind the house, it is commonly
square, with a back door, and wall'd in very neatly like a cistern
or pond, for which reason it is called Tsubo^ which in the
Japanese language signifies a large water-trough or cistern. If
there be not room enough for a garden, they have at least an old
ingrotted plane, cherry or apricock tree. The older, the more
crooked and monstrous this tree is, the greater value they put
upon it. Sometimes they let the branches grow into the rooms. . .
If the Tsubo or Garden be a good one, it must have at least
30 foot square and consist of the following essential parts.
I. The ground is partly cover'd with roundish stones, of different
colours, gather'd in rivers or upon the sea-shore, well-wash'd and
clean'd, and those of the same kind laid together in form of beds,
partly with gravel, which is swept every day, and kept clean and
neat to admiration, the large stones being laid in the middle, as
a path to walk upon, without injuring the gravel, the whole in a
seeming but ingenious confusion. 2. Some few flower-bearing
plants planted confusedly, tho' not without some certain rules.

JOHN WORLIDGE 129

Amidst the plants stands sometimes a Saguer, as they call it, or
scarce outlandish tree, sometimes a dwarf-tree or two. 3. A
small rock or hill in a corner of the garden, made in imitation
of nature, curiously adorn'd with birds and insects, cast in brass,
and placed between the stones, sometimes the model of a temple
stands upon it, built, as for the sake of the prospect they generally
are, on a remarkable eminence, or the borders of a precipice
Often a small rivulet rushes down the stones with an agreeable
noise, the whole in due proportions and as near as possible
resembhng nature. 4. A small bush, or wood, on the side of the
hill, for which the gardiners chuse such trees, as will grow close
to one another, and plant and cut them according to their
largeness, nature, and the colour of their flowers and leaves, so
as to make the whole very accurately imitate a natural wood, or
forest. 5. A cistern or pond, as mention'd above, with alive fish
kept in it, and surrounded with proper plants, that is such, as love
a watry soil, and would lose their beauty and greeness if planted
in a dry ground. It is a particular profession to lay out these
gardens, and to keep them so curiously and nicely as they ought
to be, as I shall have an opportunity to shew more at large in
the sequel of this history. Nor doth it require less skill and
ingenuity to contrive and fit out the rocks and hills above
mention'd according to the rules of art. What I have hitherto
observed will be sufficient to give the reader a general idea of
the Inns of Japan. — History of Japan.

Author of ' Sy sterna A^culturm' 1669, and * Sysiema HorticulturcB,' 1677. JOHN

■J -^ ^ ' ^ . 1 , • WORLIDGE

THE excellency of a Garden is better manifested by experi- (j^th cent.).
ence, which is the best Mistress, than indicated by an
imperfect Pen, which can never sufficiently convince the Reader
of those transcendent pleasures, that the Owner of a Complete
Garden with its Magnificent Ornaments, its Stately Groves, and
infinite variety of never dying Objects of Delight every day enjoys ;
Nor how all his Senses are satiated with the great variety of

I30 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Objects it yields to every of them : Nor what an influence
they have upon the passions of the mind, reducing a discomposed
fancy to a more sedate temper by contemplating on those
miracles of Nature Gardens afford ; deemed Miracles because
their admired and strange forms and effects proceed from occult
causes. . . .

The Italians, in the time of their Ancient Glory, thought no
Palace nor Habitation Complete without its Garden, on which
they spared for no cost as well in their forming.

Neither is there a noble or pleasant seat in England, but hath
its gardens for pleasure and delight. So that we may, without
vanity, conclude, that a garden of pleasant avenues, walks, fruits,
flowers, grots, and other branches springing from it, well composed,
is the only complete and permanent inanimate object of delight
the world affords. — Sy sterna Horticulturce.

CHAPTER VI

DECLINE OF THE FORMAL, AND EARLY INDICATIONS OF THE
NATURAL OR LANDSCAPE GARDEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

W^

^ANSTEAD, the noble seat of Sir Richard Child, with the DANIEL

finest wardens in the world. You descend from the Salon P^^^^ >
^ . (1003-1731).

into the parterre, which hath a Canal in the middle ; on the right
a wilderness, and on the left a fine green walk, which ends in a
banqueting house. On one side of this green walk stands the
green-house, finely adorned with statues, and uncommonly furnished
with greens : while behind this green-house are variety of high-
hedged walks, affording delicious vistas. At the bottom of the
canal is a bowling-green encircled with grottos and seats, with
antique statues between each seat ; this bowling-green is separated
by a balustrade of iron from another long green walk, which leads
you to another long canal.

On Richmond Green is a fine house and gardens, made by Sir
Charles Hedges, but now belonging to Sir Matthew Decker, which
are very curios. The longest, largest, and highest hedge of holly
I ever saw is in this garden, with several other hedges of ever-
greens, vistas cut through woods, grottos with fountains, and a
fine canal running up from the river. His duckery, which is
an oval pond bricked round, and his pretty summer-house by it,
in which to drink a bottle, his stove houses, which are always
kept of an equal heat for his citrons and other Indian plants, with
gardeners brought from foreign countries to manage them, are
very curious and entertaining.

Sutton Court is une bijoux ; it hath three parterres from the Sutton Court.

three fronts of the house, each finely adorned with statues. The

131

132 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

gardens are irregular, but that, I think, adds to their beauty, for
every walk affords variety ; the hedges, grottos, statues, mounts,
and canals, are so many surprising beauties.

Durdans. There are several very good seats in and about Epsom. That
of Lord Guildford, called Durdans, at the extremity of the village,
was built by the Earl of Barclay out of the materials of Nonsuch,
a royal palace in this neighbourhood, built by Henry VIII. , and
given by King Charles II. to the Duchess of Cleveland, who
pulled it down and sold the materials. This house of Durdans is
built a-la-77ioderne of free-stone ; the front to the garden, and that
to the Downs, are very noble ; the apartments within are also very
regular, and in the garden is the most charming grove imaginable;
famous for that scene of love between Lord Grey and his lady's
sister, which you have read of.

Cannons. The parterre fronting the west is separated from the great
avenue, and the great court leading to the great staircase by
balustrades of iron, as it is also from the gardens on the other
side. There is a large terrace walk, from whence you descend to
the parterre \ this parterre hath a row of gilded vases on pedestals
on each side down to the great canal, and in the middle fronting
the canal, is a gladiator, gilded also ; through the whole parterre,
abundance of statues as big as the life, are regularly disposed.
The canal runs a great way, and indeed one would wonder
to see such a vast quantity of water in a country where are
neither rivers or springs; but they tell me that the Duke
hath his water in pipes from the mountains of Stanmore, about
two miles off. The gardens are very large and well disposed;
but the greatest pleasure of all is that the divisions of the
whole, being only made by balustrades of iron and not by
walls, you see the whole at once, be you in what part of the
garden or parterre you will. — A Journey through England and
Scotland in 17 14.

—'Af\/\f-^—

STEPHEN SWITZER 133

Professional gardener and seedsman in the reign of Anne and George /., STEPHEN
and for several years a pzipil of London and Wise, under the for?ner of whom ^Wl 1 Z.iiK
he was employed in 1 706 in laying out the grounds at Blenheim. His own ^ ^' '^^''
garden was at Milbank. {See G. W. Johnson' s 'History of English Gaj'detzing,^
for a long analysis of his chief work ' Ichnographia Rustica.^)

IF a little Regularity is allow'd near the main Building and as
soon as the Designer has stroke out by Art some of the
roughest and boldest of his strokes, he ought to pursue Nature
afterwards, and by as many Twinings and Windings as his
Villa will allow, will endeavour to diversify his Views, always
striving that they may be so intermixt, as not to be all discover'd
at once ; but that there should be as much as possible, some-
thing appearing new and diverting, while the whole should corre-
spond together by the magic Error of its natural Avenues and
Meanders. . . . And to the End that he may know the better,
how to make the best use of natural Advantage, he ought to make
himself Master of all Rural Scenes : And the Writings of the
Poets on this Subject, will give him considerable Hints, for in
Design the Designer as well as the Poet should take as much Pains
in forming his Imagination^ as a Philosopher in cultivating his
Understanding. — Ichnographia Rustica, 1742 {first edition 17 18).

— www—

I WISH I were iust now in my little garden at Laracor. I JONATHAN
would set out for Dublin early on Monday and bring you (1667.174O
an account of my young trees, which you are better acquainted
with than the ministry, and so am I.

It is now high cherry time with us; take notice is it so
soon with you ? And we have early apricots ; and gooseberries
are ripe. — {Kensington, July i, 17 12.)

^ Swift had an odd humour of making extempore proverbs. Observing
that a gentleman, in whose garden he walked with some friends, seemed to
have no intention to request them to eat any of the fruit, Swift observed,
' It was a saying of his dear grandmother,

Always pull a peach
When it is within your reach ' ;

and helping himself accordingly, his example was followed by the whole
company. — Sir W. Scott: Memoirs 0^ Jonathan Swift,

134 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Pray why don't MD go to 'Trim, and see Laracor, and give
me an account of the garden, and the river, and the holly
and the cherry-trees on the river-walk. — Journal to Stella.

JOSEPH C IR, — Having lately read your essay on The Pleasures of the
ADDISON <J Imagination, I was so taken with your thoughts upon

(i672-I7IQ)

some of our English gardens, that I cannot forbear troubling
you with a letter upon that subject. I am one, you must know,
who am looked upon as a humourist in gardening. I have
several acres about my house, which I call my garden, and
which a skilful gardener would not know what to call. It is
a confusion of kitchen and parterre, orchard and flower-garden,
which lie so mixt and interwoven with one another, that if a
foreigner, who had seen nothing of our country, should be
conveyed into my garden at his first landing, he would look
upon it as a natural wilderness, and one of the uncultivated
parts of our country. My flowers grow up in several parts
of the garden in the greatest luxuriancy and profusion. I am
so far from being fond of any particular one, by reason
of its rarity, that if I meet with any one in a field
which pleases me, I give it a place in my garden. By
this means, when a stranger walks with me, he is surprised to see
several large spots of ground covered with ten thousand different
colours, and has often singled out flowers he might have met with
under a common hedge, in a field, or in a meadow, as some of the
greatest beauties of the place. The only method I observe in this
particular, is to range in the same quarter the products of the same
season, that they may make their appearance together, and com-
pose a picture of the greatest variety. There is the same irregularity
in my plantations, which run into as great a wilderness as their
natures will permit. I take in none that do not naturally rejoice
in the soil; and am pleased, when I am walking in a labyrinth
of my own raising, not to know whether the next tree I shall meet
with is an apple or an oak ; an elm or a pear tree. My kitchen
has likewise its particular quarters assigned it; for besides the

JOSEPH ADDISON 135

wholesom 3 luxury which that place abounds with, I have always
thought a kitchen garden a more pleasant sight than the finest
orangery, or artificial greenhouse. I love to see everything in
its perfection : and am more pleased to survey my rows of cole-
worts and cabbages, with a thousand nameless pot-herbs, springing
up in their full fragrancy and verdure, than to see the tender plants
of foreign countries kept alive by artificial heats, or withering in
an air and soil that are not adapted to them. I must not omit,
that there is a fountain rising in the upper part of my garden,
which forms a little wandering rill, and administers to the pleasure
as well as the plenty of the place. I have so conducted it that it
visits most of my plantations ; and have taken particular care to
let it run in the same manner as it would do in an open field, so
that it generally passes through banks of violets and primroses,
plats of willow or other plants, that seem to be of its own pro-
ducing. There is another circumstance in which I am very
particular, or, as my neighbours call me, very whimsical ; as my
garden, invites into it all the birds of the country, by offering them
the conveniency of springs and shades, solitude and shelter, I do
not suffer any one to destroy their nests in the Spring, or drive
them from their usual haunts in fruit-time; I value my garden
more for being full of blackbirds than cherries, and very frankly
give them fruit for their songs. By this means I have always the
music of the season in its perfection, and am highly delighted to
see the jay or the thrush hopping about my walks, and shooting
before my eye across the several little glades and alleys that I
pass through. I think there are as many kinds of gardening as of
poetry : your makers of parterres and flower-gardens are epigram-
matists and sonneteers in this art ; contrivers of bowers and grottos,
treillages and cascades, are romance writers. Wise and London
are our heroic poets ; and if, as a critic, I may single out any
passage of their works to commend, I shall take notice of that
part in the upper garden at Kensington, which was at first nothing
but a gravel pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening,
that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow into
so beautiful an area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon

136 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wroaght into.
To give this particular spot of ground the greater effect, they
have made a very pleasing contrast ; for as on one side of
the walk you see this hollow basin, with its several little
plantations, lying so conveniently under the eye of the be-
holder, on the other side of it there appears a seeming mount,
made up of trees, rising one higher than another, in pro-
portion as they approach the centre. A spectator, who has
not heard this account of it, would think this circular mount
was not only a real one, but that it actually had been scooped
out of that hollow space which I have before mentioned. I
never yet met anyone who has walked in this garden, who was
not struck with that part of it which I have here mentioned.
As for myself, you will find, by the account which I have already
given you, that my compositions in gardening are altogether
after the Pindaric manner, and run into the beautiful wildness
of nature, without affecting the nicer elegancies of art. What
I am now going to mention, will, perhaps, deserve your atten-
tion more than anything I have yet said. I find, that in the
discourse which I spoke of in the beginning of my letter, you
are against filling an English garden with evergreens ; and indeed
I am so far of your opinion, that I can by no means think the
verdure of an evergreen comparable to that which shoots out
annually, and clothes our trees in the summer season. But I
have often wondered that those who are like myself, and love
to live in gardens, have never thought of contriving a winter
garden, which should consist of such trees only as never cast
their leaves. We have very often little snatches of sunshine
and fair weather in the most uncomfortable parts of the year,
and have frequently several days in November and January
that are as agreeable as any in the finest months. At such
times, therefore, I think there could not be a greater pleasure
than to walk in such a winter garden as I have proposed. In
the summer season, the whole country blooms, and is a kind of
garden ; for which reason we are not so sensible of those beauties
that at this time may be everywhere met with ; but when Nature

JOSEPH ADDISON 137

is in her desolation, and presents us with nothing but bleak and
barren prospects, there is something unspeakably cheerful in a
spot of ground which is covered with trees that smile amidst
all the rigours of winter, and give us a view of the most gay
season, in the midst of that which is most dead and melancholy.
I have so far indulged myself in this thought, that I have set
apart a whole acre of ground for the executing of it. The walls
are covered with ivy instead of vines. The laurel, the horn-
beam, and the holly, with many other trees and plants of the
same nature, grow so thick in it that you cannot imagine a more
lively scene. The glowing redness of the berries with which
they are hung at this time, vies with the verdure of their leaves,
and is apt to inspire the heart of the beholder with that vernal
delight which you have somewhere taken notice of in your former
papers. It is very pleasant, at the same time to see the several
kinds of birds retiring into this little green spot, and enjoying
themselves amongst the branches and foliage, when my great
garden, which I have before mentioned to you, does not afford
a single leaf for their shelter.

You must know. Sir, that I look upon the pleasure which we
take in a Garden, as one of the most innocent delights in human
life. A Garden was the habitation of our first parents before
the fall. It is naturally apt to fill the mind with calmness and
tranquillity, and to lay all its turbulent passions at rest. It gives
us a great insight into the contrivance and wisdom of providence,
and suggests innumerable subjects for meditation. I cannot but
think the very complacency and satisfaction which a man takes
in these works of Nature to be a laudable if not a virtuous habit
of mind. For all which reasons I hope you will pardon the
length of my present letter.

I am. Sir, etc.
— The Spectator^ No. 477 {Saturday, Sept. 6, 1712).

Writers who have given us an account of China, tell us the
inhabitants of that country laugh at the plantations of our
Europeans, which are laid out by the rule and line ; because

138 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

they say, any one may place trees in equal rows and uniform
figures.

They choose rather to shew a genius in works of this nature,
and therefore always conceal the art by which they direct them-
selves. They have a word, it seems, in their language, by which
they express the particular beauty of a plantation, that thus strikes
the imagination at first sight, without discovering what it is, that
has so agreeable an effect.

Our British gardeners, on the contrary, instead of humouring
nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our trees
rise in cones, globes, and pyramids. We see the marks of the
scissors upon every plant and bush. I do not know whether I
am singular in my opinion, but for my own part, I would rather
look upon a tree in all its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and
branches, than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathe-
matical figure : and cannot but fancy that an orchard in flower
looks infinitely more delightful, than all the little labyrinths of
the most finished parterre. But as our great modellers of
gardens have their magazines of plants to dispose of, it is very
natural for them to tear up all the beautiful plantations of fruit-
trees, and contrive a plan that may most turn to their own profit,
in taking off their evergreens, and the like movable plants, with
which their shops are plentifully stocked.— 7%^ Spectator, No. 414.
Wednesday, June 25, 1712.

I have often looked upon it as a piece of happiness that I have
never fallen into any of these fantastical tastes, nor esteemed
anything the more for its being uncommon and hard to be met
with. For this reason I look upon the whole country in Spring-
time as a spacious garden, and make as many visits to a spot of
daisies, or a bank of violets, as a florist does to his borders or
parterres.

There is not a bush in blossom within a mile of me, which I
am not acquainted with, nor scarce a daffodil or cowslip that
withers away in my neighbourhood without my missing it. I
walked home in this temper of mind through several fields and
meadows with an unspeakable pleasure, not without reflecting on

SAINT-SIMON 139

the bounty of providence, which has made the most pleasing and
most beautiful objects the most ordinary and most common. —
The Tatler, No. 2\Z.

Soldier, Diplomatist, Historian. SAINT-

. . r r • ,, . SIMON,

I 'HERMITAGE (de Marly) fut fait : ce n'etait que pour y (1675-1755).

-^ coucher trois nuits du Mercredi au Samedi, deux ou trois

fois I'annee, avec une douzaine de courtisans en charge, les plus

indispensables ; peu a peu I'hermitage fut augmente. D'accroisse-

ment en accroissement les collines furent taillees pour faire place

et y batir, et celles du bout legerement emportees pour donner

au moins une echappee de vue fort imparfaite. Enfin en batiments,

en jardins, en eaux, en aqueducs, en ce qui est si curieux sous

le nom de Machine de Marly, en pares, en forets ornees et en-

fermees, en statues, en meubles precieux, en grands arbres qu'on

y a apportes sans cesse de Compiegne et de bien plus loin, dont

les trois quarts mouraient, et qu'on remplacait aussitot, en allees

obscures subitement changees en d'immenses pieces d'eau ou Ton

se promenait en gondoles, en remises, en forets a n'y pas voir

le jour des le moment qu'on les plantait, en bassins changes cent

fois, en casgades de meme, en figures successives et toutes differ-

entes, en sejours de carpes ornes de dorures, et de peintures les

plus exquises, a peine acheves, rechanges et retablis par les memes

maitres une infinite de fois ; que si on ajoute les d^penses de ces

continuels voyages qui devinrent enfin egaux aux sejours de

Versailles, souvent presque aussi nombreux, et tout a la fin de

la vie du roi, le sejour le plus ordinaire, on ne dira pas trop sur

Marly en comptant par milliards. — Memoirs.

— v\/\/Vv>—

T AM in my farm, and here I shoot strong and tenacious roots, HENRY
* I have caught hold of the earth, to use a gardener's phrase, lord
and neither my friends nor my enemies will find it an easy matter BOLING-
to transplant me again. — Letter to Swift. P??"^^

w^

140 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

WILLIAM Coach-painter, portrait and historical painter, sculptor, architect, furniture
KENT and dress designer, and landscape gardener; patro?iised by the Earl of

(1684-1748). Bzirlington, the great amateur-architect, with whom he lived and died. He
sculptured Shakespeare' s monumejit in Westminster Abbey, and painted an
altar-piece for St Clement Dane's Church, of St Cecilia, afterwards removed to
the Vestry Hall. Hogarth's Caricature ' The Man of Taste ' places Kent on
the summit of Burli?igton Gate, with Pope his patron lower dowti ; and his
opinion of Ke7it as a painter was that 'neither England nor Italy ever produced
a more contemptible dauber'

^HEN Kent had returned to England, about 1730, he first
distinguished himself as an architect and ornamental
gardener at his great patron's, Lord BurHngton's villa at Chiswick ;
and his additions to the plans of Bridgman and Vanbrugh, at
Stowe, firmly established his fame. Esheri and Claremont ^ are
cited as his best works; yet the garden laid out for General
Dormer at Rousham, in Oxfordshire, was more agreeable to our
noble author.

Of the beautiful scenes which have been created upon Kent's
system, and since his death, some account is necessary with a
view to the date and progress of the art.

A new application of it, comprehending the grounds destined
to agriculture, by including them in the whole scheme, and im-
perceptibly connecting them with the more embellished portion,
was first successfully practised by Mr Philip Southcote, at Woburn
farm, in Surrey. Hence the origin of that description of pleasure-
ground which has since received the French designation oi fer?ne
ornee. Pain's hill, in the same country, soon followed the new
attempt, and exceeded it in point of taste, variety, and extent.
Its author, the Hon. C. Hamilton, was a man of genius, who
dedicated all his powers to this pursuit, and sad to say, expended
his private fortune in the completion of improvements which
continually presented themselves.

1 See Illustration in Appendix.

2 Whateley, when speaking of Kent's work at Claremont, confers a very
eleo-ant eulogy, and communicates an idea of a perfect garden. ' The whole
is a place wherein to tarry with secure delight, or to saunter with perpetual
amusement.'

ALEXANDER POPE 141

Dr Burgh in his notes on the Enghsh Garden calls 'Bacon,
the prophet ; Milton, the herald ; and Addison, Pope and Kent,
the champions of this true taste in gardening, because they
absolutely brought it into execution.'

Mr Price, in his Essay on the Picturesque, objects to Kent,
that his ideas of painting were uncommonly mean, contracted
and perverse ; and that as he painted trees without form, so he
planted them without life. ' Kent, it is true, was by profession
a painter, as well as an improver; but we may learn from his
example how little a certain degree of mechanical practice can
qualify its possessor to direct the taste of the nation in either
of these arts.' — Rev. Jaities Dallaway^ ' Supplementary Anecdotes
of Garde?iing in Englajid.''

—'Af\/W—

LJOW contrary to this simplicity (of Homer) is the modern ALEXANDEF

* * practice of gardening ! We seem to make it our study to f9^^^ x

recede from nature, not only in the various tonsure of greens into

the most regular and formal shape, but even in monstrous attempts

beyond the reach of the art itself : we run into sculpture, and are

yet better pleased to have our trees in the most aukward figures

of men and animals, than in the most regular of their own. . . .

A citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews, but he
entertains thoughts of erecting them into giants, like those of

^ Mr Pope undoubtedly contributed to form his (Kent's) taste. The design
of the Prince of Wales's garden at Carlton House was evidently borrowed
from the poet's at Twickenham. There was a little of affected modesty in the
latter, when he said, of all his works he was most proud of his garden. And
yet it was a singular effort of art and taste to impress so much variety and
scenery on a spot of five acres. The passing through the gloom from the grotto
to the opening day, the retiring and again assembling shades, the dusky groves,
the larger lawn, and the solemnity of the termination at the cypresses that lead
up to his mother's tomb, are managed with exquisite judgment; and though
Lord Peterborough assisted him

To form his quincunx and to rank his vines,
those were not the most pleasing ingredients of his little perspective. — Horace
Walpole . On Modern Gardening.

142 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Guildhall I know an eminent cook, who beautified his country-
seat with a coronation - dinner in greens, where you see the
champion flourishing on horseback at _one end of the table, and
the Queen in perpetual youth at the other.

For the benefit of all my loving countrymen of this curious
taste, I shall here publish a catalogue of greens to be disposed of
by an eminent town-gardener, who has lately applied to me upon
this head. He represents that for the advancement of a politer
sort of ornament in the villas and gardens adjacent to this great
city, and in order to distinguish those places from the mere
barbarous countries of gross nature, the world stands much in
need of a virtuoso gardener, who has a turn to sculpture, and is
thereby capable of improving upon the ancients in the imagery
of evergreens. I proceed to this catalogue :

Adam and Eve in yew ; Adam a little shattered by the fall of
the tree of Knowledge in the great storm ; Eve and the serpent
very flourishing.

Noah's Ark in holly, the ribs a little damaged for want of
water.

The tower of Babel not yet finished.

St. George in Box ; his arm scarce long enough, but will be in
a condition to stick the dragon by next April.

A green dragon of the same, with a tail of ground-ivy for the
present.

N.B. — Those two are not to be sold separately.

Edward the Black Prince in Cypress. . . .

A Queen Elizabeth in Phyllirea, a little inclining to the Green
sickness, but of full growth. . . .

An old Maid of honour in wormwood.

A topping Ben Johnson in Laurel.

Divers eminent modern poets in bays, somewhat blighted, to
be disposed of a penny worth. . . . — The Guardian^ No. 173.

I can afford room for your self and two servants ; I have indeed
room enough, nothing but myself at home ; the kind and hearty
house-wife is dead ! the agreeable and instructive neighbour is

ALEXANDER POPE 143

gone ! yet my house is inlarg'd, and the gardens extend and
flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have lost. I have
more fruit-trees and kitchen garden than you have any thought
of; nay I have good Melons and Pine-apples of my own growth.
I am as much a better Gardiner, as I am a worse Poet, than
when you saw me : but gardening is near a-kin to Philosophy, for
Tully says "Agricultura proxima sapientise," For God's sake why
should not you (that are a step higher than a Philosopher, a
Divine, yet have too much grace and wit than to be a Bishop)
e'en give all you have to the poor of Ireland (for whom you have
already done every thing else) so quit the place, and live and die
with me ? And let " Tales Animae Concordes " be our Motto and
our Epitaph. — Letter to Dea?i Swift, March 25, 1736.

Let the young ladies be assured I make nothing new in my
gardens, without wishing to see the print of their fairy steps in
every part of them. I have put the last hand to my works of this
kind, in happily finishing the subterraneous way and grotto. I
there found a spring of the clearest water, which falls in a perpetual
rill, that echoes through the Cavern day and night. From the
river Thames, you see through my arch up a walk of the wilder-
ness, to a kind of open temple, wholly composed of shells in the
rustic manner; and from that distance under the temple, you look
down through a sloping arcade of trees, and see the sails on the
river passing suddenly and vanishing as through a perspective
glass. When you shut the doors of this grotto it becomes on the
instant, from a luminous room, a Camera obscura, on the walls
of which all the objects of the river, hills, woods and boats are
forming a moving picture in their visible radiations ; and when
you have a mind to Hght it up, it affords you a very different
scene. It is finished with shells interspersed with pieces of
looking-glass in angular forms ; and in the ceiling is a star of the
same material, at which when a lamp, of an orbicular figure of
thin alabaster, is hung in the middle, a thousand pointed rays
glitter, and are reflected over the place. There are connected to
this grotto by a narrower passage two porches with niches and

144 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

seats, — one towards the river, of smooth stones, full of light, and
open; the other towards the arch of trees, rough with shells,
flints and iron-ore. The bottom is paved with simple pebble, as
the adjoining walk up the wilderness to the temple is to be
cockle-shells, in the natural taste, agreeing not ill with the little
dripping murmur, and the aquatic idea of the whole place. It
wants nothing to complete it but a good Statue with an inscrip-
tion, like that beautiful antique one which you know I am so
fond of: —

" Hujus Nympha loci, sacri custodia fontis,

Dormio, dum blandae sentio murmur aquae ;

Parce meum, quisquis tangis cava murmura, somnum

Rumpere ; sive bibas, sive lavare, tace.

" Nymph of the Grot, those sacred springs steep,
And to the murmur of these waters sleep ;
Ah, spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave !
And drink in silence, or in silence lave."

Letter to Edward Blount, Twkkenha7?i, June 3, 1725.

My Lord Chesterfield tells me your Lordship has got ahead of
all the gardening lords ; that you have distanced Lord Burlington
and Lord Cobham in the true scientific past ; but he is studying
after you, and has here lying before him those Thesauruses
from which he affirms you draw all your knowledge — Miller's
Dictionaries ; but I informed him better, and told him your chief
lights were from Johannes Serlius,i ^hose books he is now enquiring
for of Leake, the bookseller, who has wrote for them to his cor-
respondents.— Letter to Lord Marchmont, 1743.

MONTESQUIEU TT is, then, the pleasure which an object gives us, which carries
(1689-1755). 1 ug on to another ; it is for this reason that the soul is always

seeking new things, and is never at rest.

1 This looks like a joke of Pope's— John Serle being his gardener and fac-
totum at Twickenham, who has left a " Plan of Mr Pope's Garden and Grotto,"
and an account of the materials composing the latter, published by Dodsley,
1745. (See Plan in Appendix.)

PHILIP MILLER 145

Thus, you will be always certain to please the soul, whenever
you show it many things or more than it had hoped to see.

In this way may be explained the reason why we take pleasure
in seeing a perfectly regular garden, and yet are pleased to see a
wild and rural spot ; the same cause produces these effects.

As we like to see a large number of objects, we would wish to
extend our view, to be in several places, traverse greater space :
in short, our soul escapes from bounds, and wishes, so to
speak, to widen the sphere of its presence; and derives
great pleasure from a distant view. But how to effect this ?
In towns, our view is confined by houses ; in the country, by
a thousand obstacles ; we can scarcely see three or four trees.
Art comes to our assistance, and discovers to us nature which
hides itself j we love art, and we love it better than nature, that
is to say, nature concealed from our eyes : but when we find
beautiful situations, when our unfettered view can see in the
distance meadows, streams, hills, and these dispositions are,
so to speak, expressly created, it is enchanted otherwise than
when it sees the gardens of Le Notre; because nature does
not copy itself, whereas art always bears its own likeness. That
is why, in painting, we prefer a landscape to the plan of the most
beautiful garden in the world ; it is because painting only chooses
nature where it is beautiful, where the sight can extend to a
distance and to its full scope, where it is varied, where it can be
viewed with pleasure. — Essay o?i Taste.

-~/\i\/\f^ —

^^ Hortulanorum Princeps :^^ for nearly fifty years gardener to the Botanic PHILIP
Garden at Chelsea belonging to the company of Apothecaries. ^^ In him the MILLER,
perfect Botanist and Horticulturist were combined" {G, W. Johnson). r.R.S.

In 1792 appeared the ()th edition of his ' Gardener's Dictionary^ edited hy^ 9I-I/7IJ*
Professor Martyn of Cambridge, it having been already translated into Dutch,
German and French. Linnceus said of it, ' ' Non est Lexicon Hortulanorum
sed Botanicorum."

'T^HE Area of a handsom Garden may take up thirty or forty
^ Acres, not more.

And as for the Disposition and Distribution of this Garden,
the following Directions may be observed.

K

146 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

I St. There ought always to be a Descent from the house to the
garden not fewer than three steps. This elevation of the Building
will make it more dry and wholesome : Also, from the Head of
these steps there will be a prospect or view of a great part of
the Garden.

In a fine Garden, the first thing that should present itself to
the sight, is a parterre, which should be next to the House,
whether in the front or on the sides, as well upon account of the
Opening it affords to the House, as for the Beauty with which it
constantly entertains the sight from all the windows on that side

of the House.

As for the Parterres, they must be furnished with such works as
will improve and set them off; and they being low and flat, do
necessarily require something that is raised, as Groves and
Pallisades. . . .

Groves make the chief of a garden, being great Ornaments to
all the rest of its Parts ; so that there cannot be too many of them
planted, if the Places designed for them don't take up those of
the Kitchen and Fruit-Garden, which are very necessary for a
House, and should always be placed near the Stabling.

To accompany Parterres, it is useful to make choice of those
designs of Wood-work that are the finest; as Groves opened in
Compartiments, Quincunces, Verdant Halls, with Bowling-greens,
Arbour-work, and Fountains in the Middle.

These small Groves, being placed near the House, are so much
the more agreeable, in that you have no need to go far to find
shades • and besides this, they communicate a coolness to the
Apartments, which is very agreeable in hot weather.

It would also be very proper to plant some Groves of Ever-
greens, that may afford the pleasure of seeing a Wood always
verdant in Winter, when the other trees and plants are deprived
of their Ornaments ; and also to plant some squares of them to
be a diversity from the other Woods.

It is also usual to adorn the Head of a Parterre with Basons,
Water-works : and beyond it, with a circular line of Pallisades or
Wood-work cut into a Goosefoot, leading into the great Walks,

PHILIP MILLER 147

and to fill the space between the Bason and the Pallisade with
small pieces of Embroidery or Grass-work, set off with Yews,
Vases and flower-pots.

In Gardens, which have Terrasses, either in the side or front of
the house, where there is a delightful prospect, so that you cannot
shut up the Parterre by a circular Pallisade ; in order to continue
the new view, you should lay several compartiments of a parterre
together, such as plain green pots after the modern fashion, or
cut-work ; which ought to be divided at convenient distances by
Cross-walks : But the parterre or plain Green plot must always
be next to the House, because it is very agreeable to the eye. . . .

When the great lines and chief walks are laid out, and the
Parterres and Works about the sides and head of them are
disposed so as is most suitable to the Ground, then the rest of
the Garden is to be furnished with many different designs, as tall
groves. Close walks, Quincunces, Galleries and Halls of Verdure,
Green Arbours, Labyrinths, Bowling greens, and Amphitheatres,
adorned with Fountains, Canals, Figures, etc. Which sort of
Works distinguish a Garden well, and do also greatly contribute
to the rendring of it magnificent. . . .

Before the design of a Garden be put into execution, it ought
to be considered what it will be in twenty or thirty years time,
when the Pallisades are grown up, and the trees are spread : For
it often happens that a design which looks handsome when it is
first planted, and in good proportion, becomes so small and
ridiculous in process of time, that there is a necessity either to
alter it, or destroy it entirely, and so plant it anew.

The corners and angles of every part of a Garden ought to be
sloped, or cut hollow : This will make the cross-paths more
agreeable to the eye, and more convenient for walking, than to
find points and corners advancing, which look very ill upon the
ground, and are very inconvenient.

There is a peculiar Excellency in Gardens that have terrasses ;
because from the height of one Terrass, all the lower parts of the
Garden may be discovered ; and from others the Compartiments
are seen, which form so many several Gardens one under another,

148

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

and present us with very agreeable Views, and different Scenes of
Things, if the Terrasses are not too frequent, and there be good
lengths of Level between them. — The Gardener^ s Dictionary {1st
edition 1724).

— V\/\/\/V^—

VOLTAIRE, A FTER having thus passed in review all the books, they

{1694-177S). /\ descended into the garden. Candide praised all its beauties.

I know nothing in such bad taste, said the master ; here are only

gee-gaws : but I shall begin to-morrow to have one planted of a

nobler design. — Candide ou F Optimis^ne^ chap. xxv.

EARL OF
CHESTER-
FIELD

(1694-1773).

BATTY
LANGLEY

(1696-1751),
Architect and
Garden De-
signer.

— vWVv—

I HAVE been a Country Gentleman a great while, for me, that is ;
for I have now been a fortnight together at Blackheath, and
stay three or four days longer. The fu7'or hortensis has seized
me, and my acre of ground here affords me more pleasure than
Kingdoms do to Kings; for my object is not to extend but to
enrich it.

My Gardener calls me, and I must obey. — Letter to the Bishop
of Waterford. {Blackheath^ i75i-)

— Ay\/\/v. —

Of the Disposition of Gardens in General.

NOW as the Beauty of Gardens in general depends upon an
elegant Disposition of all their Parts, which cannot be
determined without a perfect Knowledge of its several Ascend-
ings, Descendings, Views, etc., how is it possible that any Person
can make a good Design for any Garden, whose Situation they
never saw ?

To draw a beautiful regular Draught, is not to the Purpose ; for
altho' it makes a handsome Figure on the paper, yet it has
quite a different Effect when executed on the ground : Nor is
there any Thing more ridiculous, and forbidding, than a Garden
which is regular j which, instead of entertaining the Eye with fresh

BATTY LANGLEY 149

Objects, after you have seen a quarter Part, you only see the very
same part repeated again, without any variety.

And what still adds to this wretched Method, is, that to execute
these still regular Designs, they destroy many a noble Oak, and in
its place plant, perhaps, a clumsy-bred Yew, Holley, etc., which,
with me, is a Crime of so high a Nature, as not to be pardon'd.

There is nothing adds so much to the pleasure of a Garden, as
these great Beauties of Nature, Hills and Valleys, which, by our
regular Coxcombs, have ever been destroyed, and at a very great
Expence also in Levelling.

For, to their great Misfortune, they always deviate from Nature,
instead of imitating it.

There are many other absurdities I could mention, which
those wretched Creatures have, and are daily guilty of: But as
the preceding are sufficient to arm worthy Gentlemen against
such Mortals, I shall at present forbear, and instead thereof,
proceed to General Directions for laying out Gardens in a more
grand and delightful Manner than has been done before. But
first observe.

That the several Parts of a beautiful Rural Garden, are Walks,
Slopes, Borders, Open Plains, Plain Parterres, Avenues, Groves,
Wildernesses, Labyrinths, Fruit-Gardens, Flower-Gardens, Vine-
yards, Hop-Gardens, Nurseries, Coppiced Quarters, Green Open-
ings, like Meadows : Small Inclosures of Corn, Cones of Ever-
Greens, of Flowering-Shrubs, of Fruit Trees, of Forest-Trees, and
mix'd together : Mounts, Terraces, Winding Valleys, Dales,
Purling Streams, Basons, Canals, Fountains, Cascades, Grottos,
Rocks, Ruins, Serpentine Meanders, Rude Coppies, Hay-Stacks,
Wood-Piles, Rabbit and Hare-Warrens, Cold Baths, Aviaries,
Cabinets, Statues, Obelisks, Manazeries, Pheasant and Partridge-
Grounds, Orangeries, Melon-Grounds, Kitchen-Gardens, Physick
or Herb-Garden, Orchard, Bowling Green, Dials, Precipices,
Ampthitheatres, etc.

General Directions, etc.
I. That the Grand Front of a Building lie open upon an

I50 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

elegant Lawn or Plain of Grass, adorn'd with beautiful Statues,
(of which hereafter in their Place,) terminated on its sides with
open Groves.

II. That Grand Avenues be planted from such large open
plains, with a Breadth proportionable to the Building, as well
as to its Length of view.

III. That Views in Gardens be as extensive as possible.

IV. That such Walks, whose Views cannot be extended,
terminate in Woods, Forests, mishapen Rocks, strange Preci-
pices, Mountains, old Ruins, grand Buildings, etc.

V. That no regular Ever-Greens etc., be planted in any part
of an open Plain or Parterre.

VI. That no Borders be made, or Scroll- Work cut, in any such
Lawn or plain Parterre ; for the Grandeur of those beautiful Carpets
consists in their native Plainness.

VII. That all Gardens be grand, beautiful and natural.

VIII. That shady Walks be planted from the End- Views of a
House, and terminate in those open Groves that enclose the Sides
of the plain Parterre, that thereby you may enter into immediate
shade, as soon as out of the House, without being heated by the
scorching Rays of the Sun.

" Without a Shade no Beauty Gardens know :
And all the Country's but a naked Show."

IX. That all the Trees of your shady Walks and Groves be
planted with Sweet-Brier, White Jessamine, and Honey-Suckles,
environ'd at Bottom with a small Circle of Dwarf-Stock, Candy
Turf and Pinks.

X. That all those Parts which are out of view from the House,
be form'd into Wildernesses, Labyrinths, etc.

XL That Hills and Dales, of easy Ascents, be made by Art,
where Nature has not perform'd that work before.

XII. That Earths cast out of Foundations, etc., be carried to
such Places for raising of Mounts, from which, fine Views may be
seen.

XIII. That the Slopes of Mounts, etc., be laid with a moderate

BATTY LANGLEY 151

Reclination, and planted with all sorts of Ever-Greens in a
promiscuous Manner, so as to grow all in a Thicket ; which has
a prodigious fine Effect.

In this very Manner are planted two beautiful Mounts in the
Gardens of the Honourable Sir Fisher Tench at Low Laxton in
Essex.

XIV. That the Walks leading up the Slope of a Mount, have
their Breadth contracted at the Top, full one half part ; and if
that contracted Part be enclosed on the sides with a Hedge
whose Leaves are of a Light Green, 'twill seemingly add a great
Addition to the Length of the Walk, when view'd from the other
End.

XV. That all Walks whose Lengths are short, and lead away
from any point of View, be made narrower at their further Ends
tiian at the hither part; for by the Inclination of their Sides, they
appear to be of a much greater Length than they really are ; and
the further end of every long Walk, Avenue, etc., appears to be
much narrower than that End where you stand.

And the Reason is, that notwithstanding the Sides of such
Walks are parallel to each other, yet as the Breadth of the
further End is seen under a lesser Angle, than the Breadth of
that Part where you stand, it will therefore appear as if con-
tracted, although the Sides are actually parallel ; for equal
Objects always appear under equal Angles, Q.E.D.

XVI. That the Walks of a Wilderness be never narrower than
10 feet, or wider than 25 feet.

XVII. That the Walks of a Wilderness be so plac'd as to respect
the best Views of the Country.

XVIII. That the Intersections of Walks be adorn'd with
Statues, large open Plains, Groves, Cones of Fruit, of Ever-
Greens, of Flowering Shrubs, of Forest Trees, Basons, Fountains,
Sun-Dials, and Obelisks.

" When in the Garden's Entrance you provide,
The Waters, there united, to divide :
First, in the Center a large Fountain make ;
Which from a narrow Pipe its Rise may take,

152 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

And to the Air those Waves, by which 'tis fed,
Remit agen ; About it raise a Bed
Of Moss, or Grass ; but if you think this base,
With well-wrought Marble circle in the Place."

XIX. That in those Serpentine Meanders, be placed at proper
Distances, large Openings, which you surprisingly come to ; and
in the first are entertain'd with a pretty Fruit-Garden, or Paradice-
Stocks, with a curious Fountain, from which you are insensibly
led through the pleasant Meanders of a shady delightful planta-
tion ; first into an even Plain environ'd with lofty Pines, in whose
Center is a pleasant Fountain adorn'd with Neptune and his
Tritons, etc., secondly into a Flower Garden, enrich'd with the
most fragrant Flowers and beautiful Statues ; and from thence
through small Inclosures of Corn, open Plains, or small Meadows,
Hop-Gardens, Orangeries, Melon-Grounds, Vineyards, Orchards,
Nurseries, Physick Gardens, Warrens, Paddocks of Deer, Sheep,
Cows, etc., with the rural Enrichments of Hay Stacks, Wood-
Piles, etc.

" Which endless are, with no fixed Limits bound,
But fill in various forms the spacious Round,
And endless Walks the pleas'd Spectator views.
As ev'ry Turn the verdant scene renews."

These agreeable surprising Entertainments in the pleasant Passage
through a Wilderness, must without doubt, create new Pleasures
at every Turn : And more especially when the Whole is so happily
situated, as to be blessed with small Rivulets and purling Streams
of clear Water, which generally admit of fine Canals, Fountains,
Cascades, etc., which are the very Life of a delightful rural
Garden.

" Of pleasant Floods, and Streams, my Muse now sings,
Of chrystal Lakes, Grotts, and transparent Springs ;
By these a Garden is more charming made.
They chiefly beautify the rural Shade. "

And to add to the Pleasure of these delightful Meanders, I
advise that the Hedge-Rows of the Walks be intermix'd with
Cherries, Plumbs, Apples, Pears, Bruxel Apricots, Figs, Goose-

BATTY LANGLEY 153

berries, Currants, Rasberries, etc., and the Borders planted with
Strawberries, Violets, etc.

The most beautiful Forest-Trees for Hedges, are the English
Elm, the Dutch Elm, the Lime-Tree, and Hornbeam : And
although I have advis'd the Mixing of these Hedges of Forest-
Trees with the aforesaid Fruits, yet you must not forget a Place
for those pleasant and delightful Flowering-Shrubs, the White
Jessemine, Honey Suckle, and Sweet-Brier.

New Principles of Garde?iing, or The Laying out and Planting
Parterres, Groves, IVilderfiesses, Labyrinths, Avenues, Parks,
etc., after a more Grand and Rural Maimer than has been
done before. 1728.

CHAPTER VII.

HENRY

HOME,

LORD

KAMES

(1696-1782)

THE SENTIMENTAL, LANDSCAPE, AND PARK SCHOOLS OF GARDEN-
ING, FOUNDED UPON PAINTING; AND THE CHINESE AND
ENGLISH 'natural' STYLES IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

'HpHE emotions raised by the fine arts, are generally too nearly
■'• related to make a figure by resemblance; and for that
reason their succession ought to be regulated as much as possible
by contrast. ... In gardening there is an additional reason for
the rule : the emotions raised by that art are at best so faint, that
every artifice should be used to give them their utmost strength :
a field may be laid out in grand, sweet, gay, neat, wild, melancholy
scenes ; and when these are viewed in succession, grandeur ought
to be contrasted with neatness, regularity with wildness, and gaiety
with melancholy, so as that each emotion may succeed its opposite :
nay it is an improvement to intermix in the succession, rude, un-
cultivated spots as well as unbounded views, which in themselves
are disagreeable, but in succession heighten the feeling of the agree-
able objects ; and we have nature for our guide, who in her most
beautiful landscapes often intermixes rugged rocks, dirty marshes,
and barren stony heaths. — Ele77ients of Criticism. (^Resemblance
and Contrast.^

Gardening, besides the emotions of beauty by means of
regularity, order, proportion, colour, and utility, can raise
emotions of grandeur, of sweetness, of gaiety, melancholy, wild-
ness, and even of surprise or wonder. ... In gardening as well
as in architecture simplicity ought to be the governing taste.
Profuse ornament hath no better effect than to confound the eye,
and to prevent the object from making an impression as one
entire whole. . . .

154

LORD KAMES 155

The simplest idea of a garden, is that of a spot embellished
with a number of natural objects, trees, walks, polished parterres,
flowers, streams, etc. One more complex comprehends statues
and buildings, that nature and art may be mutually ornamental.
A third, approaching nearer perfection, is of objects assembled
together, in order to produce, not only an emotion of beauty,
essential to gardens of every kind, but also some other particular
emotion, grandeur, for example, gaiety, or any other of those
above mentioned.

The most perfect idea of a garden is an improvement upon the
third, requiring the several parts to be arranged in such a manner,
as to inspire all the different emotions that can be raised by
gardening. In this idea of a garden, the arrangement is an im-
portant circumstance ; for it has been shown that some emotions
figure best in conjunction, and that others ought always to appear
in succession and never in conjunction.

. . . Kent's method of embellishing a field is admirable;
which is, to paint a field with beautiful objects, natural and
artificial, disposed like colours upon a canvas. It requires
indeed more genius to paint in the gardening way : in forming a
landscape upon a canvas, no more is required but to adjust the
figures to each other : an artist who lays out ground in Kent's
manner, has an additional task ; he ought to adjust his figures to
the several varieties of the field. . . .

It seems to me far from an exaggeration that good professors
are not more essential to a college, than a spacious garden, which
ought to be formed with the nicest elegance, tempered with
simplicity, rejecting sumptuous and glaring ornaments. In this
respect so grand and important, the university of Oxford may
justly be deemed a perfect model. — Ibid. {Gardefiing a?id
Architecture.)

Millin^ {Dictionnaire des Beaux Arts) thus comments on the
above : —

" On peut dire que ce chapitre fut le prelude d'un bavardage
esthetique et vague qui a ete a la mode pendant quelque temps

156 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

sur Tart des jardins, mais par lequel certainement personne n'aura
appris I'art d'etablir un beau jardin."

— A/VV\^ —

JOSEPH Friend of Pope and Horace Walpole ; in 1747 published ^ Polymetis^'' and
oPENCE, later, ^ Rernarks on Virgil': in 1757, under the pseudonytn of Sir Harry
, 'r o _/-o\ Beaumojit, he translated the Jesuit Pere Attirefs ' Account of the Emperor of

China's Gardens, near Peking which largely contributed to the revolution in

European Garden-taste.

A S for the Pleasure Houses, they are really charming. They
-'*' stand in vast Compass of Ground. They have raised Hills
from Twenty to Sixty foot high ; which form a great Number of
Little Valleys between them. The Bottoms of these Valleys are
watered with clear streams ; which run on till they join together,
and form Larger pieces of Water and Lakes : They pass these
Streams, Lakes, and Rivers, in beautiful and magnificent Boats :
I have seen one, in particular. Seventy eight feet long, and Twenty
four feet broad, with a very handsome House raised upon it. In
each of these Valleys, there are Houses about the Banks of the
Water, very well disposed ; with their different Courts, open and
close Porticos, Parterres, Gardens and Cascades ; which, when
viewed all together, have an admirable effect upon the eye.

They go from one of the Valleys to another, not by formal
strait Walks as in Europe ; but by various Turnings and Windings,
adorned on the sides with little Pavilions and Charming Grottos ;
and each of these Valleys is diversified from all the rest, both by
their manner of laying out the Ground, and in the Structure and
Disposition of its Buildings.

All the Risings and Hills are sprinkled with Trees ; and par-
ticularly with Flowering Trees, which are here very common. The
sides of the Canals, or lesser Streams, are not faced (as they are
with us) with smooth Stone, and in a straight Line ; but look
rude and rustic, with different Pieces of Rock, some of which
jut out, and others recede inwards; and are pleased with so
much Art, that you would take it to be the work of Nature.

EARL OF CHATHAM 157

In some Parts the Water is wide, in others narrow; here it
serpentises, and there spreads away, as if it was really pushed
off by the Hills and Rocks. The Banks are sprinkled with
Flowers, which rise up even through the Hollows in the Rock
work, as if they had been produced there naturally. They have
a great variety of them, for every season of the year.

Beyond these streams there are always Walks, or rather Paths,
paved with small Stones ; which lead from one Valley to another.
These Paths too are irregular ; and sometimes wind along the
Banks of the Water, and at others run out wide from them.

... I have already told you that these little Streams, or
Rivers, are carried on to supply several larger Pieces of Water,
and Lakes. One of these Lakes is very near Five Miles round ;
and they call it a Meer or Sea. This is one of the most beautiful
Parts in the whole Pleasure Grounds.

On the Banks are several Pieces of Buildings, separated from
each other by the Rivulets and artificial Hills above mentioned.

"But what is the most charming Thing of all is, an Island, or
Rock, in the Middle of this Sea ; raised, in a natural and rustic
Manner about Six Feet above the Surface of the Water. On this
rock there is a little Palace, which, however, contains an hundred
different Apartments. — A particular accoimt of the Emperor of
China^s Gardens ?iear Fekin, in a letter from F. Attiret^ 1757-^

L

— v\/\/Vv—

ORD CHATHAM'S taste in laying out his grounds was ex- EARL OF
quisite. In the pleasing gardens of South Lodge, Enfield p^^'^^^^
Chase, he designed a Temple of Pan, and its accompaniments,
which are highly commended by Mr Whately, in his " Observa-
tions on Modern Gardening." Mr Hayley likewise mentions Mr
Pitt's admirable taste in selecting points of picturesque scenery.

About 1754, Hayes Place, Kent, was purchased by Pitt. He
rebuilt the house, and considerably added to the Grounds. Here
^ See Illustration in Appendix.

158 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

General Wolfe dined the evening before he left England for
Quebec, Chatham died, and William Pitt was born.

Lord Mahon, in his History of England, says that at Hayes
in former years Chatham "had made improvements, which his
memory fondly recalled : plantations for example, pursued with
so much ardour and eagerness, that they were not even interrupted
at nightfall, but were continued by torchlight, and with relays of
labourers." The belts thus planted are pointed out to this day
at Hayes (Timbs's "Anecdote Biography," which has a vignette
of Hayes Place on the title-page).

— WXAa'^"

SAMUEL XTO^"^ ^vas excited his (Shenstone's) delight in rural pleasures,
JOHNSON IN and his ambition of rural elegance : he began from this time
(1 709- 1 784). ^^ p^.^^ j^.g prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his
walks, and to wind his waters ; which he did with such judgment
and such fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great
and the admiration of the skilful — a place to be visited by
travellers and copied by designers. Whether to plant a walk in
undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where
there is an object to catch the view — to make water run where it
will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen — to leave
intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the
plantation where there is something to be hidden — demand any
great powers of the mind, I will not enquire : perhaps a surly and
sullen spectator may think such performances rather the sport
than the business of human reason. But it must at least be
confessed that to embellish the form of nature is an innocent
amusement, and some praise must be allowed by the most
scrupulous observer to him who does best what multitudes are
contending to do well. — Lives of the Poets. {Shenstone.)

The truth is, he (Dr Johnson) hated to hear about prospects
and views, and laying out ground, and taste in gardening : " That
was the best garden," he said, "which produced most roots and
fruits; and that water was most to be prized which contained

CHARLES DE BROSSES 159

most fish." He used to laugh at Shenstone most unmercifully for
not caring whether there was anything good to eat in the streams
he was so fond of; "as if," says Johnson, "one could fill one's
belly with hearing soft murmurs, or looking at rough cascades ! "
He loved the sight of fine forest trees, however, and detested
Brighthelmstone Downs, "because it was a country so truly
desolate," he said, "that if one had a mind to hang one's self
for desperation at being obliged to live there, it would be difficult
to find a tree on which to fasten the rope," Walking in a wood,
when it rained, was, I think, the only rural image he pleased
his fancy with; "for," says he, "after one has gathered the
apples in the orchard, one wishes them well-baked, and removed
to a London eating-house for enjoyment." ^ With such notions
who can wonder he passed his time uncomfortably enough with
us, whom he often complained of for living so much in the
country ; " feeding the chickens," as he said I did, " till I starved
my own understanding. Get, however," said he, " a book about
gardening, and study it hard, since you will pass your Hfe with
birds and flowers, and learn to raise the largest turnips, and to
breed the biggest fowls." It was vain to assure him that the
goodness of such dishes did not depend upon their size ; he
laughed at the people who covered their canals with foreign fowls,
" when," says he, " our own geese and ganders are twice as large :
if we fetched better animals from distant nations, there might be
some sense in the preference ; but to get cows from Alderney, or
water-fowl from China, only to see Nature degenerating round one,
is a poor ambition indeed. — Mrs Piozzi. {'^ Joh?iso?tiana'')

—-A/VW—

Comte de Tournai et de Montfalcon, first President of the Parliament of Dijon CHARLES
{the Burgiindian Parliament.) Translator and editor of Sallust. The first DE
edition of his Letters fro jh Italy ^ written at the age of thirty, appeared in 1839. /jfl? jP-?-)
HEN we reached them we forgot all our troubles, so

W

singular is the appearance of that called the Beautiful
Island (Isola Bella). Imagine a quantity of arcades, formed in

^ This reminds one of Caraccioli's remark that "the only fruit in England
that ripened in the open air were apples, for they were roasted." — Fotmereau.

i6o THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

the centre of the Lake, supporting a conical-shaped hill, cut on
four sides, covered with thirty-six terraces, one over the other,
nine on each side, and one of these sides covered with buildings.
Each of these terraces is hung with palisades of jessamine, orange
trees, or pomegranates, with pots of flowers placed on the ledge.

At the top of the hill is an equestrian figure, which forms a
fountain, although we saw no water come from it, and there are
also four statues on the angles. We have in France artificial and
natural beauties better than this, but I have seen none more
singular and curious than this isle, which resembles a palace in a
fairy tale.

I would advise you, my dear Quinton, if you intend having a
pleasant time in Rome, to take this house; you will have also
the advantage of living within a stone's throw of Ludovisi Gardens.
We go there every evening ; they were Sallust's gardens in the
olden times. They are worth describing, and I shall make
honourable mention of them in the life of my old friend which I
am now engaged in writing. One has not to go outside of Rome
to enter these Gardens ; they are the largest in the town, the best
kept, and, being near to the most populous part of the City are
much frequented. They contain numerous alleys, orange groves,
and cypress copses, fountains, statues, vases and obelisk found in
situ quo (which obelisk was formerly in Sallust's garden), and
two little villas, not much in themselves, but full of treasures.
These gardens although they might be better kept, have a
delightful rural look about them. You must not expect to find
gardens here like those of the Tuileries, nor arranged like those
of the Palais Royal — little as the latter are to compare to the
former. We have greatly surpassed the Italians in our gardens,
although we owe ours to them. To compare gardens to buildings,
those of the Tuileries are as superior to others as is St Peter's to
other churches — that is to say, that none can be compared with
them on the same scale. After all, the Italians follow their own
taste, and adapt their gardens to their climate. They wish to
have green trees all the year round, grass in their walks instead of

ROUSSEAU i6i

sand, long and palisaded walks, which always afford shade in
their sunny land, and they require many fountains, great and
small, a crowd of statues, obelisks and bas-reliefs, of which they
possess a far greater store than we can show. They do not care
a morsel for the keeping up of their gardens, nor for their
cleanliness, and they cannot spend much on them. None of
their gardens outside the town, not excepting the finest of all,
that of Pamphili, which is the most rural and park-like, can
compare to St Cloud in charm of rusticity or to Marly in
picturesqueness. The best statues in the Ludovisi gardens are
those of Silenus and Priapus.

.... The Belvedere and the park of the Ludovisi villas are
mountains cut into terraces, covered with verdure, containing
grottoes and superb cascades. The great fountain in the
Belvedere is nearly equal to that of St Cloud ; it is one of the
finest things of its kind that can be seen. It descends, with a
terrific sound of air and water, through pipes arranged expressly
to make a perpetual cannonade. Besides this great fountain,
there are numerous smaller ones ; many in very good taste. The
hill of the Belvedere is scooped out into three terraces, orna-
mented with grottoes and with fagades, in rustic architecture, all
ornamented with cascades in full play. The great cascade is
crowned with columns with twisted flutings, through which the
water circulates in spiral lines. The Ludovisi cascade has above
it a platform containing a huge fountain basin. The long fa9ades
of grottoes, with porticoes, fountains, and statues are beautiful,
both here and in the Aldobrandini gardens. In the latter, at the
foot of the hill, is a very fine building designed by Porta. The
Avenues below are fringed with oranges and palisades of laurel,
with balustrades, on which are placed vases full of myrtle and
pomegranates. — Letters of Charles de Brasses^ translated by Lord
Ronald Gower.

—'HMV''—

T BEGAN to traverse in ecstacy the orchard thus transformed ; ROUSSEAU
■^ and if I did not find exotics, and plants of Indian growth, (1712-1778).
I found those of the country arranged and blended so as to

L

1 62 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

produce a more smiling and pleasing effect. The turf verdant,
yet close and crisp, was strewn with wild thyme, balsam,
marjoram, and other sweet-scented herbs : A thousand lustrous
wild-flowers were in sight, among which the eye distinguished
with surprise some from the garden, which seemed to grow up
naturally with the others. I encountered from time to time
dark thickets, as impenetrable to the sun's rays as the depths
of the forest : these thickets were formed of trees of the most
flexible wood, whose branches had been made to bend back,
hang on the ground, and take root, by an art akin to the natural
habit of the mango in America.

In the more open places, I saw here and there, unordered
and unsymmetrical, bushes of roses, raspberries, and gooseberries ;
patches of lilac, hazel, alders, seringas, broom, and clover, which
clothed the earth whilst giving it an appearance of being un-
cultured. I followed the serpentine and irregular alleys edged
with these flowering thickets, and roofed wdth a thousand garlands
of Judaea- vines, virgin-vines, hops, rose-w^ed, snake-\veed, clematis,
and other plants of this kind, with which honeysuckle and jasmine
deigned to mingle. These garlands appeared to be thrown
carelessly from one tree to another, as I had sometimes observed
in forests, and formed above us, as it were, draperies, which
sheltered us from the sun, whilst under foot we had soft, pleasant,
and dry walking upon fine moss, without sand, grass, or rough
shoots. Only then I discovered, not without surprise, that these
green and bushy shades, which in the distance had looked so
imposing, wTre only formed of these creeping parasite plants,
which, trained along the trees, wrapped their heads in the
thickest foliage, and their feet in shadow and coolness. I observed
too, that by means of a very simple industry, several of these
plants had been induced to take root on the trunks of trees
and so to spread more, being nearer the top, while requiring less
room. You will easily understand that the fruitage is none the
better for all these additions ; but only in this spot has the useful
been sacrificed to the agreeable, and in the rest of the grounds
such care has been bestowed upon the plants and trees, that

ROUSSEAU 163

with this orchard the less, the fruit crop is larger^ than
before.

If you think how charming it is, sometimes deep in the wood,
to see wild fruit and even to refresh yourself with it, you will
understand the pleasure it gives to find in this artificial desert
excellent and ripe fruit, although thinly sown and of bad com-
plexion, but which, for all that, affords the pleasure of search and
choice.

All these little paths were confined and crossed by a Hmpid
and clear stream, sometimes circling amid the grass and flowers
in almost imperceptible threads, now in larger streams flowing
over a pure mosaic of gravel, which made the water more trans-
parent.

I can imagine, said I to them, a rich man from Paris or
London, master of this house, bringing with him an expensive
architect to spoil Nature. With what disdain would he enter
this simple and mean place ! With what contempt would he
have all these weeds up-rooted ! What fine avenues he would
open out ! what beautiful alleys he would have pierced ! what
fine goose-feet, what fine trees like parasols and fans ! what
finely fretted trellises ! what beautifully drawn yew-hedges, finely
squared and rounded ! what fine bowling-greens of fine Engfish
turf, rounded, squared, sloped, ovaled : what fine yews carved
into dragons, pagodas, marmosets, every kind of monster !
With what fine bronze vases, what fine stone-fruits he would
adorn his garden ! ^

When all that is carried out, said M. de Wolmar, he will have
made a very fine place, which one will scarcely enter, and will
always be anxious to leave to seek the country : a dismal spot,
where no one will walk, but through which one will pass to go
for a walk ; whereas in my country strolls I am often eager to
return, that I may come and walk here.

^ I am convinced the time is at hand, when we shall no longer have in
gardens anything that is found in the country ; we shall tolerate neither
plants nor shrubs ; we shall only like porcelain flowers, baboons, arbour-
work, sand of all colours, and fine vases full of nothing.

1 64 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

I only see in these vast and richly ornamented estates the
vanity of the proprietor and of the artist, who, always eager to
display, the one his wealth and the other his talent, prepare, at
a great expense, ennui for any one desirous of enjoying their
work. A false taste for grandeur, which is not made for man,
poisons his pleasures.

The "grand air" is always melancholy: it makes us think of
the miseries of the man who affects it. Amid his parterres and
grand alleys, his littleness does not increase : a tree twenty feet
high shelters him as well as one of sixty feet : he never occupies
more than- his three feet of space, and is lost like a worm in his
immense possessions.

There is another taste directly opposed to that, and still more
ridiculous, in so far as it does not even permit the enjoyment of
the walk, for which gardens are made.

I understand, I replied : it is that of those pretty virtuosi, those
small florists, who swoon at the sight of a ranunculus, and prostrate
themselves before a tulip. Whereupon I related to them what
had formerly happened to me in London, in that flower-garden
into which we were ushered with so much formality, and where
we saw displayed so pompously all the treasures of Holland on
four beds of dung. I did not forget the ceremony of the parasol,
and of the little wand, with which they honoured me, all unworthy
as I was, as well as the other spectators.

I humbly confessed to them, how, being desirous to exert
myself when my turn came, and to venture to go into ecstacies
at the sight of a tulip, of which the colour appeared to me
striking, and the form elegant, I was mocked, hooted, hissed by
all the connoisseurs ; and how the garden-professor, passing from
his contempt for the flower to that for the panegyrist, did not
condescend to look at me during the whole interview. I think,
I added, that he greatly regretted having profaned his wand and
parasol. . . .

What then will the man of taste do, who lives for the sake
of living, who can enjoy by himself, who seeks real and simple
pleasures, and who wishes to make for himself a walk within

STERNE 165

reach of his house. He will make it so commodious and so
agreeable, that he can please himself there at all hours of the
day, and moreover so simple and so natural, that he seems to
have done nothing. He will combine water, verdure, shade and
coolness ; for Nature too combines all these things. He will
give symmetry to nothing ; it is the enemy to nature and variety ;
and all the alleys of an ordinary garden have so strong a
resemblance, that you think you are always in the same one :
he will level the soil to walk on it comfortably : but the two
sides of his alleys will not be always exactly parallel ; its direc-
tion will not be always in a straight line, it will have a certain
vagueness, like the gait of a leisurely man who sways as he
walks. He will not be anxious to open up fine prospects in
the distance : the taste for points of view and distances comes
from the tendency which most men have to be pleased only
where they do not happen to be : they are always longing for
what is far from them, and the artist, who does not know how
to make them sufficiently satisfied with what surrounds them,
allows himself this resource to amuse them : but the man of
whom I speak, has not this anxiety : and when he is well where
he is, he does not desire to be elsewhere.— y^^/zV, or the New

Heloise.

—fj\f\[\t^ —

METHINKS I see my contemplative girl now in the gardens, STERNE
watching the gradual approaches of Spring. Dost not thou ^'^^^'^^ ''
mark with delight the first vernal buds? the snow-drop, and
primrose, these early and welcome visitors, spring beneath thy
feet. Flora and Pomena already consider thee as their hand-
maid; and in a little time will load thee with their sweetest
blessing. The feathered race are all thy own, and with them,
untaught harmony will soon begin to cheer thy morning and
evening walks. Sweet as this may be, return — return, the birds
of Yorkshire will tune their pipes, and sing as melodiously as
those of Staffordshire.

I think I see you looking twenty times a day at the house,

1 66 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

almost counting every brick and pane of glass, and telling
them at the same time, with a sigh, you are going to leave
them. Oh ! happy modification of matter ! they will remain
insensible of thy loss. But how wilt thou be able to part
with thy garden? The recollection of so many pleasing walks
must have endeared it to you. The trees, the shrubs, the
flowers, which thou rearedst with thy own hands, will they not
droop and fade away sooner upon thy departure? Who will
be thy successor to nurse them in thy absence? Thou wilt
leave thy name upon the myrtle-tree. If trees and shrubs and
flowers could compose an elegy, I should expect a very plaintive
one upon this subject. — Letters to Miss L. {afterwards Sterne^s
wife and Editress of his Letters dedicated to David Garrick^
Jujie 1775, by Lydia Sterne de Medalle).

— -AlVv^f—

DIDEROT'S npHE French, plunged so long in barbarism, had no ideas of

^^^CYCLO- 1 ^]^Q decoration of gardens or of gardening, before the age

(1751-1765). of Louis XIV. It is in the reign of that prince that this art

was on the one hand created, perfected by la Quintinie for

utility, and by le Notre for pleasure. . . .

Let us, without partiality, cast our eye over this century.
How do we at present decorate the most beautiful situations of
our choice, with which, le Notre would have been able to achieve
wonders ? We bring to bear upon them a ridiculous and paltry
taste. The long straight alleys appear to us insipid; the
palissades cold and formless ; we delight in devising twisted
alleys, scroll-work parterres and shrubs pruned into tufts ; the
largest portions are divided-up into little lots always decorated
without grace, without nobility, without simplicity. Baskets of
flowers, faded after a few days, have taken the place of lasting
flower-beds ; we see everywhere vases of terra-cotta, Chinese
grotesques, caricatures, and other such works in sculpture of
mean workmanship, which plainly enough prove to us that
mediocrity has extended its empire over all our productions of
this kind.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE 167

It is not so with a neighbouring nation, amongst whom gardens
in good taste are as common as magnificent palaces are rare. In
England, these kinds of walks, practicable in all weathers, seem
made to be the sanctuary of a sweet and placid pleasure; the
body is there relaxed, the mind diverted, the eyes are enchanted
by the verdure of the turf, and bowling-greens ; the variety of
flowers offers pleasant flattery to the smell and sight. There is
no pretence of lavishing on these places, I do not say small, but
even the most beautiful works of art.

Nature alone, modestly arrayed, and never made up, there
spreads out her ornaments and benefits. How the fountains
beget the shrubs and beautify them ! How the shadows of the
woods put the streams to sleep in beds of herbage ! Let us call
the birds in these places of delight ; their concerts will draw man
hither, and will form a hundred times better eulogy of a taste for
sentiment, than marble and bronze whose display but produces a
stupid wonderment. — Encyclopcedia. (Jardm.)

Poet and author. Seems to have been the inventor of the term " landscape- WILLIAM
gardening,^' as well as of the actual " Sentimental Faj-tn" the " Leasowes." SHENSTONE

(1714-1763).
/^^ARDENING may be divided into three species — kitchen-

^-^ gardening — parterre gardening — and landscape or pictur-
esque-gardening : which latter is the subject intended in the
following pages. It consists in pleasing the imagination by
scenes of grandeur, beauty or variety. Convenience merely has
no share here any further than it pleases the imagination. . . .

Objects should indeed be less calculated to strike the imme-
diate eyes than the judgment or well-informed imagination, as
in painting. . . .

I believe, however, the sublime has generally a deeper effect
than the merely beautiful.

I use the words landscape and prospect, the former so
expressive of home scenes, the latter of distant images. Pros-
pects should take in the blue distant hills ; but never so remotely,

1 68 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

that they be not distinguishable from clouds. Yet this mere effect
is what the vulgar value.

Landscape should contain variety enough to form a picture
upon canvass ; and this is no bad test, as I think the landscape-
painter is the gardener's best designer. The eye requires a sort
of balance here ; but not so as to encroach upon probable nature.
A wood or hill may balance a house or obelisk ; for exactness
would be displeasing. . . . The eye should look rather down
upon water : customary nature makes this requisite. ... It is
not easy to account for the fondness of former times for straight-
lined avenues to their houses; straight-lined walks through their
woods ; and in short every kind of a straight-line ; where the foot
is to travel over what the eye has done before. . . .

By the way I wonder that lead statues are not more in vogue
in our gardens. Though they may not express the finer lines
of a human body, yet they seem perfectly well calculated, on
account of their duration, to embellish landscapes, were they
some degrees inferior to what we generally behold.^ .

It is always to be remembered in gardening, that sublimity or
magnificence, and beauty or variety, are very different things.
Every scene we see in nature is either tame and insipid, or
compounded of those. . . .

Gardeners may be divided into three sorts, the landscape-
gardener, the parterre - gardener, and the kitchen - gardener,
agreeably to our first division of gardens.

I have used the word landscape-gardeners, because, in
pursuance of oi;r present taste in gardening, every good painter
of landscape appears to me the most proper designer. The
misfortune of it is that these painters are apt to regard the
execution of their work, much more than the choice of
subject. . . .

Hedges, appearing as such, are universally bad. They dis-
cover art in nature's province.

^ The taste for lead statues and vases in gardens is now being stimulated by
Mr W. R. Lethaby, Mr Inigo Thomas, and other Architects. See the former's
admirable monograph on " Leadwork." (Macmillan, 1893.)

LANCELOT BROWN 169

Water should ever appear, as an irregular lake, or winding
stream. . . .

In gardening, it is no small point to enforce either grandeur
or beauty by surprize; for instance, by abrupt transition from
their contraries — but to lay a stress upon surprize only; for
example, on the surprize occasioned by an aha ! (Ha ! Ha !) with-
out including any nobler purpose ; is a symptom of bad taste, and
a violent fondness for mere concetto.— Unconnected Thoughts on
Gardening,

— A/\/VV>^ —

As a boy, entered sei'vice of Lord Cobham at Stowe and became his head LANCELOT
gardener. On his recommendation was appointed Royal Gardener at Haiiipton ^rpAPARTT I TV
Court in 1 750 by George II. Brown, asked by the King to " ^'''''!/^^^^^ " |l7ic.i78^)
the gardens at Hamptoti Co7irt, declined, ' ' ont of respect to himself and his
profession." He probably planted the famous vine in 1769, from a slip of
one at Valentines, Ilford, Essex ; he resided many years at Hampton Court,
Chatham, who corresponded with Brown, writes of him in a letter to Lady
Stanhope: *' The writer, Lancelot Brown, Esquire, en litre d' office: please to
consider he shares the private hotirs of the Kijtg, dines faj?iiliarly with his
tieighbour of Sion {Duke of Northumberland) and sits down at the tables of all
the House of Lords."

LANCELOT BROWN had the supreme control over the art
of modern gardening for nearly half a century. He had
been bred as a kitchen gardener at Stowe. Having been recom-
mended by Lord Cobham to the Duke of Grafton at Wakefield
Lodge, Northamptonshire, he directed the formation of a large
lake, and afterwards at Blenheim, where he covered a narrow
valley with an artificial river, and gave a character to a lofty
bridge. He exultingly said, that "the Thames would never
forgive him ! " . . . Croome in Worcestershire and Fisherwick
in Staffordshire are his only works entirely new, as taken from
fields. But it would be barely possible to enumerate all the
villas and their environs which he remodelled, according to the
system upon which he acted, with persevering uniformity, for he
was a consummate mannerist. His reputation and consequent

I

lyo THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

wealth gave him almost exclusive pretensions. Clumps and belts
were multiplied to a disgusting monotony, and abounded in every
part of the kingdom. The ancient avenues disappeared, as if
before the wand of a magician ; every vestige of the formal or the
reformed taste was forcibly removed. Whatever approached to
a right line was held in abhorrence. Brown's influence upon
public opinion produced, in time, two memorable contro-
versies, which may be styled the "Chinese," and the
" Picturesque."

Yet during his high career, he found some of the most
approved theorists to gratify him with no measured praise.
Walpole is courtly and discreet, as far as not becoming his
partizan. Whately treats him with bare allusion ; but Mason
gives an unequivocal encomium, whilst he afterwards combats
his principles.^

By his partizans. Brown has been complimented as ' the living
leader of the powers of nature, and the realiser of Kent's Elysian
scenes ' ; an immoderate praise which has excited the most severe
contempt. But, in candour, he should not have been charged
with all the faults of his numerous followers. He was not likely
to form himself upon the pictures of Salvator, Claude, or Poussin,
who was himself ignorant of mechanical drawing. His principles
were known, and his plans manufactured by others. His manage-
ment of water was more worthy of admiration than of grounds or
plantations, in which his mind appears to have been occupied by
a single object, not consulting, in some instances, the genius of
the place. The uniformity of ' clumps and belts ' (as he called
them) by such constant repetition has lost its claim to our surprise
or approbation ; and that claim originated as much in the novelty
as the beauty of the objects. Unlike the instance of the prophet
of old, his mantle has been appropriated to themselves by numer-
ous successors ; unless indeed, the precedence claimed by

1 ' Bards yet unborn

Shall pay to Brown, that tribute fitliest paid
In strains the beauty of his scenes inspire.'

— English Garden, Book I.

THOMAS GRAY 171

Repton be allowed by the public.^ — Dallaway's ^Anecdotes of
Gardening.^ ^

T TE (Count Algarotti) is highly civil to our nation, but there is THOMAS
^ one little point, in which he does not do us justice. I am (j^jg.,--!)
the more solicitous about it, because it relates to the only taste
which we can call our own, the only proof of our original talent
in matter of pleasure ; I mean, our skill in gardening, and laying
out grounds. That the Chinese have this beautiful art in high
perfection, seems very probable from the Jesuifs Letters, and
more from Chamber's little discourse published some few years
ago. But it is very certain, we copied nothing from them, nor
had anything but nature for our model. It is not forty years
since the art was born among us ; and it is sure, that there was
nothing in Europe like it, and as sure, we then had no informa-
tion on this head from China at all. — Letter to Williafn Taylor
Howe, dated Cambridge, September 10, 1763.

And so you have a garden of your own, and you plant and
transplant, and are dirty and amused; are not you ashamed of
yourself? Why, I have no such thing, you monster; nor ever
shall be either dirty or amused as long as I live ! My gardens

1 Reptoiij in his enquiry into the changes of taste in Landscape Gardening,
offers the following defence of Brown : — ' After his death he was immediately
succeeded by a numerous herd of his foremen and working gardeners, who
from having executed his designs, became consulted as well as employed in
the several works which he had entrusted them to superintend. And this
introduced all the bad taste attributed to Brown, by enlarging his plans.
Hence came the mistaken notion, that greatness of dimensions would produce
greatness of character : hence proceeded the immeasurable length of naked
lawn : the tedious length of belts and drives : the useless breadth of meander-
ing roads : the tiresome monotony of shrubberies and pleasure-grounds : the
naked expanse of water accompanied by trees, and all the unpicturesque
features which disgrace modern gardening, and which brought on Brown's
system the opprobrious epithets of " bare and bald." '

^ What may be called the literary history of gardening shall be succinctly
and impartially attempted. — Dallaway.

172 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

are in a window like those of a lodger up three pair of stairs in
Petticoat Lane or Camomile Street, and they go to bed regularly
under the same roof that I do : dear, how charming it must be to
walk out in one's own garden, and sit on a bench in the open air
with a fountain and a leaden statue and a rolling stone and an
arbour ! have a care of sore throat though, and the agoe. — Letter
to the Rev. JVorfon Nicholls. (^Pejnbroke College^ Jime 24, 1769.)

\ A 7HEN I had drank tea I strolled into the garden. They

(1717- I7Q7) ^^-^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^°^^ called the ''pleasure-ground.^ What

a dissonant idea of pleasure ! Those groves, those alleys^ where
I have passed so many charming moments, are now stripped up,
or overgrown ; many fond paths I could not unravel, though with
a very exact clue in my memory. I met two gamekeepers and
a thousand hares ! In the days when all my soul was tuned to
pleasure and vivacity, I hated Houghton and its solitude ; yet
I loved this garden ; as now, with many regrets, I love Houghton ;
— Houghton, I know not what to call it : a monument of grandeur
or ruin ! — Letters.

A cottage and a slip of ground for a cabbage and a gooseberry-
bush such as we see by the side of a common, were in all pro-
bability the earliest seats and gardens: a well and bucket succeeded
to the Pison and Euphrates.^

As settlements increased, the orchard and the vine-yard
followed ; and the earliest princes of tribes possessed just the
necessaries of a modern farmer.

Matters, we may well believe, remained long in this situation ;
and though the generality of mankind form their ideas from the
import of words in their own age, we have no reason to think
that for many centuries the term garde?i implied more than a
kitchen-garden or orchard. When a Frenchman reads of the

^ Two of the four rivers enclosing Paradise, the others being Gihon and
Hiddekel.

HORACE WALPOLE 173

Garden of Eden, I do not doubt but he concludes it was some-
thing approaching to that of Versailles, with dipt hedges,
berceaus, and trelliswork. If his devotion humbles him so
far as to allow that, considering who designed it, there might
be a labyrinth full of ^sop's fables, yet he does not conceive
that four of the largest rivers in the world were half so magni-
ficent as an hundred fountains full of statues by Girardon. It
is thus that the word garden has at all times passed for what-
ever was understood by that term in different countries. But
that it meant no more than a kitchen-garden or orchard for
several centuries, is evident from those few descriptions that
are preserved of the most famous gardens of antiquity.

(Walpole then describes Alcinous's garden in Homer ; the hanging gardens
of Babylon ; Pliny's gardens, at his Laurentine and Tusculan villas ; the gardens
of Herculaneum, of which latter he says :)

In the paintings found at Herculaneum are a few traces of
gardens, as may be seen in the second volume of the prints.
They are small square inclosures formed by trellis-work, and
espaliers,! and regularly ornamented with vases, fountains and
Caryatides, elegantly symmetrical, and proper for the narrow
spaces allotted to the garden of a house in a capital city. From
such I would not banish those playful waters that refresh a
sultry mansion in town, nor the neat trellis, which preserves
its wooden verdure better than natural greens exposed to dust.
Those treillages in the gardens at Paris, particularly on the
Boulevard, have a gay and delightful effect. They form light
corridores, and transpicuous arbours through which the sun-
beams play and chequer the shade, set off the statues, vases,
and flowers, that marry with their gaudy hotels, and suit the
galant and idle society who paint the walks between their
parterres, and realize the fantastic scenes of Watteau and Durfe.

From what I have said, it appears how naturally and insensibly
the idea of a kitchen-garden slid into that which has for so
many ages been peculiarly termed a garden, and by our

1 At Warwick castle is an ancient suit of arras, in which there is a garden
exactly resembling these pictures of Herculaneum. — Walpole s Note.

174 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

ancestors in this country, distinguished by the name of a
pleasure-garden.

A square piece of ground was originally parted off in early ages
for the use of the family — to exclude cattle and ascertain the
property, it was separated from the fields by a hedge. As pride
and desire of privacy increased, the inclosure was dignified by
walls ; and in climes where fruits were not lavished by the ripen-
ing glow of nature and soil, fruit-trees were assisted and sheltered
from surrounding winds by the like expedient ; for the inundation
of luxuries which have swelled into general necessities, have almost
all taken their source from the simple fountain of reason.

When the custom of making square gardens enclosed with walls
was thus established, to the exclusion of nature and prospect,
pomp and solitude combined to call for something that might en-
rich and enliven the insipid and unanimated partition. Fountains,
first invented for use, which grandeur loves to disguise and throw
out of the question, received embellishments from costly marbles,
and at last, to contradict utility, tossed their waste of waters into
air in spouting columns. Art, in the hands of rude man, had at
first been made a succedaneum to nature ; in the hands of ostenta-
tious wealth it became the means of opposing nature ; and the
more it traversed the march of the latter, the more nobility thought
its power was demonstrated.

Canals measured by the line were introduced instead of
meandering streams, and terrasses were hoisted aloft in opposi-
tion to the facile slopes that imperceptibly unite the valley to
the hill. Balustrades defended these precipitate and dangerous
elevations, and flights of steps rejoined them to the subjacent flat
from which the terrass had been dug. Vases and sculpture were
added to these unnecessary balconies, and statues furnished the
lifeless spot with mimic representations of the excluded sons of
men. Thus difficulty and expense were the constituent parts of
those sumptuous and selfish solitudes; and every improvement
that was made, was but a step farther from nature. The tricks
of water-works to wet the unwary, not to refresh the panting
spectator, and parterres embroidered in patterns like a petti-

HORACE WALPOLE 175

coat, were but the childish endeavours of fashion and novelty
to reconcile greatness to what it had surfeited on.

To crown these impotent displays of false taste, the sheers were
applied to the lovely wildness of form with which nature has dis-
tinguished each various species of tree and shrub.

The venerable oak, the romantic beech, the useful elm, even
the aspiring circuit of the lime, the regular round of the chesnut,
and the almost moulded orange-tree, were corrected by such
fantastic admirers of symmetry. The compass and square were
of more use in plantations than the nursery-man. The measured
walk, the quincunx, and the etoile imposed their unsatisfying
sameness on every royal and noble garden. Trees were headed,
and their sides pared away; many French groves seem green
chests set upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours and summer-
houses terminated every visto ; and symmetry, even where the
space was too large to permit its being remarked at one view,
was so essentia], that, as Pope observed :

' . . . Each alley has a brother,
And half the garden just reflects the other.'

Knots of flowers were more defensibly subjected to the same
regularity. Leisure, as Milton expressed it,

' In trim gardens took his pleasure.'

In the garden of Marshal de Biron at Paris, consisting of fourteen
acres, every walk is buttoned on each side by lines of flower-pots
which succeed in their seasons. When I saw it, there were nine
thousand pots of Asters, or la Reine Marguerite.

We do not precisely know what our ancesters meant by a
bower, it was probably an arbour; sometimes it meant the whole
frittered enclosure, and in one instance it certainly included a
labyrinth. Rosamund's bower was indisputably of that kind,
though whether composed of walls or hedges we cannot determine.
A square and a round labyrinth were so capital ingredients of a
garden formerly, that in Du Cerceau's architecture, who lived in
the time of Charles IX. and Henry III., there is scarce a ground
plot without one of each. The enchantment of antique appellations

176 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

have consecrated a pleasing idea of a royal residence, of which we
now regret the extinction. Havering in the Bower, the jointure of
many dowager queens, conveys to us the notion of a romantic scene.
In Kip's views of the seats of our nobility and gentry, we see
the same tiresome and returning uniformity. Every house is
approached by two or three gardens, consisting perhaps of a
gravel-walk and two grass-plats, or borders of flowers. Each rises
above the other by two or three steps, and as many walks and
terrasses ; and so many iron gates, that we recollect those ancient
romances, in which every entrance was guarded by nymphs or
dragons. At Lady Oxford's at Piddletown in Dorsetshire, there
was, when my brother married, a double enclosure of thirteen
gardens each I suppose not a hundred yards square, with an
enfilade of correspondent gates ; and before you arrived at these,
you passed a narrow gut between two stone terrasses, that rose
above your head, and which were crowned by a line of pyramidal
yews. A bowling-green was all the lawn admitted in those times,
a circular lake the extent of magnificence.

(Then follows reference to Hentzner, and the origin of parks, 'the
principle of modern gardening ' : —

Eulogy of Milton's idea of Paradise, about which he says : ' He seems with
the prophetic eye of taste to have conceived, to have foreseen modern garden-
ing. . . . The description of Eden is a warmer and more just picture of the
present style than Claud Lorraine could have painted from Hagley or
Stourhead.' —

Analysis of Milton's description : ' And recollect that the conceits in
Italian gardens, and Theobalds and Nonsuch, were the brightest originals that
his memory could furnish.' —

Censure of Sir William Temple's idea of a garden : quotation from his
essay, describing Moor Park in Hertfordshire.

Spence's account of Chinese Emperor's garden. — )

But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed,
was (I believe the first thought was Bridgman's) the destruction
of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses — an attempt
then deemed so astonishing that the common people called them
Ha ! Ha's ! to express their surprise at finding a sudden and
unperceived check to their walk.

HORACE WALPOLE i^^

... I call a sunk fence the leading step, for these reasons
No sooner was this simple enchantment made, than levelling,
mowing and rolling, followed. The contiguous ground of the
park without the sunk fence was to be harmonized with the lawn
within ; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its
prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country
without. The sunk fence ascertained the specific garden, but
that it might not draw too obvious a line of distinction between
the neat and the rude, the contiguous out-lying parts came to be
included in a kind of general design : and when nature was taken
into the plan, under improvements, every step that was made,
pointed out new beauties and inspired new ideas.

At that moment appeared Kent ; painter enough to taste the
charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and
dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from
the twilight of iniperfect essays. He leaped the fence, and saw
that all nature was a garden. He felt the delicious contrast of
hill and valley changing imperceptibly into each other, tasted the
beauty of the gentle swell, or concave scoop, and remarked how
loose groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament,
and while they called in the distant view between their graceful
stems, removed and extended the perspective by delusive com-
parison.

Thus the pencil of his imagination bestowed all the arts of
landscape on the scenes he handled. The great principles on
which he worked were perspective, and light and shade. Groups
of trees broke too uniform or too extensive a lawn ; evergreens
and woods were opposed to the glare of the champain, and where
the view was less fortunate, or so much exposed as to be beheld
at once, he blotted out some parts by thick shades, to divide it
into variety, or to make the richest scene more enchanting by
reserving it to a farther advance of the spectator's step. Thus
selecting favourite objects, and veiling deformities by screens of
plantation ; sometimes allowing the rudest waste to add its foil
to the richest theatre, he realized the compositions of the greatest
masters in painting. Where objects were wanting to animate his

M

178 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

horizon, his taste as an architect could bestow immediate termina-
tion. His buildings, his seats, his temples, were more the works
of his pencil V than of his compasses. We owe the restoration of
Greece and the diffusion of architecture to his skill in landscape.
But of all the beauties he added to the face of this beautiful
country, none surpassed his management of water. Adieu to
canals, circular basons, and cascades tumbHng down marble steps,
that last absurd magnificence of Italian and French villas. The
forced elevation of cataracts was no more. The gentle stream
was taught to serp^ntize seemingly at its pleasure, and where
discontinued by different levels, its course appeared to be con-
cealed by thickets properly interspersed, and glittered again at
a distance where it might be supposed naturally to arrive. Its
borders were smoothed, but preserved their waving irregularity.
A few trees scattered here and there on its edges sprinkled the
tame bank that accompanied its maeanders; and when it dis-
appeared among the hills, shades descending from the heights
leaned towards its progress, and framed the distant point of light
under which it was lost, as it turned aside to either hand of the
blue horizon. — On Modern Gardening.

CLAUDE Receiver -General of Finances, Member of the French Acadeniy and of the

HENRI Royal Acadeniy of Painting and Sculpture, author of poem on * The Art of

WATELET, Painting'' and 'Essay on Gardetts'' ; a critic of the type of the Comte de
(1718-1786). Caylus. He created the Moulin-Joli {near Paris) of which the Prince de Ligne
•wrote : —

' Void un lieu peut-etre enco7-e plus selon vion ca'ur {qii Erjnenonville), et
plus pres de Paris. Cest en quittant un jour son vain tourbillon, qtier^-ant a
taventure, le long de la Seine, je le perdis de vtie au Moulin-Joli, et que je me
irouvai moi-?neme, car ce nest qtiaux champs qiion petit se trouver. Qui que
votis soyez, si vous n'ctes pas des cxurs endurcis, asseyez-vous entre les bras dun
saule, au Moulin-Joli, sur le bord de la riviere. Lisez, voyez et pleurez, ce ne
sera pas de tristesse, mais d'tine sensibilite delicieuse. Le tableau de votre dme
viendra s'offrir a votis. . . . Allez-y, incridules. . . . Meditez sur les inscrip-
tions que le gout y a dict^es. Miditez avec le sage, soupirez avec Pamant, et
binissez Watelet.^

WATELET 179

Watelet divides his * Essay on Gardens ' into ' useful establishments and
places of pleasure^ ; the first is represented by the ^ Fer?}ie orn^e,' which he
depicts in detail. He next treats of ancient Parks, which owed their origin
to feudal pride ; Modern Parks, the three characters of which he classes tinder
the heads Picturesque, Poetic ajid Romantic {Ro??tanesque). In the ' Places of
Pleasure ' he finds the power of fashion and ifnitation too strong, good taste
yielding to artifice '' impotently Inisy^ {' p^niblmcfit industrietix^) and the
^ ??iechanicaP overwhelmitig the ^liberal.'

ON verra done, dans les Jardins, les ornemens factices preferes
aux agremens naturels. Les arbres seront soumis a des formes
et a des usages qui les defigurent. . . . Les branches et les feuillages
mutiles et transformes en plafond, ou en murs, n'oseront vegeter
que sous les loix du fer, des distributions semblables a celle des
appartemens reproduiront, en plein air, des salles, des cabinets,
des boudoirs, oii se trouvera le meme ennui qui remplit ceux
que couvrent les lambris dores. L'eau stagnera dans des bassins
ronds ou quarres ; elle sera emprisonnee dans des tuyaux, pour
attendre quelques instants de liberte de la volonte du fontainier.
Le marbre qui pretendra ennoblir par la richesse ce qui dans la
Nature est bien au-dessus de la somptuosite, s'y montrera souvent
dans un etat de deperissement, qui contraste avec ses pretentions
a la magnificence. Le triste bronze ternira I'email riant des
fleurs. . . .

Cependant, dans quelques coins oublies, la Nature encore
hasardera d'user de ses droits a la liberte ; et s'il arrive que ces
arbres, tourmentes par le fer et le niveau, vieillissent, ils
acquerront, en depit de leurs tirans, des proportions grandes,
nobles et robustes. Alors, parvenus a elever leurs cimes au-
dessus de la portee des echelles et des croissans, ils reprendront
les traits de cette beaute majestueuse et pittoresque qui appelle et
fixe les regards. C'est alors que de larges allees, devenues de
superbes galeries, formeront leur votite au sommet des airs. Les
branchages etendus sans gene, s'approcheront a leur gre,
s'entrelasseront sans contrainte, et se feront justement admirer
par des effets que I'art ne pent imiter. . . .

Dans les pares I'utile doit preter des secours a Tagrement, et
I'Art doit etre subordonne generalement a la Nature.

i8o THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Dans les lieux de plaisance I'Art peut s'arroger le droit de se
montrer avec moins de reserve.

Enfin, dans les jardins destines a des sensations plus delicates
et plus recherchees, I'artifice et la richesse employes a des effets
surnaturels et a des prodiges, s'effacent de I'emporter sur la
Nature.

Mais pour revenir encore un instant a des notions primitives
et simples ; dans quelques dispositions de promenades et de
jardins que ce soit, le premier principe est d'entremeler sans
cesse les motifs de curiosite qui engagent a changer de place aux
objets qui attachent et qui invitent a s'arreter.

. . . Aussi, des Arts connus, celui qui a plus de relations
d'idee avec I'Art des Jardins, c'est celui de la Peinture.

L'Architecture s'en est cependant presque toujours occupe
jusqu'ici, et il etait assez naturel que ne regardant pas les jardins
comme susceptibles d'une certaine perfection liberale qu'on y
desire aujourd'hui, I'Artiste a qui Ton confiait le soin des
edifices, fiit charge de ce qui ne semblait en etre que les acces-
soires. D'ailleurs on appercevait une relation, en apparence
assez fondee, entre les formes adoptees pour les jardins, et celles
qu'employait I'Architecture ; mais on ne faisait pas attention a la
difference qu'apporte dans les deux Arts la seule nature des
plans sur lesquels ils s'exercent.

L'Architecte, dans la partie liberale de son Art, a pour objet
de rendre agreable toutes les parties d'un plan vertical.

Le decorateur de jardin exerce ses talens pour embellir un
plan horizontal.

Le premier doit satisfaire le plutot et avec le moins d'effort
possible, le spectateur qui ne destine ^ son plaisir que des
regards et quelques momens.

Le second ne doit decouvrir que I'une apres I'autre les beautes
de son ouvrage a ceux qui consacrent a cette jouissance des heures
entieres.

D'apres des intentions si differentes ; les plans simples, les
formes symmetriques, les proportions faciles a saisir, les masses
regulieres seront preferees par I'Architecte ; tandis que les plans

GILBERT WHITE i8i

misterieux, les formes dissemblables, les effets plus appergus que
leurs principes, les accidents qui combattent la regularite offriront
les moyens les plus favorables au decorateur. La precision du
trait, la proprete des details seront les recherches de I'Architecture ;
une certaine indecision pleine d'agremens, cette negligence qui
sied si bien a la Nature seront les finesses de I'Art des Jardins. —
Essai sur les Jardins ^ 1 7 74-

As to the produce of a Garden, every middle-aged person of GILBERT
observation may perceive, within his own memory, both in ©f SELBORNE
town and country, how vastly the consumption of vegetables is (1720- 1793).
increased. Green stalls in cities now support multitudes in a
comfortable state, while gardeners get fortunes. Every decent
labourer also has his garden, which is half his support as well as
his delight ; and common farmers provide plenty of beans, peas,
and greens, for their hinds to eat with their bacon; and those
few that do not are despised for their sordid parsimony, and
looked upon as regardless of the welfare of their dependants.
Potatoes have prevailed in this little district by means of
premiums, within these twenty years only, and are much
esteemed here now by the poor, who would scarce have ven-
tured to taste them in the last reign.

Our Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of cabbage,
because they call the month of February Sprout-cale ; but long
after their days, the cultivation of gardens was little attended to.
The religious being men of leisure, and keeping up a constant
correspondence with Italy, were the first people among us that
had gardens and fruit-trees in any perfection, within the walls of
their abbies, priories, and monasteries, where the lamp of know-
ledge continued to burn, however dimly. In them men of business
were formed for the state : the art of writing was cultivated by the
monks ; they were the only proficients in mechanics, gardening,
and architecture. The barons neglected every pursuit that did
not lead to war, or tend to the pleasure of the chase.

It was not till gentlemen took up the study of horticulture

1 82 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

themselves, that the knowledge of gardening made such hasty
advances. Lord Cobham, Lord Ila, and Mr Waller of Beacons-
field, were some of the first people of rank that promoted the
elegant science of ornamenting without despising the superintend-
ence of the kitchen quarters and fruit walls. — The Natural History
of Selborne. {Letter LXXIX. ) ^

ADAM -^HE circumstances of gardeners, generally mean, and always
^72^^700) moderate, may satisfy us that their great ingenuity is not

commonly over-recompenced. Their delightful art is practised
by so many rich people for amusement, that little advantage is
to be made by those who practise it for profit ; because the
persons who should naturally be their best customers, supply
themselves with all their most precious productions. — The
Nature afid Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

— A/WV^ —

WILLIAM Owner of a school at Cheain ; Rector of Boldre, near New Forest ; author of
GILPIN Lives of Bernard Gilpin, Cranmer, Wycliffe, and others; also of *■ Forest
(1724- 1 804). Scenery,^ ''Essay 07i Prints,^ and many vohwies on Picturesqtie Beauty and
Travels in the British Isles, from the year 1776, with his own illustrations ;
his name is generally joined with those of Uvedale Price and Payne Knight on
the * Picturesque ' side of the Cont^-oversy with the ' Improvers ' and Land-
scape Gardeners, * Capability ' Brown and ' Amenity ' Repton.

FROM clumps we naturally proceed to Park scenery, which is
generally composed of combinations of clumps, interspersed
with lawns. ... As the park is an appendage of the house, it
follows that it should participate of its neatness and elegance.
Nature, in all her great walks of landscape, observes this accom-
modating rule. She seldom passes abruptly from one mode of
scenery to another, but generally connects different species of
landscape by some third species, which participates of both.
Thus, as the house is connected with the country through the
medium of the park, the park should partake of the neatness of
the one, and of the wildness of the other. As the park is a scene
either planted by art, or if naturally woody, artificially improved,
we expect a beauty and contrast in its clumps, which we do not

WILLIAM MASON 183

look for in the wild scenes of Nature. We expect to see its lawns
and their appendages contrasted with each other, in shape, size
and disposition, from which a variety of artificial scenes will
arise. We expect, that when trees are left standing as individuals,
they should be the most beautiful of their kind, elegant and well
balanced. ... If there be a natural river or a real ruin in the
scene, it may be a happy circumstance : let the best use be made
of it ; but I should be cautious in advising the creation of either.
At least I have rarely seen either ruins or rivers well manufac-
tured. Mr Brown, I think, has failed more in river making than
in any of his attempts. An artificial lake has sometimes a good
efi"ect ; but neither propriety nor beauty can arise from it, unless
the heads and extremities of it are perfectly well managed and
concealed ; and after all the success is hazardous. . . .

As the garden, or pleasure ground, as it is commonly called,
approaches nearer to the house than the park, it takes of course a
higher polish. Here the lawns are shorn instead of being grazed ;
the roughness of the road is changed into an elegant, gravel walk ;
and knots of flowers and flowering shrubs are introduced, yet
blended with clumps of forest trees, which connect it with the
park. Single trees also take their station here with great pro-
priety. Here too, if the situation suits it, the elegant temple may
find a place. But it is an expensive, a hazardous and often a
useless decoration. ... In the most polished landscape, unless
nature and simplicity lead the way, the whole will be deformed. —
^ Refnarks on Forest Scenery^ edited by Sir T. Dick Lauder ^
1834 {who has also edited Humphry Reptoiis complete works).

Mason was Author of two tragedies and of the poem ' The English Garden,^ WILLIAM
1772. MASON

Dallaway says these Notes and Commentaries to "The Plnglish Garden" \^T^S''^19n
are by W. Burgh. Loudon quotes them as by Mason. — See ' Encyclopedia ^/txt'tt t TAM
Gardening: BURGH,

^HE first book (of 'The English Garden') contains the LL.D.

ji

general principles of the art, which are shown to be no
other than those which constitute beauty in the sister art of

1 84 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

landscape-painting ; beauty which results from a well-chosen
variety of curves, in contradistinction to that of architecture,
which arises from a judicious symmetry of right lines, and which
is thus shown to have afforded the principle on which that formal
disposition of garden ground, which our ancestors borrowed from
the French and Dutch, proceeded : a principle never adopted by
nature herself, and therefore constantly to be avoided by those
whose business it is to embellish nature. . . .

The picturesque principle being thus established, the second
book proceeds to a more practical discussion of the subject, but
confines itself to one point only, the disposition of the ground
plan, and that very material business immediately united with it,
the proper disposition and formation of the paths and fences.
The necessity of attending constantly to the curvilinear principle
is first shown, not only in the formation of the ground plan, with
respect to its external boundary, but in its internal swellings and
sinkings where all abruptness or angular appearances are as much to
be avoided, as in the form of the outline that sui-rounds the whole.

The pathways or walks are next considered, and that peculiar
curve recommended for their imitation, which is so frequently
found in common roads, footpaths, etc., and which being casually
produced appears to be the general curve of nature.

The rest of the book is employed in minutely describing the
method of making sunk fences, and other necessary divisions of
the pleasure-ground or lawn from the adjacent field or park. . . .

The third book proceeds to add natural ornament to that
ground-plan, which the second book has ascertained, in its two
capital branches, wood and water. . . . Factitious or artificial
ornaments (apparently including flowers) in contradistinction
to natural ones last treated, form the general subject of the
fourth book, and conclude the plan.

I had before called Bacon the prophet, and Milton the herald,
of true taste in Gardening (on account of their introducing 'natural
wildness '). I here call Addison, Pope, Kent, etc., the champions
of this free taste, because they absolutely brought it into execution.
— General Postscript to the ^English Garden'

SIR WILLIAM CHAMBERS 185

Born at Stockholm ; employed by Geoi-ge III. to plan the gardens at Kezu, ^SIR
which he published the * Plans, Elevations and Views' in folio, 1763, having in WILLIAM
1757 issued ^Designs of Chinese Buildings,' etc., drawn by him as a youth , V^^^
in China. 1772, appeared his ^Dissertation on Oriental Gardening' and a ' 1^ i'

' Treatise on Civil Architecture ' ; he built Somerset House.

npHE Gardens of Italy, France, Germany and Spain, and of
* all the other countries where the antient style still pre-
vails, are in general mere cities of verdure; the walks are like
streets conducted in strait lines, regularly diverging from differ-
ent large open spaces, resembling public squares ; and the
hedges with which they are bordered, are raised, in imitation
of walls, adorned with pilasters, niches, windows and doors, or
cut into colonades, arcades and porticos ; all the detached trees
are slmped into obelisks, pyramids and vases ; and all the
recesses in the thickets bear the names and forms of theatres,
amphitheatres, temples, banqueting halls, ball rooms, cabinets
and saloons. The streets and squares are well manned with
statues of marble or lead, ranged in regular lines, like soldiers
at a procession ; which, to make them more natural, are some-
times painted in proper colours, and finely gilt. The lakes
and rivers are confined by quais of hewn stone, and taught to
flow in geometrick order ; and the cascades glide from the
heights by many a succession of marble steps : not a twig is
suffered to grow as nature directs, nor is a form admitted but
what is scientific, and determinable by the line or compass.

In England, where this antient style is held in detestation,
and where, in opposition to the rest of Europe, a new manner
is universally adopted, in which no appearance of art is tolerated,
our gardens differ very little from common fields, so closely
is common nature copied in most of them ; there is generally
so little variety in the objects, such a poverty of imagination
in the contrivance, and of art in the arrangement that these
compositions rather appear the offspring of chance than design ;
and a stranger is often at a loss to know whether he be walking
in a meadow, or in a pleasure-ground, made and kept at a very
considerable expence : he sees nothing to amuse him, nothing
to excite his curiosity, nor anything to keep up his attention.

1 86 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

At his first entrance, he is treated with the sight of a large green"
field, scattered over with a few straggling trees, and verged with
a confused border of little shrubs and flowers ; upon farther in-
spection, he finds a little serpentine path, twining in regular S's
amongst the shrubs of the border, upon which he is to go round,
to look on one side at what he has already seen, the large green
field ; and on the other side at the boundary, which is never more
than a few yards from him, and always obtruding upon his sight :
from time to time he perceives a little seat or temple stuck up
against the wall ; he rejoices at the discovery, sits down, rests
his weary limbs, and then reels on again, cursing the line of
beauty, till spent with fatigue, half roasted by the sun, for there
is never any shade, and tired for want of entertainment, he re-
solves to see no more : vain resolution ! there is but one path ;
he must either drag on to the end, or return back by the tedious
way he came.

Such is the favourite plan of all our smaller gardens : and our
larger works are only a repetition of the small ones ; more green
fields, more shrubberies, more serpentine walks and more seats ;
like the honest bachelor's feast, which consisted in nothing but
a multiplication of his own dinner; three legs of mutton and
turneps, three roasted geese, and three buttered apple-pies.

It is, I think, obvious that neither the artful, nor the simple
style of Gardening here mentioned, is right : the one being too
extravagant a deviation from nature ; the other too scrupulous
an adherence to her. One manner is absurd ; the other insipid
and vulgar : a judicious mixture of both would certainly be more
perfect than either.

But how this union can be effected is difficult to say. The
men of art and the friends of nature, are equally violent in
defence of their favourite system ; and, like all other partizans,
loth to give up anything, however unreasonable. . . .

Whether the Chinese manner of Gardening be better or worse
than those now in use amongst the Europeans, I will not deter-
mine: comparison is the surest as well as the easiest test of truth;
it is in every man's power to compare and to judge for himself. . . .

JOHN WILKES 187

Though the Chinese artists have nature for their general model,
yet they are not so attached to her as to exclude all appearance of
art ; on the contrary they think it on many occasions necessary
to make an ostentatious shew of their labour. Nature, say they,
affords us but few materials to work with. . . .

The Chinese are therefore no enemies to strait lines ; because
they are, generally speaking, productive of grandeur, which often
cannot be attained without them : nor have they any aversion
to regular geometrical figures, which they say are beautiful in
themselves, and well suited to small compositions, where the
luxuriant irregularities of nature would fill up and embarrass
the parts they should adorn. . . .

The usual method of distributing Gardens in China, is to
contrive a great variety of scenes to be seen from certain points
of view ; at which are placed seats or buildings adapted to the
different purposes of mental or sensual enjoyments.

The perfection of their Gardens consists in the number and
diversity of these scenes, and in the artful combination of their
parts ; which they endeavour to dispose in such a manner, as not
only separately to appear to the best advantage, but also to unite
in forming an elegant and striking whole. ... In their large
Gardens they contrive different scenes for the different times
of the day ; disposing at the points of view buildings, which
from their use point out the proper hour for enjoying the view
in its perfections. . . . They have beside, scenes for every season
of the year : some for the winter, generally exposed to the
southern sun, and composed of pines, firs, cedars, evergreen
oaks, phillyreas, hollies, yews, and many other evergreens. — 'A
Dissertation on Oriental Gardenitig^^ by Sir William Chambers,
Knt., Comptroller General of his Majesty s Works, 1772.

T CUT off all the rosebuds of the trees in our little garden JOHN

* (which is a secret) to make them blow at the end of the WH-KES

r (I727-I797)-

season, when I hope to enjoy your company there after our trees.

— Letter to his Daughter.

1 88 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

OLIVER n^HE English have not yet brought the art of gardening to the

POT nmviiTH I ^ o DO

(1728-1774) ^^^^^ perfection with the Chinese, but have lately begun to

imitate them ; Nature is now followed with greater assiduity than
formerly; the trees are suffered to shoot out into the utmost
luxuriance ; the streams no longer forced from their native beds,
are permitted to wind along the vallies : spontaneous flowers take
the place of the finished parterre, and the enamelled meadow of
the shaven green.

Yet still the English are far behind us in this charming art:
their designers have not yet attained a power of uniting instruction
wnth beauty. An European will scarcely conceive my meaning,
when I say, that there is scarce a garden in China which does not
^^^ontain some fine moral, couch'd under the general design, where
one is not taught wisdom as he walks, and feels the force of some
noble truth or delicate precept resulting from the disposition of
the groves, streams or grotto's.

Permit me to illustrate what I mean by a description of my
gardens at Quamsi. My heart still hovers round those scenes
of former happiness with pleasure ; and I find satisfaction in
enjoying them at this distance, though but in imagination.

You descended from the house between two groves of trees,
planted in such a manner that they were impenetrable to the
eye : while on each hand the way was adorned with all that was
beautiful in porcelaine, statuary and painting.

This passage from the house opened into an area surrounded
with rocks, flowers, trees and shrubs, but all so disposed as if each
was the spontaneous production of nature. As you proceeded
forward on this lawn, to your right and left hand were two gates,
opposite each other, of very different architecture and design ;
and before you lay a temple built rather with minute elegance
than ostentation.

The right-hand gate was planned with the utmost simplicity or
rather rudeness ; ivy clasp'd round the pillars, the baleful Cyprus
hung over it ; time seemed to have destroyed all the smoothness
and regularity of the stone : two champions with lifted clubs
appeared in the act of guarding its access ; dragons and serpents

OLIVER GOLDSMITH 189

were seen in the most hideous attitudes, to deter the spectator
from approaching ; and the perspective view that lay behind
seemed dark and gloomy to the last degree; the stranger was
tempted to enter only from the motto : Pervia Virtuti.

The opposite gate was formed in a very different manner ;
the architecture was light, elegant and inviting ; flowers hung
in wreaths round the pillars ; all was finished in the most exact
and masterly manner ; the very stone of which it was built still
preserved its polish ; nymphs wrought by the hand of a master,
in the most alluring attitudes, beckoned the stranger to approach,
while all that lay behind as far as the eye could reach, seemed
gay, luxuriant, and capable of affordmg endless pleasure. The
motto itself contributed to invite him ; for over the gate was
written these words, Facilis Descensus. — The Citizen of the
World.

I was led into this train of thinking upon lately visiting the
beautiful gardens of the late Mr Shenstone,^ who was himself a
poet, and possessed of that warm imagination, which made him
ever foremost in the pursuit of flying happiness. Could he but
have foreseen the end of all his schemes, for whom he was
improving, and what changes his designs were to undergo, he
would have scarcely amused his innocent life with what, for
several years, employed him in a most harmless manner, and
abridged his scanty fortune. As the progress of this improve-
ment is a true picture of sublunary vicissitude, I could not help
calling up my imagination, which, while I walked pensively along,
suggested the following reverie.

As I was turning my back upon a beautiful piece of water,
enlivened with cascades, and rock-work, and entering a dark
walk, by which ran a prattling brook, the Genius of the place
appeared before me, but more resembling the God of Time, than
him more peculiarly appointed to the care of gardens. Instead
of shears, he bore a scythe; and he appeared rather with the
implements of husbandry, than those of a modern gardener.

^ At the Leasowes.

I90 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Having remembered this place in its pristine beauty, I could
not help condoling with him on its present ruinous situation. I
spoke to him of the many alterations which had been made, and
all for the worse ; of the many shades which had been taken away,
of the bowers that were destroyed by neglect, and the hedge-rows
that were spoiled by clipping. The Genius, with a sigh, received
my condolement and assured me that he was equally a martyr to
ignorance and taste, to refinement and rusticity.

Seeing me desirous of knowing farther, he went on :

'You see in the place before you the paternal inheritance of
a poet ; and, to a man content with little, fully sufficient for his
subsistence : but a strong imagination, and a long acquaintance
with the rich, are dangerous foes to contentment.

'Our poet, instead of sitting down to enjoy life, resolved to
prepare for its future enjoyment, and set about converting a
place of profit into a scene of pleasure. This he at first supposed
could be accomplished at a small expense; and he was willing
for a while to stint his income, to have an opportunity of dis-
playing his taste. The improvement in this manner went forward ;
one beauty attained led him to wish for some other ; but still he
hoped that every emendation would be the last. It was now,
therefore, found that the improvement exceeded the subsidy —
that the place was grown too large and too fine for the inhabitant.
But that pride which was once exhibited, could not retire ; the
garden was made for the owner, and though it was become unfit
for him, he could not willingly resign it to another. Thus the
first idea of its beauties contributing to the happiness of his life,
was found unfaithful ; so that, instead of looking within for satis-
faction, he began to think of having recourse to the praises of
those who came to visit his Improvement.

' In consequence of this hope, which now took possession of
his mind, the gardens were open to the visits of every stranger ;
and the country flocked round to walk, to criticise, to admire,
and to do mischief. He soon found that the admirers of his taste
left by no means such strong marks of their applause, as the
envious did of their malignity. All the windows of his temples.

IMMANUEL KANT 191

and the walls of his retreats, were impressed with the characters
of profaneness, ignorance and obscenity ; his hedges were broken,
his statues and urns defaced, and his lawns worn bare. It was
now, therefore, necessary to shut up the gardens once more, and
to deprive the public of that happiness which had before ceased
to be his own. — Essays : ' 0?i the Tenafits of the Leasowes?

T WOULD divide the Art of Painting, as one of the second IMMANUEL
^ kind of Formative Arts, representing sense-appearance (jo >,
{Si7i?ien-scheiii) artistically united with ideas, into that of
beautiful presentation of Nature, and beautiful combination
of her products. The first would be pure Painting, the second
Pleasure-gardening. For the first gives only the appearance of
physical extent, whereas the second represents this according
to truth, but only the appearance of its application and use for
other ends, as merely for the play of the imagination in the
contemplation of its forms. The latter is nothing else but
decoration of the ground with the same variety (grasses, flowers,
bushes and trees, even waters, hills and valleys) as Nature
presents to the sight, only in different combinations and ac-
cording to certain ideas. But the beautiful juxtaposition of
material things is also only presented to the eye, as in painting.
— Criticism of the Aesthetic Judg77ient.

—N\f\j\h —

Professor of Botany at Cambridge^ a post he obtained by fraud. '■One RICHARD
of the first writers on Horticulture^ who concentrated in any considerable BRADLEY,
degree, the light of other Sciences for its improvement. His works abound in ,1 \
information collected from books and men of learningj' — G. W. Johnson. He ^ ' ' ^~''
was the author of twenty-nine different works on Botany^ Husbandly and
Gardening. His ' General Treatise of Husbandry and Gardening'' is a
su77wia7y of what he had previously wi'itten on the stibject.

"\ A 7HEN I consider these things, I cannot enough lament the

^ ' want of learning among the gardeners of this nation -, who

in their spare hours, were they Men of Letters, might very

192

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

greatly improve themselves by reading the works of the Ancients,
and bringing their several propositions to practice ; and also
might bring to light many of the most hidden branches of the
art of Gardening, and have the pleasure of producing several
effects, as good and useful, perhaps, as most of those that are
called modern discoveries. For upon a deliberate perusal of
Columella, Varro, and the other gentlemen I am to descant
upon in the following work, I find many excellent pieces, which
have not hitherto been made common with us ; many more
that have not yet been try'd in our fields and gardens. — A Survey
of the A?ident Husbandry and Gardening.

^j\f\/\j^—

ERASMUS

DARWIN,

F.R.S.,

(1731-1802).

M.D., EdiJi., and practised as Physicia,n at Derby ; grandfather of Charles
Darwin ; author of ' Botajiic Garden or Loves of the Plajits, ' and ' Zoonomia'

npHE beautiful colours of the petals of flowers with their
*^ polished surfaces are scarcely rivalled by those of shells,
of feathers, or of precious stones. Many of these transient
beauties, which give such brilliancy to our gardens, delight at
the same time the sense of smell with their odours : yet have
they not been extensively used as articles, either of diet,
medicine, or the arts. — Fhytologta, or The Philosophy of Agri-
culture and Garde?iing, 1800.

~'A/\Ar^~

WILLIAM
COWPER

(1731-1780).

\A Y green-house is never so pleasant as when we are just upon
^^ *- the point of being turned out of it. The gentleness of the
autumnal suns, and the calmness of this latter season, make it
a much more agreeable retreat than we ever find it in the
summer ; when the winds being generally brisk, we cannot cool
it by admitting a sufficient quantity of air, without being at the
same time incommoded by it. But now I sit with all the
windows and the door wide open, and am regaled with the
scent of every flower, in a garden as full of flowers as I have

WILLIAM COWPER 193

known how to make it. We keep no bees, but if I lived in a
hive, I should hardly hear more of their music. All the bees
in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mignonette opposite
to the window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it
by a hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable
to my ear as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that
Nature utters are delightful, at least in this country. — Letter to
Rev. Joh7i Newton. {Sept. 18, 1784.)

My dear, I will not let you come till the end of May, or
beginning of June, because before that time my green-house
will not be ready to receive us, and it is the only pleasant
room belonging to us. When the plants go out, we go in.
I line it with mats, and spread the floor with mats ; and there
you shall sit with a bed of mignonette at your side, and a hedge
of honeysuckles, roses, and jasmine; and I will make you a
bouquet of myrtle every day. Sooner than the time I mention,
the country will not be in complete beauty. — Letter to Lady
Hesketh. {Olney^ February 9, 1786.)

I write in a nook that I call my boudoir ; it is a summer-
house not bigger than a sedan-chair ; the door of it opens into
the garden that is now crowded with pinks, roses, and honey-
suckles, and the window into my neighbour's orchard. It
formerly served an apothecary as a smoking-room ; at present,
however, it is dedicated to subHmer uses. — Letter to Hill.

N

CHAPTER VIII

GARDEN DESIGN AS A LIBERAL OR FINE ART : THE ' COMPOSI-
TION ' OF NATURE OR LANDSCAPE — REACTION OF THE
' PICTURESQUE ' WRITERS — COSMOPOLITANISM AND ECLEC-
TICISM IN THE GARDEN.

THOMAS London in the ' Encyclopaedia oj Gardening' says of him : — ' His " Observa-

WHATELY tions on Modern Gardening,'' published in 1770, is the grand fundamental and
{d. 1772). standard work on English gardening. It is entirely analytical ; treating first

of the rnaterials, then of the scenes, and lastly, of the subjects of gardening. Its
style has been pronounced by the learned Eason, inimitable; and the descriptions
with 2ohich his investigations are accompanied have been largely copied and
amply praised by Alison in his work on " Taste'' The book was soon
translated into the continental languages, and is judiciously praised in the
Mercure de France, Journal Encyclopedique aw^ Wieland's Journal. G. Mason
alone dissents frovi the general opinion, enlarging on the very few faults or
peculiarities which are to be found in the book' Whately was the brother of
the then proprietor of Nonsuch Park, near Epsom in Surrey, which place he
mainly assisted in ' laying out. ' He was for a short time secretary to the Earl
of Suffolk ; then M. P. and secretary to the Treasury ; besides this work, he
published two anonymous English pamphlets, and died in \T12. After his
death his Remarks on Shakespeare we7'e published in 1785 by his brother, the
Rro. DrJ. Whately, and a secotid edition in 1808 by his nephew Dr R. Whately,
Archbishop of Dublin, yZt^x.

GARDENING, in the perfection to which it has been lately
brought in England, is entitled to a place of considerable
rank among the liberal arts. It is as superior to landskip-painting
as a reality to a representation : it is an exertion of fancy, a
subject for taste ; and being released now from the restraints of
regularity and enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic con-
venience, the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble
scenes of nature are all within its province : for it is no longer
confined to the spots from which it borrows its name, but
194

THOMAS WHATELY

195

regulates also the disposition and embellishments of a park, a
farm, or a riding ; and the business of a gardener is to select and
to apply whatever is great, elegant, or characteristic in any of them ;
to discover and to shew all the advantages of the place upon
which he is employed ; to supply its defects, to correct its faults,
and to improve its beauties. For all these operations, the objects
of nature are still his only materials. . . . Nature, always simple,
employs but four materials in the composition of her scenes,
grou?td, woody water, and rocks. The cultivation of nature has
introduced a fifth species, the buildings requisite for the accom-
modation of men.

But the art of gardening aspires to more than imitation : it can
create original characters and give expressions to the several
scenes superior to any they can receive from illusions. Certain
properties and certain dispositions of the objects of nature are
adapted to excite particular ideas and sensations.

Elega7ice is the peculiar excellence of a garden ; greatness of a
park ; simplicity of a farm ; and pleasantness of a riding.

Whatever contributes to render the scenes of nature delightful
is amongst the subjects of gardening; and animate as well as
inanimate objects are circumstances of beauty or character.
Nothing is unworthy of the attention of a gardener which can
tend to improve his compositions, whether by immediate effects
or by suggesting a train of pleasing ideas. The whole range of
nature is open to him, from the parterre to the forest ; and what-
ever is agreeable to the senses or the imagination he may appro-
priate to the spot he is to improve ; it is a part of his business to
collect into one place the delights which are generally dispersed
through different species of country.

But in this application, the genius of the place must always be
particularly considered ; to force it is hazardous ; and an attempt
to contradict it is always unsuccessful.

The art of laying out gardens has, within a little more than a
hundred years in Europe, and within a much less time in Great

196 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Britain started up from being one of the mechanical arts, in
which mere utility is intended, to be one of the fine arts, which
join utility to pleasure. In all ages men have known the use of
fruits, flowers and herbs for the pleasure of the senses: it is
almost only in our age that they have introduced into gardens
one half of the pleasing objects of art and nature for the enter-
tainment of the imagination. ...

There seem in nature to be four different dispositions of
grounds distinct from each other, and which create distinct and
separate sentiments.

The first situation is that of a high-land country, consisting of
great and steep mountains, rocks, lakes, impetuous rivers, etc.
Such a place is Inverary.

The sentiment which a situation like this creates in the breast
of a beholder is obviously, and every one feels it, that of Grandeur.

The next is what one may call a romantic disposition of
grounds, consisting of small valleys, woods hanging over them,
smooth rivers, the banks steep but accessible, etc. Places like
this we have on the banks of many of our small rivers in the
low countries of Scotland.

The sentiment which such a situation seems to flatter, is that
of composure of mind, and perhaps even of melancholy.

A third situation is that of grounds running by gentle falls and
risings easily into each other. In situations of this kind are
placed many of the English modern gardens; and particularly
those which Kent delighted in laying out. Such a situation, as it
is generally attended with great verdure, cultivation and populous-
ness, naturally creates in the mind that sentiment of cheerfulness
which society and action are apt to create.

The last situation is that of a dead flat. A situation of this
kind may, from its verdure, or from its extent, or from its contrast
with other grounds that surround it, create some particular senti-
ment, but merely considered in itself, it appears to create little

or none. . . .

The English in such a situation attempt to humour nature; the
French in such a situation attempt to hide her. ... In a small

THOMAS WHATELY 197

flat the serpentine river, the open planting, the lake and island,
the moulding the flat into the gentle unevennesses of Kent, have
a rural and cheerful aspect; of this last particularly there is a
fine instance in Kent's plantation at the back of the house at
Chiswick, compared with the phlegmatic plantation of Bridgeman
on the same side of the garden. But these contrivances though
proper for a small plain, are too few and simple for a great one. . . .
We must frankly call in the assistance of art to make the chief
parts of the garden. For this reason bosquets, statues, vases,
trees cut into great arches, jets-d'eau, cascades forced up and
made to tumble down an hundred steps, regular basins, peristiles,
temples, long vistas, the star plantation, etc., are in taste here.
All the magnificence of Versailles, without its conceits or its too
often repeated symmetry, should be admitted. To supply the
defects of natural prospect the walks should terminate in artificial
vistas ; and in the light, perhaps even painted cascades and
buildings, as practised by some of our EngHsh gardeners, if
pardonable anywhere, are pardonable here. To get too, as far as
can be, the advantage of natural prospects, the artificial mounts
of the flat Dutch gardens should here be introduced. ... As
there is but little pleasure to the imagination arising from this
situation itself, so it should be contrived to give as much pleasure
to the senses as possible ; for this reason, the flowers should be
sown in beds and parterres, to be the more obviously seen, and
to throw out their sweets stronger into the air; fruits of the
finest kinds should be spread through the compartments; the
flowering shrubs should be planted in clumps, and assorted in
their colours and flowers with all the nicety of a well made-up
flower-pot ; to strike with the stronger surprize, the trees should
be all exotics, and of the rarest kinds ; and to create a greater
variety, though the Chinese form from its fantastical appearance
and the Corinthian order from its magnificence, be, in general,
the prospect for such an adorned garden, yet buildings of all
species under the sun that have dignity in them should here find
place. In short, every agreeable object that creates surprize
and that exhibits a view of magnificent art should enter into the

198 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

composition of such a garden. It is more proper when in the
neighbourhood of a great city and thrown open to all the world
than when in a remote province, and for that reason some of
the French gardens have an excuse which those at Stow have
not.

A garden like this is a kind of fairy land. It is in comparison
of other gardens what an opera is in comparison of a tragedy :
neither of them should be judged by the ordinary rules of
experience or taste, but by the capricious ones of variety and
Fancy. — Observations on Modern Gardening, atid laying out
Pleasure-Groiaids^ Parks, Ridings, 6^r. {A new edition 1801, with
notes hy Horace Walpoie, late Earl of Orford ; and ornamented with
coloured plates, chiefly designed by Mr Woollet, of Hall Bar7i, Esher,
Carlton House, Wooburn^ Pain's Hill and Hagley.)

'AAA/>—

CHARLES One of the most cosmopolitan and accofnplished men of arms and letters

JOSEPH, luho ever lived: ' Le seul stranger,' said Mme. de Stael, 'qui dans le genre

^^^^^^^Pj. Francais, soil devemi tnodele, an lieu d'etre imitateur.' ^ I have six or seven

Tj^-.jgjrf countries; he declared. Born in Brussels, he entered the Austrian army at

the age of \'], fought with distinction in the Seven Years War, and was then

invited to the French Court by the Comte d'Artois. Sent on a mission to

Russia, he was made a Field-Marshal hy Catherine the Great, with an estate

in the Crimea. A Citizen of the World zvith the freedo?n of all the Courts

of Europe, a dandy of the first water and a brilliant wit and ' causeicr,' he had

also a most delicate instinct for letters, a vein of serious reflection rvorked in

epigram, ajid a fine taste in designing gardens.

AINTE-BEU VE writes thus of the Prince's Essay on Gardens :—
Parmi les ouvrages decousus echappes au prince de Eigne
dans la premiere moitie de sa vie, et qui le peignent le mieux a
cette date, je distingue ce qu'il a ecrit sur les jardins a I'occasion
de ceux de Beloeil. Coup d'ceil sur Belail, avait-il intitule son
Essai (1781) par un de ces jeux de mots et de ces sortes de
calembours qui sont un de ses petits travers. C'etait le temps
oil I'abbe Delille publiait son poeme des Jardins, et disait de ce

S

PRINCE DE LIGNE 199

beau lieu de Beloeil pres d'Ath en Belgique, qui ^tait la propri^te
et en partie la creation du Prince de Ligne.^

' Beloeil, tout a la fois magnifique et champetre.' On etait
alors en France dans une veine de creation et de renouvelle-
ment pour les jardins : le genre anglais s'y introduisait et y
rompait I'harmonie de le Notre. C'etait a qui s'etudierait a
diversifier la nature et a en profiter pour Tembellir. M, de
Girardin creait Ermenonville, M. de Laborde Mereville ; M.
Boutin avait Tivoli, et M. Watelet Moulin- Joli. Belceil etait,
et j'aime a le croire, est encore un assemblage et un compose
charmant de jardins anglais et frangais, quelque chose de naturel
et de regulier, d'elegant et de majestueux. Tout ce qui, a
Beloeil, etait grand, regulier, dans le genre de Le Notre, venait
du Pere du prince : lui, il s'occupa d'y jeter le varie et I'imprevu ;
il ne lui manque que plus de temps pour achever son ceuvre, son
poeme. II n'est pas exclusif; il serait bien fache de bannir la
ligne droite; il ne veut pas substituer la monotonie anglaise a
la monotonie frangaise, ce qui de son temps arrivait deja ; mais
en jardins comme en amour, il est d'avis qu'il ne faut pas tout
montrer d'abord, sans quoi, le premier moment passe. Ton bailie
et Ton s'ennuie. II traite des batiments dans leurs rapports avec
la campagne : autre doit etre une residence et un palais, autre un
chateau, autre une maison de plaisance, une maison de campagne,
une maison des vignes, etc. ; mais quels que soient les batiments,
' j'exclus,' dit-il, ' tous ceux qui ont une fagade bourgeoise, sans
mouvement dans le toit ou la batisse, sans milieu, sans saillant sur
les ailes, ou en platre avec un air vulgaire ; et je recommande
encore le beau ou le simple, le magnifique ou le joli, et toujours
le propre, le piquant et le distingue.' — Causer ies du Limdi,
Vol. viii.

^ * His patrimonial house, the Castle of Beloeil, still stands in quaint
supremacy over the modest village of Ligne, about six miles from Ath, in
Belgium. It has endured seven centuries of change ; and its gothic peculi-
arities, with its old-world garden, and its ancient horn-beam, yet answer to
the prolix description thereof given in the Prince's published letters.' — Dr
Dorayi's ' Habits and. Men.''

200 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

I should like to inflame the whole world with my taste for
gardens. It seems to me impossible for an evil-doer to share it.
He is not capable of any taste at all. But if, for this reason, I
rate highly the vvild-herborist, the deft and agile butterfly-hunter,
the minute scrutinizer of shells, the stern lover of minerals, the
icy geometrician, the three frenetics of poetry, music and painting,
the abstract thinker and the subtle chemist, there is no virtue
which I do not attribute to the man who loves to project and
execute gardening.

Engrossed in this passion, the only one which keeps pace with
advancing years, a man day by day casts off such as disturb peace
of mind or social order. When he has passed the draw-bridge at
the gate of the city, that refuge of moral and physical corruption,
to work in or enjoy the country, his heart laughs with Nature, and
experiences the same feeling as his lungs in absorbing the fresh
air, which regenerates them.

Fathers, instil into your children the garden-mania. They will
grow up the better for it. Let other arts be only studied to
heighten the beauty of the one I advocate. Engaged in planning
how to shade a glen, or in contriving how to divert the course of
a stream, one is too busy ever to become a dangerous citizen, an
intriguing general, or a caballing courtier. If such a man had
designs to write against the laws, to lay his grievances before the
ministry of war, to overthrow a superior, or hatch plots at court,
he would arrive too late, for his head would be fall of his Judaea
trees, or his flower-borders, or with the ordering of his grove of
plane-trees. . . .

Let not the mason's art come in awkwardly to overload the
Earth, under pretence of supporting it : let not their lime burn up
the enamel of the meadows — let not their cement make the daisy,
the violet and the pansy lie low, let not their feet soil the bed of
the Nymphs. I love to see them sport with young Sylvan boys,
for whom they begin to have a budding passion, as yet un-
conscious. Steps are alarming. Gentle slopes are required for
their sports.

Let all trades be banished from gardens. Above all no

PRINCE DE EIGNE 201

scaffolding, no trellises, paintings, hoops : let the branches at
their own will try to find one another.

I see no other rule for bridges, than not to make two alike.
We can give ourselves up to all the extravagances of our imagina-
tion. Happily architecture did not take possession of these at the
time it usurped gardens ; if however, a highly decorated garden
scene neighbour to some august temple, required an elaborate
bridge, without copying that of Czarskozelo^ or Wilton, a colonnade
may be permitted. With that exception, the more fantastic they
are, the more pleasure they will give : let them be high enough not
to impede navigation, but not arched enough to cause one to slip
when crossing. Taste, or rather the situation, will decide if they
should be partially concealed, or entirely exposed.

I detest sketches of great things. There must be no failure
when one takes them in hand. No Ruins of Palmyra in the
taste of General Conway. Their whiteness, their low columns,
are a bad example : their vaults, too well kept, are ridiculous.
Ruins ought to offer an idea of things deserving respect, which
have passed, and of celebrated people who inhabited them ; but
when we see the Greek of many Englishmen and the Gothic of
Mr Walpole, one is tempted to think the delirium of a night-
mare has presided over their work. I like his ' Castle of Otranto,'
as much as that on the Thames, which is as mad, and not more
lively.

Temples ought to inspire pleasure, or recall that secret terror,

^ The Garden of Zarskojeselo or Tzarsco-Celo (Imperial Spot) mentioned by
de Ligne was laid out by Catherine II. of Russia about 1768. She acquired
the English taste in gardening from reading the ' Hausvater ' by Count
Munchhausen. Her own architect and gardener being unable to satisfy her
orders ' to follow Nature ' she sent to England for a landscape gardener in the
person of John Busch of Hackney. In 1772 he commenced his work at
Pulkova, about five miles from Tzarsco-Celo, which, visited by Catherine in

1774 completely satisfied her, with its winding, shady, gravel walks and fine
lawn. 'This is what I have long wished to have,' she exclaimed. From

1775 till 1789 Busch worked in the Tzarsco-Celo gardens, and was succeeded
by his son Joseph Busch. The Emperor Paul, her successor, preferred straight
walks and clipped trees, and Alexander patronised both styles. — {Loudon,)

202 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

which one felt of old on entering them. But what is the sensation
when one sees one above the other, spoiling by a templo-mania,
those which like the temple of friendship, would deserve our
commendation ? My Lord Temple has been too much led
astray by his name.^ I should prize the house of Lord Batita {sic)
near Bristol, but it has only the water which falls from the sky.
In vain are Chinese bridges often thrown across hollows, to make
believe there is something beneath. We are not long duped,
and what I saw at Lord Mansfield's, from the windows of his
house, only shews the sorry privations of several Gardens in
England.

This would be lessened, if they had not the rage for separating
themselves from the Thames. They do not know how to profit
by it. The Duke of Marlborough makes up for it by the river
which he brought into his park, which increases in breadth and
swiftness and falls with much noise. I do not forgive Lord
Pembroke for making his flow like a canal. — Coup cPceil sur les
Jardins.

MARQUIS l^Vas largely instrumental in introducing the ' English ' Style of Gardening
DE into France at his Park of Ermenonville, where he was assisted by J. M. Morel

GIRARDIN ^c ^/^^ j^g^f of France ' and author Oj the ' Thiorie des Jardins ') and the Land-
( 1 73 5- 1 ^05). scape -painter, G. F. Meyer. Rousseau^ his guest, died here and was first buried
on the ' He des Peupliers,^ before he was removed to the Pantheon {see the descrip-
tion by Arthur Young). Author of *■ De la Cotnposition des Paysages, oti des
Moyens dembellir la Nature pres des habitations, en y joignant t utile a V agri-
able. — Paris 1777, \to, translated by Daniel Malthus.

MUCH has of late been said upon the subject of Gardens ; but
in the more common sense of the word, by which we under-
stand a piece of ground enclosed and laid out in straight lines,
or in some form or other, this by no means defines the species
of garden which I have undertaken to describe ; the first express
condition of which is that neither garden nor enclosure should

^ Alluding to Lord Temple's Gardens at Stowe, which swarmed with
Temples to every conceivable Deity and Virtue.

GEORGE MASON 203

appear; for stiff forms can only produce the effect of a mathe-
matical plan, cut paper or an ornament for a dessert, and can never
produce the picturesque effect of a landscape. . . .

Symmetry certainly owed its origin to vanity and indolence ; to
vanity, in attempting to force the situation to accord with the
building, instead of making the building suit the situation ; to
idleness, because it was more easy to work upon paper, which will
allow of any form, than to examine and combine the real objects,
which can only take the forms that suit them. — The Composition
of Landscape.

—'A/\/Vj~—

ly yjILTON, as well as Sidney, lived at a time when rural graces GEORGE
^^^ were but little understood ; yet kis model of Eden remains (1735.1806).
unimpeachable. Claremont could not be freed from the fetters
of regularity, when celebrated by Garth ; nevertheless regularity
is concealed without violating truth in the description.

' 'Tis he can paint in verse those rising hills,
Those gentle vallies, and their silver rills ;
Close groves and opening glades with verdure spread ;
Flowers sighing sweets, and shrubs that balsam bleed.'

Garth's Claremont.

The elegance and propriety of rural designs seems greatly to
depend on a nice distinction between contrast and incongruity. . . .
At Paine's Hill the banks of the lake are admirably contrasted
by the wild rusticity on the other side of the arch : but I could
wish the separation more perfect. The species of design should
generally conform to the nature of the place, but even this rule
may sometimes be neglected without any visible incongruity. . . .

There is an art in the management of grounds little under-
stood, and possibly the most difficult to be accomphshed ; 'tis
analogous to what is called keeping under in painting : by some
parts being seemingly neglected, the succeeding are more strik-
ingly beautiful. The effect of this management is very apparent
at the Leasowes. . . .

From a general view of our present gardens in populous

204 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

districts, a stranger might imagine they were calculated for a
race of Lilliputians. Are their shade, their po?tds, or their
islands proportionable to common mortals ? Their winding
walks — such as no human foot-step (except a reeling drunkard's)
could have traced. ^ Yet these, in the eyes of the proprietors,
are perfect models of Chinese. . . .

Oatlands, Windsor-Park, and Wentworth Castle will show
you how rivers can be imitated : Peresfield {sic) may bring to
your imagination some romantic paradise of Semiramis. Paine's-
HiLL has every mark of creative genius, and Hagley of correctest
fancy ; but the most intimate allia7ice with nature was formed by
Shenstone. . . . Nature's favourite haunts are the school of
gardening — she appears in sublimest rude?tess on the forest of
Macclesfield, and the Welch mountains — her milder train of
graces disperse themselves along the banks of Thames — her
majestic retire7ne?its are situated on the streams of Dove and
Derwent, in the vale of Hackness, and the groves of Eastwell
— she assumes on Richmond-Brow a gayer and a softer dignity,
making every sprightly work of art serve for her embellishment. —
An Essay on Design i7i Gardeiiing, 1768 {greatly enlarged, 1795 —
tivo Appendices, 1798).

— WVV*' —

GIBBON \ A/E now enjoy the genial influence of the Climate and the
(1737-1794)- V y Season; and no station was ever more calculated to
enjoy them than Deyverdun's house and garden, which are now
become my own. You will not expect that the pen should
describe, what the pencil would imperfectly delineate. A few
circumstances may, however, be mentioned. My library is
about the same size with that in Bentinck Street, with this
difference, however, that instead of looking on a paved court

^ This looks like the fans et origo of the 7not usually attributed to a
Frenchman, of intoxicating your gardener and following his steps, to design a
modern garden. France was 'translating' our garden-ideas pretty freely
just then — many into verse, more into prose, most into execution — but often
without acknowledgment.

GIBBON 205

twelve feet square, I command a boundless prospect of vale,
mountain, and water from my three windows. ... A Terrace,
one hundred yards long, extends beyond the front of the House,
and leads to a close impenetrable shrubbery ; and from thence
the circuit of a long and various walk carries me round a
meadow and vineyard. The intervals afford abundant supply
of fruit, and every sort of vegetables ; and if you add, that this
villa (which has been much ornamented by my friend) touches
the best and most sociable part of the town, you will agree with
me, that few persons, either princes or philosophers, enjoy a
more desirable residence.

Deyverdun, who is proud of his own works, often walks me
round, pointing out with knowledge and enthusiasm, the beauties
that change with every step and with every variation of light. I
share, or at least I sympathise, with his pleasure — he appears
content with my progress, and has already told several people,
that he does not despair of making me a Gardener." . . , {To his
step-mother — Lausa?tfte, 1784).

. . . The glories of the landskip I have always enjoyed ; but
Deyverdun has almost given me a taste for minute observation,
and I can dwell with pleasure on the shape and colour of the
leaves, the various hues of the blossoms, and successive progress
of vegetation. These pleasures are not without cares ; and there
is a white Acacia just under the windows of my library, which
in my opinion was too closely pruned last Autumn, and whose
recovery is the daily subject of anxiety and conversation ! My
romantic wishes led sometimes to an idea which was impractic-
able in England, the possession of an house and garden, which
should unite the society of town with the beauties and freedom
of the country. That idea is now realised in a degree of per-
fection to which I never aspired, and if I could convey in words
a just picture of my library, apartments, terrace, wilderness, vine-
yard, with the prospect of land and water, terminated by the
mountains ; and this position at the gate of a populous and
lively town where I have some friends and many acquaintance,
you would envy or rather applaud the singular propriety of my

2o6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

choice. — {To his step-mother^ May 'i^rd, 1786.) Private Letters of
Edward Gibbon^ i753-i794 {edited by Rowland E. Brother 6).

L'ABB^ Called ^ VAbbi Virgile^ by Rivarol, from his 7-endering of the Georgics in

DELILLE 1769; translated "■ Paradise Lost, ^ in London, and like Milton lost his sight.
(i73o*i°l3)- Author of^Vhomme des Cha??ips ' a?id ' La Conversation.'

pAPIN has sung Gardens of the regular style, and the
^^ monotony attached to the great regularity has passed
from the subject into the poem. The imagination, naturally a
friend to liberty, here walks painfully in the involved design of
a parterre, anon expires at the end of a long straight alley. Every-
where it regrets the slightly disordered beauty and the piquant
irregularity of nature. Finally he has only treated the mechanical
part of the art of gardening ; he has entirely forgotten the most
essential part, which seeks in our sensations, in our feeling, the
source of the pleasures, which country scenes and the beauties
of nature perfected by art occasion us. In a word, his gardens
are those of the architect ; the others are those of the philosopher,
the painter, the poet.

This style has gained much in the last few years ; and if this
is but the effect of fashion, we ought to be grateful to it. The
art of gardens, which might be called the luxury of agriculture,
appears to me one of the most suitable, I might almost say, one
of the most virtuous amusements of rich people. . . .

When Rapin wrote a Latin poem on regular gardens, it was
easy for him to present in the four Cantos which compose it —
(i) the flowers, (2) orchards, (3) waters, (4) forests. But in
picturesque and free gardens, in which all these objects are
often mixed together, where it has been necessary to go back to
the philosophic causes of the pleasure, which the sight of Nature,
embellished and not tortured by art, gives us ; from which it has
been necessary to exclude straight lines, symmetrical distributions,
and formal beauties, another plan was necessary. The author has
thus shown in the first Canto the art of borrowing from nature

L'ABBE DELILLE 207

and of happily employing the rich materials of the picturesque
decoration of irregular gardens, of changing landscapes into
pictures ; with what care we must choose the locality and the
site, profit by its advantages, correct its inconveniences; what
in nature lends itself to, or resists imitation ; finally the distinc-
tion between different kinds of gardens and landscapes, free
gardens and regular gardens. . . .

The second Canto concerns itself entirely with plantations,
the most important part of the landscape, and the beauty of
prospective and distant views, which depend upon the artifice of
plantations. The third contains objects, each of which would
not suffice to fill a canto, without falling into sterility or
monotonousness ; such are lawns, flowers, rocks and waters.

The fourth Canto contains the distribution of different scenes,
majestic or touching, voluptuous or severe, melancholy or smil-
ing, the artifice with which the paths leading to them ought to be
traced, finally what the other arts, and particularly agriculture
and sculpture can add to the art of landscape. — Preface to
' Les Jar dins ^^ 20th edifiofi, 1801.

Moins pompeux qu'elegant, moins decore que beau,
Un jardin a mes yeux est un vaste tableau.

Les arbres, les rochers, et les eaux et les fleurs
Ce sont la vos pinceaux, vos toiles, vos couleurs.

C'est peu de charmer I'oeil, il faut parler au coeur

Partout entremeles d'arbres pyramidaux,
Marbres, bronzes, palais, urnes, temples, tombeaux,
Parlent de Rome antique ; et la vue abusee
Croit, au lieu d'un jardin, parcourir un musee.

Loin done ces froids jardins, colifichet champetre,
Insipides reduits, dont I'insipide maitre
Vous vante, en s'admirant, ses arbres bien peignes,
Ses petits salons verds bien tondus, bien soignes,

2o8 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Son plan bien symmetrique, ou, jamais solitaire,
Chaque allee a sa soeur, chaque berceau son frere ;
Ses sentiers ennuyes d'obeir au cordeau,
Son parterre brode, son maigre filet d'eau,
Ses buis tournes en globe, en pyramide, en vase,
Et ses petits bergers bien guindes sur leur base.
Laissez-le s'applaudir de son luxe mesquin ;
Je prefere un champ brut a son triste jardin. —

Les Jar dins.

— A/\/\/V*' —

ARTHUR ' The Coluniella of the North,' 1768, published ' A Six weeks' Tour through
YOUNG the Southern Counties of England and Wales' ; 1 77 1, 'A Six months' Tour
(1 741-1820). fjij.Q^oh the North of England' ; ' The Farmer'' s Tour through the East of
England'' ; 1 780, ''Tour in Irelatid' ; 1792-4, ^ 7 ravels in France duritig
1 787- 1 790'; ^ The Farmers Letters to the People of England'', ^ The
Farmers Guide' ^ Rural Economy,' and ''A Course of Experimental Agri-
culture ' ; Agricultural Surveys, and many other works.

His name is a ^household word' in France, while in England confined to
agj'icultural and literary circles.

Chantilly. T HAD been so accustomed to the imitation in water of the
^ waving and irregular lines of nature that I came to Chantilly
prepossessed against the idea of a canal, but the view of one
here is striking and had the effect which magnificent scenes
impress. It arises from extent and from the right lines of the
water uniting with the regularity of the objects in view. It is
Lord Kames, I think, who says the part of the garden contiguous
to the house should partake of the regularity of the building ;
with much magnificence about a place this is unavoidable. The
effect here, however, is lessened by the parterre before the Castle,
in which the division and the diminutive jets d'eau are not of a
size to correspond with the magnificence of the canal. The
hameau contains an imitation of an English garden ; the taste is
but just introduced into France, so that it will not stand a critical
examination. The most English idea I saw is the lawn in front
of the stables ; it is large, of a good verdure and well kept ; prov-
ing clearly that they may have as fine lawns in the North of

ARTHUR YOUNG 209

France as in England. The labyrinth is the only complete one
I have seen, and I have no inclination to see another : it is in
gardening what a rebus is in poetry. In the Sylvae are many
very fine and scarce plants. — May 2^th, 1787.

As to the garden, it is beneath all contempt, except as an St Martino.
object to make a man stare at the efforts to which folly can arrive :
in the space of an acre, there are hills of genuine earth, mountains
of pasteboard, rocks of canvas : abbes, cows, sheep and shep-
herdesses in lead ; monkeys and peasants, asses and altars, in
stone. Fine ladies and blacksmiths, parrots and lovers, in wood.
Windmills and cottages, shops and villages, nothing excluded
except nature. ...

Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will
turn it into a garden ; give him a nine years' lease of a garden,
and he will convert it into a desert.

We passed by Chantilly to Morefountain, the country seat of Morefontaine.
Mons. de Morefountain, Prevost des Marchands of Paris ; the
place has been mentioned as decorated in the Enghsh style. It
consists of two scenes ; one a garden of winding walks, and
ornamented with a profusion of temples, benches, grottos, columns,
ruins, and I know not what : I hope the French who have not
been in England do not consider this as the English taste. It is
in fact as remote from it as the most regular style of the last age.
The water view is fine. There is a gaiety and cheerfulness in it
that contrast well with the brown and unpleasing hills that
surround it, and which partake of the waste character of the
worst part of the surrounding country. Much has been done
here ; and it wants but few additions to be as perfect as the ground
admits.

Reach Ermenonville, through another part of the Prince of Ermenonville.
Conde's forest, which join the ornamented grounds of the Marquis
Girardon.i This place, after the residence and death of the

^ Marquis de Girardin, friend of Rousseau, died 1808.

O

2IO THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

persecuted, but immortal Rousseau, whose tomb every one knows
is here, became so famous as to be resorted to very generally.
It has been described, and plates published of the chief views ; to
enter into a particular description would therefore be tiresome, I
shall only make one or two observations, which I do not recollect
having been touched on by others. It consists of three distinct
w^ater scenes ; or of two lakes and a river. We were first shown
that which is so famous for the small Isle of Poplars, in which
reposes all that was mortal of that extraordinary and inimitable
writer. This scene is as well imagined, and as well executed as
could be wished. The water is between forty and fifty acres ;
hills rise from it on both sides, and it is sufficiently closed in by
tall wood at both ends, to render it sequestered. The remains of
departed genius stamp a melancholy idea, from which decoration
would depart too much, and accordingly there is little. We
viewed the scene in a still evening. The declining sun threw a
lengthened shade on the lake, and silence seemed to repose on
its unruffled bosom ; as some poet says, I forget who. The
worthies to whom the temple of philosophers is dedicated, and
whose names are marked on the columns, are Newton, Lucem. —
Descartes, Nil i?i rebus mane. — Voltaire, Ridiculutn. — Rousseau,
Naturam. — And on another unfinished column, Quis hoc perficiet?
The other lake is larger ; it nearly fills the bottom of the vale,
around which are some rough, rocky, wild and barren sand hills ;
either broken or spread with heath ; in some places wooded, and
in others scattered thinly v/ith junipers. The character of the
scene is that of wild and undecorated nature, in which the hand
of art was meant to be concealed as much as was consistent with
ease of access. The last scene is that of a river, which is made
to wind through a lawn, receding from the house, and broken by
wood : the ground is not fortunate ; it is too dead a flat, and no
where viewed to much advantage.

Trianon. To Trianon, to view the Queen's Jardin Anglais. I had a
letter to Mons. Richard, which procured admittance. It contains
about IOC acres, disposed in the taste of what we read of in books

ARTHUR YOUNG 211

of Chinese gardening, whence it is supposed the English style
was taken. There is more of Sir William Chambers here than
of Mr Brown, more effort than nature — and more expence than
taste. It is not easy to conceive anything that art can introduce
in a garden that is not here ; woods, rocks, lawns, lakes, rivers,
islands, cascades, grottos, walks, temples, and even villages.
There are parts of the design very pretty, and well executed.
The only fault is too much crouding ; which has led to another,
that of cutting the lawn by too many gravel walks, an error to be
seen in almost every garden I have met with in France. But
the glory of La Petite Trianon is the exotic trees and shrubs.
The world has been successfully rifled to decorate it. Here
are curious and beautiful ones to please the eye of ignorance ;
and to exercise the memory of science. Of the buildings the
temple of Love is truly elegant.

Pass Rosoy to Maupertuis, through a country chearfully Maupertuis.
diversified by woods, and scattered with villages ; and single
farms spread every where as about Nangis. Maupertuis seems
to have been the creation of the marquis de Montesquiou, who
has here a very fine chateau of his own building ; an extensive
Enghsh garden, made by the Count d'Artois' gardener,^ with
the town, has all been of his own forming. I viewed the garden
with pleasure; a proper advantage has been taken of a good
command of a stream, and many fine springs which rise in the
grounds ; they are well conducted, and the whole executed with
taste. In the kitchen garden, which is on the slope of a hill,
one of these springs has been applied to excellent use, it is made
to wind in many doubles through the whole on a paved bed,
forming numerous basons for watering the garden, and might
with little trouble, be conducted alternately to every bed as in
Spain. This is a bit of real utility to all those who form gardens
on the sides of hills ; for watering with pots and pails is a miser-
able, as well as expensive succedaneum to this infinitely more

^ Thomas Blaikie, a Scotsman, who laid out many of the best gardens in
France before and after the Revolution (see Loudon, p. ^2>),

212 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

effective method. There is but one fault in this garden, which
is its being placed near the house, where there should be nothing
but lawn and scattered trees when viewed from the Chateau. —
Travels in Frafice, 1787-9.

-^^/\/\/W—

SIR 1780, Translated Pausamas : his various works on the Picturesque^ Beauty

UVEDALE and Landscape were collected in one vohune by Sir T. D. Lauder in 1842.

PRICE . .

1747-1829). J MAY perhaps have spoken more feelmgly on this subject, from

■*■ having done myself what I so condemn in others — destroyed

an old-fashioned garden. . . .

I remember, that even this garden (so infinitely inferior to those
of Italy) had an air of decoration, and of gaiety, arising from that
decoration — un air pare — a distinction from mere unimbellished
nature, which, whatever the advocates for extreme simplicity may
allege, is surely essential to an ornamented garden : all the beauties
of undulating ground, of shrubs, and of verdure are to be found
in places where no art has ever been employed, and consequently
cannot bestow a distinction which they do not possess. . . .

Among other circumstances, I have a strong recollection of a
raised terrace, seen sideways from that in front of the house, in
the middle of which was a flight of steps with its iron rails, and
an arched recess below it backed by a wood : these steps con-
ducted you from the terrace to a lower compartment, where there
was a mixture of fruit-trees, shrubs, and statues, disposed, indeed,
with some formality, yet which formed a dressed foreground to
the woods ; and with a little alteration would have richly and
happily blended with the general landscape. . . .

I regret extremely, not only the compartment I have just
mentioned, but another garden immediately beyond it : and I
cannot forget the sort of curiosity and surprise that was excited
after a short absence, even in me to whom it was familiar, by the
simple and common circumstance of a door that led from the
first compartment to the second, and the pleasure I always
experienced on entering that inner and more secluded garden.
There was nothing, however, in the garden itself to excite any

>m' if^Tif '■■■".;

GOETHE 213

extraordinary sensations; the middle part was merely planted
with the lesser fruits, and dwarf trees, but on the opening of the
door, the lofty trees of a fine grove appeared immediately over
the opposite wall; the trees are still there, they are more dis-
tinctly and openly seen, but the striking impression is gone. —
Essay on the Picturesque^ i794-

—rJ\/\/\r^—

I

N the public garden at Palermo, adjoining the road, I peacefully GOETHE
passed the most pleasurable hours. It is the most marvellous (1749-1832).
spot in the world. Though laid out in regular order, it is Hke
fairy-land ; planted no great time since, it sets us down amidst
antiquity. Green parterres embrace foreign shrubs, lemon-espaliers
arch themselves into comely leaf-shaded walks, lofty walls of
oleander, gemmed with a thousand red clove-like blossoms, arrest
the eye. Foreign trees entirely unknown to me, still leafless,
probably from warmer climes, spread forth curious branches. A
bench raised behind the level ground brings into view vegetation
so wonderfully interwoven, and guides the gaze at last to great
basins, wherein gold and silver fish dart fascinatingly about, now
hiding under mossy reeds, now assembling again in shoals, lured
by a bit of bread. Everywhere upon the plants appears a green
that we are not used to see, now yellower, now bluer than with
us. But that which threw over the whole the rarest grace was a
hazy vapour, pervading everything uniformly with so striking
effect, that objects but a few steps' distance behind one another,
stood forth by a distinct shade of light blue from each other, so
that their own colour was finally lost, or at least presented itself
to the eye through a blue medium. — Italian Journey, {Sicily
1787).!

Advantages of Dilettantism in the Garden-Art.

Ideal in the Real.

Striving after form in formless masses.

^ See Lewes's * Life of Goethe,' for a charming description of his Garden-
House at Weimar.

2 14 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Selection.

Beautiful composition.

To make a picture out of reality, in short, first entrance into art.
A pure and completely beautiful surrounding always has a
beneficial effect upon the company.

Harm of Dilettantism in the Garden-Art.

The real is treated as a work of Fancy.

Garden amateurism is pursuing something infinite : —

1. Because it is not definite and limited in idea.

2. Because the material, always accidental, is ever changing and
ever resisting the idea.

Garden-dilettantism often allows the nobler arts to serve it
in an unworthy manner, and makes a plaything of their solid
tendency.

Furthers sentimental and fantastic Nullity.

It dwarfs the sublime in Nature and neutraUses it by imitation.

It perpetuates the reigning degeneracy of the age by its desire
to be unconditioned and lawless in Esthetics, to give way to
arbitrary fancy, by not correcting itself like other arts and holding
itself in check.

The blending of Art and Nature.

Its preference for appearances. — Ferneres ilber Kunst.

RI CHARD Greek scholar : 1784- 1806, M. P. for Ludlow, 18 14, Trustee of the British
PAYNE Museum, to which he bequeathed his collection of coins and ancient bronzes, and
KNIGHT where his btist is placed', 1794, published ' The Landscape,' a didactic poem ;
(1 750-1824). united with Sir Uvedale Price in reacting against the extre7nes and exaggera-
tions of the ' Landscape ' School of Brown and Repton.

fune 26th, 1839. — Delbury. I rode to Dowton Castle on Monday — a
gimcrack Castle and bad-house, built by Payne Knight, an epicurean Philo-
sopher, who, after building the Castle went and lived in a lodge or cottage
in the park : there he died, not without suspicion of having put an end to
himself, which would have been fully conformable to his notions. He was a
sensualist in all ways, but a quiet and self-educated scholar. His property is

RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT 215

now in Chancery, because he chose to make his own will. The prospect from
the windows is beautiful, and the walk through the wood overhanging the
river Teme, surpasses any thing I have ever seen of the kind. — The Gt-eville

Memoirs.

FOR this reason we require, immediately adjoining the dwellings
of opulence and luxury, that every thing should assume its
character; and not only be, but appear to be dressed and
cultivated. In such situations, neat gravel walks, mown turf,
and flowering plants and shrubs, trained and distributed by art,
are perfectly in character ; although, if the same buildings were
abandoned, and in ruins, we should, on the same principle of
consistency and propriety, require neglected paths, ragged lanes
and wild uncultivated thickets ; which are, in themselves, more
pleasing, both to the eye and the imagination, but unfit accom-
paniments for objects, not only originally produced by art, but
in which art is constantly employed and exhibited. . . .

On this account, I think the avowed character of art of the
Italian Gardens preferable, in garden scenery, to the concealed
one now in fashion ; which is, in reality, rather counterfeited than
concealed ; for it appears in every thing ; but appears in a dress
that does not belong to it: at every step we perceive its exertions;
but at the same time perceive that it has laboured much to
effect little ; and that while it seeks to hide its character, it only
discovers it the more. In the decorations, however, of ground
adjoining a house, much should depend upon the character of
the house itself: if it be neat and regular, neatness and regularity
should accompany it ; but if it be rugged and picturesque, and
situated amidst scenery of the same character, art should
approach it with more caution : for though it be in itself an
avowed work of art, yet the influence of time, with the accom-
paniments of trees and creepers may have given it a character
of nature, which ought to be as little disturbed as is consistent
with comfort: for, after all, the character of nature, is more
pleasing than any that can be given by art. At all events, the
character of dress and artificial neatness ought never to be
suffered to encroach upon the park or the forest ; where it is as
contrary to propriety as it is to beauty; and where its intro-

2i6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

duction by our modern landscape gardeners affords one of the
most memorable instances of any recorded in the history of
fashions, of the extravagant absurdity, with which an insatiate
passion for novelty may infect a whole nation.

By the old system of laying out ground, indeed, this incongruity
was in a great degree obviated : for the house being surrounded
by gardens, as uniform as itself, and only seen through vistas at
right angles, every visible accompaniment was in union with it;
and the systematic regularity of the whole discernible from every
point of sight : but when, according to the modern fashion, all
around is levelled and thrown open ; and the poor square edifice
exposed alone, or with the accompaniment only of its regular
wings and portico, amidst spacious lawns interspersed with ir-
regular clumps or masses of wood, and sheets of water, I do
not know a more melancholy object ; it neither associates nor
harmonizes with anything; and as the beauties of symmetry,
which might appear in its regularity, are only perceived when that
regularity is seen ; that is, when the building is shown from a
point of sight at right angles with one of the fronts, the man of
taste takes care that it never shall be so shown ; but that every
view of it shall be oblique, from the tangent of a curve in a
serpentine walk; from whence it appears neither quite regular,
nor quite irregular, but with that sort of lame and defective
uniformity which we see in an animal that has lost a limb.

The view from one of these solitary mansions is still more
dismal than that towards it : for, at the hall door, a boundless
extent of open lawn presents itself in every direction, which the
despairing visitant must traverse before he can get into any change
of scenery : and to complete the congruity of the whole, the
clumps with which this monotonous tract is dotted, and the
winding stream or canal, by which it is intersected, are made as
neat and determinate as ever the ancient gardens were; which
having been professedly a work of art, and an appendage to the
house, the neatness and even formality of architecture were its
proper characteristics ; and when its terraces and borders were

WILLIAM WINDHAM 217

intermixed with vines and flowers (as I have seen them in Italian
villas and in some old English gardens in the same style) the
mixture of splendor, richness and neatness was beautiful and
pleasing in the highest degree. But the modern art of landscape
gardening, as it is called, takes away all natural enrichment, and
adds none of its own ; unless, indeed, meagre and formal clumps
of trees, and still more formal patches of shrubs may be called
enrichment. Why this art has been called landscape gardening,
perhaps he, who gave it the title, may explain. I can see no
reason unless it be the efficacy which it has shown in destroying
landscapes, in which, indeed, it seems to be infallible ; not one
complete painter's composition being, I believe, to be found m
any of the numerous, and many of them beautiful and picturesque
spots, which it has visited in different parts of this island. — An
Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste, 1805.

—'AlMV''--

T HOPE therefore that you will publish the system which I RT. HON.

^ conceive you to have adopted, and vindicate to the art of -y^n^jDHAM

laying out ground its true principles, which are wholly different (1750-1810).

from those which these wild improvers (Payne Knight and

Uvedale Price) would wish to introduce. Places are not to be

laid out with a view to their appearance in a picture, but to their

uses, and the enjoyment of them in real life ; and their conformity

to those purposes is that which constitutes their beauty : with

this view, gravel walks and neat mown lawns, and in some

situations, straight alleys, fountains, terraces, and for aught I know,

parterres and cut hedges are in perfect good taste, and infinitely

more conformable to the principles which form the basis of our

pleasure in these instances, than the docks, and thistles, and litter

and disorder, that may make a much better figure in a picture. —

Letter to Humphry Repton, on his co?itroversy with Uvedale Price,

1794.

2i8 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

HUMPHRY Was the first to assume professionally the title of 'Landscape Gardener:

REPTON Having failed as a merchant, he settled in Norfolk, and tried Agricultural

(1752-1818). Experiments and gardening— was Confidential Secretary to Mr Windham, Lord

Lieutenant of Ireland ift 1783 — then resided in Harestreet, Essex, till his death.

He lost jfiore money hi Palmer's mail-coach system, and then announced himself

as 'Landscape Gardener,' ' Capability' Brown, by his death in 1784, having

left the field open, Repton began a period of uninterrupted prosperity. He

published, 1795, 'Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening''', 1803,

'Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening' ; 1 806,

' Inquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening'' ; 1 808, ' Designs

for the Pavilion at Brighton' {not accepted); 18 16, 'Fragments on the Theory

of Landscape Gardening,' assisted by his son ; all reprinted by J. C. Loudon,

in 1840, iti one volume, with a Memoir of the author. — {Knight's Biography.)

Humphry Repton next occupied the attention of many, who confirmed
their opinion of his skill and taste by greatly encouraging his professional
labours. Considered as an eleve of Brown's school, and, at first, the zealous
defender both of his system and practice, it is clear, that when he became
more firmly established, he invented for himself, and trusted to his own talents.
He declared himself a professor of an art, to which he gave the designation of
'Landscape Gardening,' about the year 1788, and continued his practice of
'producing beautiful effects,' till his death in 1818. If the character of this
artist's talents be fairly examined and defined, it was more for elegant orna-
ment and prettiness, than for any decided effort of original genius. He
studied, in most instances, rather to gratify his employers by acceding to their
previous intentions, than to attempt grandeur in any scene. Amenity was his
leading object — colonnades of wicker work covered with flowering shrubs, or
large conservatories, in fanciful forms, were made the appendage of mansions,
no longer as Brown had left them, bald and exposed. He continued to be ad-
mired and popular, as long as the ardour for improving places and the fashion
itself lasted. Nor can it now be said that it has passed away. — Dallaway's
' Anecdotes of Modern Gardening.'

npO improve the scenery of a country, and to display its native
■■■ beauties with advantage, is an Art which originated in
England, and has therefore been called E7iglish Gardening \ yet
as this expression is not sufficiently appropriate, especially since
gardening, in its more confined sense of Horticulture^ has been
likewise brought to the greatest perfection in this country, I have
adopted the term Landscape Gardenings as most proper, because
the art can only be advanced and perfected by the united powers
of the landscape painter and the practical gardener. The former

HUMPHRY REPTON 219

must conceive a plan, which the latter may be able to execute ;
for though a painter may represent a beautiful landscape on his
canvas, and even surpass Nature by the combination of her
choicest materials, yet the luxuriant imagination of the painter
must be subjected to the gardener's practical knowledge in
planting, digging and moving earth ; that the simplest and
readiest means of accomplishing each design may be suggested.

The perfection of Landscape Gardening consists in the
four following requisites : First, it must display the Natural
beauties, and hide the natural defects of every situation. Secondly,
it should give the appearance of extent and freedom, by carefully
disguising or hiding the boundary. Thirdly, it must studiously
conceal every interference of art, however expensive, by which the
Scenery is improved ; making the whole appear the production of
Nature only; and fourthly, all objects of mere convenience or
comfort, if incapable of being made ornamental, or of becoming
proper parts of the general scenery, must be removed or con-
cealed.^

Each of the four objects here enumerated are directly opposite
to the principles of ancient gardening, which may be thus stated.
First, the natural beauties or defects of a situation had an influence,
when it was the fashion to exclude by lofty walls every surround-
ing object. Secondly, these walls were never considered as
defects, but were ornamented with vases, expensive iron gates,
and palisades to render them more conspicuous. Thirdly, so
far from making gardens appear natural, every expedient was
used to display the expensive efforts of Art, by which Nature had
been subdued : — the ground was levelled by a line ; the water
was squared or scalloped into regular basins; the trees, if not
clipped into artificial shape, were at least so planted by line and
measurement, that the formal hand of art could not here be

1 This last article, I confess, has occasionally misled modern improvers into
the absurdity of not only banishing the appearance but the reality of all com-
fort and convenience to a distance ; as I have frequently found in the bad choice
of a spot for the kitchen garden.

2 20 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

mistaken. And lastly, with respect to objects of convenience,
they were placed as near the house as possible : — the stables, the
barns, and the kitchen garden, were among the ornaments of a
place ; while the village, the alms house, the parish school, and
churchyard were not attempted to be concealed by the walls or
palisades that divided them from the Embellished pleasure ground.
— Sketches and Hifits on Landscape Gardenings ^ 794-

Sources of pleasure in Landscape Gardejiing: — i. Conformity;
2, Utility; 3, Order; 4, Symmetry; 5, Picturesque Effect; 6,
Intricacy; 7, Simplicity; 8, Variety; 9, Novelty; 10, Contrast;
II, Continuity; 12, Association; 13, Grandeur; 14, Appropria-
tion ; 15, Animation. — Lbid.

JOSEPH C CENTS are the souls of flowers : they may be even perceptible
JOUBERT O in the land of shadows.

(1754-1824).

The tulip is a flower without a soul ; but the rose and lily seem
to have one.

We ought to gather nothing which grows in our cemeteries, and
to let even the grass in them enjoy a pious uselessness.

We enjoy in gardening the pure delicacies of agriculture.

Our gardens in Paris smell musty. I do not like these ever-
green trees. There is something of blackness in their greenery,
of coldness in their shade, something sharp, dry, and thorny in
their leafage. Besides, since they neither lose anything, nor have
anything to fear, they seem to me unfeeling, and hence have little
interest for me.^

When a regular building commands the garden which surrounds
it, it ought, so to speak, to radiate regularity, by throwing it round
itself to all distances, whence it can be easily seen.

It is a centre, and the centre ought to be in harmony with all
points of the circumference, which is itself nothing but the

^ ' I hate those trees that never lose their foliage :
They seem to have no sympathy with Nature :
Winter and Summer are alike to them.'

W, S. Laiidor.

ARCHIBALD ALISON 221

development of a central point. Those irregular gardens, which
we call English gardens, require a labyrinth for a dwelling. —
Thoughts.

'HpHE Art of Gardening seems to have been governed, and long ARCHIBALD

* governed, by the same principle. When men first began to (7- g \
consider a garden as a subject capable of Beauty, or of bestowing
any distinction upon its possession, it was natural that they should
endeavour to render its Form as different as possible from that of
the country around it ; and to mark to the Spectator, as strongly
as they could, both the design and the labour which they had
bestowed upon it. Irregular Forms, however convenient or
agreeable, might still be the production of Nature ; but forms
perfectly regular, and Divisions completely uniform, — immediately
excited the belief of Design, and with this belief all the admiration
which follows the employment of Skill, or even of Expense. That
this Principle would naturally lead the first Artists in Gardening
to the production of Uniformity, may easily be conceived, as even
at present, when so different a System of Gardening prevails, the
common People universally follow the first System ; and even the
Men of the best Taste, in the cultivation of waste or neglected
lands, still enclose them by uniform Lines and in regular Divisions,
as more immediately signifying what they wish should be signified,
their Industry or Spirit in their improvement.

As gardens, however, are both a costly and permanent subject,
and are of consequence less liable to the influence of Fashion,
this Taste would not easily be altered ; and the principal improve-
ments which they would receive, would consist rather in the
greater employment of uniformity and expense, than in the intro-
duction of any new Design. The whole History of Antiquity,
accordingly, contains not, I believe, a single instance where this
character was deviated from, in a spot considered solely as a
garden ; and till within the last century, and in this country, it
seems not any where to have been imagined, that a garden was

22 2 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

capable of any other Beauty than what might arise from Utihty,
and from the display of Art and Design. It deserves also further
to be remarked, that the additional ornaments of gardening have
in every country partaken of the same character, and have been
directed to the purpose of increasing the appearance and the
Beauty of Art and of Design. Hence Jets d'Eau, artificial Fountains,
regular Cascades, Trees in the form of animals, etc., have in all
countries been the principal ornaments of gardening. The viola-
tion of the usual appearances of Nature in such objects, strongly
exhibited the employment of Art. They accorded perfectly,
therefore, with the character which the scene was intended to
have; and they increased its Beauty as they increased the effect
of that quality upon which this Beauty was founded, and intended
to be founded. — Essays o?t the Nature a?id Principles of Taste^
1790.

SCHILLER 'T~^HERE will be found in all probability a very good middle
(1759-1S05). 1 course between the formality of the French gardening-taste
and the lawless freedom of the so-called English style ; it will
become manifest that this art may not indeed soar into such lofty
spheres as they would persuade us, who, in their designs, overlook
nothing but the means of putting them into execution ; and that
it is certainly tasteless and inconsistent to desire to encompass the
world with a garden-wall, but very practicable and reasonable to
make a garden, satisfying all the demands of a good husbandman,
into a characteristic whole to the eye, heart, and understanding
alike.

The road from Stuttgart to Hohenheim is, in some measure, an
embodied history of the art of gardening, which offers to the
attentive observer an interesting commentary. In the orchards,
vineyards, and kitchen-gardens, past which the high road stretches,
the first natural beginning of the garden-art is revealed to him,
stripped of all aesthetic ornament. But now the French style of
gardening greets him with dignified formality beneath the gaunt

WILLIAM BECKFORD

223

and abrupt walls of poplar, which unite the open landscape with
Hohenheim and arouse expectation by their well-balanced form.
This solemn impression rises to an almost painful intensity, as you
roam through the chambers of the ducal palace, which for
splendour and elegance has few peers, and in a certain rare
manner combines taste with profusion. By the brilliance which
here strikes the eye from every side, and by the exquisite architec-
ture of the rooms and furniture, the craving for simplicity is
wrought to the highest pitch, and the most conspicuous triumph
is in waiting for rural Nature, which all at once welcomes the
traveller into the so-called English Park.

Meantime the monuments of sunken splendour, against whose
decaying walls the gardener leans his peaceful hut, make a quite
peculiar impression upon the heart, and it is with a secret joy that
in these mouldering ruins we see ourselves revenged upon the
art, which in the gorgeous building hard by had wielded its
power over us to excess. But the Nature we meet in this English
Park is no more the same as that we have issued from. It is a
Nature quickened with soul and exalted by art, which satisfies
not only the man of simple taste, but also the spoiled child of
culture, charming the one into reflection, and leading back the
other to emotion. — Miscellaneous Writi7izs : On the Garden-
Calendar for the Year I 'J g^.

—'A/\/\fv—

Son of a Lord Mayor, he bega7i lije with timisual material, physical a«^ WILLIAM
intellectual advantages. He did many extraordinary things, writing ' Vathek ' BECKFORD
in a few hours, building the fabulous Fonthill, and shuttijig hi77iself tip in it (l7oO-l844).
alone with dogs and a magnificent library ; but perhaps the tnost extraordinary
thing was his declaration, at the close of a long luxurious life, that he had never
known an hours ennui.

T RETURNED towards the Hague, and looked into a country-
^ house of the late Count Bentinck, with parterres and bosquets
by no means resembhng, one should conjecture, the gardens of
the Hesperides. But, considering that the whole group of trees,
terraces, and verdure were in a manner created out of hills of

"S^

224 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

sand, the place may claim some portion of merit. The walks
and alleys have all the stiffness and formality which our ancestors
admired, but the intermediate spaces, being dotted with clumps
and sprinkled with flowers, are imagined in Holland to be in
the English style. An Englishman ought certainly to behold
it with partial eyes, since every possible attempt has been made
to twist it into the taste of his country.

I need not say how liberally I bestowed my encomiums on
Count Bentinck's tasteful inventions ; nor how happy I was,
when I had duly serpentized over his garden, to find myself once
more in the grand avenue.

All the way home, I reflected upon the unyielding perseverance
of the Dutch, who raise gardens from heaps of sand, and cities
out of the bosom of the waters. — Italy^ Spain, and Portugal.
{Letter II. Ostend, ft me 21, 1780.)

Having remained some time in this pious hue, I returned home
and feasted upon grapes and ortolans with great edification ; then
walked to one of the bridges across the Arno, and from thence
to the garden of Boboli, which lies behind the Grand Duke's
palace, stretched out on the side of a mountain. I ascended
terrace after terrace, robed by a thick underwood of bay and
myrtle, above which rise several nodding towers, and a long
sweep of venerable wall, almost entirely concealed by ivy. You
would have been enraptured with the broad masses of shade
and dusky alleys that opened as I advanced, with white statues
of fauns and sylvans glimmering amongst them : some of which
pour water into sarcophagi of the purest marble, covered with
antique rilievos. The capitals of columns and ancient friezes
are scattered about as seats.

On these I reposed myself, and looked up to the cypress groves
which spring above the thickets ; then, plunging into their retire-
ments, I followed a winding path, which led me by a series of
steep ascents to a green platform overlooking the whole extent
of wood, with Florence deep beneath, and the tops of the hills
which encircle it jagged with pines ; here and there a convent,

WILLIAM BECKFORD 225

or villa, whitening in the sun. This scene extends as far as the
eye can reach.

Still ascending I attained the brow of the eminence, and had
nothing but the fortress of Belvedere and two or three open
porticoes above me. On this elevated situation, I found several
walks of trellis-work, clothed with luxuriant vines. A colossal
statue of Ceres, her hands extended in the act of scattering fertility
over the country, crowns the summit.

Descending alley after alley, and bank after bank, I came to
the orangery in front of the palace, disposed in a grand amphi-
theatre, with marble niches relieved by dark foliage, out of which
spring cedars and tall aerial cypresses. This spot brought the
scenery of an antique Roman garden so vividly into my mind,
that, lost in the train of recollections this idea excited, I expected
every instant to be called to the table of LucuUus hard by, in one
of the porticoes, and to stretch myself on his purple triclinias ;
but waiting in vain for a summons till the approach of night, I
returned delighted with a ramble that had led my imagination
so far into antiquity. — Ibid. {Florence^ Sept. 14, 1780.)

I dined in peace and solitude, and repaired, as evening drew
on, to the thickets of Boboli.

What a serene sky ! what mellowness in the tints of the
mountains ! a purple haze concealed the bases, whilst their
summits were invested with saffron light, discovering every white
cot and every copse that clothed their declivities. The prospect
widened as I ascended the terraces of the garden.

After traversing many long dusky alleys, I reached the opening
on the brow of the hill, and, seating myself under the statue of
Ceres, took a sketch of the huge mountainous cupola of the
Duomo, the adjoining lovely tower and one more massive in
its neighbourhood, built not improbably in the style of ancient
Etruria. Beyond this historic group of buildings a plain stretches
itself far and wide, most richly studded with villas and gardens,
and groves of pine and olive, quite to the feet of the mountains.

Having marked the sun's going down and all the soothing

p

226 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

effects cast by his declining rays on every object, I went through
a plat of vines to a favourite haunt of mine : — a little garden of
the most fragrant roses, with a spring under a rustic arch of grotto-
work fringed with ivy. Thousands of fish inhabit here, of that
beautiful glittering species which comes from China. This golden
nation were leaping after insects as I stood gazing upon the deep
clear water, listening to the drops that trickle from the cove.
Opposite to which, at the end of a green alley, you discover an
oval basin, and in the midst of it an antique statue full of that
graceful languor so peculiarly Grecian.

Whilst I was musing on the margin of the spring (for I returned
to it after casting a look upon the sculpture), the moon rose above
the tufted foliage of the terraces, which I descended by several
flights of steps, with marble balustrades crowned by vases of aloes.
— Florence^ Oct. 5, 1780.

As soon as the sun declined I strolled into the Villa Medici ;
but finding it haunted by pompous people, nay, even by the
Spanish Ambassador, and several red-legged Cardinals, I moved
off to the Negroni garden. There I found what my soul desired,
thickets of jasmine, and wild spots overgrown with bay ; long
alleys of cypress totally neglected, and almost impassable through
the luxuriance of the vegetation ; on every side antique fragments,
vases, sarcophagi, and altars sacred to the Manes, in deep, shady
recesses, which I am certain the Manes must love. The air was
filled with the murmurs of water trickling down basins of porphyry,
and losing itself amongst overgrown weeds and grasses.

Above the wood and between its boughs appeared several
domes, and a strange lofty tower. I will not say they belonged
to St. Maria Maggiore ; no, they are fanes and porticoes dedicated
to Cybele, who delights in sylvan situations. The forlorn air ot
this garden, with its high and reverend shades, make me imagine
it as old as the baths of Dioclesian, which peep over one of its
walls. — Rome ^ June 30, 1782.

Home persuaded me much against my will to accompany him
in his Portuguese chaise to Pagliavam, the residence of John the

WILLIAM BECKFORD 227

Fifth's bastards, instead of following my usual track along the
sea-shore. ... A great flat space before the garden-front of the
villa is laid out in dismal labyrinths of clipped myrtle, with lofty
pyramids rising from them, in the style of that vile Dutch maze
planted by King William at Kensington, and rooted up some
years ago by King George the Third.

Beyond this puzzling ground are several long alleys of stiff dark
verdure, called ruas^ i.e. literally streets, with great propriety,
being more close, more formal, and not less dusty than High
Holborn. I deviated from them into plats of well-watered
vegetables and aromatic herbs, inclosed by neat fences of cane,
covered with an embroidery of the freshest and most perfect roses,
quite free from insects and cankers, worthy to have strewn the

couches and graced the bosom of Lais, Aspasia, or Lady ,

You know how warmly every mortal of taste delights in these
lovely flowers ; how frequently, and in what harmonious numbers,

Ariosto has celebrated them. Has not Lady a whole

apartment painted over with roses ? Does she not fill her bath
with their leaves, and deck her idols with garlands of no other
flowers? and is she not quite in the right of it ? — A'Tay 30, 1787.

At length, after a tedious drive through vast tracts of desolate
country, scarce a house, scarce a shrub, scarce a human being to
meet with, we descended a rapid declivity, and I once more found
myself in the valley of Aranjuez.

. . . Charles the Fifth's elms in the island-garden close to the
palace are decaying apace. I visited the nine venerable stumps
close to a hideous brick ruin ; the largest measures forty or fifty
feet in girth \ the roots are picturesquely fantastic. The fountains,
like the shades in which they are embowered, are rapidly going
to decay : the bronze Venus, at the fountain which takes its name
from Don John of Austria, has lost her arm.

Notwithstanding the dreariness of the season, with all its
accompaniment of dry leaves and faded herbage, this historic
garden had still charms ; the air was mild and the sunbeams
played on the Tagus, and many a bird flitted from spray to spray.

228 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Several long alleys of the loftiest elms, their huge rough trunks
mantled with ivy, and their grotesque roots advancing and reced-
ing like grotto-work into the walk, struck me as singularly
pleasing. — December i, 1795.

— wvvv—

WILLIAM As a boy of sixteen was engaged in the Gardens of Farnhani Castle : fired by
COBBETT a description of Kew gardens, he started off to see them himself: enlisted in ^/^th
(1762-1035). jp^^f and served at Halifax, N. S. 1792, visited France for six months : settled
7tear Philadelphia, teaching English, and is said to have refused to give
Talleyrand lessons; edited a Fre7ich gra77tmar. 1796, wt'ote ^ Life and
Adventures of Peter Porcupine,^ {an autobiography'). 1802, started ' Cobbetfs
Political Register,^ continued till his death. 1806, he began farming at Botley
in Hampshire; iv7'ote ^ The Woodlands^ ^English Gardener,^ 'American
Gardener.^ 1 810, was prosecuted by government for libel, and senteitced to two
years' imprisonment and £1000 fine. 1820, he became insolvent with debts of
;^34,ooo. 1 82 1, commenced his * Rural Rides.'' 1832, after Reform Bill was
returned M. P. for Oldham.

THEY say that these Gardens (of Mr Drummond, at Shere,
Surrey) were laid out for one of the Howards, in the reign
of Charles the Second, by Mr Evelyn, who wrote the Sylva.
The mansion house, which is by no means magnificent, stands
on a little flat by the side of a parish church, having a steep,
but not lofty hill, rising up on the south side. It looks right
across the gardens, which lie on the slope of a hill which runs
along at about a quarter of a mile distant from the front of the
house. The gardens, of course, lie facing the south. At the
back of them under the hill, is a high wall ; and there is also a
wall at each end, running from north to south. Between the
house and the gardens there is a very beautiful run of water, with
a sort of little wild narrow sedgy meadow. The gardens are
separated from this by a hedge, running along from east to west.
From this hedge there go up the hill, at right angles, several
other hedges, which divide the land here into distinct gardens,
or orchards. Along at the top of these there goes a yew hedge,
or, rather, a row of small yew trees, the trunks of which are bare
for about eight or ten feet high, and the tops of which form one

WILLIAM COBBETT

229

solid head of about ten feet high, while the bottom branches
come out on each side of the row about eight feet horizontally.
This hedge, or row, is a quarter of a mile long. There is a nice
hard sand-road under this species of umbrella ; and, summer and
winter, here is a most delightful walk ! Behind this row of yews,
there is a space, or garden (a quarter of a mile long you will
observe) about thirty or forty feet wide, as nearly as I can recollect.
At the back of this garden, and facing the yew tree row, is a
wall probably ten feet high, which forms the breastwork of a
terrace ; and it is this terrace which is the most beautiful thing
that I ever saw in the gardening way. It is a quarter of a mile
long, and, I believe, between thirty and forty feet wide ; of the
finest green sward, and as level as a die.

We came hither by the way of Waverley Abbey and Moor(e)
Park. . . . We got leave to go and see the grounds at Waverley,
where all the old monks' garden walls are totally gone, and
where the spot is become a sort of lawn.^ I showed him the
spot where the strawberry garden was, and where I, when sent to
gather hautboys^ used to eat every remarkably fine one, instead of
letting it go to be eaten by Sir Robert Rich. . . .

From Waverley we went to Moore Park once the seat of Sir
William Temple, and, when I was a very little boy, the seat of a
Lady, or a Mrs Temple. Here I showed Richard Mother Ludlam's
Hole ; but alas, it is not the enchanting place that I knew it, nor
that which Grose describes in his Antiquities ! . . . Near the
mansion, I showed Richard the hill, upon which Dean Swift tells
us, he used to run for exercise, while he was pursuing his studies

1 Cobbett was born at Farnham, in a house still existing, and the ancient
kitchen garden of the Monks at Waverley Abbey was where he first worked.
' It was the spot where I first began to learn to work, or rather where I first
began to eat fine fruit in a garden ; and though I have now seen and observed
upon as many fine gardens as any man in England, I have never seen a garden
equal to that of Waverley. ' — ( The English Gardener. )

The Abbey gave the title to the Waverley Novels, Scott having explored its
monastic chronicles in early life — the Annates Waverlienses of the Cistercian
Monks from 1066 to 1 291, were published by Gale in vol ii. of his Hist.
Anglican, Scriptores.

230 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

here ; and I would have showed him the garden-seat, under which
Sir Wilham Temple's heart was buried, agreeably to his will ; ^ but
the seat was gone, also the wall at the back of it ; and the ex-
quisitely beautiful little lawn in which the seat stood was turned
into a parcel of divers-shaped Cockney clumps, planted according
to the strictest rules of artificial and refined vulgarity.- — Rurai
Rides.

-w\/W/—

MADAME r^ ARDENS are almost as beautiful in some parts of Germany
P^fi^T^^^ ^^ ^^ England ; the luxury of gardens always implies a love

of the Country. In England simple mansions are often built in
the middle of the most magnificent parks ; the proprietor neglects
his dwelling to attend to the ornament of nature. This magnifi-
cence and simplicity united do not, it is true, exist in the same
degree in Germany \ yet, in spite of the want of wealth, and the
pride of feudal dignity, there is everywhere to be remarked a
certain love of the beautiful, which sooner or later must be
followed by taste and elegance, of which it is the only real source.
Often, in the midst of the superb gardens of the German princes,
are placed yEolian harps close by grottoes, encircled with flowers,
that the wind may waft the sound and the perfume together.
The imagination of the northern people thus endeavours to create
for itself a sort of Italy ; and during the brilliant days of a short-
lived summer, it sometimes attains the deception it seeks. —
Germany, Chap. I.

— A/\/\/\^ —

MAINE DE One of the few true Psychologists France has producea, who anticipated

BIRAN Schopenhazier in making the Will the 7nain-sp7-ing of his Philosophy.

(1 766- 1524). J j^^Y£ experienced, this evening, in a solitary walk taken

^ during the finest weather, some instantaneous flashes of that

ineffable enjoyment, which I have tasted at other times, and at

^ Is Cobbett accurate here ? It has always been supposed that it was a sun-
dial (near the east end of the house) under which Temple's heart was buried in
a silver box in 1698.

- About 1858 Moor Park was a Hydropathic Establishment. In 1896 it was
again for sale.

ISAAC DISRAELI 231

such a season ; of that pure pleasure, which seems to snatch us
away from all that is of the earth, to give us a foretaste of heaven.
The verdure had a new freshness, and took beauty from the last
rays of the sinking sun ; all things were instinct with a soft
splendour; the trees waved tenderly their majestic crests; the
air was full of balm, and the nightingales interchanged sighs of
love, which yielded to accents of pleasure and joy.

I walked gently in an alley of young plane-trees, which I
planted a few years since. Above all the vague incomplete
impressions and images, which were born of the presence of
the objects and my moods, hovered this feeling of the infinite
which bears us onward sometimes towards a world superior to
phenomena, towards this world of realities, which links itself
to God, as the first and only reality. It seems in this condition,
when all sensations without and within are calm and happy, as
if there were a peculiar sense appropriate to heavenly things,
which, wrapped up in the actual fashion of our existence, is
destined perhaps to develop itself one day, when the soul shall
have quitted its mortal husk. — His Life and Thoughts {May 17,

1815).

'T^HERE has been a class of men, whose patriotic affection, or ISAAC

^ whose general benevolence, have been usually defrauded of the P^f^'g ^H
gratitude their country owes them : these have been the introducers
of new flowers, new plants, and new roots into Europe ; the greater
part which we now enjoy was drawn from the luxuriant climates of
Asia, and the profusion which now covers our land originated in
the most anxious nursing, and were the gifts of individuals.
Monuments are reared, and medals struck to commemorate
events and names which are less deserving our regard than those,
who have transplanted into the colder regions of the North, the
rich fruits, the beautiful flowers, and the succulent pulse and
roots of more favoured spots ; and carrying into their own country,
as it were, another Nature, they have, as old Gerard well expresses

232 THE PRAISE OE GARDENS

it, ' laboured with the soil to make it fit for the plants, and with
the plants to make them delight in the soil.'

There is no part of the characters of Peiresc and Evelyn,
accomplished as they are in so many, which seems more delightful
to me, than their enthusiasm for the garden, the orchard, and the
forest. — Curiosities of Literature,

— v\/\/Vv —

ALEXANDER T ANDSCAPE-PAINTING, notwithstanding the multiplication
HUMBOLDT °^ ^^^ productions by engravings, and by the recent improve-

(1769- 1859). ments in lithography, is still productive of a less powerful effect than

that excited in minds susceptible of natural beauty, by the immediate
aspect of groups of exotic plants in hot-houses or in gardens. I
have already alluded to the subject of my own youthful experience,
and mentioned that the sight of a colossal dragon-tree and of a
fan-palm in an old tower of the botanical garden at Berlin, im-
planted in my mind the seeds of an irresistible desire to under-
take distant travels.

He who is able to trace through the whole course of his im-
pressions that which gave the first leading direction to his whole
career, will not deny the influence of such a power. — Cosmos^
Part L, § ii.

CHAPTER IX

THE GARDEN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

LAYING out grounds, as it is called, may be considered as a WILLIAM
liberal art, in some sort like poetry and painting; and its ob- (V770 iSqo)
ject, like that of all the liberal arts is, or ought to be, to move the
affections under the control of good sense ; that is, those of the
best and wisest : but speaking with more precision, it is to assist
Nature in moving the affections, and surely, as I have said, the
affections of those who have the deepest perception of the beauty
of Nature ; who have the most valuable feelings, that is, the most
permanent, and most independent, the most ennobling, connected
with Nature and human Hfe. No Uberal art aims merely at the
gratification of an individual or a class : the painter or poet is
degraded in proportion as he does so ; the true servants of the
arts pay homage to the human kind as impersonated in unwarped
enlightened minds. If this be so when we are merely putting
together words or colours, how much more ought the feeling to
prevail when we are in the midst of the realities of things ; of the
beauty and harmony, of the joy and happiness of living creatures ;
of men and children, of birds and beasts, of hills and streams,
and trees and flowers ; with the changes of night and day, evening
and morning, summer and winter ; and all their unwearied actions
and energies, as benign in the spirit that animates them, as they
are beautiful and grand in that form and clothing which is given
to them for the delights of our senses. — Letter to Sir G. Beaumont^
1805.

— "^NMSt^ —

WET now that these ridiculous anomalies have fallen into SIR
* general disuse, it must be acknowledged that there exist scOTT
gardens, the work of Loudon, Wise, and such persons as laid out (1771-1832).
ground in the Dutch taste, which would be much better subjects

233

234 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

for modification than for absolute destruction. Their rarity now
entitles them to some care as a species of antiques, and unquestion-
ably they give character to some snug, quiet, and sequestered
situations which would otherwise have no marked feature of any
kind. We ourselves retain an early and pleasing recollection of
the seclusion of such a scene. A small cottage, adjacent to a
beautiful village, the habitation of an ancient maiden lady, was
for some time our abode. It was situated in a garden of seven or
eight acres, planted about the beginning of the eighteenth century,
by one of the Millars, related to the author of the Gardener's
Dictionary, or, for aught we know, by himself. It was full of long
straight walks between hedges of yew and hornbeam, which rose
tall and close on every side. There were thickets of flowering
shrubs, a bower, and an arbour, to which access was obtained
through a little maze of contorted walks, calling itself a labyrinth.
In the centre of the bower was a splendid Platanus, or oriental
plane — a huge hill of leaves — one of the noblest specimens of
that regularly beautiful tree which we remember to have seen.^
In different parts of the garden were fine ornamental trees which
had attained great size, and the orchard was filled with fruit-trees
of the best description. There were seats and trellis-walks and a
banqueting house. Even in our time this little scene, intended
to present a formal exhibition of vegetable beauty, was going fast
to decay. The parterres of flowers were no longer watched by
the quiet and simple frie7ids under whose auspices they had been
planted, and much of the ornament of the domain had been
neglected or destroyed to increase its productive value. We
visited it lately, after an absence of many years. Its air of
retreat, the seclusion which its alleys afforded, was entirely gone ;
the huge Platanus had died, like most of its kind, in the beginning
of this century ; the hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed up
and the whole character of the place so much destroyed, that I

^ It was under this Platanus that Scott first devoured Percy's Reliques. I
remember well being with him, in 1820, or 1821, when he revisited the favourite
scene, and the sadness of his looks, when he discovered that ' the huge hill of
leaves was no more.'— y^. G. Lockhart : Life of Sir Walter Scott.

ROBERT SOUTHEY 235

was glad when I could leave it.^ — Essay on Landscape Gardening.
( Quarterly RevieiVy 1828.)

BUT out of doors as much regard was shown to beauty as to ROBERT
SOUXHEY
utility. Miss Allison and Betsey claimed the little garden (lyy^.is.o).

in front of the house for themselves. It was in so neglected a
state when they took possession that, between children and
poultry and stray pigs, not a garden flower was left there to grow
wild : and the gravel walk from the gate to the porch was over-
grown with weeds and grass, except a path in the middle which
had been kept bare by use. On each side of the gate were three
yew-trees, at equal distances. In the old days of the Grange they
had been squared in three lessening stages, the uppermost taper-
ing pyramidally to a point. While the house had been shorn of
its honours, the yews remained unshorn ; but when it was once
more occupied by a wealthy habitant, and a new gate had been
set up and the pillars and their stone balls cleaned from moss
and lichen and short ferns, the unfortunate evergreens were again
reduced to the formal shape in which Mr Allison and his sister
remembered them in their childhood.

This was with them a matter of feeling, which is a better thing
than taste. And indeed the yews must either have been trimmed,
or cut down, because they intercepted sunshine from the garden,
and the prospect from the upper windows. The garden would
have been better without them, for they were bad neighbours :
but they belonged to old times, aud it would have seemed a sort
of sacrilege to destroy them.

Flower-beds used, like beds in the kitchen-garden, to be raised
a little above the path, with nothing to divide them from it, till
about the beginning of the seventeenth century ; the fashion of
bordering them was introduced either by the Italians or the
French. Daisies, periwinkles, feverfew, hyssop, lavender, rose-
mary, rue, sage, wormwood, camomile, thyme, and box were used
for this purpose : a German horticulturist observes that hyssop

^ See Note on page 234.

236 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

was preferred as the most convenient; box, however, gradually
obtained the preference. The Jesuit Rapin claims for the French
the merit of bringing this plant into use, and embellishes his
account of it by one of those school-boy fictions which passed for
poetry in his day, and may still pass for it in his country. He
describes a feast of the rural Gods. . . .

Adfuit et Cybele, Phrygias celebrata per urbes, etc.

The fashion which this buxom Flora introduced had at one
time the effect of banishing flowers from what should have been
the flower garden ; the ground was set with box in their stead,
disposed in patterns more or less formal, some intricate as a
labyrinth and not little resembling those of Turkey carpets, where
Mahommedan laws interdict the likeness of any living thing, and
the taste of Turkish weavers excludes any combination of graceful
forms. One sense at least was gratified when fragrant herbs were
used in these ' rare figures of composures,' or knots as they were
called, hyssop being mixed in them with thyme, as aiders the one
to the other, the one being dry, the other moist. Box had the
disadvantage of a disagreeable odour ; but it was greener in winter
and more compact in all seasons. To lay out these knots and
tread them required the skill of a master-gardener : much labour
was thus expended without producing any beauty. The walks
between them were sometimes of different colours ; some would
be of lighter or darker gravel, red or yellow sand : and when such
materials were at hand, pulverised coal, and pulverised shells.

Such a garden Mr Cradock saw at Bordeaux no longer ago
than the year 1785 ; it belonged to Monsieur Rabi, a very rich
Jew merchant, and was surrounded by a bank of earth, on which
there stood about two hundred blue and white flower-pots ; the
garden itself was a scroll-work cut very narrow, and the interstices
filled with sand of different colours to imitate embroidery; it
required repairing after every shower, and if the wind rose, the
eyes were sure to suffer. Yet the French admired this and
exclaimed, Superbe ! magnifique f

Neither Miss Allison nor her niece would have taken any

ROBERT SOUTHEY i'^^

pleasure in gardens of this kind, which had nothing of a garden
but the name. They both dehghted in flowers ; the aunt because
flowers to her were 'redolent of youth,' and never failed to
awaken tender recollections ; Betsey for an opposite reason :
having been born and bred in London, a nosegay there had
seemed always to bring her a foretaste of those enjoyments for
which she was looking forward with eager hope. They had
stocked their front-garden therefore with the gayest and the
sweetest flowers that were cultivated in those days ; larkspurs,
both of the giant and dwarf species, and of all colours ; sweet-
williams of the richest hues ; monk's-hood for its stately growth ;
Betsey called it the dumbledore's delight, and was not aware that
the plant, in whose helmet, rather than cowl-shaped flowers that
busy and best-natured of all insects appears to revel more than
in any other, is the deadly aconite of which she read in poetry :
the white lily, and the fleur-de-hs; pceonies, which are still the
glory of the English garden : stocks and gillyflowers which make
the air sweet as the gales of Arabia; wall-flowers, which for a
while are little less fragrant, and not less beautiful; pinks and
carnations added their spicy odours ; roses, red and white,
peeped at the lower casements, and the jessamine climbed to
those of the chambers above. You must nurse your own flowers,
if you would have them flourish, unless you happen to have a
gardener, who is as fond of them as yourself.

Eve was not busier with hers in Paradise, her 'pleasant task
injoined,' than Betsey Allison and her aunt, from the time that
early spring invited them to their cheerful employment, till late
and monitory autumn closed it for the year.

' Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these ' ;
and Solomon in all his wisdom never taught more wholesome
lessons than these silent monitors convey to a thoughtful mind
and an understanding heart. 'There are two books,' says Sir
Thomas Browne, 'from whence I collect my Divinity; besides
that written one of God, another of his servant Nature — that
universal and public manuscript that lies expansed unto the
eyes of all. Those that never saw him in the one have dis-

238 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

covered him in the other. This was the scripture and theology
of the heathens : the natural motion of the sun made them more
admire him than its supernatural station did the children of
Israel ; the ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration
in them, than in the other all his miracles. Surely the heathens
knew better how to join and read these mystical letters, than
we Christians, who cast a more careless eye on those common
hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of
Nature.' — The Doctor.

—fJ\f\S\t'^—

SYDNEY Canofi of St PauPs, first Editor of Edinburgh Review, author of ^ Peter

SMITH Plymleys Letters,' * Sketches of Moral Philosophy,^ and countless witticisms.

11774-1847).

T WENT for the first time in my life, some years ago, to stay at a

^ very grand and beautiful place in the country, where the
grounds are said to be laid out with consummate taste. For the
first three or four days I was perfectly enchanted; it seemed
something so much better than nature, that I really began to
wish the earth had been laid out according to the latest principles
of improvement, and that the whole face of nature were a little
more the appearance of a park. In three days' time I was tired
to death ; a thistle, a nettle, a heap of dead bushes, anything
that wore the appearance of accident and want of intention, was
quite a relief. I used to escape from the made grounds, and
walk upon an adjacent goose-common, where the cart-ruts, gravel-
pits, bumps, irregularities, coarse ungentlemanlike grass, and all
the varieties produced by neglect, were a thousand times more
gratifying than the monotony of beauties the result of design,
and crowded into narrow confines with a luxuriance and abundance
utterly unknown to nature.

CHARLES \ylINE too, — whose else? — thy costly fruit-garden, with its sun-
LAMB

(1775-1834).

M

baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising
backwards from the house in triple terraces, with flower-pots
now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved from

CHARLES LAMB 239

the elements, bespake their pristine state to have been gilt and
glittering ; the verdant quarters backwarder still ; and stretching
still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of
the squirrel, and the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that
antique image in the centre, god or goddess I wist not ; but
child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to
Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that fragmental

mystery. — Essays of Elia {Blakesmoor i?t If shire).

What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the
first time — the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street,
by unexpected avenues, into its (the Temple's) magnificent ample
squares, its classic green recesses ! What a cheerful, liberal look
hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the
greater garden ; that goodly pile

* Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,'

confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more fantastic-
ally shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown
Office-row (place of my kindly engendure), right opposite the
stately stream, which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely
trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned from her
Twickenham Naiades ! a man would give something to have
been born in such places.

What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where
the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, how many
times ! to the astonishment of the young urchins, my contempor-
aries, who, not being able to guess at its recondite machinery,
were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic !
What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with
their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which
they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight im-
mediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain
of light ! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on,
watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement,
never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests
of sleep !

240 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Ah ! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived !

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments
of lead or brass, its pert or solemn dulness of communication,
compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-
language of the old dial ! It stood as the garden god of Christian
gardens. Why is it almost everywhere banished ? If its business-
use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses,
its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of
moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of
temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the
horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it
in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate for sweet plants and
flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings
by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The ' shepherd
carved it out quaintly in the sun ' ; and turning philosopher by
the very occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than
tombstones. It was a pretty device of the gardener, recorded by
Marvell, who, in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial out
of herbs and flowers.

I must quote his verses a little higher up, for they are full, as
all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will not
come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains and sun-dials.

He is speaking of sweet garden scenes : —

What wondrous life is this I lead !
Rich apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their vv^ine.
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
"Withdraws into its happiness.
The mind, that ocean, where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these.
Far other worlds, and other seas,

CHARLES LAMB 241

Annihilating all that's made

To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain's sliding foot,

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,

Casting the body's vest aside,

My soul into the boughs does glide ;

There, like a bird, it sits and sings,

Then whets and claps its silver wings,

And till prepared for longer flight

Waves in its plumes the various light.

How well the skilful gardener drew

Of flowers and herbs this dial new.

Where from above the milder sun

Does through a fragrant zodiac run ;

And as it works, the industrious bee

Computes its time as well as we.

How could such sweet and wholesome hours

Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers ? ^

— The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple.

I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five-and-
twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn —
they were then far finer than they are now — the accursed Verulam
Buildings had not encroached upon all the east side of them,
cutting out the delicate green crankles, and shouldering away one
or two of the stately alcoves of the terrace — the survivor stands
gaping and relationless as if it remembered its brother — they are
still the best gardens of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved
Temple not forgotten — have the gravest character ; their aspect
being altogether reverend and law-breathing — Bacon has left the
impress of his foot upon their gravel walks — taking my afternoon
solace on a summer day upon the aforesaid terrace, a comely sad
personage came towards me, whom from his grave air and deport-
ment, I judged to be one of the old Benchers of the Inn. . . . —
On some of the old Actors.

When you come Londonward, you will find me no longer in
Covent Garden ; I have a cottage in Colebrook Row, Islington ;
^ From a copy of verses entitled ' The Garden.'
Q

242 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

a cottage, for it is detached ; a white house with six good rooms

in it; the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a
moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the
house; and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure
you); pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to
delight the heart of old Alcinous. ... I heard of you from
Mr P. this morning, and that gave a fillip to my laziness, which
has been intolerable; but I am so taken up with pruning and
gardening, quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have gathered
my jargonels, but my winter pears are backward. The former
were of exquisite raciness. I do now sit under my own vine, and
contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I can now under-
stand in what sense they speak of Father Adam. I recognise
the paternity, while I watch my tulips. I almost feel with him
too ; for the first day I turned a drunken gardener (as he let in
the serpent) into my Eden, and he laid about him, lopping off
some choice boughs, etc., which hung over from a neighbour's
garden, and in his blind zeal laid waste a shade, which had
sheltered their window from the gaze of passers-by. The old
gentlewoman (fury made her not handsome) could scarcely be
reconciled by all my fine words. There was no buttering her
parsnips. She talked of the law. What a lapse to commit on
the first day of my happy ' garden state ! ' — Letter to Bernard
Barton, {Sept. 2, 1823.)

— 'Aj\/\t\t—

WALTER "T^ERNISSA. I promise you I never will hate a tree again.

SAVAGE -^ Epicurus. I told you so.

(if7^-?86s). Leontion. Nevertheless I suspect, my Ternissa, you will often
be surprised into it. I was very near saying, ' I hate these rude
square stones ! ' Why did you leave them here, Epicurus ?

Epicurus. It is true, they are the greater part square, and seem
to have been cut out in ancient times for plinths and columns :
they are also rude. Removing the smaller, that I might plant
violets and cyclamens and convolvuluses and strawberries, and

WALTER SAVAGE LAND OR 243

such other herbs as grow willingly in dry places, I left a few of
these for seats, a few for tables and for couches.

Leo7ition. Delectable couches !

Epicurus. Laugh as you may, they will become so when they
are covered with moss and ivy, and those other two sweet plants,
whose names I do not remember to have found in any ancient
treatise, but which I fancy I have heard Theophrastus call
'Leontion' and 'Ternissa.' . . .

Leofition. Why have you torn up by the root all these little
mountain ash-trees ? This is the season of their beauty : come,
Ternissa, let us make ourselves necklaces and armlets, such as
may captivate old Sylvanus and Pan : you shall have your choice.
But why have you torn them up ?

Epicurus. On the contrary, they were brought hither this
morning. Sosimenes is spending large sums of money on an
olive-ground, and has uprooted some hundreds of them, of all
ages and sizes. I shall cover the rougher part of the hill with
them, setting the clematis and vine and honey-suckle against
them, to unite them.

Terfiissa. O what a pleasant thing it is to walk in the green light
of the vine-leaves, and to breathe the sweet odour of their invisible
flowers !

Epicurus. The scent of them is so delicate that it requires a
sigh to inhale it ; and, this, being accompanied and followed by
enjoyment, renders the fragrance so exquisite. Ternissa, it is
this, my sweet friend, that made you remember the green hght of
the foliage, and think of the invisible flowers as you would of
some blessing from heaven. — Imaginary Coftversations. {Epicurus,
Leontion, and Terfiissa.)

Fillipo. It is delightful to see their (the Moors') gardens, when
one has not the weeding and irrigation of them. What fruit !
what foliage ! what trellises ! what alcoves ! what a contest of
rose and jessamine for supremacy in odor ! of lute and nightingale
for victory in song ! And how the little bright ripples of the
docile brooks, the fresher for their races, leap up against one

244 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

another to look on ! And how they chirrup and applaud, as if
they too had a voice of some importance in these parties of
pleasure they are loath to separate.

Eugenius. Parties of pleasure ! birds, fruits, shallow running
waters, lute-players and wantons ! Parties of pleasure ! and com-
posed of these ! Tell me now, Filippo, tell me truly, what com-
plexion in general have the discreeter females of that hapless
country.

Filippo. The colour of an orange-flower, on which an overladen
bee has left a suffusion of her purest honey. — Idid. {Fra Filippo
Lippi and Pope Eugenius IV.)

Lander. Enter the gardens and approach the vases : do you
perceive the rarity, the beauty, the fragrance of the flowers ? In
one is a bush of box, in another a knot of tansy. Neptune is
recumbent on a bed of cabbages, and from the shell of a Triton
sprout three turnips ... to be sold.

Pallavicini. Our first object in the garden is profit. The
vicinity of Genoa produces a large quantity of lemons, and many
families are supported by renting, at about thirty crowns, half an
acre or less of lemon ground. . . .

Landor. We Englishmen talk of pla?iting a garden; the
modern Italians and ancient Romans talk of building one.
Ours, the most beautiful in the universe, are not exempt from
absurdities ; but in the shadiness of the English garden it is
the love of retirement that triumphs over taste, and over a
sense of the inconveniences.

Inhabiting a moist and chilly climate, we draw our woods
almost into our dining-rooms ; you, inhabiting a sultry one,
condemn your innocent children to the ordeal of a red-hot
gravel. The shallow well called pescina, in the middle of every
garden, contains just enough water to drown them — which happens
frequently — and to supply a generation of gnats for the villegianti.
We again may be ridiculed in our turn : our serpentine ditches
are fog-beds.

You should cover your reservoirs (an old hat or wig would do

HENRY HALLAM 245

it), and we should invite our Naiads to dance along the green a
good half-mile from our windows.

The English are more zealous of introducing new fruits, shrubs
and plants, than other nations ; you Italians are less so than any
civilised one. Better fruit is eaten in Scotland than in the most
fertile and most cultivated parts of your peninsula. As for flowers,
there is a greater variety in the worst of your fields than in the
best of your gardens. As for shrubs, I have rarely seen a lilac,
a laburnum, a mezereon, in any of them : and yet they flourish
before almost every cottage in our poorest villages. I now come
among the ordinary fruits. The currant, the gooseberry, and the
raspberry — the most wholesome and not the least delicious — were
domesticated among you by the French in some few places :
they begin to degenerate already. I have eaten good apples in
this country, and pears and cherries much better than ours ; the
other kinds of fruitage appeared to me unfit for the table, not to
say uneatable ; and as your gentlemen send the best to market,
whether the produce of their own gardens or presents, I have
probably tasted the most highly-flavored. Although the sister
of Bonaparte introduced peaches, nectarines, and apricots from
France, and planted them at Marlia, near Lucca, no person cares
about taking grafts from them.

We wonder in England, when we hear it related by travellers,
that peaches in Italy are left under the trees for swine; but, when
we ourselves come into the country, our wonder is rather that the
swine do not leave them for animals less nice,

I have now, Signor Marchese, performed the conditions you
imposed on me, to the extent of my observation ; hastily I con-
fess it, and pre-occupied by the interest you excited. — Ibid.
{^Marchese Pallavicini and Walter Lattdor.)

A FAR superior performance is the poem on Gardens by the HENRY
^ Jesuit Rene Rapin. For skill in varying and adorning his HALLAM
subject, for a truly Virgilian spirit in expression, for the exclusion
of feeble, prosaic, or awkward lines, he may perhaps be equal to

246 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

any poet, to Sammarthanus or to Sannazarius himself. His
cadences are generally very gratifying to the ear, and in this
respect he is much above Vida. But his subject or his genius,
has prevented him from rising very high ; he is the poet of
Gardens, and what Gardens are to nature, that is he to mightier
poets. There is also too monotonous a repetition of nearly the
same images, as in his long enumeration of flowers in the first
book ; the descriptions are separately good, and great artifice is
shown in varying them ; but the variety could not be sufficient to
vary the general sameness that belongs to an horticultural cata-
logue. Rapin was a great admirer of box and all topiary works,
or trees cut into artificial forms.

The first book of the Gardens of Rapin is on flowers, the second
on trees, the third on waters, and the fourth on fruits. The poem
is of about 3000 lines, sustained with equable dignity. All kinds
of graceful associations are mingled with the description of his
flowers, in the fanciful style of Ovid and Darwin ; the violet is
lanthis, who lurked in valleys to shun the love of Apollo, and
stained her face with purple to preserve her chastity : the rose is
Rhodanthe, proud of her beauty, and worshipped by the people
in the place of Diana, but changed by the indignant Apollo to a
tree, while the populace, who had adored her, are converted into
her thorns, and her chief lovers into snails and butterflies. A
tendency to conceit is perceived in Rapin, as in the two poets to
whom we have just compared him. Thus, in some pretty lines,
he supposes Nature to have ' tried her prentice hand ' in making
a convolvulus, before she ventured upon a lily.

In Rapin there will generally be remarked a certain redundancy,
which fastidious critics might call tautology of expression. But
this is not uncommon in Virgil. The Georgics have rarely been
more happily imitated, especially in their didactic parts, than by
Rapin in the Gardens ; but he has not the high flights of his
prototype : his digressions are short and belong closely to the
subject ; we have no plague, no civil war, no Eurydice. If he
praises Louis XIV., it is more as the Founder of the Garden of
Versailles, than as the conqueror of Flanders, though his con-

I

LORD CAMPBELL 247

eluding lines emulate with no unworthy spirit, those of the last
Georgic. It may be added, that some French critics have
thought the famous poem of Delille on the same subject inferior
to that of Rapin. — Introductio7t to the Literature of Europe.

While reading for the Bar, acted as dramatic critic to the Morning LORD
Chronicle ; later Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor of England, and p"^^^??^^
biographer of his predecessors in those offices. He declared himself on the v^ 779-1 )•
hustings to be ^ Plain Jock Campbell,^ introduced and carried the ^ Divoj-ce
Act' of 1857, defended L.ord Melbourne and Mrs Norton, and is most often
quoted in the Law Courts as the godfather of the Act for the protection of the
British Workman.

HE house, garden and pleasure-grounds (at Hartrigge, in
Roxburghshire) were in a sad state of neglect, the former
laird having been in embarrassed circumstances. I began with
some zeal to repair and improve. I am a decided lover of
London life, admiring the saying of the old Duke of Queensberry,
who still sticking to his house in Piccadilly in the month of
September, and being asked whether the town was not now
rather empty, replied, 'Yes, but the country is much emptier.'
Nevertheless, I am by no means insensible to the beauties of
nature, and although I could not write a treatise De Utilitate
Stercorandi, and most of the rural occupations enumerated by
Cicero in his De Se?iectute are much above me, I have great
delight in gardening. I have even a Httle farm in my own
hands, and my heart swells within me when my turnips are
praised as the most luxuriant, and my stooks are declared to be
the most crowded to be seen in Teviotdale. — Life of J.ord
Ca77ipbell^ by his daughter^ the Hon. Mrs Hardcastle.

T

--/\/\/\yw—

TT is in society as in nature — not the useful, but the ornamental, SIR

A that strikes the imagination. DAVy'^^'^

The monstrous flower, which produces nothing, arrests the eye; (1778-1829).
the modest and humble germ of the grain, the staff of human

248 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

life, is passed by with neglect : but the one is the fancy of the
florist, and fades, and dies, and disappears for ever ; the other
is propagated from generation to generation, eternal in its use.

To raise a chestnut on the mountain, or a palm in the plain,
which may afford shade, shelter, and fruit for generations yet
unborn, and which, if they have once fixed their roots, require
no culture, is better than to raise annual flowers in a garden,
which must be watered daily, and in which a cold wind may
chill or too ardent a sunshine may dry. — Extracts from his Note-
Books.

— -A/W' —

WASHINGTON HPHE taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in
IRVING 1 what is called landscape-gardening, is unrivalled. They

(17 3-1 59)- 'Sxd.vQ studied nature intently, and discover an exquisite sense of

her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations.

Those charms, which in other countries she lavishes in wild
solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts of domestic life.
They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and spread
them, like witchery, about their rural abodes.
^ Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of
/" English park scenery. Vast lawns that extend like sheets of
vivid green, with here and there clumps of gigantic trees, heaping
up rich piles of foliage ; the solemn pomp of groves and woodland
glades, with the deer trooping in silent herds across them ; the
hare, bounding away to the covert; or the pheasant, suddenly
bursting upon the wing : the brook, taught to wind in natural
meanderings, or expand into a glassy lake : the sequestered pool,
reflecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on its
bosom, and the trout roaming fearlessly about its limpid waters,
while some rustic temple or sylvan statue, grown green and dark
with age, gives an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion.

These are but a few of the features of park scenery ; but what
most delights me is the creative talent with which the English

LEIGH HUNT 249

decorate the unostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest
habitation, the most unpromising and scanty portion of land, in
the hands of an Englishman of taste, becomes a little paradise.

With a nicely discriminating eye, he seizes at once upon its
capabilities, and pictures in his mind the future landscape. The
sterile spot grows into loveliness under his hand ; and yet the
operations of art which produce the effect are scarcely to be
perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees; the
cautious pruning of others ; the nice distribution of flowers and
plants of tender and graceful foliage ; the introduction of a green
slope of velvet turf; the partial opening to a peep of blue
distance, or silver gleam of water : all these are managed with a
delicate tact, a pervading yet quiet assiduity, like the magic
touchings with which a painter finishes up a favourite picture. —
The Sketch Book (' Rural Life in England:)

—'A!\l\t^r—

Describing his two years' imprisonmejit in the Kings Bench for '■libelling'' LEIGH

the Prince Regent as an ' Adonis-o^ Fifty,' writes :— /^J^^T. %

(1754-1559;.

BUT I had another surprise, which was a garden. There was a
little yard outside, railed off from another belonging to the
neighbouring ward. This yard I shut in with green paHngs,
adorned it with a trellis, bordered it with a thick bed of earth
from a nursery, and even contrived to have a grass-plot. The
earth I filled with flowers and young trees. There was an apple-
tree from which we managed to get a pudding the second year.
As to my flowers they were allowed to be perfect. A poet from
Derbyshire (Mr Moore) told me he had seen no such heartsease.
I bought the Farnaso Italiano while in prison,, and used often to
think of a passage in it, while looking at this miniature piece of
horticulture : —

Mio picciol orto,
A me sei vigna, e campo, e silva, e prato.

— Baldi.
My little garden,
To me thou'rt vineyard, field, and wood, and meadow.

250 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Here I wrote and read in fine weather, sometimes under an
awning. In autumn my trellises were hung with scarlet-runners,
which added to the flowery investment. I used to shut my eyes
in my arm-chair, and affect to think myself hundreds of miles off.
But my triumph was in issuing forth of a morning. A wicket
out of the garden led into the large one belonging to the prison.
The latter was only for vegetables, but it contained a cherry-tree,
which I twice saw in blossom. — Lord Byron, and some of his
Contemporaries.

Variations of flowers are like variations in music, often beauti-
ful as such, but almost always inferior to the theme on which
they are founded — the original air. And the rule holds good
in beds of flowers, if they be not very large, or in any other
small assemblage of them. Nay, the largest bed will look well,
if of one beautiful colour ; while the most beautiful varieties may
be inharmoniously mixed up. Contrast is a good thing, but we
should first get a good sense of the thing to be contrasted, and
we shall find this preferable to the contrast, if we are not rich
enough to have both in due measure. We do not in general
love and honour any one single colour enough, and we are
instinctively struck with a conviction to this effect when we
see it abundantly set forth. The other day we saw a little
garden-wall completely covered with nasturtiums, and felt how
much more beautiful it was than if anything had been mixed
with it. For the leaves, and the light and shade, offer variety
enough. The rest is all richness and simplicity united — which
is the triumph of an intense perception. Embower a cottage
thickly and completely with nothing but roses, and nobody
would desire the interference of another plant. — The Seer {'A
Flower for your Window ').

JOHN A ND thus it is, that to us all gardens are beautiful — and all

yi\^^^^ gardeners Adam's favourite sons. An orchard ! FamiHes

( ChriStOpker c c • t^^^y 11

North) of fruit-trees high planted by a river,' and that river the Clyde.

(1785- 1 854). Till we gazed on you, we knew not how dazzling may be the

JOHN WILSON 251

delicate spring, even more than the gorgeous autumn with all
her purple and gold. No frost can wither, no blast can scatter
such a power of blossoming as there brightens the day with
promise that the gladdened heart may not for a moment doubt
will be fulfilled ! And now we walk arm in arm with a venerable
lady along a terrace hung high above a river — but between us
and the brink of the precipice a leafless lawn — not of grass, but
of moss, whereon centuries seem softly embedded — and lo ! we
are looking — to the right down down the glen, and to the left
up up the glen — though to the left it takes a majestic bend, so
that yonder castle, seemingly almost in front of us, stands on one
of its cliffs — now we are looking over the top of holly-hedges
twenty feet high, and over the stately yew-pawns and peacocks —
but hark ! the flesh-and-blood peacock shrieking from the pine !
An old English garden — such as Bacon, or Evelyn or Cowley
would have loved — felicitously placed, with all its solemn calm,
above the reach of the roar of a Scottish Flood !

But we shall not permit the visions of gardens thus to steady
themselves before our imagination ; and, since come they will,
away must they pass like magic shadows on a sheet. There
you keep gliding in hundreds along with your old English halls,
or rectories, or parsonages — some, alas ! looking dilapidated and
forlorn, but few in ruins, and thank heaven ! many of you in the
decay of time renewed by love, and many more still fresh and
strong, though breathing of antiquity, as when there was not
one leaf of all that mass of ivy in which the highest chimneys
are swathed and buried all the gables.— Oh ! stay but for one
moment longer, thou garden of the cliffs ! Gone by ! with all
thine imagery, half-garden and half-forest — reflected in thine own
tarn — and with thee a glimmer of green mountains and of dusky
woods ! Sweet visionary shadow of the poor man's cot and
garden ! A blessing be upon thee, almost on the edge of the
bleak moor !— But villages, and towns, and cities travel by mistily,
carrying before our ken many a green series of little rural or
suburban gardens, all cultivated by owners' or tenants' hands,
and beneath the blossomed fruit-trees, the ground variegated

252

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

with many a flush of flowers. — What pinks ! Aye, we know
them well — the beautiful garden plats on the banks and braes all
round about our native town, pretty Paisley — and in among the
very houses in nooks and corners which the sunshine does not
scorn to visit — and as the glamour goes by, sweet to our soul
is the thought of the Kilbarchan, the loveliest flower in heaven
or on earth — for 'tis the prize pink of our childhood, given us
by our Father's hand, and we see now the spot where the fine-
grained glory grew. — Loudon on the Education of Gardeners.
{Blackwood's Magazine^ i834-)

—^A/\/V^

THOMAS

LOVE

PEACOCK

{1785-1866).

Friend of Shelley ; for thirty-seven years clerk to the East India Company ;
married the ''Beauty of Carnarvonshire,^ and wrote the poem ' Rhododaphne,^
and the satyrical novels ''Headlong Hall,^ ' Nightmare Abbey,' and * Crotchet
Castle. '

A/TR MILESTONE}— This, you perceive, is the natural state

of one part of the grounds. Here is a wood, never yet

touched by the finger of taste ; thick, intricate, gloomy. Here

is a little stream, dashing from stone to stone, and overshadowed

with these untrimmed boughs.

Miss Tenorina. — The sweet romantic spot ! How beautifully
the birds must sing there on a summer evening !

Miss Graziosa. — Dear sister ! How can you endure the horrid
thicket ?

Mr Milestone. — You are right, Miss Graziosa ; your taste is
correct, perfectly ^;'z regie. Now, here is the same place corrected
— trimmed — polished — decorated— adorned. Here sweeps a
plantation, in that beautiful regular curve ; there winds a gravel
walk ; here are parts of the old wood, left in these majestic
circular clumps, disposed at equal distances with wonderful
symmetry; there are some singular shrubs scattered in elegant
profusion ; here a Portugal laurel, there a juniper; here a laurus-
tinus, there a spruce fir ; here a larch, there a lilac : here a

^ Possibly a caricature of ' Capability ' Brown or of Humphry Repton.

LORD BYRON 253

rhododendron, there an arbutus. The stream, you see, is become
a canal : the banks are perfectly smooth and green, sloping to
the water's edge : and there is Lord Littlebrain, rowing in an
elegant boat.

Squire Headlong. — Magical, faith !

Mr Milestone. — Here is another part of the ground in its
natural state. Here is a large rock, with the mountain-ash
rooted in its fissures, over-grown, as you see, with ivy and moss,
and from this part of it bursts a little fountain, that runs bubbling
down its rugged sides.

Miss Tenorijia. — O how beautiful ! How I should love the
melody of that miniature cascade !

Mr Milestone. — Beautiful, Miss Tenorina ! Hideous. Base,
common, and popular. Such a thing as you may see anywhere,
in wild and mountainous districts. Now, observe the meta-
morphosis. Here is the same rock, cut into the shape of a
giant. In one hand he holds a horn, through which the little
fountain is thrown to a prodigious elevation. In the other is
a ponderous stone, so exactly balanced as to be apparently ready
to fall on the head of any person who may happen to be beneath,
and there is Lord Littlebrain walking under it.

Squire Headlong. — Miraculous, by Mahomet ! — Headlong Hall.

J HAVE sent for my daughter from Venice, and I ride daily and LORD
* walk in a garden, under a purple canopy of grapes, and sit by /iXg.j32.x
a fountain, and talk with the gardener of his tools, which seem
greater than Adam's, and with his wife, and with his son's wife,
who is the youngest of the party, and, I think, talks best of the
three. — Letter to Mr Murray. Bologna^ ^^^S- ^4) 1819.

It is worthy of remark that after all this outcry about ' indoor
nature,' and 'artificial images,' Pope was the principal inventor of
that boast of the English, Modern Gardening. He divides this
honour with Milton. . . . His various excellence is really wonder-
ful : architecture, painting, gardening., are all alike subject to his

254 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

genius. Be it remembered, that English gardening is the purposed
perfectioning of niggard Nature^ and that without it England is
but a hedge-and-ditch, double-post-and-rail, Hounslow-heath and
Clapham-common sort of a country, since the principal forests
have been felled. It is in general far from a picturesque country.
— Moore^s ' Notices of the Life of Lord Byro?i,^ 1821.

ARTHUR V^ET how aesthetic is nature ! Every spot that is entirely
fPJ^^^K?^' uncultivated and wild, i.e., left free to himself, however

(17S8-1860). small it may be, if only the hand of man remains absent, it
decorates at once in the most tasteful manner, clothes it with
plants, flowers and shrubs, whose unforced nature, natural grace,
and tasteful grouping, bear witness that they have not grown up
under the rod of correction of the great egoist, but that nature
has here moved freely. Every neglected plant at once becomes
beautiful. Upon this rests the principle of the English garden,
which is as much as possible to conceal art, so that it may appear
as if nature had here moved freely ; for only then is it perfectly
beautiful, i.e., shows in the greatest distinctness the objectivication
of the still unconscious will to live, which here unfolds itself with
the greatest naivete, because the forms are not, as in the animal
world, determined by external ends, but only immediately by the
soil, climate, and a mysterious third influence, on account of which
so many plants which have originally sprung up in the same soil
and climate yet show such different forms and characters.

The great difference between the English, or more correctly
the Chinese, garden and the old French, which is now always
becoming more rare, yet still exists in a few magnificent examples,
ultimately rests upon the fact that the former is planned in an
objective spirit, the latter in a subjective. In the former the will
of nature, as it objectifies itself in tree and shrub, mountain and
waterfall, is brought to the purest possible expression of these its
Ideas, thus of its own inner being. In the French garden, on the
other hand, only the will of the possessor of it is mirrored, which

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE 255

has subdued nature, so that instead of its Ideas it bears as tokens
of its slavery the forms which correspond to that will, and which
are forcibly imposed upon it — clipped hedges, trees cut into all
kinds of forms, straight alleys, aud arched avenues. — Arthur
Schopenhauer^ ' The World as Will and Idea ' {Isolated Remarks
on natural Beauty).

— A/WW—

p'T in Arcadia Ego! 'I, too, have been a gardener' ! Yes, ALPHONSE

I, too, have had as my first cradle a little rustic garden, P?iwr arxtnf
hemmed in by a wall of unmortared stones, upon one of those (1790- 1869).
parched and sombre hills which you see from here to the limits
of your horizon ; there were to be found (for the more than
modest mediocrity of my father's fortune did not allow it) neither
vast tracts, nor majestic shade, nor gushing waters, nor rare
flowers, nor precious fruits, nor costly plants ; a few narrow
alleys strewn with red sand, edged with wild carnations, violets
and primroses, and bordering plots of vegetables for the nurture
of the family. Well,. there, and not in the gardens of Italy or of
the great proprietors of the parks of France, Germany, or England,
I have experienced the first and most poignant delights that it is
given to Nature to inspire in a soul, in a child's or youth's imagina-
tion. I dwell now in gardens vaster and more artistically planted
but I have kept my predilection for that one. I keep it as a
precious possession, in its ancient poverty of shade, water, flowers,
and fruits ; and when I have a few rare hours of liberty and solitude
snatched from public affairs or labours of the mind to give to
vague self-communings, it is to this garden I go to spend them.
Yes, in this poor enclosure, long since deserted, emptied by
death ; in these alleys overrun by weeds, by moss, and the
pinks from the beds under those old trunks drained of sap, but
not of souvenirs — on this unraked sand, my eye still seeks the
footprints of my mother, of my sisters, old friends, old servants
of the family, and I go and sit under the fence opposite the house,
which is buried year by year deeper under the ivy, beneath the

256 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

rays of the setting sun to the hum of insects, the sound of the
Hzards of the old wall, whom I seem to recognise as old garden
guests, and to whom it seems I might gossip about old times. —
An Address to Gardeners.

PERCY W/^ ^^^ ^^^ palace and gardens of Versailles and le Grand
SHELLEY ^^ ^^^^^ Trianon. They surpass Fontainebleau. The

(1 792- 1 822). gardens are full of statues, vases, fountains, and colonnades. In
all that essentially belongs to a garden they are extraordinarily
deficient. The orangery is a stupid piece of expense. There
was one orange-tree not apparently so old, sown in 1442. We
saw also the gardens and the theatre at the Petit Trianon. The
gardens are in the English taste and extremely pretty. — Journal
{Sept. 3, 18 16).

This shore of the Lake (Como) is one continued village, and
the Milanese nobility have their villas here. The union of
culture and the untameable profusion and loveliness of nature
is here so close, that the line where they are divided can hardly
be discovered. But the finest scenery is that of the Villa
Pliniana ; so called from a fountain which ebbs and flows every
three hours, described by the younger Pliny, which is in the
court-yard.

This house, which was once a magnificent palace and is now
half in ruins, we are endeavouring to procure. It is built upon
terraces raised from the bottom of the lake, together with its
garden at the foot of a semi-circular precipice, overshadowed by
profound forests of chestnut.

The scene from the colonnade is the most extraordinary, at
once, and the most lovely that eye ever beheld. On one side
is the mountain, and immediately over you are clusters of cypress-
trees of an astonishing height, which seem to pierce the sky.
Above you, from among the clouds, as it were, descends a water-
fall of immense size, broken by the woody rocks into a thousand

THOMAS ARNOLD 257

channels to the lake. On the other side is seen the blue extent
of the lake and the mountains, speckled with sails and spires.
The apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill-
furnished and antique. The terraces which overlook the lake,
and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as
deserve the epithet of Pythian, are most delightful. — Letters from
Italy. To T. L. Peacock. {Milan, April 20, 18 18.)

In Rome, at least in the first enthusiasm of your recognition of
ancient time, you see nothing of the Italians. The nature of the
city assists the delusion, for its vast and antique walls describe a
circumference of sixteen miles, and thus the population is thinly
scattered over this place, nearly as great as London. Wide, wild
fields are enclosed within it, and there are grassy lanes and copses
winding among the ruins, and a great green hill, lonely and bare,
which overhangs the Tiber. The gardens of the modern palaces
are like wild woods of cedar, and cypress, and pine, and the
neglected walks are overgrown with weeds. The English burying-
place is a green slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of
Cestius, and is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery
I ever beheld. To see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh,
when we first visited it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the
whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees which have
overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in
the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and
young people who were buried there, one might, if one were to
die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human
mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and obhvion. —
Ibid. {Naples, Dec. 22, 18 18.)

— '\/\j\/\/\-—

A S it is, my garden claims a good portion of my spare time in THOMAS
-'*• the middle of the day, when I am not engaged at home or ARNOLD
taking a walk; there is always something to interest me even in ^^

R

258 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

the very sight of the weeds and Htter, for then I think how much
improved the place will be when they are removed ; and it is very
delightful to watch the progress of any work of this sort, and
observe the gradual change from disorder and neglect to neatness
and finish. In the course of the autumn I have done much in
planting and altering, but these labours are now over, and I have
now only to hope for a mild winter as far as the shrubs are con-
cerned, that they may not all be dead when the Spring comes. —
Letter to J. T. Coleridge, Esq.^ Laleham. Nov. 29, 18 19.

— 'A[\f\!\t —

WILLIAM npHE reader need hardly be reminded that in the early periods
y^^^^f^}"^ of man's mental culture, he acquires those opinions on

which he loves to dwell, not by the exercise of observation sub-
ordinate to reason ; but, far more, by his fancy and his emotions,
his love of the marvellous, his hopes and fears. It cannot
surprise us, therefore, that the earliest lore concerning plants,
which we discovered in the records of the past, consists of mytho-
logical legends, marvellous relations, and extraordinary medicinal
qualities. To the lively fancy of the Greeks, the Narcissus, which
bends its head over the stream, was originally a youth who in such
an attitude, became enamoured of his own beauty; the hyacinth, ^
on whose petals the notes of grief were traced (AI, AI,),- recorded
the sorrow of Apollo for the death of his favourite Hyacinthus ;
the beautiful Lotus of India,^ which floats with its splendid flower
on the surface of the water, is the chosen seat of the goddess
Lackshmi, the daughter of Ocean."* In Egypt, too,^ Osiris swam
on a lotus-leaf, and Harpocrates was cradled in one. The lotus-

^ Lilium Martagon.

^ al, aX : the Greek expression of woe.

Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit et AI, AI,

Flor habet inscriptum funestaque litera ducta est. — Ovid.

^ Nelumbium Speciosum.

^ Sprengel, Geschichte der Botanik, i. 27. ^ y^/^^ {^ 28.

HENRI HEINE

259

eaters of Homer lost immediately their love of home. — History
of the Inductive Sciences.

A ND from my heart poured out the feeling of love ; it poured HENRI
-'*' forth with wild longing into the broad night. The flowers HEINE
in the garden beneath my window breathed a stronger perfume.
Perfumes are the feelings of flowers, and as the human heart feels
most powerful emotions in the night, when it believes itself to be
alone and unperceived, so also do the flowers, soft-minded, yet
ashamed, appear to await for concealing darkness, that they may
give themselves wholly up to their feelings, and breathe them out
in sweet odours.^ Pour forth, ye perfumes of my heart, and seek
beyond yon blue mountain for the loved one of my dreams. —
Pictures of Travel: The Hartz Journey. {Translated by Charles
Godfrey Leland.)

When I think of the great Emperor, all in my memory again
becomes summer-green and golden. A long avenue of lindens
rises blooming around, on the leafy twigs sit singing nightingales,
the water-fall rustles, flowers are growing from full round beds,
dreamily nodding their fair heads — I stood amidst them once in
wondrous intimacy, the rouged tulips proud as beggars, con-
descendingly greeted me, the nervous sick lilies nodded with
woeful tenderness, the tipsy red roses nodded at me at first sight
from a distance, the night-violets sighed — with the myrtle and
laurel I was not then acquainted, for they did not entice me with
a shining bloom, but the reseda, with whom I am now on such
bad terms, was my very particular friend. — I am speaking of the
Court garden of Dusseldorf, where I often lay upon the bank and
piously listened there when Monsieur Le Grand told of the
warlike feats of the great Emperor, beating meanwhile the marches
which were drummed during the deeds, so that I saw and heard
all to the life. — Ideas. Book le Grand. (C. G. Leland.)

^ ' Les odeurs sont comme les ames des fleurs : elles peuvent etre sensibles
dans le pays meme des omhxQS.^—f.foubert.

26o THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

AMOS n^HUS we associate gardens and orchards with the perfect

BRONSON 1 condition of mankind. Gardeners ourselves by birthright,
{b. 1799). we also mythologize and plant our Edens in the East of us, like
our ancestors ; the sacredness of earth and heaven still clinging
to the tiller of the ground. Him we esteem the pattern man, the
most favoured of any. His labours have a charming innocency.
They yield the gains of a self-respect denied to other callings.
His is an occupation friendly to every virtue ; the freest of any
from covetousness and debasing cares. It is full of honest profits,
manly labours, and brings and administers all necessaries ; gives
the largest leisure for study and recreation, while it answers most
tenderly the hospitalities of friendship, and the claims of home.
The delight of children, the pastime of woman, the privilege of
the poor man, as it is the ornament of the gentleman, the praise
of the scholar, the security of the citizen, it places man in his
truest relations to the world in which he lives. And he who is
insensible to these pleasures, must lack some chord in the harp
of humanity, worshipping, if he worship, at some strange shrine.

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps ;

Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.

— Tablets. {The Garden, I. Antiquity.)

Orchards are even more personal in their charms than gardens,
as they are more nearly human creations. Ornaments of the
homestead, they subordinate other features of it ; and such is
their sway over the landscape that house and owner appear
accidents without them. So men delight to build in an ancient
orchard, when so fortunate as to possess one, that they may live
in the beauty of its surroundings. Orchards are among the most
coveted possessions ; trees of ancient standing, and vines, being
firm friends and royal neighbors for ever. The profits, too, are
as wonderful as their longevity. And if antiquity can add any
worth to a thing, what possession has a man more noble than
these ? So unlike most others, which are best at first, and grow
worse till worth nothing ; while fruit-trees and vines increase in
worth and goodness for ages. — {The Orchard.)

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 261

' Thick-growing thyme, and roses wet with dew,
Are sacred to the sisterhood divine.'

As orchards to man, so are flowers and herbs to women.
Indeed the garden appears ceHbate, as does the house, without
womanly hands to plant and care for it. Here she is in place —
suggests lovely images of her personal accomplishments, as if
civility were first conceived in such cares, and retired unwillingly,
even to houses and chambers ; something being taken from their
elegancy and her nobleness by an undue absorption of her
thoughts in household affairs.

But there is a fitness in her association with flowers and sweet
herbs, as with social hospitafities, showing her affinities with the
m.agical and medical, as if she were the plant All-Heal, and mother
of comforts and spices. Once the herb-garden was a necessary
part of every homestead ; every country house had one well
stocked, and there was a matron inside skilled in their secret
virtues, having the knowledge of how her

* Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Have their acquaintance there,'

her memory running back to the old country from whence they
first came, and of which they retained the fragrance. Are not
their names refreshing ? with the superstitions concerning the sign
under which they were to be gathered, the quaint spellings ; mint,
roses, fennel, coriander, sweet-cicely, celandine, summer savory,
smellage, rosemary, dill, caraway, lavender, tanzy, thyme, balm,
myrrh ; these and many more, and all good for many an ail ;
sage, too, sovereign sage, best of all — excellent for longevity — of
which to-day's stock seems running low — for

' Why should man die ? So doth the sentence say,
When sage grows in his garden day by day ? '

— {Sweet Herbs.)

— A/WV« —

CVERYTHING has its own perfection, be it higher or lower JOHN
^ in the scale of things ; and the perfection of one is not the CARDINAL
perfection of another. Things animate, inanimate, visible, in- NEWMAN
visible, all are good in their kind, and have a best of themselves, (i 801 -1890).

262 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

which is an object of pursuit. Why do you take such pains with
your garden or your park? You see to your walks, and turf, and
shrubberies ; to your trees and drives ; not as if you meant to
make an orchard of the one, or corn or pasture land of the other,
but because there is a special beauty in all that is goodly in
wood, water, plain, and slope, brought all together by art into
one shape, and grouped into one whole. — The Idea of a University.
{K?tow ledge its own End.)

VICTOR nPHOUGHT is a virgin and fruitful soil, whose products insist

?i8o2 iSS^i ^^ growing in freedom, and, so to speak, by chance,

without arrangement, without being drilled into borders like

the knots in one of Le Notre's classical gardens, or the flowers

of language in a treatise on rhetoric.

Let it not, however, be supposed that this freedom must beget
disorder ; quite the reverse. Let us expand our idea.
N ' Compare for an instant a royal garden of Versailles, well levelled,
^well clipped, well swept, well raked, well gravelled, quite full of
little cascades, little basins, little groves, bronze tritons in cere-
monious dalHance with oceans pumped up at great cost from the
Seine, marble fauns wooing dryads allegorically imprisoned in a
multitude of conical yews, cyHndrical laurels, spherical orange-
trees, elliptical myrtles, and other trees, whose natural form, too
trivial, no doubt, has been gracefully corrected by the gardener's
shears ; compare this garden, so extolled, with a primitive forest
of the New World, with its giant trees, its tall grasses, its deep
vegetation, its thousand birds of a thousand hues, its broad
avenues, where light and shadow play only upon the verdure,
its wild harmonies, its great rivers which drift along islands of
flowers, its stupendous waterfalls, over which hover rainbows ! We
will not say where is the magnificence ? Where is the grandeur ?
Where is the beauty ? But simply : where is the order ? where
is the disorder?

In the one, fountains, imprisoned or diverted from their course,
gush from petrified gods, only to stagnate; trees transplanted

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON 263

from their native soil, torn away from their climate and forced to
submit to the grotesque caprices of the shears and line ; in a
word natural order everywhere contradicted, inverted, upset,
destroyed. In the other, on the contrary, all obeys an unchange-
able law ; in all a God seems to dwell. Drops of water follow
their course and form rivers, which will form seas : seeds choose
their soil and produce a forest. The very bramble is beautiful
there. Again we ask, where is the order ?

Choose, then, between the masterpiece of gardening and the
work of nature; between what is conventionally beautiful, and
what is beautiful without rule ; between an artificial literature,
and an original poesy! — Preface to ' Odes and Ballads^ (1826).

VFOTHING more stamps the true Cockney than his hate for the EDWARD
^^ sound of Bow bells. It is in vain that we squirearchs affect BULWER,
to sneer at the rural tastes of the cit in his rood of ground by the lytTON^
high-road to Hampstead ; the aquarium stored with minnows {i8o3-i873)«
and tittle-bats ; the rock work of vitrified clinkers, rich with ferns
borne from Wales and the Highlands. His taste is not without
knowledge. He may tell us secrets in horticulture that would
startle our Scotch gardener; and if ever he be rich and bold
enough to have a farm, the chances are that he will teach more
than he learns from the knowing ones who bet five to one on
his ruin. And when these fameless students of Nature ramble
forth from the suburb, and get for a while to the real heart of the
country — when, on rare summer holidays they recline, in remoto
grami?te, — they need no choice Falernian, no unguents and brief-

^ 'This place of Lord Lytton's (Knebworth) stands well on a hill in the
pretty part of Hertfordshire. It is a house originally of Henry VII. 's reign,
and has been elaborately restored. The grounds, too, are very elaborate, and
full of statues, kiosks, and knick-knacks of every kind. . . . But, like Lord
Lytton himself, the place is a strange mixture of what is really romantic and
interesting with what is tawdry, and gimcracky ; and one is constantly coming
upon stucco for stone, and bits in the taste of a second-rate Vauxhall stuck
down in a beautiful recess of garden.' — Matthew Arnold: Letter to his
Mother, May 12, 1869.

264 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

lived roses for that interval of full beatitude which the poet invites
his friend to snatch from reprieving fates. Their delight proves
the truth of my favourite aphorism — ' that our happiest moments
are those of which the memories are the most innocent.' —
Caxtoniana.

DOUGLAS A SMx^LL quiet nook of a place nestled among trees, and carpeted
(iSo^^S"?) ^^^^ green around. And there a brook should murmur

with a voice of out-door happiness ; and a little garden brim-
ming over with flowers should mark the days and weeks and
months, with bud and blossom ; and the worst injuries of time
be fallen leaves. And then, health in balm should come about
my path and my mind be as a part of every fragrant thing that
shone and grew around me.

A garden is a beautiful book, writ by the finger of God ; every
flower and every leaf is a letter. You have only to learn them
— and he is a poor dunce that cannot, if he will, do that — to
learn them and join them, and then to go on reading and
reading, and you will find yourself carried away from the earth
to the skies by the beautiful story you are going through. You
do not know what beautiful thoughts — for they are nothing short
— grow out of the ground, and seem to talk to a man. And then
there are some flowers, they always seem to me like over-dutiful
children : tend them ever so little, and they come up and flourish,
and show, as I may say, their bright and happy faces to you.

— WWv—

GEORGE T E nouveau jardin vallonne et seme de corbeilles de fleurs
a8o^-?876) exotiques, c'est toujours, en somme, le petit Trianon de la

decadence classique et le jardin anglais du commencement de ce
siecle, perfectionnes en ce sens qu'on en a multiplie les mouve-
ments et les accidents afin de reussir a realiser I'aspect du
paysage naturel dans un espace hmite. Rien de moins justifie,
selon nous, que ce titre de jardin paysager dont s'empare

BENJAMIN DISRAELI 26$

aujourd'hui tout bourgeois dans sa ville de province. Meme,
dans les espaces plus vastes que Paris consacre a cette fiction,
n'esperez pas trouver le charme de la nature. Le plus petit
recoin des roches de Fontainebleau ou des collines boisees de
I'Auvergne, la plus mince cascatelle de Gargilesse, le plus ignore
des meandres de I'Indre ont une autre tournure, une autre saveur,
une autre puissance de penetration que les plus somptueuses
compositions de nos paysagistes de Paris ! si vous voulez voir le
jardin, de la creation, n'allez pas au bout du monde. II y en a
dix mille en France dans des endroits ou personne n'a affaire ou
dont personne ne s'avise. Cherchez, vous trouverez !

Mais si vous voulez voir le jardin decoratif ^^diX excellence, vous
I'aurez a Paris, et disons bien vite que I'invention en est ravissante.
C'est du decor, pas autre chose, prenez-en votre parti, mais du
decor adorable et merveilleux. La science et le goiit s'y sont
donne la main ; inclinez-vous, c'est un jeune menage. — La Reverie
a Paris {Paris Guide. 1867.)^

— ^/\/\/\/V—

A RMINE PLACE, before Sir Ferdinand, unfortunately for his BENJAMIN
-'*■ descendants, determined in the eighteenth century on build- DISRAELI
ing a feudal castle, had been situate in famous pleasure-grounds,
which extended at the back of the mansion over a space of some
hundred acres. The grounds in the immediate vicinity of the
buildings had of course suffered severely, but the far greater
portion had only been neglected; and there were some indeed
who deemed, as they wandered through the arbour-walks of this
enchanting wilderness, that its beauty had been enhanced even
by this very neglect. It seemed like a forest in a beautiful
romance ; a green and bowery wilderness where Boccacio would
have loved to woo, and Watteau to paint. So artfully had the
walks been planned that they seemed interminable ; nor was

1 Never before or since has such a constellation of the genius of a whole
nation gathered together to produce such a Guide-book, as Paris out-did
herself by publishing in 1867. It is perhaps the highest achievement of the
Third Empire.

266 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

there a single point in the whole pleasaunce, where the keenest
eye could have detected a limit. Sometimes you wandered in
those arched and winding walks dear to pensive spirits : some-
times you emerged on a plot of turf blazing in the sunshine, a
small and bright savannah, and gazed with wonder on the group
of black and mighty cedars that rose from its centre, with their
sharp and spreading foliage. The beautiful and the vast blended
together ; and the moment after you had beheld with delight a
bed of geraniums or of myrtles, you found yourself in an amphi-
theatre of Italian pines. A strange exotic perfume filled the air ;
you trod on the flowers of other lands ; and shrubs and plants,
that usually are only trusted from their conservatories, like
Sultanas from their jalousies, to sniff the air and recall their
bloom, here learning from hardship the philosophy of endur-
ance, had struggled successfully even against northern winters, and
wantoned now in native and unpruned luxuriance. Sir Ferdinand,
when he resided at Armine, was accustomed to fill these pleasure-
grounds with macaws, and other birds of gorgeous plumage ; but
these had fled away with their master, all but some swans, which
still floated on the surface of a lake which marked the centre of
this paradise. — Henrietta Temple.

NATHANIEL HPHESE gardens of New College are indescribably beautiful, —
r 1807186 ) ^■^^^ gardens in our American sense, but lawns of the richest

green and softest velvet grass, shadowed over by ancient trees,
that have lived a quiet life here for centuries, and have been
nursed and tended with such care, and so sheltered from rude
winds, that certainly they must have been the happiest of all
trees. Such a sweet, quiet, sacred, stately seclusion — so age-long
as this has been, and, I hope, will continue to be — cannot exist
anywhere else.

We concluded the rambles of the day by visiting the gardens
of St John's College \ and I desire, if possible, to say even more

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 267

in admiration of them than of those of New College, — such
beautiful lawns with tall ancient trees, and heavy clouds of
foliage, and sunny glimpses through archways of leafy branches,
where, to-day, we could see parties of girls, making cheerful
contrast with the sombre walls and solemn shade. The world,
surely, has not another place like Oxford ; it is a despair to see
such a place, and ever to leave it, for it would take a lifetime,
and more than one, to comprehend and enjoy it satisfactorily. —
English Note-Books. {Oxford^

Positively the garden of Eden cannot have been more beautiful
than this private garden of Blenheim. It contains three hundred
acres, and by the artful circumlocution of the paths, and the
undulations, and the skilfully interposed clumps of trees, is made
to appear limitless. The sylvan delights of a whole country are
compressed into this space, as whole fields of Persian roses go to
the concoction of an ounce of precious attar. The world within
that garden fence is not the same weary and dusty world with
which we outside mortals are conversant ; it is a finer, lovelier,
more harmonious Nature ; and the Great Mother lends herself
kindly to the gardener's will, knowing that he will make evident
the half-obliterated traits of her pristine and ideal beauty, and
allow her to take all the credit and praise to herself. I doubt
whether there is ever any winter within that precinct, — any
clouds, except the fleecy ones of summer. The sunshine that I
saw there rests upon my recollection of it as if it were eternal.
The lawns and glades are like the memory of places where one
has wandered when first in love. — Our Old Home, {Near Oxford.)

My garden, that skirted the avenue of the Manse, was of pre-
cisely the right extent. An hour or two of morning labour was
all that it required. But I used to visit and revisit it a dozen
times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable
progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of, who
had never taken part in the process of creation.

It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to

ALPHONSE
KARR

(1 808- 1 890).

268 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row of early
peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.
Later in the season the humming-birds were attracted by the
blossoms of a peculiar variety of bean ; and they were a joy to me,
those little spiritual visitants, for deigning to sip airy food out of
my nectar-cups. Multitudes of bees used to bury themselves in
the yellow blossoms of the summer-squashes. This, too, was a
deep satisfaction ; although, when they had laden themselves with
sweets, they flew away to some unknown hive, which would give
back nothing in requital of what my garden had contributed.
But I was glad thus to fling a benefaction upon the passing breeze
with the certainty that somebody must profit by it^ and that there
would be a little more honey in the world to allay the sourness
and bitterness which mankind is always complaining of. Yes,
indeed ; my life was the sweeter for that honey. — The Old Manse}

/^NE of the chief charms I find in a garden, is to say to myself:
^-^ ' I am shut up, I and my imagination, my body and spirit,
in a place filled with flowers, that is to say, with rich colours,
dulcet perfumes, and songs of birds (enchanting harmony, which
nothing can interrupt), where no one will come, except a friend ;
but neither mar-joys, the evil-minded, nor enemies can find
entrance, any more than my spirit can issue forth to visit thera.
I keep them imprisoned outside as I keep myself imprisoned
within ; I create for myself a part of the earth, of the sky, of the
grass, and of the flowers, but that part is my own.' To do this, a
garden must not be too large ; you must feel yourself enclosed
in it.

It may be possible not to see the walls, but you must not forget
them. It seems as though Nature and Providence have intended
man to surround himself with walls, by creating so many beautiful
plants, which hide and decorate them wondrously, and which are

^ The Old Manse was Emerson's residence on the Concord, when he wrote
' Nature.'

ALPHONSE KARR 269

nowhere so luxuriant, so beautiful, and so happy, as when beam-
ing upon and spreading over a wall. — Letters ivritten froi7i my
Garden.

At the bottom of my garden, the vine stretches in long piazzas,
through whose arcades are seen trees of every kind, and foliage
of every hue.

On this side is an azeroller, which in the Fall is hung with
little scarlet berries of the richest lustre. I have given several
cuttings from it : far from obtaining pleasure from the privation
of others, I strive to scatter and make common and vulgar the
trees and plants which I prefer ; it is to me, as to those who
really love flowers for their brilliance, their grace, and their
perfume, a multiplication of pleasure, and of the chance of
seeing them. They who, on the contrary, are misers of their
plants, and who only value them in so far as they are satisfied
no one else possesses them, do not love flowers ; and rest
assured that either accident or poverty has driven them to
coUect flowers, instead of collecting pictures, gems, or medals,
or in a word any other thing which might serve as a pretext
for all the joys of possession, heightened by their being owned
by no one else.

I have carried the vulgarization of beautiful flowers a step
further.

I go for walks round about the place where I live into the
wildest and most deserted nooks.

There, after having properly prepared a few inches of ground,
I scatter the seeds of my richest plants, which re-sow themselves,
are perpetuated, and multiply. Already, whilst the fields round
about have only the scarlet wild poppy, it must surprise passers-
by to see in certain wild ingles of our little country the finest
double poppies, white, rose, red, edged with white, etc ; and
the most splendid garden poppies, violet, white, lilac, scarlet,
and white tipped with scarlet, etc. ; at the foot of a lonely tree,
instead of the bindweed with its white field-flowers, are to be
found here and there patches of convolvulus major, blue, violet,
pink, white streaked with red and violet, etc.

270 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Then I enjoy all alone and in advance the pleasures of
surprise, which the solitary dreamer will feel, who chances
in his walks upon these beautiful flowers or luscious fruits.

That will one day afford some learned botanist, who will go
and herborize thereabouts a hundred years hence, long after my
death, opportunity to publish a ridiculous system. All these
beautiful flowers will have grown common in the country, and
will give it a quite unique look, and maybe chance and wind will
cast some of their seeds amid the grass which hides my lonely
grave. Vale. — A Voyage round my Garden,

OLIVER T KNOW this, that the way Mother Earth treats a boy shapes
Hm^l^F^^ °^^ ^ ^^^^ °^ natural theology for him. I fell into
(1809-1894). Manichean ways of thinking from the teaching of my garden
experiences. Like other boys in the country, I had my patch
of ground, to which, in the spring-time, I intrusted the seeds
furnished me, with a confident trust in their resurrection and
glorification in the better world of summer.

But I soon found that my lines had fallen in a place where a
vegetable growth had to run the gauntlet of as many foes and
trials as a Christian pilgrim. Flowers would not blow ; daffodils
perished like criminals in their condemned cups, without their
petals ever seeing daylight ; roses were disfigured with monstrous
protrusions through their very centres, — something that looked
like a second bud pushing through the middle of the corolla;
lettuces and cabbages would not head ; radishes knotted them-
selves until they looked like centenarian's fingers \ and on every
stem, on every leaf, and both sides of it, and at the root of every-
thing that grew, was a professional specialist in the shape of a
gnat, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose business it was
to devour that particular part, and help murder the whole attempt
at vegetation. Such experiences must influence a child born to
them. A sandy soil, where nothing flourishes but weeds and
evil beasts of small dimensions, must breed different qualities

EDGAR ALLAN POE

271

in its human offspring from one of those fat and fertile spots
which the wit whom I have once before quoted described so
happily, that, if I quoted the passage, its brilliancy would spoil
one of my pages, as a diamond breastpin sometimes kills the
social effect of the wearer, who might have passed for a gentle-
man without it. — The Poet at tJie Breakfast Table.

— fj\f\j\i^ —

VrO definition has spoken of the landscape-gardener as of the EDGAR
■•■^ poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the dqe^^
landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent (1811-1849).
of opportunities.

Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display of imagination
in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty ; the elements
to enter into combination being, by a vast superiority, the most
glorious which the earth could afford. In the multiform and
multicolour of the flowers and the trees, he recognised the most
direct and energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And
in the direction or concentration of this effort — or, more properly,
in its adaptation to the eyes, which were to behold it on earth —
he perceived that he should be employing the best means —
labouring to the greatest advantage — in the fulfilment, not only
of his own destiny as poet, but of the august purposes for which
the Deity had implanted the poetic sentiment in man. — The
Z)o??iain of Arriheim.

-~i\t\i\i\f —

I A Chenaie is a sort of oasis in the midst of the steppes of MAURICE
^ Brittany. In front of the chateau stretches a very large phfrtnt
garden cut in two by a terrace with a lime avenue, at the end of (iSii-1839).
which is a tiny chapel. I am extremely fond of this little oratory,
where one breathes a two-fold peace, — the peace of solitude and
the peace of the Lord. When Spring comes we shall walk to
prayers between two borders of flowers. On the east side, and
only a few yards from the chateau, sleeps a small mere between

2 72 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

two woods, where the birds in warm weather sing all day long ;
and then, — right, left, on all sides, — woods, woods, everywhere
woods. — Letter to M. de Bay?ie, Christmas Day, 1832.

One can actually see the progress of the green ; it has made a

start from the garden to the shrubberies, it is getting the upper

hand all along the mere ; it leaps, one may say, from tree to tree,

from thicket to thicket, in the fields and on the hill-sides ; and I

can see it already arrived at the forest hedge and beginning to

spread itself over the broad back of the forest. — Letters {traiislated

by Matthew Arnold.^

— Af\y\jV' —

THEOPHILE QOME time ago we dreamed to plan a garden wherein Nature
fifiVTsyf )^ should have full liberty. Never should the bill-hook cut

one branch in it, nor shears trim a hedge or a border. The twigs
would have been quite free to interlace themselves according to
their own fancy : the plants, to creep and climb ; the mosses, to
cover with their patches the trunks of trees ; the lichens, to make
the statues white with their grey bands ; the brambles, to bar the
walks and arrest you with their thorns ; the wild poppy, to raise
its red spark near the untrained rose ; the ivy, to shoot its roving
wreaths, and hang over the balustrades of terraces. Full license
would have been granted to the nettle, the thistle, the celandine,
the cleavers, which cling to you like a burr ; to the burdock, the
nightshade, the quitch — to all the gipsy horde of undisciplined
plants — to grow, multiply, invade, obliterate every trace of cultiva-
tion, and to turn the flower-garden into a miniature forest.

This forsaken paradise, we should, besides, have liked to see
surrounded with walls green with moss, clothed with mural plants,
and crowned with stocks, iris, gilliflowers, and seagreens, in place
of the broken glass, wherewith it is usual to deter the intruding
urchins ; and over the rain-washed gate, bare of paint, and having
no trace of that green colour beloved by Rousseau, we would
have written this inscription in black letters, stone-like in shape,
and threatening of aspect : ' Gardeners are prohibited from
entering here.' — Nature at Home.

THEOPHILE GAUTIER 273

Gardens were then (under Louis XIV.) built as much as planted,
and the trees had to approximate to architectural forms. The
hedges were folded back at right angles like the leaves of a screen
of verdure. The yews were sharpened to a pyramid, or rounded to
a ball ; deft shears outlined arches in clumps of foliage, and what
we now know as the ' picturesque,' was sedulously avoided.
This taste, improperly called the French taste, reached us from
Italy, where the villas and vines of the popes and Roman princes
set the example of this mixture of terraces, fabrics, statues, vases,
green trees and spouting waters.

We ourselves, in the day of Romanticism, had more or less
paraphrased the ingenious antithesis, which Victor Hugo,^ in the
preface of Cro?Jiwell, made between a virgin forest of America
and the gardens of Versailles, and we have jested, hke others,
about 'the little yews in onion-rows.'^

We were wrong ; this garden was quite the garden of this
chateau, and there was a marvellous harmony in this collec-
tion of regular forms, in which the life of the period could
develop at ease its majestic and rather sluggish evolutions. The
result is an impression of grandeur, symmetry and beauty, which
no one can resist. Versailles ever remains unrivalled in the
world : it is the supreme formula of a complete art, and the
expression, at its highest power, of a civilisation arrived at its
complete expansion.

When, under Louis XVI., the garden was replanted, taste
had changed. The Citizen Rousseau of Geneva had discovered
Nature; English ideas invaded the Continent, fashion was with
' the landscape gardeners,' that is to say, with hilly sites, clumps

^ See p. 262.

^ O dieux ! O bergers ! O rocailles !
Vieux Satyres, Termes grognons,

Vieux petits ifs en rang d'oignons,
O bassins, quinconces, charmilles,

Boulingrins plains de majeste,
Ou, les dimanches, tout I'ete

Baillent tant d'honnetes families.

Alfred de Mitsset.
S

274 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

of untrimmed trees, sinuous alleys, green lawns, sheets of water
crossed by rustic bridges, sham grottoes, artificial ruins, cottages
containing automata performing country labours. By admiring
such things, one showed that one had a soul of sensibility^
a great pretension of the period, and the thought arose of re-
modelling the garden in the modern style . . . this transformation
was effected by the plans of Hubert Robert, the designer in
fashion, the painter of ruins, the ' Romantique ' of the day, an
artist endowed with a decorative and picturesque feeling still
appreciated in our day, whose pictures and sketches full of
intelhgence are still collected by amateurs. — Tableaux de Siege
(Le Versailles de Louis XIV.)}

— A/WV- —

ALEXANDER \\JYLV> as the nighest woodland of a deserted home in
KINGLAKE England, but without its sweet sadness, is the sumptu-

(1811-1891). ous Garden of Damascus. Forest trees tall and stately enough,

if you could see their lofty crests, yet lead a bustling life of it
below, with their branches struggling against strong numbers of
bushes and wilful shrubs. The shade upon the earth is black as
night. High, high above your head, and on every side all down
to the ground, the thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the
interlacing boughs that droop with the weight of roses, and load
the slow air with their damask breath. The rose-trees which I
saw were all of the kind we call damask — they grow to an
immense height and size. There are no other flowers. Here
and there are patches of ground made clear from the cover,
and these are either carelessly planted with some common and
useful vegetable, or else are left free to the wayward ways of
nature, and bear rank weeds, moist-looking and cool to your eyes,
and freshening the sense with their earthy and bitter fragrance.
There is a lane opened through the thicket, so broad in some
places that you can pass along side by side — in some so narrow
(the shrubs are for ever encroaching) that you ought, if you can,
^ See Account of Versailles in Appendix.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 275

to go on the first and hold back the bough of the rose-tree. And
through this wilderness there tumbles a loud rushing stream, which
is halted at last in the lowest corner of the garden, and then tossed
up in the fountain by the side of the simple alcove. This is all.
Never for an instant will the people of Damascus attempt to
separate the idea of bliss from these wild gardens and rushing
waters. — Eothen.

—A/\/\/V^—

IV/JEANWHILE my beans, the length of whose rows, added HENRY
^^^ together, was seven miles already planted, were i'^^P^tient 5^^j^ - ^
to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the (1817-1S62).
latest were in the ground ; indeed, they were not easily to be put
off. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting,
this small Herculean labour, I knew not. I came to love my
rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They
attached me to the Earth, and so I got strength like Antoeus.
But why should I raise them ? Only Heaven knows. This was
my curious labour all summer, — to make this portion of the
Earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries,
johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant
flowers, produce instead this pulse ? What shall I learn of beans
or beans of me? I cherish them, I owe them, early and late I
have an eye to them, and this is my day's work. It is a fine
broad leaf to look on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains,
which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself,
which for the most part is lean and effete. My enemies are
worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks. The last have
nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. But what right had I
to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb-
garden. — Walden.

—'AJ\f\t^—

JE me suis toujours plu a chercher dans la nature exterieure et CHARLES
visible des exemples et des metaphores qui me servissent a ^^^^3h^
, . , . • , • • 1, J • • , (1821-1867).

caracteriser les jouissances et les impressions d un ordre spirituel.

Je reve a ce que me faisait eprouver la poesie de Madame Valmore

276

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

quand je la parcourus avec ces yeux de I'adolescence qui sont,
chez les hommes nerveux, a la fois si ardents et si clairvoyants.
Cette poesie m'apparait comme un jardin : mais ce n'est pas la
solennite grandiose de Versailles ; ce n'est pas non plus le pittor-
esque vaste et theatral de la savante Italic qui connait si bien I'art
d^edtfier des ja7'dins {cedificat hortos) ; pas meme, non pas meme
la Vallee des Flutes ou le Te?iare de notre vieux Jean Paul.
C'est un simple jardin anglais, romantique et romanesque. Des
massifs de fleurs y representent les abondants expressions du
sentiment. Des etangs, limpides et immobiles, qui refiechissent
toutes choses s'appuyant a I'envers sur la voute renversee des
cieux, figurent la profonde resignation toute parsemee de souvenirs.
Rien ne manque a ce charmant jardin d'un autre age : ni quelques
ruines gothiques se cachant dans un lieu agreste, ni le mausolee
inconnu qui, au detour d'une allee, surprend notre ame et lui
commande de penser a I'eternite. Des allees sinueuses et
ombragees aboutissent a des horizons subits. Ainsi la pensee du
poete, apres avoir suivi de capricieux meandres, debouche sur les
vastes perspectives du passe ou de I'avenir ; mais ces ciels sont
trop vastes pour etre generalement purs, et la temperature du
climat trop chaude pour n'y pas amasser des orages. Le pro-
meneur, en contemplant ces etendues voilees de deuil, sent
monter a ses yeux les pleurs de I'hysterie, hysterical tears. Les
fleurs se penchent vaincues, et les oiseaux ne parlent qu' a voix
basse. Apres un eclair precurseur, un coup de tonnerre a retenti :
c'est I'explosion lyrique ; enfin un deluge inevitable de larmes rend
a toutes ces choses, prostrees, souffrantes et decouragees la
fraicheur et la solidite d'une nouvelle jeunesse ! — Literary Notice
of Madame Desbordes-Vabnore {Les Po'etes Fra?icais).

J•^J\tV^r—

HENRI npHIS morning the air was calm, the sky slightly veiled. I

______ ■■• wpnt nnt- intn thp aarHpn fn caa wl-iof nrr^rrvAcc tViA en

AMIEL

(1821-1881).

went out into the garden to see what progress the spring
was making. I strolled from the irises to the Hlacs, round
the flower-beds and in the shrubberies. Delightful surprise !

EDMOND DE GONCOURT i.^^

at the corner of the walk, half hidden under a thick clump of
shrubs, a small-leaved chorchorus had flowered during the night.
Gay and fresh as a bunch of bridal flowers, the little shrub glittered
before me in all the attraction of its opening beauty. What spring-
like innocence, what soft and modest loveliness there was in
these white corollas, opening gently to the sun, like thoughts
which smile upon us at waking, and perched upon their young
leaves of virginal green like bees upon the wing ! Mother of
marvels, mysterious and tender Nature, why do we not live more
in thee ? . . . A modest garden and a country rectory, the narrow
horizon of a garret, contain for those who know how to look and
to wait, more instruction than a library. — 2^th April 1852 {Lancy).

2,1st October 1852 {Lancy). Walked for half an hour in the
garden. A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of
autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and
mists hovered about the distant mountains, — a melancholy nature.
The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth
under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds
were chasing each other through the shrubberies, and playing
games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys.
Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever
penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there
is in each detail. — Journal Intime {translated by Mrs Humphry
Ward).

— na/W'—

n^HE garden, which I had bought with my house, although planted EDMOND

*- with common, vulgar, philistine shrubs, still possessed one goncourT
beauty. At the bottom of it stood a superb group of huge trees (1822-1896).
of the ancient Montmorency Park, all draped in ivy and unfolding
over the head of a low rock one of those great fans of verdure,
with which Watteau shades the repose and siesta of his courtly
groups. This I had to preserve, while uprooting all the rest, and
to set this bouquet of great trees in a centre of hardy evergreen

278 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

shrubs, which under winter sunlight simulate a summer garden ; and
these shrubs I had to choose from rare sources, for the rare in
everything, whatever may be said, is almost always the beautiful.
. . . There was something further to do in the state of research
and actual progress of horticulture, and in the rehandling and artist
recolouring of natural verdure ; it was the duty of a coloiirist man-
of-letters to make a painter's garden, and to set before his eyes on
a large scale a palette of greens shading from the deep greens to
the tender ones, through the range of the blue-greens of the Juniper
tree, the golden-brown greens of the Cryptomerias, and all the
varied blendings of hue of Hollies, Spindle trees and Aucubas,
which, by the pallor of their leaves, give an illusion of flowers in
their absence. Let us confess that in this style of gardening, which
has a touch of bric-a-brac about it, the bush elegantly branched,
charmingly trained, coquettishly variegated, becomes a kind of art-
object, which we see again with closed eyes, dream of in bed, and
imagine ourselves seeking in the private garden of a great horti-
culturist, just as we might pursue a rarity hidden upon the shelf of
the private collection of a great curio-hunter. . . .

Here is June with the flowering of the rhododendrons, and the
crumpling of their pink and mauve tulle, which calls up visions of
ball dresses ; and with their lovely tawny and black spots like
drones cradled in the core of the flower ; and here with the flower-
ing of the rhododendrons come the blossoms of the climbing
roses which mount into the great trees and are lost in the ivy.
Trails, wreaths, cascades, arranged as deftly as those of the old
Venetian masters around the curves of their ewers ; cascades of
white, yellow, and pink roses, which, with the sun enclosed in
their translucent petals, illumine the dark verdure. And, at dusk,
days which fade to the scent of pepper blent with the savours of
Eastern spices, to the slowly modulated songs of the weary birds,
and where, upon a sunless day, a lingering ray of the vanished sun
gilds even at eight o'clock the green of the lawn. It is the
moment beneath the twilight for the sport of young and imprudent
blackbirds still unfledged, watched over by an old, grave, and very
ebon blackbird. And amid the sinking into sleep of Colour, when

ERNEST RENAN

279

the white of a great-headed viburnum, the yellow of a bunch of
iris, the cerise of a broughton rhododendron, are no more than
phantoms of white, yellow, and cerise, the zigzags of little blurred
bats no longer seem like flights, but the shades of flights. At last,
in the mist of things in the darkened garden, nothing but the
almost spectral pallor of a streaked negundo, silvery pink in foliage
beneath the rising moon, calls to mind an enchanted midnight
tree, whither, in a shroud of white satin, a slender wraith of old
Italian Comedy comes to cut ghostly capers. — La Maison d'un
Artiste.'^

— A/\/\A^ —

A

ND how preferable for such historical work would be the ERNEST
peaceful conditions presented by provincial life, to the ^?^^^
narrow, troubled, instable, precarious conditions of life in Paris.
One of the necessities of erudition is a spacious and pleasant in-
stallation, where there is no fear of being either unsettled or
disturbed. . . . The love of truth, moreover, makes us solitary :
the provinces possess sohtude, repose, liberty.

I will add to this the pleasure and the smile of Nature.
These austere labours require calm and joy of mind, leisure,
complete self-possession. A pretty house in the suburb of a
large town ; a long work-room furnished with books, the exterior
tapestried with Bengal roses ; a garden with straight alleys, where
we can distract ourselves a moment with our flowers from the
conversation of our books : nothing of all this is useless for that
health of the soul necessary to the works of the mind. — Feuilles
Detachees (' Peut on travailler en Province .? ')

W^

^E venture to think that artistic and scientific gardening MORTIMER
might become an admirable profession for gentlemen COLLINS
not ambitious of making great fortunes. No occupation is
healthier; none is fuller of variety and interest. Every day in

^ No. 53 Boulevard Montmorency, Auteil. For a translation of the whole
article, see ' The Garden,' May 28, 1898.

28o THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

garden and greenhouse brings a new surprise — a new delight;
and the man who becomes a thorough gardener will often recall
Cowley's famous line :

' God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain.'

The leaves of autumn are flying before rain and wind. They
drive athwart my lawn, a versi-coloured shower. The copper-
beech is burning its deepest russet, the Canadian oak is a
tangled web of shivering saffron ; soon the turf will be clear
swept, to the weary gardener's high delight, and the eye's chief
solace will be the glossy green of laurel and holly. — Thoughts in
my Garden.

— '\f\/\/^ —

T. JAMES ?w C^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ assumptions of these coxcombical times, that
'( ^'t^ ^arthustan ' V^ which arrogates the pre-eminence in the true science of
^ ' gardening is the vainest. True, our conservatories are full of the

choicest plants from every chme; we ripen the grape and the
pine-apple with an art unknown before, and even the mango, the
mangosteen, and the guava are made to yield their matured fruits ;
but the real beauty and poetry of a garden are lost in our efforts
after rarity, and strangeness, and variety. To be the possessor
of a unique pansy, the introducer of a new specimen of the
Orchidacese, or the cultivator of 500 choice varieties of the dahlia,
is now the only claim to gardening celebrity and Horticultural
medals.

And then our lot has fallen in the evil days of system. We are
proud of our natural or English style ; and scores of unmeaning
flower-beds, disfiguring the lawn in the shapes of kidneys, and
tadpoles and sausages, and leeches, and commas, are the result.
Landscape-gardening has encroached too much upon gardening
proper ; and this has had the same effect upon our gardens that
horticultural societies have had on our fruits, — to make us enter-
tain the vulgar notion that size is virtue. ... If we review the
various styles that have prevailed in England, from the knotted

T. JAMES 281

gardens of Elizabeth, the pleach-work and intricate flower-borders
of James I., the painted Dutch statues and canals of William and
Mary, the winding gravel walks, and lake-making of Brown, to
poor Shenstone's sentimental farm and the landscape fashion of
the present day, — we shall have little reason to pride ourselves on
the advance which national taste has made upon the earliest
efforts in this department.

If I am to have a system at all, give me the good old system
of terraces and angled walks, and dipt yew-hedges, against whose
dark and rich verdure the bright old-fashioned flowers glittered in
the sun.

I love the topiary art, with its trimness and primness, and its
open avowal of its artificial character. It repudiates at the first
glance the skulking and cowardly ' celare artein ' principle, and,
in its vegetable sculpture, is the properest transition from the
architecture of the house to the natural beauties of the grove and
paddock.

Who, to whom the elegance, and gentlemanliness, and poetry —
the Boccaccio-spirit — of a scene of Watteau is familiar, does not
regret the devastation made by tasty innovators upon the grounds
laid out in the times of the Jameses and Charleses ? As for old
Noll, I am certain, though I have not a jot of evidence, that he
cared no more for a garden than for an anthem ; he would as lief
have sacrificed the verdant sculpture of a yew-peacock as the
time-honoured tracery of a cathedral shrine ; and his crop-eared
soldiery would have had as great satisfaction in bivouacking in
the parterres of a ' royal pleasaunce ' as in the presence-chamber
of a royal palace. It were a sorrow beyond tears to dwell on the
destruction of garden-stuff in those king-killing times. Thousands,
doubtless, of broad-paced terraces and trim vegetable conceits
sunk in the same ruin with their mansions and their masters : and
alas ! modern taste has followed in the footsteps of ancient
fanaticism. How many old associations have been rooted up
with the knotted stumps of yew and hornbeam ! And Oxford, too,
in the van of reform ! Beautiful as are St John's Gardens, who
would not exchange them for the very walks and alleys along

282 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

which Laud, in all the pardonable pride of collegiate lionizing,
conducted his illustrious guests, Charies and Henrietta? Who
does not grieve that we must now inquire in vain for the bowling-
green in Christ Church, where Cranmer solaced the weariness of
his last confinement ? And who lately, in reading Scott's life, but
must have mourned in sympathy with the poet over the destruction
of ' the huge hill of leaves,' and the yew and hornbeam hedges of
the ' Garden ' at Kelso. . . .

My garden should lie to the south of the house ; the ground
gradually sloping for some short way till it falls abruptly into the
dark and tangled shrubberies that all but hide the winding brook
below. A broad terrace, half as wide, at least, as the house is
high, should run along the whole southern length of the building,
extending to the western side also, whence, over the distant
country, I may catch the last red light of the setting sun. I
must have some musk and noisette roses, and jasmine, to run
up the mullions of my oriel window, and honeysuckles and
clematis, the white, the purple, and the blue, to cluster round
the top. The upper terrace should be strictly architectural, and
no plants are to be harboured there, save such as twine among
the balustrades, or fix themselves in the mouldering crevices of
the stone. I can endure no plants in pots, — a plant in a pot is
like a bird in a cage. The gourd alone throws out its vigorous
tendrils, and displays its green and golden fruit from the vases
that surmount the broad flight of stone steps that lead to the
lower terrace; while a vase of larger dimensions and bolder
sculpture at the western corner is backed by the heads of a mass
of crimson, rose, and straw-coloured hollyhocks that spring up
from the bank below. The lower terrace is twice the width of
the one above, of the most velvety turf, laid out in an elaborate
pattern of the Italian style. Here are collected the choicest
flowers of the garden ; the Dalmatic purple of the gentianella, the
dazzling scarlet of the verbena, the fulgent lobelia, the bright
yellows and rich browns of the calceolaria here luxuriate in their
trimly cut parterres, and with colours as brilliant as the mosaic of
an old cathedral painted window

T. JAMES 283

' Broider the ground

With rich inlay.' ^

But you must leave this mass of gorgeous colouring and the two
pretty fountains that play in their basins of native rock, while you
descend the flight of steps, simpler than those of the upper
terrace, and turn to the left hand, where a broad gravel walk
will lead you to the kitchen-garden, through an avenue splendid
in autumn with hollyhocks, dahlias, China asters, nasturtians,
and African marigolds.

We will stop short of the walled garden to turn among the
dipt hedges of box, and yew, and hornbeam which surround
the bowling-green, and lead to a curiously formed labyrinth, in
the centre of which, perched up on a triangular mound, is a
fanciful old summer-house, with a gilded roof, that commands
the view of the whole surrounding country. Quaint devices of
all kinds are found here. Here is a sun-dial of flowers, arranged
according to the time of day at which they open and close.
Here are peacocks and lions in livery of Lincoln green. Here
are berceaux and arbours, and covered alleys, and enclosures
containing the primest of the carnations and cloves in set order,
and miniature canals that carry down a stream of pure water to
the fish-ponds below. Further onwards, and up the south bank,
verging towards the house, are espaliers and standards of the
choicest fruit-trees ; here are strawberry-beds raised so as to be
easy for gathering; while the round gooseberry and currant
bushes, and the arched raspberries continue the formal style up
the walls of the enclosed garden, whose outer sides are clothed
alternately with fruit and flowers, so that the ' stranger within the
house' may be satisfied, without being tantalized by the rich
reserves within the gate of iron tracery of which the head
gardener keeps the key.

Return to the steps of the lower terrace : what a fine slope
of green pasture loses itself in the thorn, hazel, and holly thicket
below, while the silver thread of the running brook here and

^ ' Tot fuerant illic, quot habet natura, colores :
Pictaque dissimili flore nitebat humus.' — Ovid.

284 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

there sparkles in the light; and how happily the miniature
prospect, framed by the gnarled branches of those gigantic oaks,
discloses the white spire of the village church in the middle
distance ! While in the background the smoke, drifting athwart
the base of the purple hill, gives evidence that the evening fires
are just lit in the far-off town.

At the right-hand corner of the lower terrace the ground falls
more abruptly away, and the descent into the lawn, which is
overlooked from the high western terrace, is, by two or three
steps at a time, cut out in the native rock of red sandstone,
which also forms the base of the terrace itself. Rock plants
of every description freely grow in the crevices of the rustic
battlement which flanks the path on either side ; the irregularity
of the structure increases as you descend, till, on arriving on the
lawn below, large rude masses lie scattered on the turf and along
the foundation of the western terrace.

A profusion of the most exquisite climbing roses of endless
variety here clamber up till they bloom over the very balustrade
of the higher terrace, or creep over the rough stones at the foot
of the descent. Here stretching to the south is the nosegay of
the garden. Mignonette, 'the Frenchman's darling,' and the
musk-mimulus spring out of every fissure of the sandstone ;
while beds of violets,

' That strew the green lap of the new-come Spring,'

and lilies of the valley scent the air below. Beds of heliotrope
flourish around the isolated block of sandstone; the fuchsia,
alone inodorous, claims a place from its elegance; and honey-
suckles and clematis of all kinds trail along the ground, or twine
up the stands of rustic baskets, filled with the more choice odori-
ferous plants of the greenhouse. The scented heath, the tuberose,
and the rarer jasmines have each their place, while the sweet-briar
and the wall-flower, and the clove and stock gilliflower are not
too common to be neglected. To bask upon the dry sunny rock
on a bright spring morning in the midst of this 'wilderness of
sweets,' or on a dewy summer's eve to lean over the balustrade

'qUARTERLY REVIEW 285

above, while every breath from beneath wafts up the perfumed

air,

' Stealing and giving odour,'

is one of the greatest luxuries I have in life. — The Poetry of

— A/WV^ —

Garde ?img.^

npHE amateur who, happening to have a sufficiency of land ' QUARTERLY

^ attached to his residence, chooses himself to take the com- .,'.,, x
mand of two or three labourers, instead of employmg a tramed
professional at a high salary — {wages might be offensive) — is of
compulsion the most assiduous student of garden literature. His
practice will be adapted to various ends, according as utility or
ornament is the object the more desirable in his state of affairs.
But his horticulture is mostly of the composite order; he cultivates
a garden-of-all-work. As the celebrated cobbler ' lived in a stall
— that served him for parlour and kitchen and all,' so the inde-
pendent manager arranges a plot of ground so as to comprise the
conveniences of orchard, kitchen-garden, shrubbery, parterre, and
terrace. And a capital school it is for the men and boys who are
wise enough to look after instruction while working in it. How
well, too, an avenue of standard perpetual roses harmonizes with
the line of a feathery asparagus bed ! How little there is to
displease in a rectangular strawberry-ground enclosed in a frame-
work of brilliant low-growing flowers, with an outer fillet of box,
having openings left, like the gates of a Roman camp, for the
approach of the workmen and the fruit-gatherers ! What pleasant
strolls may be taken in a wilderness of apple, bullace, cherry,
plum, filbert, and medlar-trees, with an underwood of the peri-
winkles, great and small, honesty, and primroses, and with one
path at least skirting the edge of the fish-pond, from which a pike
for dinner may always be had. His visitors enjoy the combination

^ This essay, together with another one by the same writer, which originally
appeared in the Quarterly Review, 1842, was reprinted by Murray in 1852, in
one of the little volumes of his * Reading for the Rail,' under the title of
'The Flower-Garden.'

286

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

as much as himself. He asks a city friend which he will have
put into his carriage — a basket of flowers or a hamper of vegetables ;
— and the answer is, ' Both ! ' To make it perfect in its way, all
the spare decoration he can afford to bestow upon it should tend
to make it a winter garden.

—^\J\f\t\r—

A S for our love of gardens, it is the last refuge of art in the
•'*' minds and souls of many Englishmen : if we did not care

SIR

ARTHUR
HELPS

(1817-1875). for gardens, I hardly know what m the way of beauty we should

care for. — Co7npanions of my Solitude.

— 'A/VV^ —

SIR pMBOSOMED in a valley and an unshorn forest, and refreshed

^t/rVtnt ^y ^^^ Tagus and the Xarama which mingle their streams

MAXWELL beneath the palace-walls, Aranjuez has long been the Tivoli or
(1818-1878). Windsor of the princes, and the Tempe of the poets of Castile.
Even now, the traveller who comes weary and adust from brown
La Mancha, and from the edge of the desert, looks down on the
palace, sparkling with its long white arcades and gilded vanes
amongst woods and waters, may share the raptures of Garcilasso
and Calderon. The island garden, though deserted by royalty
and grandeeship, has yet its bright sun and rivers, its marble
statues and fountains half hid in thickets ; the old elms of
Charles V. ; ^ and cathedral-walks of hornbeam, peopled with a
melodious multitude of nightingales. The fountain-pipes that
once climbed unseen amongst the branches, and played from
the tops of the trees,^ have long ceased to play ; others, however, .
are still in full force; and a few camels, parading too and fro
with garden burdens, preserve an oriental custom of the place, as
old as the days of Philip II. Here Velasquez attended his
master in his walks, or sat retired in ' pleached bowers,' noting

1 Beckford, ' Letters from Spain, ' xvii.
- Lady Fanshaw, ' Memoirs,' pp. 222-3. |

FORBES WATSON 287

the fine effects of summer sunlight and silvan shade, and making
many sketches of sweet garden scenes. Some of these have
found their way to the Royal gallery ; such as the fine view of
the Avenue of the Queen, enlivened by coaches and promenaders
from the palace. Another is a study of the Fountain of the
Tritons, a rich piece of sculpture in white marble, sometimes
attributed to the chisel of Berreguete, not unlike that which re-
freshed the garden of Boccaccio's immortal palace.^ Through
the bough of overarching trees, the light falls brokenly on a
group of courtly figures, that might pass for the fair sisterhood
and gallant following of Pampinea. — Annals of the Artists of
Spain.

— A/V/Wv —

NOW the faults of gardening, against which my present paper is FORBES
directed, all centre in this one thing — the constant subjec- WATSON,
tion of the imaginative, or higher, to the sensuous, or lower,
element of flower beauty. We will trace this, first, in the general
arrangement of gardens and of flowers in relation to each other,
and afterwards in the case of their individual culture. To begin,
then, we find flower-beds habitually considered too much as mere
masses of colour, instead of an assemblage of living beings. The
only thought is to delight the eye by the utmost possible splendour.
When we walk in our public gardens everything seems tending to
distract the attention from the separate plants, and to make us
look at them only with regard to their united effect. And this
universal brillianc}^, this striking effect of the masses, is the ac-
knowledged chief aim of the cultivator. . . .

Has any of our readers, gifted with real love for flowers, ever
walked through one of those older gardens, and observed the
wide difference in its effect ? I am not here speaking necessarily
of the grounds of a mansion, but merely of such a garden as might
often be found, some twenty years ago, attached to any good-sized
house in a country town or village. Or even a little cottage-plot

^ 'Decameron,' Giorn. III., Nov. I.

288 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

of the kind so beautifully described by Clare will to some extent
illustrate^my meaning :

' And where the marjoram once, and sage and rue,
And balm and mint, with curled-leaf parsley grew,
And double marigolds, and silver thyme,
And pumpkins 'neath the window used to climb ;
And where I often, when a child, for hours
Tried through the pales to get the tempting flowers ;
As lady's laces everlasting peas,
True love lies bleeding, with the hearts at ease ;
And golden rods, and tansy running high.
That o'er the pale top smiled on passer-by ;
Flowers in my time which every one would praise,
Though thrown like weeds from gardens now-a-days.'

There might be but little attempt at colour-grouping, or at the
production of effect by masses in a narrow sense. But was there
any want of beauty there ? And did you not feel, in looking at
those flowers, how each made you love it as a friend — the Pinks
and Sweet Williams, the Everlasting Peas, Valerian, Day Lily,
Jacob's Ladder, and a host of others ? And did you not notice
how ever and again you fell upon some quaint, strange plant
which has been expelled from the modern border, which seemed
to touch your inmost soul, and to fill the mind, especially if in
childhood, with a sense of wonder and mysterious awe? What
was that plant ? Could not anybody tell its name, and where it
came from, and all else about it, for it must surely have an event-
ful history ? And, with curiosity rather stimulated than satisfied
by the scanty knowledge you could glean, you fell back upon the
imagination, which set it down as an actor in some strange and
awful tale, as that of a young man who gathered some unknown
wild flowers that attracted him, and who, together with his be-
trothed, was poisoned by their touch. Feelings of this sort were
strongly awakened in my mind in childhood by such plants as
Caper Spurge, Henbane, Rue, and other more beautiful species,
as the Dog's-Tooth Violet, with its spotted leaves, the common
Nigella, and the pink Marsh-Mallow of the fields.

Want of general effect ! Is there none in those cottage gardens,

I

JOHN RUSKIN 289

where the Nasturtiums twine lovingly all the summer amongst the
Jasmine, Clematis, and thickly-trellised Rose — where the towering
splendour of the Hollyhocks is confronted by the broad discs of
the Sunflower, and where the huge leaves, herbs, and fruit-trees
of the kitchen-garden run close up on, or intermix with, the
border flowers, amongst which we may meet at any time with
some new or long-absent friend ? Here are no masses of colour
in the modern sense ; but do you ever feel the want of them ?
Or can you turn from these simple plots, unstudied for effect, to
the showy, unvaried brilliancy of the modern border, and find
that you miss nothing there? Do not the plants seem com-
paratively wanting in interest? Do they not seem to be in-
dividually less dear, to hold you with a lighter grasp ? Now what
can be the reason of this? The old gardeners, we are told,
thought little of beauty, and chiefly of genera and species. Why,
then, should the poet find that, with all its faults, the old garden
stirs him in those depths which the modern one can seldom
reach ? This defect is far less conspicuous in the larger hot-
houses and greenhouses, and I am convinced that it depends
almost wholly on false principles of arrangement. I will give an
illustration of this. Everybody knows the little blue annual
Lobelia. It is a pretty flower, but, as the gardeners place it in
their show-beds, it seems as cold and unlovable as if it was
wrought of steel. Yet, should we ever think it so if we found it
rising stem by stem amongst the looser grass, in such meadows
as the Harebell, Milkwort, or Eyebright (Euphrasia) will often
enter, or perhaps in closer tufts on open banks of gravel ? I have
chosen localities altogether imaginary, and am, of course, well
aware that the plant's colours are too bright to associate easily
with the tints of our native flowers. — Flowers and Garde7ts.

—J^AJ\/^ —

WOU have heard it said — (and I believe there is more than JOHN
* fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one) RUSKIN
— that flo\N^ers only flourish rightly in the garden of some one who ^

290 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

loves them. I know you would like that to be true ; you would
think it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into
brighter bloom by a kind look upon them : nay, more, if your
look had the power, not only to cheer, but to guard; — if you
could bid the black blight turn away, and the knotted caterpillar
spare — if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought,
and say to the south wind in frost — 'Come, thou south, and
breathe upon my garden that the spices of it may flow out.' This
you would think a great thing? And do you think it not a
greater thing, that all this (and how much more than this !) you
can do, for fairer flowers than these — flowers that could bless you
for having blessed them, and will love you for having loved them ;
— flowers that have thoughts like yours, and lives like yours ; and
which, once saved, you save for ever ! Is this only a little power ?
Far among the moorlands and the rocks, — far in the darkness of
the terrible streets, — these feeble florets are lying, with all their
fresh leaves torn, and their stems broken : will you never go down
to them, nor set them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor
fence them, in their trembling, from the fierce wind? Shall
morning follow morning for you, but not for them ; and the dawn
rise, to watch, far away, those frantic Dances of Death ; but no
dawn rise to breathe upon those living banks of wild violet, and
woodbine and rose ; nor call to you, through your casement — call
(not giving you the name of the English poet's lady, but the name
of Dante's great Matilda, who, on the edge of happy Lethe, stood,
wreathing flowers with flowers), saying :

' Come into the garden, Maud,

For the black bat, night, has flown.
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the roses blown ' ?

Will you not go down among them ? Among those sweet living
things whose new courage, sprung from the earth with the deep
colour of heaven upon it, is starting up in strength of goodly spire ;
and whose purity, washed from the dust, is opening, bud by bud,
into the flower of promise ; — and still they turn to you, and for

MATTHEW ARNOLD 291

you, ' The Larkspur listens — I hear, I hear ! And the Lily-
whispers — I wait.' — Sesame and Lilies. {Of QueerCs Gardens^

' The English Sainte Beuve,' who, with George Meredith and Walter Pater, MATTHEW
forms the Triad of '• puissant voices'' in the litej-ature of the passing generation, ARNOLD
as he himself called Carlyle, Emerson and Newjnan, of his own earlier day, 1 1023-1055;.

HTHE College (Marlborough) was the old inn, but I did not
■^ know that this inn was the old home of the Hertford
family, a house built by Inigo Jones, and in a style I particularly
like and admire. The old garden, bowling-green, sward, and yew-
trees still subsist, and give an air to the place of age and of style
beyond anything that Harrow or Rugby can show.^ — Letter to his
mother, November 12, 187 1.

Cobham, Surrey, will find me. The cottage we have got there
is called Paijis Hill Cottage. The country is beautiful — more
beautiful even than the Chilterns, because it has heather and
pines, while the trees of other kinds, in the valley of the Mole,
where we are, are really magnificent. We are planting and im-
proving about our cottage, as if it were our own, and we had a
hundred years to live there; its great merit is that it must have
had nearly one hundred years of life already and is surrounded
by great old trees — not the raw new sort of villa one has generally
to take if one wants a small house near London.

It is a hoar frost, and you should see the squirrels scampering
about the lawn for the nuts we strew there. We have also a
jackdaw who visits us and is becoming very tame. But my
delight at present is in the blackbirds and thrushes, who abound,

^ Arnold makes no mention of the Mound situated in ' the wilderness ' —
perhaps the largest of its kind in England. ' Such a mound (as at Wressel,
mentioned by Leland) still exists at the Castle Inn at Marlborough, not
ascended by steps or degrees, but by a winding path, covered with ancient
yew-trees. ' — Loudon.

292 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

and sing indefatigably. Now I must take a turn round the place
and then work at my Goethe. — December 1877.

And I do very much enjoy the life at home, with half an hour
in the garden every morning, and two hours in the lanes every
afternoon. The aconites are coming out, and as for the primroses
they are all over the place. I have been repairing the ravages
made by the elm-tree's fall, and really with cupressuses and thujas
the gap has lost its horror already, and will be quite filled up in
a year or two. — 1882.

The colour has come at last, and the horse-chestnuts and
poplars are a sight. I go about the garden — I cannot come in to
work — examine the acorns on the Turkey Oak, with their curly-
haired cups, which I had never noticed before ; they are very
effective. Then I give Flu, who is driving to Lady Ellesmere, a
Duchesse pear to take to her, who says she shall carry it to her
gardener to show him how much finer pears are grown at the Cottage
than at Burwood. Then I go to pick up some Spanish chestnuts.
At last I come in to work. — To Miss Arnold^ October 29, 1886.

You can imagine the relief with which I have been going about
the garden this morning and planting. Numbers of summer
flowers — the red salvia, for instance — are blooming. The birds
are happy in the open weather, and the sweet robins keep following
CoUis and me about as we open the ground to plant rhododen-
drons.— Letter to his eldest daughter^ Nove77iber 13, 1886. {Letters
of Matthew Arnold^ by G. W. E. Russell.)

WILLIAM /^UR suburban gardeners in London, for instance, oftenest
^-^ wind about their little bit of gravel walk and grass plot

MORRIS

(1834-1896)

in ridiculous imitation of an ugly big garden of the landscape-
gardening style, and then with a strange perversity fill up the
spaces with the most formal plants they can get ; whereas the
merest common-sense should have taught them to lay out

WILLIAM MORRIS 293

their morsel of ground in the simplest way, to fence - it as
orderly as might be, one part from the other — if it be big
enough for that — and the whole from the road, and then to
fill up the flower-growing space with things that are free and
interesting in their growth, leaving Nature to do the desired
complexity, which she will certainly not fail to do, if we do
not desert her for the florist, who, I must say, has made it
harder work than it should be to get the best of flowers. . . .

As to colour in gardens. Flowers in masses are mighty
strong colour, and if not used with a great deal of caution
are very destructive to pleasure in gardening. On the whole,
I think the best and safest plan is to mix up your flowers, and
rather eschew great masses of colour — in combination, I mean.
But there are some flowers — inventions of men, i.e. florists —
which are bad colour altogether, and not to be used at all.
Scarlet geraniums, for instance, or the yellow calceolaria, which,
indeed, are not uncommonly grown together profusely, in order,
I suppose, to show that even flowers can be thoroughly ugly.

And now to sum up as to a garden. Large or small, it should
look both orderly and rich. It should be well fenced from the
outside world. It should by no means imitate either the wilful-
ness or the wildness of Nature, but should look like a thing never
to be seen except near a house. It should, in fact, look like a
part of the house. It follows from this that no private pleasure-
garden should be very big, and a public garden should be divided
and made to look like so many flower-closes in a meadow, or
a wood, or amidst the pavement.

It will be a key to right thinking about gardens if you will
consider in what kind of places a garden is most desired. In a
very beautiful country, especially if it be mountainous, we can do
without it well enough; whereas in a flat and dull country we
crave after it, and there it is often the very making of the home-
stead. While in great towns, gardens, both private and public,
are positive necessities if the citizens are to live reasonable and
healthy lives in body and mind. — HoJ^es and Fears for Art.
(' Making the Best of it:)

294 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

THE worship of Demeter belongs to that older relisrion, nearer

WALTER

PATER I ~

(i8^Q-i8Qd) ^^ ^^^ earth, which some have thought they could discern

behind the more definitely national mythology of Homer. She is
the goddess of dark caves, and is not wholly free from monstrous
form. She gave men the first fig in one place, the first poppy in
another ; in another she first taught the old Titans to mow. She
is the mother of the vine also ; and the assumed name, by which
she called herself in her wanderings is Dos — a gift ; the crane, as
the harbinger of rain, is her messenger among the birds. She
knows the magic powers of certain plants, cut from her bosom, to
bane or bless ; and, under one of her epithets, herself presides
over the springs, as also coming from the secret places of the
earth. She is the goddess then of the fertility of the earth, in its
wildness ; and so far her attributes are to some degree confused
with those of the Thessalian Gaia and the Phrygian Cybele.
Afterwards, and it is now that her most characteristic attributes
begin to concentrate themselves, she separates herself from these
confused relationships, as specially the goddess of agriculture, of
the fertihty of the earth as furthered by human skill. She is the
preserver of the seed sown in hope, under many epithets derived
from the incidents of vegetation, as the simple countryman names
her, out of a mind full of the various experiences of his little
garden or farm. She is the most definite embodiment of all those
fluctuating mystical instincts, of which Gaia, the mother of the
earth's gloomier offspring, is a vaguer and mistier one. There is
nothing of the confused outline, the mere shadowiness of mystical
dreaming, in this most concrete human figure. No nation, less
aesthetically gifted than the Greeks, could have so lightly thrown
its mystical surmise and divination into images so clear and
idyllic as those of the solemn goddess of the country, in whom
the characteristics of the mother are expressed with so much
tenderness, and the ' beauteous head ' of Kore, then so fresh and
peaceful. — ' T/ie Myth of Demeter and Persephone,^

VERNON LEE 295

BOCCACCIO and the Italians more usually employ the word 'VERNON
orto, which has lost its Latin signification, and is a place, LEE.
as we learn from the context, planted with fruit-trees and
with pot-herbs. . . . But although in this story (of Madonna
Dianora) Boccaccio employs the word giardino, instead of orto,
I think we must imagine that magic flower garden rather as
a corner — they still exist on every hillside — of orchard con-
nected with the fields of wheat and olives below by the long
tunnels of vine trellis, and dying away into them with the
great tufts of lavender and rosemary and fennel on the grassy
bank under the cherry trees. This piece of terraced ground
along which the water — spurted from the dolphin's mouth or
the sirens' breasts — runs through walled channels, refreshing
impartially violets and salads, lilies and tall flowering onions,
under the branches of the peach tree and the pomegranate, to
where in the shade of the great pink oleander tufts, it pours out
below into the big tank, for the maids to rinse their linen in
the evening, and the peasants to fill their cans to water the
bedded-out tomatoes and the potted clove-pinks in the shadow
of the house. . . .

Now this poverty of flower-beds and richness of pots made
it easy and natural for the Italian garden to become, like the
Moorish one, a place of mere greenery and water, a palace
whose fountains plashed in sunny yards walled in with myrtle
and bay, in mysterious chambers roofed over with ilex and box.
And this it became. Moderately at first ; a few hedges of box
and cypress — exhaling its resinous breath in the sunshine —
leading up to the long, flat, Tuscan house, with its tower or
pillared loggia under the roof to take the air and dry linen -, a.
few quaintly cut trees set here and there, along with the twisted
mulberry tree where the family drank its wine and ate its fruit of
an evening ; a little grove of ilexes to the back, in whose shade
you coold sleep, while the cicalas buzzed at noon; some cypresses
gathered together into a screen, just to separate the garden from
the olive yard above ; gradually perhaps a balustrade set at the
end of the bowling-green, that you might see, even from a distance,

296 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

the shimmery blue valley below — the pale blue distant hills ;
and if you had it, some antique statue, not good enough for the
courtyard of the town house, set on the balustrade or against
the tree ; also, where water was plentiful, a little grotto scooped
out under that semicircular screen of cypresses. A very modest
place, but differing essentially from the orchard and kitchen-
garden of the mediaeval burgher ; and out of which come some-
thing immense and unique — the classic Roman villa.

For your new gardens, your real Italian garden, brings in a new
element — that of perspective, architecture, decoration ; the trees
used as building material, the lie of the land as theatre arrange-
ments, the water as the most docile and multiform stage pro-
perty. . . .

Now go where you may in the outskirts of Rome you are
sure to find ruins — great aqueduct arches, temples half-standing,
gigantic terrace works belonging to some baths or palace hidden
beneath the earth and vegetation. Here you have naturally an
element of architectural ground-plan and decoration which is
easily followed : the terraces of quincunxes, the symmetrical
groves, the long flights of steps, the triumphal arches, the big
ponds, come, as it were, of them — obeying the order of what is
below. And from underground, everywhere, issues a legion of
statues, headless, armless, in all stages of mutilation, who are
charitably mended and take their place, mute sentinels, white
and earth-stained, at every intersecting box hedge, under every
ilex grove, beneath the cypresses of each sweeping hillside
avenue, wherever a tree can make a niche or a bough a canopy.
— Limbo and other Essays. {Old Italian Gardens.)

— ww^^

ALICE CORGOTTEN by the side of some rosy palace by the Adriatic,

MEYNELL 1 j|.g fountain overrun with maidenhair, its gold fish twinkling

in the marble font, and grass growing gaily and wildly where it

will, the garden that once was trimmest has a delight and a spirit

that it could not have without precisely that past of artifice and

ALICE MEYNELL 297

ceremony. No prosperity except that of summer, no order that is
not sweetly made light of while it is carelessly fulfilled, and all
access open by way of the sunny air, so that no seeds are denied
an anchorage in this port and harbour of the winds. A trim
garden that is no longer trim is full of frolic. A trim garden that
is still trim has a kind of comeliness as an accessory of architecture.
It is, at any rate, a garden and not a landscape.

For obviously the landscape garden, called abroad the English
garden, is the thing most at fault. The English garden is like
' English glass ' — that is, cut glass. Both things are a kind of
adulteration. Both things were eagerly admired and imitated on
the Continent.

Landscape gardening, literally, would have been a good thing —
the enclosure of the half-wild copse, the arbitrary capture and
captivity of a space of wood, meadow, stream, and bank, and the
mere harbourage of wild flowers ; it would be the field with all its
accidents secure from spoiling. But landscape-gardening that
implies^sinuous walks and futile hillocks, and those dullest of all
dull things — shrubs — can never have given any genuine joy to man.

Everyone knows that 'landscape garden.' It has improbable
knolls and hollows, closely and accurately fitted with a green
sward on which show no daisies. The shrubs grow in groups,
very round of shape, and dense to the penetration of the alert
and eager glimpses of the sky. Its trees are rarely deciduous, or,
if so, are of the fuller and thicker kind ; it has no slender aspens,
caught and mingled with the light, and alive with the wind and
weather. It has chiefly evergreens of the rarer kinds, having their
lower branches so near the ground as to show no stems. ' All
the Psalms are good,' says Mrs Pendennis. All trees are good,
but those are the least good.

See, however, how charming is a fruit-garden, or that still
simpler fruit-garden, an orchard. All fruit-trees are at play with
the light and at peace with the sky. There is nothing in the
world more peaceful than apple-leaves with an early moon. The
grass beneath them is not cropped of daisies, or fitted and clipped
as if by an able dressmaker. Let the garden be a vegetable garden

298 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

with fruit-trees, with gooseberry bushes to give the first buds of
leaves, and let there be slender flowers all along the edges, and a
concourse of standard rose-trees for the sake of gathering the
roses, peas in rows and rows, with the twigs they grow upon
delicate against the light ; all gentle and fortunate and useful.

How has the world so long taken so much trouble to make less
lovely things out of those fine materials — the blossoming earth and
the fostering sky ? Pity is it that the word garden should so be
vulgarized by worldly gardens. It is an early word to all men,
one of the earliest of words. It is an Orient word, fresh and
perpetual from childhood and the Divine East. A garden of
olives, a garden of cucumbers, a garden of herbs, a vineyard, a
garden enclosed — all these have the gravity of use and labour, and
are as remote as memory, and as familiar, secluded, and secret.

— vVWv—

HENRY A. /^NEof the srreatest ornaments to a garden is a fountain, but
BRIGHT v / •

• ^-^ many fountains are curiously ineffective. A fountain is most

beautiful when it leaps high into the air, and you can see it against
a background of green foliage. To place a fountain among low
flower-beds, and then to substitute small fancy jets that take the
shape of a cup, or trickle over into a basin of gold-fish, or toy with
a gilded ball, is to do all that is possible to degrade it. The real
charm of a fountain is, when you come upon it in some little grassy
glade of the ' pleasaunce,' where it seems as though it sought, in
the strong rush of its waters, to vie with the tall boles of the forest-
trees that surround it. Such was the fountain in Leigh Hunt's
Story of Rimini^ which shot up ' beneath a shade of darksome
pines,'

' And 'twixt their shafts you saw the water bright,
Which through the tops glimmered with show'ring light.'

One of the most beautiful gardens I ever knew depended almost
entirely on the arrangement of its lawns and shrubberies. It had

GEORGE MILNER 299

certainly been most carefully and adroitly planned, and it had
every advantage in the soft climate of the west of England. The
various lawns were divided by thick shrubberies, so that you
wandered on from one to the other, and always came on some-
thing new. In front of these shrubberies was a large margin of
flower-border, gay with the most effective plants and annuals. At
the corner of the lawn a standard Magnolia grandiflora of great
size held up its chaliced blossoms ; at another a tulip-tree was laden
with hundreds of yellow flowers. Here a magnificent Salisburia
mocked the foliage of the maiden-hair ; and here an old cedar
swept the grass with its large pendant branches. But the main
breadth of each lawn was never destroyed, and past them you
might see the reaches of a river, now in one aspect and now in
another. Each view was different, and each was a fresh enjoyment
and surprise.

A few years ago, and I revisited the place ; the ' improver ' had
been at work, and had been good enough to opeti up the view.
Shrubberies had disappeared, and lawns had been thrown together.
The pretty peeps among the trees were gone, the long vistas had
become open spaces, and you saw at a glance all that there was to
be seen. Of course the herbaceous borders, which once contained
numberless rare and interesting plants, had disappeared, and the
lawn in front of the house was cut up into little beds of red pelar-
goniums, yellow calceolarias, and the rest. — The English Flower-
Garden.

— ^A/VW—

TT is said that a garden should always be considered simply and GEORGE

^ wholly as a work of art, and should not be made to look like MILNER.

Nature. That is true enough. Nothing, indeed, can be in worse

taste than the landscape-gardener's imitations of Nature. But

there is another plan. If your garden be large enough you can

let Nature have her own way in certain parts of it. This takes

time, but the result is eminently delightful. For the most part

o u have only to stand aside and watch. If anything at all be

done it should only be a little judicious pruning — accomplished

300 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

in such a way that it need not be observed — and the blending by
unobtrusive gradations of the artificial with the natural. I well
remember how skilfully this was done in that 'careless order'd
garden ' of the late Laureate, at Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight,
where —

' Groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand ;
And farther on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand.'

And, curiously enough, the only other garden which I invariably
think of in this connection is that of Tennyson's predecessor.
However it may be to-day, I know that thirty years ago that
which struck me most at Rydal Mount, and which appeared to me
its greatest charm, was this union of the garden and the wilderness.
You passed almost imperceptibly from the trim parterre to the
noble wood, and from the narrow, green vista to that wide sweep
of lake and mountain which made up one of the finest landscapes
in England. Nor could you doubt that this unusual combination
was largely the result of the poet's own care and arrangement.
He had the faculty for such work. . . .

By this time I have got round to the old English flower-bed,
where only perennials with an ancient ancestry are allowed to
grow. Here there is always delight ; and I should be sorry to
exchange its sweet flowers for any number of cartloads of scentless
bedding-plants, mechanically arranged and ribbon-bordered. This
bed is from fifty to sixty yards long, and three or four yards in
width. A thorn hedge divides it from the orchard. In spring
the apple-bloom hangs over, and now we see in the background
the apples themselves. The plants still in flower are the dark-
blue monks hood, which is seven feet high ; the spiked veronica ;
the meadow-sweet or queen-of-the-meadow ; the lady's mantle,
and the evening primrose. This last may be regarded as the
characteristic plant of the season. The flowers open about seven
o'clock, and as the twilight deepens, they gleam like pale lamps,
and harmonise wonderfully with the colour of the sky. On this

ALFRED AUSTIN 301

bed 1 read the history of the year. Here were the first snow-
drops; here came the crocuses, the daffodils, the blue gentians,
the columbines, the great globed peonies ; and, last, the lilies and
the roses. — Country Pleasures. {The Chronicle of a Year, chiefly in
a Garden}}

— fj\{\f\f —

A GARDEN that one makes oneself becomes associated with ALFRED
-'*' one's personal history and that of one's friends, interwoven ^^f TJ^
with one's tastes, preferences and character, and constitutes a
sort of unwritten but withal manifest, autobiography. Show
me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you
what you are like. It is in middle life that the finishing touches
should be put to it ; and then, after that, it should remain
more or less in the same condition, like oneself, growing more
deep of shade, and more protected from the winds. . . .

'Tell me, will you, what governed you in the laying out of
the Garden that you Love ? '

' What governed me was what I found here : the house, its
time-consecrated architecture, its immovable boundaries, the
old oak, and not it only, but all the ineradicable old timber
within sight, the park, and finally, when all these were allowed
for, the general fitness of things. I am quite of opinion that
a garden should look as though it belonged to the house,
and the house as though it were conscious of and approved
the garden. In passing from one to the other, one should
experience no sense of discord, but the sensations produced by
the one should be continued, with a delicate difference, by
the other. Terraces and balustrades, box edgings, or yew
hedges, anything obviously and intentionally formal, which
is imperative in the case of certain stately dwelling-houses,
would surely have been out of place here. Near to the house,
the garden, you will have observed, is more formal and shapely,
and you never, I trust, altogether lose vague evidences of
design.- But absolutely symmetrical it is not, though a care-
less observer might imagine it to be so, and it gradually assumes

302 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

a less definite and disciplined air as it gets nearer to the tract
of orchard, meadow, and park, to which it is sunnily open
and which it commands. Thus I have obtained, I think, a
certain sense of spontaneous seclusion, without wholly shutting
myself in, or wholly shutting out everybody or everything else.
Of course, there are nooks of perfect shelter, as Goldsmith said,
for whispering lovers made ; and the South Enclosure curves
and winds as it chooses, as though there were no other curve
or line in the world. Poet's Walk comes on you as a surprise ;
and when you think you have seen everything, you suddenly
discover the copse kitchen-garden, which, I confess, contains
fully as many flowers as vegetables, and conducts to an orchard
whose existence you had not surmised. — The Ga?'den that I Love.

EMILE C OUS ce poudroiement de flammes (du soleil) le grand jardin
^^\t^ vivait avec une extravagance de bete heureuse, lachee au

' bout du monde, loin de tout, libre du tout. C'etait une debauche
telle de feuillages, une maree d'herbes si debordante, qu'il etait
comme derobe d'un bout a I'autre, inonde, noye. Rien que des
pentes vertes, des tiges ayant des jaillissements de fontaine, des
masses moutonnantes, des rideaux de forets hermetiquement tires,
des manteaux de plantes grimpantes trainant a terre, des volees
de rameaux gigantesques s'abattant de tous cotes.

A peine pouvait-on, a la longue, reconnaitre sous cet envahisse-
ment formidable de la seve I'ancien dessin du Paradou. En face,
dans une sorte de cirque immense, devait se trouver le parterre,
avec ses bassins effondres, ses rampes rompues, ses escaliers
dejetes, ses statues renversees dont on apercevait les blancheurs
en fond des gazons noirs. Plus loin, derriere la ligne bleue d'une
nappe d'eau s'etalait un fouillis d'arbres fruitiers ; plus loin encore
une haute futaie enfongait ses dessous violatres, rayes de lumiere,
une foret redevenue vierge, dont les cimes se mammelonnaient
sans fin, tachees du vert jaune, du vert pale, du vert puissant
de toutes les essences. A droite, la foret escaladait des hauteurs,

REGINALD BLOMFIELD 303

plantait des petits bois de pins, se mourait en broussailles maigres,
tandis que des roches nues entassaient une rampe enorme, un ecroule-
ment de montagne barrant I'horizon ; des vegetations ardentes y
fendaient le sol, plantes monstrueuses immobiles dans la chaleur,
comme des reptiles assoupis ; un filet d'argent, un eclabousse-
ment qui ressemblait de loin a une poussiere de perles, y indiquait
une chute d'eau, la source de ces eaux calines qui longeaient si
indolemment le parterre. A gauche enfin, la riviere coulait au
milieu d'une vaste prairie, oii elle se separait en quatre ruisseaux,
dont on suivait les caprices sous les roseaux, entre les saules,
derriere les grands arbres ; a perte de vue, des pieces d'herbage
elargissaient la fraicheur des terrains bas, un paysage lave d'une
buee bleuatre, une eclaircie de jour se fondant peu a peu dans le
bleu verdi du Couchant. Le Paradou, le parterre, la foret, les
roches, les eaux, les pres, tenaient toute la largeur du ciel.

Le Paradou ! balbutia Serge ouvrant les bras comme pour
serrer le jardin tout entier contre sa poitrine.

La Faiite de PAbbe Moure f}

T

— A/\/\/Vv —

HE characteristic of the old formal garden, the garden of REGINALD
Markham and Lawson, was its exceeding simplicity. BLOMFIELD

The primary purpose of a garden as a place of retirement and INIGO
seclusion, a place for quiet thought and leisurely enjoyment was THOMAS,
kept steadily in view. The grass and the yew-trees were trimmed
close to gain their full beauty from the sunlight.

Sweet kindly flowers filled the knots and borders. Peacocks
and pigeons brightened the terraces and lawns. The paths were
straight and ample, the garden-house solidly built and comfort-
able ; everything was reasonable and unaffected. But this simple

^ Never, perhaps, has the fecundity, the exuberance, one might almost
say the debauchery, of Earth and her Gardens been so painted as in this book.
We feel as if Nature were an immeasurable and impersonal Heliogabalus
burying the world, convened as guests at a vast garden-banquet, beneath a
mighty avalanche of flowers.

304 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

genuine delight in nature and art became feebler as the seven-
teenth century grew older.

Gardening became the fashionable art, and this was the golden
age for professional gardeners ; but the real pleasure of it was
gone. Rows of statues were introduced from the French, costly
architecture superseded the simple terrace, intricate parterres were
laid out from gardeners' pattern-books, and meanwhile the flowers
were forgotten. It was well that all this pomp should be swept
away. We do not want this extravagant statuary, these absurdities
in clipped work, this aggressive prodigality. But though one
would admit that in its decay the formal garden became un-
manageable and absurd, the abuse is no argument against the
use. An attempt has been made in this book to show the
essential reasonableness of the principles of Formal Gardening,
and the sanity of its method when properly handled. The long
yew-hedge is clipped and shorn because we want its firm boundary
lines and the plain mass of its colour ; the grass bank is formed
into a definite slope to attain the beauty of close-shaven turf at
varied angles with the light. The broad grass walk, with its
paved footpath in the centre, is cool to walk upon in summer and
dry on the pavement in winter ; and the flower border on either
side is planted with every kind of delightful flower, so that the
refinements of its colour may be enjoyed all through the summer.
— The Formal Garden in Engla^id.

— 'Ai\j\r^ —

MRS J. A GAIN, with our hedges and formal lines, how charmingly might

E5^J^f J,^ -'*• we screen off lesser gardens within gardens, and we might,
FOSTER. , , . - ° . .... °- ' . °

thus, have sweet retired places for lilies of sorts, or for roses, or

for specimens of all British flowers, or one after the manner of
the old ^ gardi?ta sacrisfce,'' where special flowers might be grown
for the decking of our churches. Passing through these we might
lead to a pleasant place for the delight of the antiquarian gardener.
Here we might, for instance, please ourselves by creating the re-
flection of a mediaeval garden. Such a one as Chaucer loved to

WILLIAM ROBINSON 305

describe, saying that its beauty ' would have made any hearts
light/ Such a one as that in which the 'fayre' Emilie walked
up and down one May morning long ago, gathering

' Flowers partie white and red
To make a subtle garland for her head.'

This garden, as we have seen, should be square of shape, it
should be enclosed with walls, and with trellis work, and espaliers;
within it should be grown quinces and pears, plums, cherries and
apples of many kinds and also buUaces and the service-berries
which, English born as they are, have been forgotten in England.
Also, in this place, we must have a medlar tree like that from
which the goldfinch, ' leaping prettily,' sang to the old poet, and
we may plant an Agnus castus, for we read how the chief lady of
the company, which came into Chaucer's dream, bore an Agnus
castus branch. Plant also Holly trees and Spindle, and bushes
of Broom and of Berberry, and a Rowan tree which we must have
not only for beauty but also for good luck, since the old Ballads
say that ^witches have no power where there is roan-tree wood.'' —
On the Art of Gardening. 1881.

TN some writings on garden design, it is assumed as a truism that WILLIAM
-^ the landscape and naturalistic view of that design was the ROBINSON.
invention of certain men, and a mere passing fashion, like many
that have disfigured the garden. This is a serious error, as land-
scape beauty has existed ever since the eyes of men were first
opened to the beauty of the earth, as now when from thousands of
places in England beautiful landscape views are seen. It exists in
wild mountain woodland, and in the forest plain, apart altogether
from man's efforts, as seen in the parks of England from Alnwick
to Richmond ; and in either case it is too lovely a lesson to forget
so long as man has any eyes to see beauty. If all the works of
man in landscape planting were swept away, there would still be
beautiful landscape on vast areas in many lands. There are ten

u

3o6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

thousand grassy lawns among the mountain Pines of Switzerland,
where beautiful things are seen in landscape, as there are on the
mountains of California and Cashmere, and, indeed, the many
other woody mountain lands of the world.

Apart from the disposition of ground and its form, there is the
question of the arrangement of all the beautiful things of earth —
flower, shrub, or tree in right or wrong ways. Here there were
always lessons to be learned : lovely colonies of Bird's-eye Prim-
rose in the bogs of Westmoreland ; little families of Gentian by
the alpine streams ; groups of Venetian Sumach cropping out of
the hot southern rocks ; groups of May on the hill, the stately
groves of the lowland forest, and the Grey Willows of the marsh
land. In planting in the same way we are simply learning a
lesson direct from Nature, and not carrying out a mere fashion.
Even the creatures of earth and air are held together beautifully
— wild birds in the air, delicate brown flocks of them by the cold
northern sea, as well as groups of nobler birds on the banks of
the Nile and southern rivers ; the cattle on a thousand hills : in
no other way could their forms or colours be so well seen. And
so it must ever be in the garden where natural grouping is the
true and artistic way.

The gardener should follow the true artist, however modestly,
in his love for things as they are, in delight in natural form and
beauty of flower and tree, if we are to be free from barren
geometry, and if our gardens are ever to be pictures. The
gardener has not the strenuous work of eye and hand that the
artist has, but he has plenty of good work to do : — to choose from
ten thousand beautiful living things ; to study their nature and
adapt them to his soil and climate ; to get the full expression of
their beauty ; to grow and place them well and in right relation
to other things, which is a life-study in itself, in view of the great
numbers of the flowers and flowering trees of the world. And as
the artist's work is to see and keep for us some of the beauty of
landscape, tree, or flower, so the gardener's should be to keep for
us as far as may be, in the fulness of their natural beauty, the
living things themselves. The artist gives us the fair image : the

WILLIAM ROBINSON 307

gardener is the trustee of a world of fair living things, to be kept
with care and knowledge in necessary subordination to human
convenience, and to the conditions of his work. — The English
Flower Garden. {Nature in the Garden.)

So far from its being true, that high mountain plants cannot be
cultivated, there is no alpine flower that ever cheered the traveller's
eye that cannot be grown in these islands. What are alpine
plants ? The word alpine is used to denote the vegetation that
grows naturally on all high mountain-chains, whether they spring
from tropical plains or green northern pastures. Above the culti-
vated land these flowers begin to occur on the fringes of the
woods ; they are seen in multitudes in the broad pastures with
which many mountains are robed, enamelling their green, and
where neither grass nor tall herbs exist; where mountains are
crumbled into slopes of shattered rock by the contending forces
of heat and cold; even there, amidst the glaciers, they spring
from the ruined ground, as if the earth-mother had sent up her
loveliest children to plead with the spirits of destruction. . . .

Alpine plants possess the charm of endless variety, and include
things widely different: — tiny orchids, tree-like moss, and ferns
that peep from crevices of alpine cliffs, often so small that they
seem to cling to the rocks for shelter, not daring to throw forth
their fronds with airy grace ; bulbous plants, from LiHes to Blue-
bells ; evergreen shrubs, perfect in leaf and blossom and fruit, yet
so small that a glass would make a house for them; dwarfest
creeping plants, spreading over the brows of rocks, draping them
with lovely colour; Rockfoils and Stonecrops no bigger than
mosses, and, like them, mantling the earth with green carpets in
winter ; in a word, alpine plants embrace nearly every type of the
plant-life of northern lands. — The English Flower Garden. {Alpine
Flower a?id Rock Gardens.)

—AfV/^

:o8

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

PHIL pLEASANT indeed is my Indian Garden. Here in a green

ROBINSON. 1 colonnade stand the mysterious broad-leaved plantains with
their strange spikes of fruit — there the dark mango. In a grove
together the spare-leaved peepul, that sacred yet treacherous tree
that drags down the humble shrine which it was placed to
sanctify ; the shapely tamarind, with its clouds of foliage ; the
graceful neem ; the patulous teak, with its great leathern leaves,
and the bamboos the tree-cat loves. Below them grow a wealth
of roses, the lavender-blossomed durantas, the cactus grotesque in
growth, the poyntzettia with its stars of scarlet, the spiky aloes,
the sick-scented jessamine, and the quaint coral-trees ; while over
all shoots up the palm. The citron, lime, and orange-trees are
beautiful alike when they load the air with the perfume of their
waxen flowers, or when they are snowing their sweet petals about
them, or when heavy-fruited they trail their burdened branches
to rest their yellow treasure on the ground. — In my Indian
Garden. (' The Birds.')

— "A/VVs/ —

CHARLES

DUDLEY

WARNER.

'T^HE man who has planted a garden feels that he has done
^ something for the good of the world. He belongs to the
producers. It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it
be nothing more than a head of lettuce or an ear of corn. One
cultivates a lawn even with great satisfaction ; for there is nothing
more beautiful than grass or turf in our latitude. The tropics
may have their delight, but they have not turf: and the world
without turf is a dreary desert. The original Garden of Eden
could not have had such turf as one sees in England. The
Teutonic races all love turf; they emigrate in the line of its
growth. . . .

The principal value of a private garden is not understood. It
is not to give the possessor vegetables and fruit (that can be
better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach
him patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues, — hope
deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resigna-

I

D'ANNUNZIO 309

tion, and sometimes to alienation. The garden thus becomes a
moral agent, a test of character, as it was in the beginning. I
shall keep this central truth in mind in these articles. I mean to
have a moral garden, if it is not a productive one, — one that shall
teach, O my brothers ! O my sisters ! the great lessons of life. . .

This sitting in the sun amid evidences of a ripe year is the
easiest part of gardening I have experienced. But what a combat
has gone on here ! What vegetable passions have run the whole
gamut of ambition, selfishness, greed of place, fruition, satiety,
and now rest here in the truce of exhaustion ! What a battle-field,
if one may look upon it so ! The corn has lost its ammunition,
and stacked arms in a slovenly, militia sort of style. The ground-
vines are torn, trampled and withered; and the ungathered
cucumbers, worthless melons, and golden squashes, lie about
like the spent bombs and exploded shells of a battle-field. So
the cannon-balls lay on the sandy plain before Fort Fisher, after
the capture. So the great, grassy meadow at Munich, any
morning during the October Fest, is strewn with empty beer-
mugs. History constantly repeats itself. There is a large crop
of moral reflections in my garden, which anybody is at liberty to
gather who passes this way. — My Sunwier in a Garden.

\ A 7E walked among evergreens, among ancient box-trees, GABRIELE

^ laurels, myrtles, whose wild old age had forgotten its D'ANNUNZIO.
early discipline. In a few places here and there was some trace
of the symmetrical shapes carved once upon a time by the
gardener's shears ; and with a melancholy, not unlike his who
searches on marble tombstones for the effigies of the forgotten
dead, I noted carefully among the silent plants those traces of
humanity not altogether obliterated. A bitter-sweet odour hung
round our path, and from time to time one of us, as if wishing to
weave afresh an unravelled web, would reconstruct some memory
of our far-off childhood.

3IO THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

The hoarse song of the water came to us through a high myrtle
hedge as we stood in a little meadow strewn with daffodils, and
guarded by a statue of Pan green with moss. A delicious softness
seemed to spring in my veins from the soft turf my feet pressed,
and once again the sudden joy of living took away my breath. —
' The Virgins of the Rocks, ^ translated by Agatha Hughes.

*E. V. B.' A GARDEN! — The word is in itself a picture, and what
(Bon. Mrs t\ pictures it reveals ! All through the days of childhood the
°^ garden is our fairy-ground of sweet enchantment and innocent

wonder. From the first dawn of thought, when we learned our
simple lessons of Eden and its loss, and seemed to see the thorn-
less garden, watered with clear streams, beautiful with spreading
trees, and the train of un-named beasts and birds meekly passing
before their spotless lord ; and then beyond, far onward to that
other garden beloved by the Man of Sorrows, Gethsemane, where
we could never picture the blossoming of roses or murmurous
hum of summer bees, but only the sombre garden walks, and One
kneeling among the olives, and dark, heavy drops upon the grass.
And near to this, the Garden of the Sepulchre — in a dewy dawn-
light, angel-haunted. These were our Gardens of the Soul. In
later years the mists of those older, holier spots wear away as
snow-wreaths in the vivid brilliance of the Gardens of Poetry.
Then, dreamlike from sapphire seas arose the Gardens of the
Hesperides, and we beheld the white-vestured maidens as they
danced around the golden-fruited dragon-guarded tree. Then
bloomed for us the gardens of Mediaeval Italy. The Poets'
gardens of cypress and lemon, of marble stairs and sparkling
fountains, with all their moonlight mirth and sorrow ; ilex-groves
of song and sih^er-threaded laughter ; visions of Rimini or gay
Boccaccio's tales. Then did we linger where high-piping night-
ingales sang to the Persian Rose in the Giilistan of Saadi : — felt
the pure sunlight shine in a little wilderness of roses, or the green
shade that lay round the apple-trees of Andrew Marvell ; or in the

'E. V. b; 311

garden of the Sensitive Plant, we followed the shadowy steps of the
Lady, our souls entranced with the love of every flower she loved.
They are all beautiful, these Gardens of Poetry ! and through the
midst of them flows the broad stream of Memory, isled with fair lilied
lawns, fringed with willowy forests and whispering reeds. And not
less beautiful than these ideal shades, are the gardens which live un-
changed and unchanging in many a painted picture within the heart.
Real, and not less ideal, is the remembrance of the gardens we have
seen : seen once, it may be, and never since forgotten.

' Un souvenir heureux est peut-etre sur terre
Plus vrai que le bonheur.'

So, lovely as truth, crystal-clear as a poet's thought, are the
earthly Edens our eyes beheld, in the years that are past. How
can we forget the gardens of queenly Genoa, in the days ere yet
she was discrowned? of Florence, of Rome and Albano and
Tivoli? The palm-gardens of Bordighiera, where periwinkles —
fiori dei morte — rain down their blue from the overflowing laps of
ancient palms, or wander in smiles about their rugged roots ; the
trellised pergolas and anemonied lawns of Mortola ; or those
strange island-gardens, Isola Madre of Maggiore, and terraced
Isola Bella? Long indeed is the lovely list. Think back into
the days that were, and remember them. . . . How they live green
and fresh and sweet, in the bloom and the glow of their eternal
summer ! For you, their skies are ever blue, their roses never
fade. Winter has never silenced the plash and flow of their
fountains, nor chilled the green from one leaf in their deep groves.
The lemon, ripening in pale gold, still hangs ungathered against
the southern terrace, where scarlet passion-flowers burn in drifted
fire-spots. The peacock, sunning himself upon the stone balus-
trade, shakes out his emerald glories, while you loiter along the
flowery borders of his kingdom ; and you know that violets hide
somewhere in the grass, for the very sunshine is impregnated with
their perfume. Or perchance in fancy, you may tread again the
narrow pathway that winds around the rocky sea-wall at Old
Monaco. There, for you, the globes of red geranium reflect still.

312 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

warm shadows about the names of lovers long since forg
dead, wrought upon the tablet leaves of aloes or of cai^us.
There mesembrianthemums shine still, sunned over as of '-•• =
with rayed discs of red and yellow, while basking lizards at
approach rustle away under the leaves. Lean over the
parapet wall and watch the waves dash in white foam agains
jagged rocks below. The old cliff blooms out into cistus
spikes of purple stocks ; midway the sea-birds scream and \
above the little fishing-boats, tossing like fairy nut-shells on
crisp blue summer sea. From the sunny Mediterranean and
narrow strip of hanging garden, dream on into the black cyp • -
shades of Tuscany.

In all Italy — the land of flowers, the garden of the worl
there are no gardens more stately, nor any nobler cypress-tr
than at Villa d'Este of Tivoli.^ In the spring, by the strai ■
smooth ways under the ilexes and cypresses, all day the gok . :
gloom is made rosy where ever and anon red Judas-tr
shower down their bloom. Marble stairs lead up through terrac.ii
heights to paved walks under the Palazzo walls. There the ;
is faint with rich fragrance of the orange-trees. The lofty spir
of ancient cypresses reach up above the topmost terrace ; fi
below in the garden, between their dark ranks sparkle the u
springing fountains. Beyond, above the tallest cypresses, ri
brown crumbling walls of the old town, piled up with open logg
and arched gates and overshadowing roofs : and high over thes
great barren hills crowned with ruined fortresses and shattere
keeps. To the west rolls out the ocean of the wide Campagm
undulating far away where Rome is lost in the sunset. Dreai
on, until you sigh with the wondrous sweetness of Rome herse
in the wild wood-garden of the Vatican, where in April days te
thousand odorous cyclamen flowers, flush with crimson all tl-
moss beneath the trees. Dream on, till you see once more tb-,
swaying of the tall pines and bathe your steps in tracts of floweiy
grass in the green Pamphili Doria, and watch the mystic fountaii-
most like the form of an inconstant spirit, like a pale blue-robe,
^ See Illustration in Appendix.

E. V. B.

3U

Undine uncertain if to leave her source, trembling betwixt desire
and fear.

Fain would we linger in the gardens of Portugal, under the
sweet-scented camellias of Cintra — lost in golden reveries amid
her rose-wreathed thickets. Strange is the remembrance of the
beautiful Montserrat cathedral water-aisles, whose torrents foam
down in long cascades beneath the high-arched Tree-ferns ! And
in Spain, like a scene in the Arabian Nights, comes back to us
the old Moorish garden of Granada, with marble-hned canal and
lofty arcades of trimmed yew, topped with crescents, pyramids,
and crowns.^

^ This beautiful rhapsody, addressed ' to the Garden-loving Reader,' formed
the Prelude to the first edition of this book.

U 2

\

E-> ''^

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE

'T^HE foregoing collection of extracts contains, perhaps, in
^ essence a sufficient History of Gardens ; but there may
be readers who prefer a less broken thread of narrative, and
to them is offered the following clue to the labyrinth of garden
literature.

Ever since the gardening art has been anything more conscious
and definite than the haphazard planting of fruit-trees, herbs and
vegetables in orchards and kitchen-gardens for practical use,
garden design may be said broadly to have adopted one of two <
forms-X)! styles, each capable of infinite variation and modification
in treatment, and each liable at times to trespass upon the territory
and overlap the limits, of the other.

One of these styles has been distinguished by such various ^
names as Architectural, Classical, Formal, Regular, Rectangular,
Symmetrical and Geometrical ; or has been called Italian, French,
or Dutch, according to the country of its origin. As the terms
denote, the exponents of this style chose for model and in-
spiration the art of the architect, who designed, or 'built' the
garden in harmony with the plan of the house, of which it was a
sort of open-air extension ; for detail and decoration it laid under
contribution the art of sculpture, in the form of clipped hedges and
trees (known as ' topiarian work '), statuary, vases and fountains.

The second school endeavoured to follow Nature more closely, l^-
believing that, with this aim in view, the sister art of painting was
a surer guide, and has been variously called the Natural, Irregular,
Landscape, Romantic, English or Chinese School; these two nations
having had most influence in its creation or development.

This later school in its designs ' lays out ' or ' composes ' its
gardens as a painter his landscapes, and employs so far as possible

X 315

3i6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

the irregular curves of Nature and her dispositions of rock, wood
and water, rather than straight Hnes and geometrical curves ; but
in the hands of mannerists these irregular windings and serpentis-
ings often become as arbitrary, unnatural and monotonous as the
more intentional regularity of the architect. ^

Broadly it may be said that the ' landscape-garden ' in its purity
resembled a park, and that the landscape-gardener was a creator of
park scenery ; but it is clear that the division into two styles is only
for the purposes of rough classification, and that between the two
are innumerable gradations and shades. Gardens may be and have
been made of the greatest beauty, which would resist all attempts
to force them into any aesthetic categories ; while no more
definite plan of design, ' laying out ' or ' composition ' may have
been followed than dictated by the instinct of beauty, taste and
the love of Nature and Art.

In an historical account of gardens the precedents are in favour
of beginning with the Gardenjpf Eden, which undoubtedly claims
priority in time ; but until we know whether Major Seton Karr,

^ It may be interesting to note a few of the many names that have from time
to time been put forward as claimants to the honour of initiating, prophecying
or suggesting the principle of the Modern, Natural or Landscape Garden : —

1. Homer's Grotto of Calypso ; CElian's Vale of Tempe (Bottiger).

2. Nero in Tacitus (Loudon).

3. Petrarch's ' Vaucluse.'

4. Tasso's Garden of Armida (Eustace).

5. Christopher Wren (father of the Architect), inventor of the serpentine

river.

6. 'Bacon the prophet, Milton the Herald' (W. Mason).

7. Milton's Paradise (Dr J. Warton and Horace Walpole).

8. Sir Plenry Wotton (G. W. Johnson).

9. Huet, Bishop of Avranches.

10. Dufresny (Gabriel Thouin).

11. Hogarth's * Line of Beauty.*

12. William Kent.

13. Pope in the Guardiati, and at Twickenham. .

14. Addison in the Spectator.

15. The Enghsh (Gray).

16. The Chinese (Geo. Mason and W. Chambers).

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 317

dissatisfied with the opinions of Bishop Huet and others on the
' Situation of Paradise,' has succeeded in his attempt to identify
its precise position at the heads of the four great rivers of Africa/
we must be satisfied with Milton's imaginative description in
* Paradise Lost.'

Possibly it may eventually be proved that Eden is identical with
the 'Gardens of the Hesperides' near Mount Atlas; although
these gardens, again, stripped of poetic fruit and foliage, have
been declared to be only disused stone quarries at Berenice
(Bengaze) affording fine soil and shelter for luxuriant fruit-trees.^

Milton, it is interesting to note, has so carefully ' trimmed ' and
' hedged ' his garden, as to have been claimed in turns by the
partisans of either school as representing its views.

A set of quotations is necessary to enable the reader to judge
whether Horace Walpole is right in seeing only Nature therein,
or Walter Bagehot in asserting you could draw a map of it.

Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green
As with a rural mound, the champain head
Of a sleep wilderness ; whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied ; and overhead up-grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar and pine and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene ! and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest vieiv. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung :
... In this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant garden God ordained.

Flowers worthy of Paradise, which tiot nice art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Pour'd forth profuse on hill and dale and plain.

1 See Mr W. Marshall Adams's letter to The Times on ' The New Search
for Eden.' November 23, 1898.

2 Lieut. Beechey's Travels in Cyrene, 1828, and Gardeners Magazine, vol.
iv. p. 398 (Loudon).

l/

1

318 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

A happy rural seat of various view :

Groves^ whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm ;

Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb. . . .
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant : meanwhile murm'ring waters fall
Down the slope hills, dispers'd or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.

— Paradise Lost, Book IV.

The earliest historical gardens are those of ancient Egypt, of
which a description from the pen of Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson has
been quoted in the text, and Mr Percy Newberry now seems to
be convinced that the illustration reproduced from Rosellini is the
design of the gardener Nekht for the Great Temple at Karnak.^

Besides the Monuments and Herodotus's mention of the sacred
groves and gardens of Amnion and Osiris in Egypt as of extra-
ordinary beauty, we have little authentic record.

Those who will penetrate into the mystery of the Hanging
Gardens of Babylon further than is disclosed by Diodorus Siculus,^
may dip into the learned Dr Falconer's ' Historical View of the
Gardens of Antiquity.' ^ The Hill Amron-Ibn-Ali is the supposed
site of the 'Horti Pensiles.' Some may have their imagination
of the subject quickened by the sight of the stupendous columns
and cypresses in Martin's pictures of the ' Destruction of Babylon '
and the ' Fall of Nineveh,' ^ or by De Brosse's description of the
terraced gardens of Isola Bella — perhaps the nearest comparison
to be found in Europe : —

" Imagine a quantity of arcades formed in the centre of a lake,
supporting a conical-shaped hill, cut on four sides, covered with

^ See ante pages 1-3. ^ See ante page 12.

3 See also Dr Sickler's Introduction to his ' Geschichte der Obst Cultur,'
1802.

^ See, too, a fine fanciful sketch by A. Castaigne in Century Magazine for
June 1898.

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 319

thirty-six terraces, one above the other, nine on each side, and
one of the sides covered with buildings. Each of these terraces
is hung with pallissades of jasmine, orange-trees or pomegranates."

Besides being a mystical poet. King Solomon was a very
practical gardener and botanist, and as we know that his garden
was quadrangular and surrounded by a high wall, it may be
surmised that he favoured the formal style. Josephus gives him
credit for being the first to plant the cedar in Judaea, and 'the
humble hyssop in the wall ' did not escape his notice any more
than the more heavily scented rose, lily, camphire, spikenard,
saffron and cinnamon ; it is rumoured Solomon's pools still exist,^
but had they been in Europe, instead of the unchanging East,
there is little doubt they would long ago have been thrown into
a lake.

The ancient Persian garden or park (Paradise) seems to have
undergone little change in form from the days of Xenophon,
through those of the later travellers Chardin and Tavernier in
the seventeenth century, down to our own time ; ^ and for the
' roses and raptures ' which you may find missing in their actual
gardens, you must appeal to the imaginative ones of Hafiz, Saadi
and Omar Khayyam.^ Compare, for instance. Lord Curzon's
description of the gardens of Shiraz with the utterances of the
poets : —

' From the outside, a square or oblong enclosure is visible,
enclosed by a high mud wall, over the top of which appears
a dense bouquet of trees. The interior is thickly planted with
these, or as Herbert phrased it, with lofty pyramidal cypresses,
broad spreading chenazvrs, tough elm, straight ash, knotty pines,
fragrant masticks, kingly oaks, sweet myrtles, useful maples.
They are planted down the sides of long alleys, admitting of
no view but a vista, the surrounding plots being a jungle of

^ *Maundrell's Travels.' '' See ante pp. 4 and 126.

^ One wonders if ' Come into the Garden, Maud ' with all its flower
personification was inspired by Jami's * Come into the Garden, for without
thy care or mine, all is ready for pleasure. Since the rose has removed the
veil from before her cheek, the narcissus has become all eyes to gaze upon
her.'

L/"

320 THE PRAISE OF GARDElsS

bushes and shrubs. Water courses along in channels or is
conducted into tanks. Sometimes these gardens rise in terraces
to a pavilion at the summit, whose reflection in the pool below
is regarded as a triumph of landscape gardening. There are
no neat walks, or shaped flower-beds, or stretches of sward.
All is tangled and untrimmed. Such beauty as arises from shade
and the purling of water is all that the Persian requires.'^
\J Of the ancient Greek gardens the sum of opinion from the
scant authority at hand is that they were little more than olive
groves or orchards. Pliny ascribes to Epicurus, the ' Philosopher
of the Garden,' the introduction of the Pleasure Garden within
the walls of Athens, between the Cephissus and the Ilissus ; and
if it was not Formal, it was certainly Classic and Academic. It is
a little difficult to reconcile this account with Plutarch's statement
that a century earlier the General Cimon first reformed the
Academy from savagery by conveying streams of water to it, and
planting it with groves of the olive plane and elm trees ; unless we
suppose Epicurus to have possessed the first private garden in
Athens.

These trees were cut down in the siege of Athens by Sulla, as
the trees of the Bois de Boulogne were sacrificed at the siege of
the modern Athens. From Aristophanes we have this picture of
an Athenian bourgeois's ideal of ' cabbage planting ' : —

* If my lot be join'd with thine —
To plant in lengthen'd ranks the vine,
To graft the fig tree's tender shoots,
To pluck the vineyard's purpling fruits ;
And olive-trees in many a row
Around our farm shall circling grow.' -

Passing to Roman gardens, Livy (as early as B.C. 534) mentions
the garden of Tarquinius Superbus. Forgetful of the stern
simplicity of old Cato the Censor and his injunction to each
Roman citizen to cultivate flowers in his enclosure as a source
of elegance and moral culture, we find in Imperial days that

^ ' Persia,' by Hon. G. N. Curzon.

2 ' The Acharnians ' (Mitchell's Translation).

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE ' 321

even the stoic Seneca indulged in garden magnificence strangely
out of keeping with the ascetic philosophy he professed.

Other famous Roman gardens were those of Scipio ; Lucullus's,
on the promontory of Misenum (perhaps on the site of his so-
called existing villa near Baiae, in the Bay of Naples), where
Martial declares his preference for the wild country over the pre-
vailing fashion of roses and clipped box-trees amongst myrtles
and planes : —

Baiana nostri villa, Basse, Faustini
Non otiosis ordinata myrtetis
Viduaque platano, tonsilique buxeto,
Ingrata lati spatia detinet campi
Sed rure vero, barbaroque l^tatur.

On the Quirinal Hill lay the gardens of Sallust, afterwards
merged into the Negroni, Ludovisi and Barberini gardens ; ^
Cicero's villa at Arpinum is constantly referred to : but best
known of all, from the owner's descriptions, are the villas of
Varro and of Pliny the Consul. The latter's Laurentine villa
on the Tiber, near Paterno, now called ' San Lorenzo ' and his
Tusculan villa, now Frascati, situate in the natural amphitheatre
of the Apennines, are so fully detailed in his letters that learned
archaeologists, Scamozzi, Felibien (1699), Schinkel and Castell
(1728) have essayed to reconstruct the plan of them.^ But even
more interesting than the gardens of Pliny are the excavations
at Pompeii showing the plan and design of the inner city gardens,
and the wall paintings at Herculaneum. In one of the latter the
trellises, pergolas, statuary and fountains might have emanated
from MoUet or Boyceau in the sixteenth or seventeenth century ;
and so striking is the likeness, that Horace Walpole expressed
his opinion that ' nothing is wanting but a parterre to make a
garden in the reign of Trajan serve for the description of one
in the reign of King William HL'; and in the Inner Garden

1 See De Brosse's ' Life of Sallust ' ; also ante p. i6o.

-In Loudon's ' History of^ Gardening' may be seen reproductions on a
small scale of the plans of Pliny's two villas from R. Castell's ' Villas of the
Ancients.' See also ante p. \^ et scq.

322 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

to the house of Aulus Vettius, even the parterre (on a domestic
scale) is not wanting. 'Pompeii,' writes Taine, 'is an ancient
Saint-Germain or Fontainebleau ; one sees the abyss separating the
two worlds.'^

In the Garden of Vettius the marble basins, statues, etc., are
all set up in their original places, from which some have never
moved, and the beds are laid out on the old lines, following the
indications in the wall paintings : for instance, the cones of basket
work overgrown with creepers and ivy to be seen at various points
in the garden are copied from one of the frescoes. Charles
Estienne's ' De re Hortensi Libellus ' throws no light upon these
dome-shaped cages. The marble heads in the centre of the
picture on ivy- carved stelae are those of Dionysius with Ariadne,
and Silenus with a Bacchante, back to back. The fountains on
either side of the foreground are bronze boys holding geese, with
water flowing from the beaks, and the fresco behind the columns
represents makers of the garlands, the art to which Athenaeus
devotes so many pages.

Another feature of Roman gardens copied in mediaeval days
was the mount, called "ko^og by Plutarch, no doubt raised to
command a view of the surrounding country.-

During the dark ages the early Christian fathers and the

^ 'Voyage en Italic.'

2 A few authorities and references (other than these in the text) to ancient
Greek and Roman gardens : —

Dr Falconer's 'Historical View of the Gardens of Antiquity,' 1785.

C. A. Bottiger's ' Racemazionen zur Garten Kunst der Alten.'

Felibien, Plans et Descriptions des maisons de Campagne de Pline le Consul,
1699.

Trinkhusii Dissertatio de Hortis et Villis Ciceronis.

C. Stephanus, ' De re Hortensi Libellus,' 1536.

Daines Barrington, ' Archceologia,' 1782.

Elian's 'Various History.'

R. Rapinus, Hortorum Lib. IV., with Appendix, — 'De Universa Culturce
Hortensis Disciplina, ' Utrecht, 1672, a most valuable dissertation : also the
Paris Edition of 1780,' with a History of Gardens by Gabriel Brotier.

Scamozzi, * Discorsi sopra I'Antichita di Roma,' 1582.

Stengel's Hortorum, Florum et Arborum Historia, 1650.

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HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 327

monks alone preserved the arts of culture as of horticulture ; in
the fourth century St Jerome describes St Anthony's mountain
garden ; and Castell points out how several early monasteries and
abbeys follow the lines and distribution of Roman villas — courts
surrounded with porticoes, and containing basins with fountains —
terraces upon arcades and garden oratories.

The Abbey of Icolmhill was founded in the Hebrides between
500 and 600 A.D., and from works like the ' Polypticon ' of the
Abbot Irminon, written between 800 and 900 a.d., we know that
gardens, orchards and arboreta were attached to the monasteries
of St Remy, St Bertin and Corbie, and consisted of a plot of
ground enclosed by a wall, a hedge or trellis, and devoted to the
cultivation of vegetables, fruits, herbs and roots.

Miss Amherst also recites the garden accounts of Norwich Priory
and Abingdon Abbey, and gives a plan of Bicester Priory.^

In the ' Ordinatio Hortorum ' of the Abbey of Corbie, the
garden is divided into four parts, and directions are given for
its weeding, by the Hortulan friar sending in the ' Sarculatores '
or hoers, to cleanse the arecc and plantationesP'

The plan of the kitchen and fruit garden of the Abbey of St
Gall (on the Lake of Constance) by a monk of the ninth
century, bald and uninteresting as it looks, contains much of the
garden and other history of its time, bringing us into touch with
Charlemagne, who himself was a constant and popular visitor
here, and known as ' Noster Carolus ' amongst the monks.

The plan is supposed to be by Abbot Eginhardus, Prefect of
the Royal Buildings under Charlemagne, whose daughter Imma
he had married, and after her death adopted a monastic life.

The kitchen garden is a parallelogram of eighteen beds, on
each of which is written in Latin the name of the vegetable it
contains, all of which (with the exception of carrots) are enumer-

^ * History of English Gardening.'

^ The word Hortus, derived perhaps from x^pTos, as it were * Cortis ' or
* Curtis,' means a garden in the Middle Ages as well as with the Latins. In
the grounds of the Abbey of Prum^ the gardens were divided into Arece and
Agri^ and into Lecti. (M. B. Gu^rard, 'Commentary on the Polyptikon.')

32 8 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

ated in Charlemagne's Capitulare de Villis^ as ordained to be
cultivated within his dominions.

The fruit trees in the cemetery are planted around the graves of
the friars, and between the monuments. The flower, i.e. herb or
physic garden, is on the other side of the house (not shown in this
half of the plan) appropriately near the doctors' quarters in the N.E.
angle of the monastery : this contains sixteen beds of herbs and
flowers also identical with those named in the Capitulary. As the
monks were bound by their vows to live upon pulse, vegetables and
fruit gathered by themselves, the importance of these gardens
in the monastic economy was considerable.^ A more detailed
account of the contents of the Garden at this date is given in
the poem ' Hortulus ' by Walafridus Strabo (afterwards abbot of
the monastery) dedicated in a.d. 849 to the then abbot, Grimald.^

' The gardens in the early part of the Norman Dynasty were
certainly not different from what we now term orchards. Com-
paratively few fruit trees or esculent plants were known in
England till even the latter centuries. But near the castles
(as at Conway) and monasteries, a small enclosure was reserved
for the ladies or for the abbot, which was surrounded by lofty
walls, sometimes decorated with paintings, and filled with roses
and other fragrant plants.' ^

Brithnod, the first Abbot of Ely, a.d. i 107, was celebrated for
his skill in horticulture, and laid out very extensive gardens
and orchards;'* and Neckam, in the same century, rhetorically
catalogues the fruit, flowers and vegetables which should adorn
* a noble garden.' ^

For the best descriptions in English of mediaeval gardens we
must consult Chaucer and Lydgate, or the * King's Quhair,' by

^ See the late Professor Willis's paper published in Archceological Journal
vol. v., with the facsimile of the original plan and a modernised and anglicised
form.

2 Strabi Fuldensis * Hortulus' per Venerabilem Bedam, Nuremberg, 1512.

^ Dallaway's ' Supplementary Anecdotes to Gardening in England.'

^ G. W. Johnson, ' History of English Gardening.'

^ See ante p. 30.

33°

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 331

the poet-king, James I. of Scotland, who from his prison in
Windsor Castle spies

* A Garden fair ; and in ihe Corners set
An Herbere greene, with Wandis long and small
Railit about.'

The ' wands ' or railings, as a division of the beds before the use
of box, may also be seen, painted green and white, the Tudor
colours, in the backgrounds of Holbein's pictures of Will Somers
and Jane the Fool. Chaucer's garden in 'Troilus and Cresseide,'
also preserves this feature and the sanded alleys :

This Yerde ^ was large, and railed al the aleyes
And shadowed wel with blos'oniy bowis grene,
And benchid newe, and sondid all the weyes.

The mediaeval garden from the illumination of the ' Roman de
la Rose ' is shown both in Miss Amherst's ' History ' and in the
' Formal Garden in England,' - and valuable illustrations are to be
found in the ' Songe de Poliphile ' and the illuminations of a
French MS. of the late fifteenth-century ' Le Rustican des Profits
Ruraux ' by Croissant, and in the Psalter of Edwin in Trinity
College, Cambridge, is given the private garden of one of the
canons.^

Less familiar is the pleasure garden here copied from the
earliest known Flemish engraving (about 1450) called the 'Garden
of Love,' in which the occupants of the garden are depicted as
engaged in all sorts of diversions, love-making, feasting, playing
cards and music. The beasts of the field and birds of the air,
monkeys and parrots even, are revelling amid perspectiveless
scenery of conventialised trefoil-trees and running water, and
large detached flowers are strewn upon the grass in the fore-

^ Yerde or Yard (surviving in the Pond Yard at Hampton Court) was the
earlier form of the word Garden, both being of the same etymology (the
Anglo-Saxon ' geard ') and signifying an enclosure — the Scotch form ' Garth '
comes half-way between the two — and other forms of the word are innumerable.
In Holland's Pliny we find hort-yard for orchard.

'^ By Reginald Blomfield and Inigo Thomas.

^ See ArchiTological Journal, vol. iv. p. i6o.

y

332 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

ground, suggesting the art of the goldsmith rather than of the

gardener.^

Dr Andrew Boorde (whom the Dictionary of National Biography
no longer allows to be the original 'Merry Andrew') in his
'Dyetary of Health' will have attached to a mansion a 'fayre
garden, repleted wyth herbes of aromatyck and redolent savours,
with a poole or two for fysche ' ; and the ' Mesnagier de Paris '
gives a long Hst of all the herbs and plants which ought to be
cultivated in the garden.

But the design of the garden, rather than its contents, is our
theme, and we must consult the work of the French architect,
Androuet du Cerceau, ' Les plus Excellents Bastiments de France,'
for bird's-eye views and plans of the gardens of the ' Thuileries,'
Montargis, the Chateaux of Blois and Gaillon, and many others.^
^^The gardens of St. Germain-en-Laye built for Henry H., run-
ning down to the Seine in a series of terraces under which were
grottoes in rock and shell-work, and figures disporting themselves
in the waters, were considered one of the marvels of the age.

The grotto has always played an important role in the history
of gardens from the mythical one of Calypso to those of Palissy
enamelled over with creeping things in pottery, and the be-
spa'd and be-mirrored creation of Pope at Twickenham.^

To come back to England in the days of Henry VHI. The
best known Tudor gardens were Nonesuch near Ewell in Surrey
described by Hentzner ; ^ Theobalds, of which we have a picture
from the Parliamentary Survey of 1650, to which date we may
assume it to have been undisturbed;^ and greatest of all, Hampton

Court. They are characterised by moats and walls, while the
1

1 I am indebted to Mr Sidney Colvin for drawing my attention to Professor
Max Lehr's monograph on this print, and to the latter for permission to re-
produce his collotype.

2 See ante p. 51. =^ See ante pp. 45-50 and 143. ^ See ante p. 73.

5 ' In the Create Garden are nine large compleate squares or knotts lyinge
upon a levell in ye middle of y« said Garden, whereof one is sett forth with
box borders in y^ likeness of y«^ Kinges armes, one other plott is planted with
choice flowers ; the other 7 knotts are all grass knotts, handsomely turfed in
the intervalls or little walkes. ... a Quicksette hedge of White Thorne

,' '-^ — Jardin entre les
deux Bosquets

Jardin en pente.

- Jardin des
Canaulx.

• — Seir

The terraced Gardens of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1523.
From Braun's ' Civitates Orbis Terrarum,' 1 572-1618.

333

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335

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE t,2>7

' knotted ' beds are railed with painted wands (the royal colours
being green and white) or surrounded with low fences of trellis-
work. Cavendish in his life of Wolsey sings : —

* My Garden sweet, enclosed with walles strong
Embanked with benches to sytt and take my rest
The knots so enknotted, it cannot be exprest,
With arbors and alyes so pleasant and so dulce. '

Mounts at the corners, galleries, dials, cabinets of verdure,
columns and pyramids of marble, topiarian work and fish-ponds
complete the details.

Skelton, a Tudor poet, paints the following picture of a garden
of his day : —

' With alys ensanded about in compas
The bankis enturfid with singular solas,
Enrailed with rosers, and vinis engrapi'd.' ^

The gardens of Hampton Court covered altogether 2000 acres
and consisted of the Mount Garden, the King's Newe Garden
(now called the Privy Garden) with gravel paths, raised mounds,
sun-dials, and railed beds — and the Pond yard or Garden (now
alone remaining, and the subject of our illustration) which retains
something of its ancient Tudor aspect, being still divided into
its original rectangular enclosures by low brick walls overgrown
with creepers, in the corners of which may be detected the bases
of the stone piers that supported the heraldic beasts 'bearing
vanes and shields with the King's arms and badges.' ^

In a drawing by Antonius Wynngarde in the Bodleian Library

and privett cutt into a handsome fashion — at every angle a faire cherrie tree,
and a ' Ciprus ' in the middle of the knotts — also a Marble fountaine.

' The Privie Garden has a Quadrangle or square squadron Quicksett hedge
9 feet high, with four round Arbours and seats at each corner and two Door-
ways to each Arbour, between which a Roman T pointing to 3 paire of
Staires and a Mulberry walk.' (Shortened from the original MS. in Record
Office, transcribed by Miss Amherst.)

^ Skel ton's * Garlande of Laurell.'

2 Ernest Law, * History of Hampton Court.'

^^8 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

these heraldic beasts are the most conspicuous feature, bristling
over the whole garden.^

As an introduction to the Elizabethan garden we must return
to Italy, which, in gardening as in literature, at this time exercised
so potent an influence over our ancestors.

The mediaeval Italian gardens are founded upon the Roman
villas evolving into fortified castles or monasteries, of which many
of them occupy the sites. Meason traces the relationship in the
later use of one of LucuUus's villas.

One of the oldest is Bramante's Vatican garden, on the site
of the present Library of the Vatican. In 1549 the same architect
laid out the Vt7/a d'Este at Tivoli for the Cardinal Hippolito
d'Este, the friend of Ariosto, upon the site of the Emperor
H adrian^s 3'il]a. A view is here given of the Villa d'Este as if
appeared about 1765, 'darkly grav'd by Piranesi's hand,' in which
some of the many cypresses said to have been planted by Michael
Angelo are conspicuous. ' Terrace rises upon terrace and water
rushes down an artificial rock, spreading in a beautiful manner as
it descends.'^

The terraces rendered necessary by the hilliness of the ground,

with flights of steps leading to the different levels; the piazzas for

shade and air; avenues and plantations of olive, vine, and myrtle;

, fountains, statuary, urns, and vases ; these are the decorative ele-

\ ments of the later stately architectural Italian Gardens with their

fine perspectives.^

^ The Inventory of ' Beestes in freeston barynge shyldes with the kynges armes
and the Queeny's,' is thus entered in the Chapel House Accounts, transcribed by
Mr Law: — 'foure dragones, seyx lyones, five grewhoundes, five harttes, foure
unicornes, serving to stand about the ponddes in the pond yard ; ' and the
' paynting of 180 postes with white and greene in oyle, and sixteen brazin
dials for the newe garden,' is also chronicled.

■•^ Wood's 'Letters of an Architect.'

^ Much ridicule has been levelled at the Italian Gardens for being only
a means of walking up and down stairs in the open air ; but a witty writer has
retorted that the Italian finds but little pleasure in the melancholy monotony
of an English Park, and least of all in a large extent of level lawn ; and that
if you tell him that in this he was to contemplate Nature dressed^ he would
probably reply that he saw in it only Nature shaved.

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339

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 341

The villas Ludovisi, Medici, Doria Pamphili, the gardens of the
Quirinal and others may be studied in Giovanni Battista Falda's
copper-plates of Roman gardens. The gardens of the villa Albani,
outside the Porta Salaria, planned by the great Cardinal-Antiquary,
Alessandro Albani, the patron and friend of Winckelmann, are
taken by Taine as the text for an eloquent aesthetic sermon upon
the art and arrangement loved by the " grand seigneur homme
de cour " of Italy : —

' No liberty is left to nature, all is artilEicial. The water leaps
out in jets and plumes, and has no bed save vases and urns.
The lawns are hemmed in by enormous hedges taller than a man,
thick as walls, and forming geometrical triangles of which the
apexes all point to one centre. In the foreground stretches a
compact alley of small cypresses planted in a row.

'You ascend from one garden to another by large stone stair-
cases like those at Versailles. The flower-beds are enclosed in
small box frames ; they compose designs and resemble well-
bordered carpets in a regular medley of gradated colours. This
villa is a wreck, as it were the fossil skeleton of a life that lasted
two centuries, whose chief pleasure was conversation amid beauti-
ful surroundings, with the customs of Salon and Ante-chamber.' ^

^ The following are some of the chief authorities on Italian villas and
Gardens : —

Pietro Crescenzi, 'Opus Ruralium Commodorum,' Bk. viii., 1471-

Angeli Politiani, ' Rusticus,' i486.

M. Bussato, ' Giardino d'Agricoltura,' Venetia, 161 2.

I. B. Ferrarius, 'de Florum Cultura,' Rome, 1633.

Israeli Silvestro, * Alcune vedute di Giardini e Fontane di Roma e di Tivoli,'
Paris, 1646.

Melchior Kysell, * Recueil des Jardins Italiens,' Augsburg, 1682.

G. B. Falda, 'Li Giardini di Roma,' 1670.

Evelyn's Diary.

R. Castell's 'Villas of the Ancients,' 1728.

L. Vanvitelli, ' Disegni del Reale Palazzo di Caserta,' 1756.

Piranesi's 'Vedute di Roma,' 1765.

De Brosse's Letters.

Eustace's ' Classical Tour through Italy.'

Beckford's ' Letters from Italy.'

342 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Thus much upon Italian gardens will serve as prelude to the
Elizabethan garden, which, like the literature of the day, was
cosmopolitan and eclectic — a happy fusion of the early Tudor
garden with the styles of Italy and France, borrowing from the
former its terraces and fountains, and from the latter its parterres,
alleys, berceaux and labyrinths. Its design is summed up in
the famous Essay of Bacon, the crown and flower of garden
literature, which contains the elements of all styles and schools —
of the architect's, the painter's, the natural and wild garden alike.

One typical Elizabethan garden was Theobalds, the garden
of Lord Treasurer Burleigh (of which there is a plan by Thorpe
in the Soane Museum), described by Mandelslo in 1640 as a large
square, with its walls covered with Phillyrea, a jet d'eau in the
centre, a parterre, with walks planted on the sides with espaliers,
and others ' arched over ' : a mount called the Mount of Venus
is in the midst of a labyrinth or maize. The walks ' arched over '
are due to the art of the 'pleacher,' a word derived from the
French 'plesser' to weave (from the woven or plaited boughs),
and of constant occurrence in Shakespeare.

Other gardens were Hatfield described by Hentzner,^ Holland
House, Kensington, with much of its original plan still existing ;
and the Earl of Pembroke's garden at Wilton (before the days of
the Palladian Bridge), here shown as originally designed by Isaac
de Caus, son of the old Solomon de Caus, from whom we have the
plan and description of the Schloss garden at Heidelberg.^

The euphuistic praise of Wilton by John Taylor, the ' Water

W. S. Rose's • Letters from the North of Italy.'

Sir R. C. Hoare's 'Classical Tour.'

Joseph Forsyth's 'Remarks on Italy,' 1802.

G. L. Meason's ' Landscape Architecture of Italy,' 1828.

R. Duppa's 'Observations and Opinions on the Continent.'

Wood's ' Letters of an Architect,' 1828.

Taine's 'Voyage en Italic ' and ' Philosophic de 1' Art.'

Leader Scott's ' Ruccellai Gardens.'

Charles A. Piatt's ' Italian Gardens,' 1894.

^ ante p. 73.

^ * Hortus Palatinus Heidelbergae exstructus,' 1620 (translated in Loudon).

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344

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 345

Poet,' has already been given ^ — although the 'intricacy' of its
'setting' hardly seems to equal the 'twisting, turnings and
windings ' of the poet's rhetorical conceits ; and if the symbolical
three arbours standing in a triangle cannot be detected, the
walks one within another like * the rind of an onion ' are certainly
visible.

According to the letter-press with the copper-plates, the garden
was 1000 feet long by 400 feet broad, and was divided into three
long squares or parallelograms. The first from the house con-
tained four platts embroidered, each with a fountain in the midst,
marble statues, platts of flowers, and a little 'terrass.' The second
comprised two groves or woods, with the River Nadar running
through them under a bridge, the breadth of the Great Walk.
In the groves were two white marble statues, 8 feet high, of
Bacchus and Flora ; and at the sides two covered arbours, 300
feet long, and alleys. In the third division were two ponds with
fountains, and two columns in the middle, the water causing
two crowns to revolve. Then came a green ' Compartment,' the
walks planted with cherry-trees, and in the middle a great Oval
with an antique Statue of a Gladiator in brass ; at the sides were
three arbours with ' twining Galleryes.'

At the end of the Great Walk stood a stone portico with pilasters
and niches containing white marble figures, and a ' terrass ' with
sea-monsters upon the steps casting water from top to bottom ;
and above the portico was a 'reserve' of water for the grotto.

Of Elizabethan writers not before quoted Sir Hugh Piatt of
Lincoln's Inn, Gentleman, 'the most ingenious husbandman
of the age he lived in,' ^ should be remembered as the author of
' The Jewel House of Art and Nature,' ' The Paradise of Flora ' and
' The Garden of Eden.' He was an advocate for complete indi-
viduality of action in ' shaping or fashioning a Garden ' — and
considered that 'every Drawer or Embroiderer, nay (almost)

1 Atife p. 87.

- Tracts on practical Agriculture and Gardening, to which is added a com-
plete Chronological Catalogue of English Authors on Agriculture, Gardening,
etc., by Richard Weston, London, 1769, 8vo,

34^ THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

each Dancing-master, may pretend to such niceties, how long,
broad or high, the Beds, Hedges, or Borders should be con-
trived, in regard they call for very small Invention and less
learning ; ' — but he takes much trouble to explain, in anticipa-
tion of modern Window-gardening, how *a faire Gallery, great
chamber or other lodging, may be inwardly garnished with sweet
herbs and flowers, yea, and fruit— and how to make apt frames
for letting down flower-pots with a pulley from your chamber-
window, and flower-boxes of lead, or hordes well pitched within,
and planted with Rosemary * running up the transums or movels
of your windowes.'

The illustration from the ' Hortus P'loridus ' by Crispin de Pass
shows more in detail the pleached Galleries supported by sculptured
columns, and the beds cut up into quaint geometrical snippets strewn
upon a sea of sand, and ' set with fine flowers, but thin and sparingly';
a Book of Designs of a similar character by a Flemish Artist, de
Vries,^ plays more variations upon the same theme.
- The name of Rembert Dodonaeus ^ associated with Clusius and
Crispin de Pass, recalls the long list of Herbals which appeared in
connection with the Physic Gardens of Europe. The translation
of Peter Treveris's 'Crete Herball' was the first published in English,
in 1568. But William Turner's ' Herball,' which he claims to have
written thirty years before, makes its author rather than Gerard
'the Father of the English Herbal.'^ Dodoens-Lyte's 'Niewe
Herbair appeared in 1578, and finally John Gerarde, the most
renowned of all, published in London his ' Herball,' of which a
reduced facsimile of the title-page is given. Gerarde was born in
1545, educated as a surgeon, and for twenty years superintended
the Garden of Lord Burleigh, to whom the Herbal is dedicated

^ I. Vredeman de Vries, ' Hortorum Viridariorumque Elegantes Formae.'
Antwerp, 1583.

2 1 517-1586 Physician to the Emperor Maximilian II., Professor of Physic
at Leyden, and author of ' Sterpium Historic Pemptades ' upon which Lyte
and Gerard founded their Herbals.

^ Dean of Wells, and M.D.; First Book, Black Letter, small fo., 1551 ; 2nd
Book, Cologne 1562. Turner had physic gardens at Cologne and later at Wells
and Kew — (Preface addressed to Queen Elizabeth).

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349

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 351

in 1597. In his youth he had taken a voyage to the Baltic,
and on his return lived in Holborn where he possessed a large
physic garden, of which in 1596 he published a catalogue (the
earliest in English), and this garden is perhaps the one delineated
at the foot of the title-page. He also drew up a letter for Lord
Burleigh recommending that a physic garden should be established
at Cambridge with himself at its head, ' to encourage the faculty of
simpling.'

The Herbal was, so to speak, the Catalogue Raisonne of the
physic gardens, public and private, which, on the revival of learn-
ing, were instituted one after another throughout Europe. Until
recently the earliest physic or botanical garden was supposed to
be that founded at Venice in 1334 by the Surgeon Gualtieri,^ if
it was not preceded by the one of Matthaus Sylvaticus at Salerno ;
but Herr H. Benrath, in his interesting introduction to the official
guide to the Hamburg Garden Exhibition,^ states that the
Rathsapothekeiigarten (Municipal Physic Garden) in that city is
much older than the Apothecary's shop known to have been
situated on the Ness in 13 16; proving that a Public 'Garden
of Simples ' existed prior to the period usually quoted.^

^ HazHtt's ' Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.'

2 Rudolf Mosse, Hamburg, 1897.

^ See ' Sprengel's Antiquitates Botanicae,' 1798, and 'Historia Rei Herbarise,'
1808 (' Geschichte der Botanik ').

The chronological order of the foundation of the various public physic
gardens seems to be as follows : —

1545. At Padua, springing from Bonaside's private Garden of Simples
founded in 1533.

1544. At Pisa, begun by Cosmo de Medici, with Ghinusand Ccesalpinus for
first two directors.

1547. At Bologna founded by Lucas Ghinus, from whom Dr Turner ac-
quired the knowledge enabling him to admonish Fuchsius (the godfather of the
Fuchsia) of * certeine erroures ' (see Preface to his ' New Herball ').

1560 Gesner's at Zurich; 1570 Paris; 1577 Leyden, under direction of
Clusius ; Petrus Paaw published ' Hortus Publicus Academicse Lugduno-
Batavse,' 1601, with plan of the garden. 1580 Leipsic ; 1598 Montpelier, by
Henry IV., famous for its circular form of which De Serres gives an engraving.
1610, The Jardin des Plantes, Paris, by Louis XHL Oxford had to wait till

352 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Other Elizabethans besides Bacon had imaginative and pro-
phetic glimpses of the modern or landscape garden — the worthy
Ambassador (sent to He abroad for the good of his country) and
Provost of Eton, Sir Henry Wotton noted ' a certain contrariety
between building and gardening ; for as fabricks should be regular,
so gardens should be irregular, or at least cast into a very wild
regularity '1 — and Sir Philip Sidney in his 'Arcadia' brings his
hero to a 'well-arrayed ground,' that was 'neither field, garden,
nor orchard ; or rather it was both field, garden and orchard.'

Here is Sidney depicted by old Isaac Oliver, the miniaturist,
reposing in the Garden at Penshurst, which he has immortalised,
with its ' pleached ' gallery in the distance ; famous once, as
Evelyn says in his ' Diary,' for the noble Conversation which
was wont to meet in its Gardens ; such conversation, as we
know from Clarendon in more troubled days, the ' flowing ' and
gracious Falkland attracted round him in his garden-retreat at
Great Tew, near Oxford,— a 'College situated in a purer Air;
so that his house was a University in a less volume.'

And now, in the words of Sidney, let us turn to our 'sweet
enemy, France,' whose hands for more than a century were
destined to sway the sceptre of garden sovereignty.

1632, when Henry Danvers, Earl of Danby, gave five acres on the Cherwell,
with Jacob Bobart from Brunswick as Superintendent, w^hose descendants (says
Foudoii) are still in Oxford. In 1673 the Apothecaries founded theirs at
Chelsea, of which Miller, author of the Gardeners Dictionary, was the most
famous Director during half a century (see Field and Semple's ' Memoirs ').
Tradescant's garden at Lambeth was famous, and his collection left to Ashmole
was the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum : but except the catalogue,
Tradescant has left no writings (see G. W. Johnson and Loudon).

^ The following interesting marginal note is from a copy of Wotton's
'Elements of Architecture' by Christopher Wren, Chaplain to Charles L,
Dean of Windsor and father of the Architect : ' For disposing the current of
a river to a mightie length in a little space I invented the serpentine, a form
admirably conveying the current in circular and yet contrary motions upon one
and the same level, with walks and retirements betweene, to the advantage of
all purposes, either of gardenings, plantings or banquetings. In brief it is to
reduce the current of a mile's length into the comjiass of an orchard ' (see
Gardener s Magazine, vol. iii. p. 480).

353

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Andre le Notre : after Carlo Maratti.

355

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 357

Charles Estienne or Stephens, a member of the family of
France's first and greatest printers, was also one of the first of
her scholars and garden-lovers ; and by his little book, ' De re
hortensi libellus,' a sort of grammar and syntax of the garden-art,
and his larger and more practical work in collaboration with
Liebault, the ' Prcedium Rusticum ' or ' Maison Rustique,' ^
showed that for him the well-known printing emblem of his family
had a literal as well as symbolic meaning.-

This work prepared the way for Olivier de Serres, 'the Father
of Agriculture,' and his 'Theatre d'Agriculture,' (its title showing
the tendency of the Gaul to seek the dramatic even in the pastoral;)
wherein Claude Mollet, the King's gardener, is commended for
his invention of his famous ' Parterres de Broderies,' of which
specimens are given. ]\lollet was the ancestor of several
generations of great Gardeners, who produced between them
the 'Theatre des Plans et Jardinages.'

Francis I., who died in 1547, in building his Palace of Fontaine-
bleau had introduced into the Garden some of the features of
Italian Gardens. Of Androuet du Cerceau we have already
spoken, and Richelieu's Gardens at Rueil were so magnificent as
to make Evelyn doubt 'whether Italy has any exceeding them
for varieties of pleasure.'-^

And now we reach perhaps the greatest name in the whole
History of Gardens ; a name which is a synonym for the highest
magnificence in Formal or Architectural Gardening, and like all
greatness has to bear the burden of the faults of feeble imitation.

At a first glance the accompanying portrait might pass for that of
the Grand Monarch himself, but it is only that of his head gardener,
Andre Le Notre. We have Saint Simon's word for it ^ that he was
a man of great simplicity, honesty and integrity, whose only thought
was to aid Nature at tlie loivest cost. In spite of his endeavours
to be natural and keep down expense, Versailles Gardens are

1 See ante pp. 43-45-

- That of a gardener grafting on' an olive tree with the motto : Eaini
frangtintiir lit iiisererer.

■^ See ante pp. 51, and 104- 107. * See ante pp. 102-3.

^

358 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

commonly cited as the acme of the artificial, and absorbed from
first to last some eight millions of pounds, its fountains at one
time having cost ;!^30oo to set working for half an hour.^

But it was not all Le Notre's fault : his master had the knack
of constantly changing his mind about the designs. Of Le Notre's
naivete of manners and familiarity with his royal Master and the
Pope amusing stories are toldMLe Notre was educated as an
Architect, and is said to have found his earliest garden inspiration
at Rueil. His first aptual experience in rural design was obtained
at Vaux le Villars (now Vaux Praslin) and the result so delighted
the King, that he made him Comptroller General of Buildings
and Gardens. For Madame Maintenon he worked at her Convent
Garden at Noisy-le Roi, where he formed the Grand Canal out of
a marsh.

A perspective view of Versailles is here given, showing the extent
and plan on a minute scale, from an engraving by Perelle.

Let not the visitor to Versailles at the present day imagine that
he is gazing upon Le Notre's creation — there is not so much of Le
Notre left there, as there is of Phidias in the Parthenon at Athens.
If the reader doubt this, let him turn to M. Ph. Gille's historical
account of the Gardens,^ or better still to Gautier's 'comparative '
Retrospect in his ' Tableaux de Siege,' — the last book he published.
There he will read one by one the devastations of Reformers, Re-
storers, and Modernisers, no doubt all men of taste and 'improvers'
according to the ideas of the time : so that what was once a whole,
a great and magnificent unit, is now a defaced and disintegrated
fraction.

Le Notre's Garden seems made to exhibit to the utmost the
social characteristics of the French people of the Grand Century.
They extend their houses into their gardens, which are necessarily
architectural : open-air drawing and dining rooms as shown in their
very nomenclature. Their groves are cut into Salons and Salles
de Bal^ their lawns rases like their heads, and paths Men peignes
like their periwigs ; as lovers of the stage and drama, their very

^ In their curtailed form in 1816, £200 an hour. The difference is typical.
^ * La France Artistique et Monumentale.'

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HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 363

fountains must ' play ' in their Theatres (TEau, and they kill
time in open-air Circuses and Amphitheatres. ' Such symmetry '
we echo with Lord Byron, 'is not for solitude.'

Le Notre found the ground at Versailles prepared by Boyceau,^
and the main features of his design are ; The Fount ai7is of Lafona^
The Royal Alky, The Parterre du Nord (a Parterre of Le Notre's
is a whole garden in itself ! ) ; The Parterre du Midi, (which still
shows the sole remaining ' broderies ' of Le Notre) : The Bosquets
(or Groves) of which not a trace remains, The Pyra??iid Fountain,
The Water Alley, and The Jfater Theatre, now altered into a great
circle of turf with the Bassin des E?ifants in the centre.

Let us go a little more into detail, humbly following the
guidance of Gautier and M. Gille.

Here is a view of the Theatre d'Eau as Le Notre designed it.
Three alleys opening like a fan are cut in the ' curtain ' of shaped
trees, forming long perspectives bordered with yews, like the
' wings ' in a theatre : three rows of fountains rise in tiers, and at
the end of the alleys are statues of Jupiter on an eagle. Mars and
Plutus : fountains, too, form the ' foot-lights.' Six water ' scenes '
by Vigarani, in the shape of lances, lilies and other devices are
celebrated in heroic verse by C. Denis, Fo7itainier du Roy, who
does honour to these watery fire-works.^

The Alice d Eau (vulgarly called the 'Alley of Marmosets')
was composed of groups of children and little genii in bronze,
carrying vases, from which the water fell into marble basins.

To the Basin of Neptujie were added under Louis XV. the Sea
God with trident, Tritons and children, the work of Bouchardon,
Lemoyne and Adam ; where once stood the ' Arc de Triomphe '
or ' Chateau d'Eau Triomphale ' is now a grassy waste, almost
a virgin forest. The Arc was destroyed when the Park was
replanted under Louis XVL ; and at the same time the Bosquet des
Trois Fontaines had the 144 jets of water cut off and was put under
lock and key.

In the statuary of the ' Baths of Apollo,' by Girardon and

^ Author of ' Traite du Jardinage selon les raisons de la Nature et de I'Art.'
- See also ' L'Art des Fontaines ' by Jean Fran9ois, 1665.

2 A

364 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Regnaudin was a transparent compliment to ' Le Roi Soleil '
reposing from his labours. 'When in the eighteenth century,
Citizen Rousseau discovered Nature, English ideas invaded the
Continent, and the fashion was for landscape gardens. This
transformation was effected at Versailles by the plan of Hubert
Robert, the designer in fashion, the " Romantique " of the moment,
the painter of ruins, who, amongst other improvements, hollowed
out of an enormous sham rock three grottos as a sort of umbrella
to the group of Apollo and the Nymphs, and as stables for the
horses of the sun ; wall plants were scattered over the rocks, and
water came through the fissures. The English style gained the
victory over the French, and the beauties of Versailles, the marvel
of the universe, became purely historical; its life was gone out,
its character was lost.' {Gautier.)

The illustration after Rigaud shows the Bains d^Apollon before
the improvements, when the gilt metal canopies still sheltered
the statuary. The Bosquet de Venus was the scene of the famous
Diamond Necklace Rendez-vous between the Cardinal de Rohan
and Demoiselle Oliva.

The Salle de Bal as here given, is the least disfigured by the
alterations of Hubert Robert. On this spot a royal supper was
given in 1691 to the King and Queen of England; and although
the steps for the spectators have disappeared and many details
are changed, the shades of the courtiers might still, according
to Gautier, execute the Ballets of Benserade. The Labyrinth
was composed of a complicated net-work of alleys cutting one
another at right angles or forming curves of the most puzzling
character. At each turning was a fountain in rockwork on
which was represented one of ^sop's fables. Of this labyrinth
no appreciable trace remains.

Taine well sums up the impression left by Le Notre's creation : —

'The monarchical and formal gardens of Le Notre are the
complements of the grave, pompous, and studied architecture
of Mansard and Perrault; buildings and parterres are all con-
structed for men studious of their dignity and observers of the
proprieties.' ^ ' It was,' says Gautier, ' the supreme formula of

^ Philosophic de I'Art.

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La balle de l>al, \'ei'sailles : after Cottel, i68S.

367

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 369

a complete art, and the expression at its highest power of a
civilisation arrived at its full expansion.' ^

^ For the history of the garden in France, the following works, besides those
already quoted, may be consulted : —

Pierre Vallet, * Le Jardin du Roy tres chrestien Henri IV.,' 1608.

Jacques Boyceau, * Traite de Jardinage selon les raisons de la Nature et de
I'Art,' 63 plates, 1638.

Andre MoUet, ' Le Jardin de Plaisir,' Stockholm, 1651.

Israel de Silvestre, ' Jardins et Fontaines,' Paris, 1661.

Jean Marot's Architecture.

I. Le Pautre, Engravings of Gardens, Grottos and Fountains, c. 1670.

Adam Perelle, Collection of Engravings, 1685.

A. J. B. Le Blond, ' Engravings of Plans for Gardens,' 1685.
,, ,, ' Parterres de Broderie,' 1688.

,, ,, * The Theory and Practice of Gardening, c. 1690.*

Translated by John James, 1728. (This book is sometimes attributed to
d'Argenville, whose edition in 1739 has very valuable plates.)

• Le Labyrinthe de Versailles,' Plates of Fountains by Leclerc, 1679.

N. Langlois, ' Parterres,' 23 Plans after Le Notre, Le Bouteux.

L. Liger, ' Le Jardinier Fleuriste,' 1719.

J. Mariette, ' Parterres de Broderie,' etc., c. 1730.

J. F. Blondel, 'de la Distribution des Maisons de Plaisance,' 160 plates,
Paris, 1737-8.

' Le Spectacle de la Nature,' Vol. II., 1735.

Galimard fils, 'Architecture de Jardins, ' 68 plates, folio, 1765.

Roger Schabol, ' Dictionnaire du Jardinage,' 1767.
,, ,, ' La Theorie du Jardinage,' 1785.

Laugier, ' Essai sur 1' Architecture,' 1753.

N. Morel, * Theorie des Jardins,' 1776.

G. L. le Rouge, * Details des nouveaux Jardins a la mode ; 200 plates,
and ' Recueil des plus beaux Jardins de I'Europe,' 1776-87.

' Promenade ou Ilineraire des Jardins d'Ermenonville,' 25 illustrations by
Merigot, Paris, 17S8.

Vues Pittoresques, Plans, etc., des Principaux Jardins Anglois qui sont en
France (Engravings in colour of the Trianon Gardens), 4to, c. 1785.

Description de Montmorency, 19 Engravings by Le Prieur, 1788.

A. L. Laborde, ' Descriptions des nouveaux Jardins de la France,' plates
by Bourgeois, 1808-21.

J. C. Krafft, ' Plans des plus beaux Jardins,' 1810.

Gabriel Thouin, * Plans Raisonnes des Jardins,' 50 lithographed plates, 1819.
• Essai sur la Composition et I'ornement des Jardins,' 107 plates, Paris, 1823.
Percieret Fontaine, ' Choix des plus celebres Maisons de Plaisance,' 75 plates,
Paris, 1809.

370 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Le Notre was also the creator of St Cloud, where Nature had
greater liberty ; he made plans for the Villas Panfili and Ludovisi
in Rome, and was invited to England by Charles 11. , where it
is said he had a hand in designing St James's Park, but whether
this is true or not, it is hardly necessary to say that Le Notre's
influence extended to England. No name stands out like his,
but John Rose, the best English gardener of his time, served
successively the Earl of Essex at Essex House, Strand, in 1665,
the Duchesses of Cleveland and Somerset, and Charles II. at St
James's.

His first master sent him to Versailles to study the style of Le
Notre, and so the French tradition was established here, and
handed on to Mr London, Rose's favourite pupil and successor.
Rose was painted presenting the first pineapple cultivated in
England to Charles II.; and was the author of 'The English
Vineyard' which first appeared in 16; 2, at the end of Evelyn's
' French Gardener.'

Le Notre's counterpart in the kitchen garden was La Quintinye,^
the constructor of the great ' Jardin Potager ' or kitchen garden, at
Versailles, which exists almost unaltered to this day. Here he
introduced his famous method of training fruit-trees on espaliers.
The translation of La Quintinye's ' Compleat Gardener ' into
English by John Evelyn (or his son) brings us to the man who,
in the words of Switzer, ' first taught Gardening to speak proper
English,' the author of ' Sylva ' and the famous ' Diary ' ; to whom
Oxford owes the Arundel marbles, Engraving the first clear ex-
position, if not the invention of Mezzotint, Science the foundation
of the Royal Society, and England many of her noblest trees.

Here is his portrait with the autograph inscription to La Quin-
tinye. The Journal of his Grand Tour, as we have seen,- is
almost that of a tour round the Grand Gardens of Europe ;
and he loved to read and write about gardens almost as much
as to design and visit them. All through a long life of eighty-
seven years, almost contemporary with Le Notre, John Evelyn
devoted himself to the improvement of the garden by precept and
^ See ante p. 115. - Ante pp. 103-115.

I

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Engraved by Svvaine after Xaiiteiiil.

371

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE

Zll

practice. He has left us in Hortulan literature the * Kalendarium
Hortense,' a ' Discourse on Sallets/ and the scheme of a vast
gardening work called ' Elysium Brittanicum,' which he did not
live to complete. At Wotton in Surrey (still belonging to his
descendant) he unfortunately yielded to the taste of the time
and removed a mountain to fill up the Moat, and here also he
contrived a Grotto which he calls a ' Pausilippo,' after the famous
one near Naples. He constructed the Oval Garden at Sayes
Court near Deptford, where the 'Czar of Muscovy' (Peter the
Great) amused himself in 1698 by being trundled in a wheel-
barrow through the holly-hedges and over the box borders ; for
which piece of fun Sir Christopher Wren (the Architect) and
London (the Gardener) assessed the damages of a three months'
tenancy at ;j^i5o.

Old Sir Thomas Browne,^ the famous Norwich Physician, treats
in his ' Garden of Cyrus ' of the ' Quincuncial Lozenge of the
Ancients,' but inasmuch as the Quincunx had been the recognised
method of planting trees (to form a grove in a square of five
repeated over and over again, so that look which way you will,
equal or parallel alleys are seen), he did not add much to our
knowledge of garden design.

To this age too belongs the Prince of Garden Poets, Andrew
Marvel, and they are to be envied who have yet to breathe the
fragrance of his garden verse :

Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade. ^

A passing mention is deserved by Ralph Austen, a student of
Magdalen College, Oxford, where he spent his time in gardening
and raising fruit trees, and wrote the ' Spiritual use of an Orchard ' ;
by John Rea, a practical gardener of forty years experience who
laid out Lord Gerard's garden at Gerard's Bromley, and was the
author of * a rude Draught of a Rustick Garden ' called ' Flora,
Ceres and Pomona' (1665), wherein he states that he has seen
many gardens of the new model in the hands of unskilful persons,
with good walls, walks, and grass-plots, but in the most essential
^ See ante pp. 94-6. - ante p. 240.

374 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

adornments so deficient that a green meadow is a more delightful
object. . . . And as all noble Fountains, Grottoes, Statues, etc.
are excellent ornaments and works of Magnificence, so all such
dead works in Gardens ill-done are little more than blocks in the
way to interrupt the sight, but not at all to satisfie the under-
standing,'

While Le Notre's trumpet was being blown throughout Europe,
a still small tune was piped in Scotland, tenui arundine by John
Reid (gardener to Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, Aberdeen-
shire), who produced at Edinburgh in 1683 the earliest Scotch
Gardening Book, ' the Scots Gard'ner.' The thrifty simplicity
of his idea of a pleasure-garden is an agreeable contrast to the
magnificence of Versailles and its imitations : — -

' Pleasure-Gardens useth to be divided into walkes and plots,
with a Bordure round each plot, and at the corner of each, may
be a holly or some such train'd up, some Pyramidal, others
Spherical, the Trees and Shrubs at the Wall well plyed and prun'd,
the Green thereon cut in several Figures, the walkes layed with
Gravel, and the plots within with Grass, (in several places whereof
may be Flower pots) the Bordures boxed, and planted with variety
of Fine Flowers orderly Intermixt, Weeded, Mow'd, Rolled, and
kept all clean and handsome.'

The Dutch style of laying out gardens, introduced into England
by William III. and Mary, is not unlike the French, but every-
thing is on a smaller, almost too minute a scale ; and much care is
expended upon isolated details and ornaments (often trivial), such
as glass balls, coloured sands and earth, flower-pots innumerable,
and painted perspectives; and the garden is usually intersected
with canals degenerating into ditches.

' Grassy slopes, green terraces and straight canals are more
common in Holland than in any other country of the Continent,
and these verdant slopes and mounds may be said to form,
with their oblong canals, the characteristics of the Dutch style.'
i^Loudon.)

Typical instances on a large scale were the Gardens at Loo,

o

376

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE ^^^

designed by Marot, the King's Architect, and the Gardens of
the Count de Nassau,^ Ryswick, Houslaerdyk and SorgvHet.

From Dr Harris's 'Description of Loo,' (1699) we learn
that ' the hedges are chiefly of Dutch elms ; and the avenues
of oaks, elms, and limes. The figures into which the trees and
'shrubs are cut, are, for the most part, pyramids. On the walls
fresco paintings are introduced in various places between the
trees. In the arbour walks of the queen's garden are seats, and
opposite to them windows through which views can be had of
the fountains, statues and other objects in the open garden. The
parterres in the queen's garden are surrounded by hedges of
Dutch elm about four feet high. The seats and prop work of
all the arbours, and the trellis work on the fruit tree walls are
painted green. All along the gravel walks, and round the middle
fountain are placed orange-trees and lemon-trees in portable
wooden frames and flower-pots about them.'

The copper-plates in Van der Groen's or Van Oesten's Dutch
gardening books give a good idea of the Dutch Garden on a
smaller scale- — and for an extreme instance of the lilliputian
garden we cannot do better than quote De Amicis's description
of the gardens at Broek : —

" The gardens are not less odd than the houses. They seem
made for dwarfs. The paths are scarcely wide enough for the
feet, the arbors can contain two very small persons standing
close together, the box borders would not reach the knee of a
child of four years old. Between the arbors and the tiny flower-
beds there are little canals, apparently made for toy-boats, which
are spanned here and there by superfluous bridges with little
painted railings and columns; basins about as large as an ordinary
sitz-bath contain a liliputian boat tied by a red cord to a sky-blue
post ; tiny steps, paths, gates, and lattices abound, each of which
can be measured with the hand, or knocked down with a blow of
the fist, or jumped over with ease. Around houses and gardens
stand trees cut in the shape of fans, plumes, discs, etc., with their
trunks painted white and blue, and here and there appears a
^ See Le Rouge's Designs. '^ See also ante pp. 36-8.

^yS THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

little wooden house for a domestic animal, painted, gilded, and
carved like a house in a puppet show." ^ ^

Hampton Court is the finest example in England of the Dutch
style, modified to some extent by Le Notre's original plans.
Beaumont, one of his pupils (who also laid out Levens, in
Westmoreland, for Colonel Graham) was employed here, and in-
Kip's view of Hampton Court we see the Gardens in all their
glory in Queen Anne's reign.

The large semi-circle of limes was planted by Charles H.,
enclosing gh acres. London (the pupil of Rose and partner of
Wise) had laid out the great semi-circular parterre under William
HI. The only fault Queen Anne found was too much box, which
she had rooted up, disliking the smell, as Defoe tells us, but it
was replanted later. Evelyn notes the cradlework of hornbeam
in ' Queen Mary's bower.' The style of London and Wise was
said to combine the best features of the French and Dutch styles —
their arbour ' an alcove arched over with trellis, excluding neither
wind nor rain ' existed till 1876. On the north side was the wilder-
ness, or maze — very rectangular, bounded by tall clipped hedges,
and called ' Troy Town.' Kent, under Queen Caroline (Consort
of George IL) simplified the scrolls and lacework of the 'Great
Parterre ' by substituting plain lawns. -

Sir William Temple showed his love for his garden at Moor
Park near Farnham by ordering his heart to be buried there in a
silver box under a sun-dial. Besides wTiting a delightful work called
' The Gardens of Epicurus ' in which he gives the palm of ' the
perfectest figure of a Garden ' to that of Moor Park in Hertfordshire,
on the slope of a hill with two terraces, one above the other, reached
by a fine flight of steps, he possessed another Garden at Sheen, in
one of which his Secretary Swift was taught by the King how to cut
asparagus. William was the first to replace stone walls previously
used in gardens by the splendid wrought-iron gates known as
' C/air-vovees,' on account of the uninterrupted view they per-
mitted. Of these a fine example exists at Hampton Court. With

^ ' Holland,' translated from the Italian by Caroline Tilton, 1880.
- See Ernest Law's ' History of Hampton Court.'

2 B

379-

381

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 383

all his love for the formal garden, Temple is modern enough to
admit that there may be other forms, wholly irregular, that may
have more beauty than any of the others, ' but they must owe it to
some extraordinary dispositions of Nature in the seat, or some
great race of fancy or judgment in the contrivance.' Fifty years
after Temple's mention of the Chinese Gardens ' as too hard of
achievement,' they were being universally copied in England and
the Continent.

Our next view is Stowe in Buckinghamshire, showing the Great
Parterre from the Portico, as laid out by Bridgman for Lord
Cobham about 17 14. Bridgman banished verdant sculpture from
his garden, but still retained green architecture (observe the
arches), straight alleys and palissades and began to introduce ' a
little gentle disorder into the plantation of his trees and bushes.' -
The whole garden became a sort of practical pun upon the name
of its owner. Lord Temple, who seems to have had temples on
the brain, and dedicated them to every possible Deity and Virtue.
Stowe almost epitomises the early history of Landscape Gardening,
for Kent succeeded Bridgman as its 'Lnprover,' and 'Capability'
Brown began his career here in the humble post of kitchen
gardener. Pope held up Stowe as an ideal almost unattainable,
crying in ecstacy : —

' Time shall make it grow,
A thing to wonder at, perhaps a " Stowe " ! '

The name of Pope brings us to the borderland dividing the
old garden from the new, as Pope's own verse may be said to be

1 The following books on the Dutch Garden mav be consulted : —

l^eudeker's ' Germania Inferior ' {British J/nscitm).

Crispin de Tass ' Hortus Floridus.'

Van der Groen ' Le Jardinier des Pays Bas,' 1672.

Commelyn ' Hortus Amstelodamus,' 1697.

,, ^ Belgic or Netherlandish Hesperides," 1683.

Ilenrik van Oesten ' The Dutch Gardener,' 1703.

De Groot ' Les Agrements de la Campagne,' 1750.

A Rademaker, ' Holland's Arcadia' 1730.

John Ray ' Observations on a Journey through the Low Countries,' 1673.
'^ Horace Walpole.

384 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

the turning-point in literature. By his famous Number 173 of
the ' Guardian ' ridiculing the absurdities and excesses of ' verdant
sculpture ' and the cut-box system, and putting up for sale ' Adam
and Eve in yew — Adam a little shaken by the fall of the Tree
of Knowledge,' — by his Epistle to Lord Burlington on the
Aesthetic of Gardening, and by his own example in his villa at
Twickenham where he and his gardener, John Serle, planned the
wonderful grotto he describes in his letters, the echo of which
has alone survived. Pope is undoubtedly one of the pioneers of
modern gardening. A plan is here given of the garden of five
acres (never before had so small a compass produced such a
revolutionary effect upon gardening ! ) as left at the Poet's death
in 1744, by his gardener, John Serle. Thereon appears the
Shell Temple, the large Mount, the two small Mounts, the Vine-
yard, the Obelisk in memory of his mother, the Grove, the
Orangery and the Underground Passage leading to the Grotto.
We have also fourteen years later from the pen of Horace
Walpole, a description of it when the property of Sir Vv illiam
Stanhope. ' Would you believe it, he has cut down" the sacred
groves themselves ! In short, it was a little bit of ground of 5
acres, inclosed with three lanes and seeing nothing. Pope has
twisted and twirled and rhymed and harmonised this till it
appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening
beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick im-
penetrable woods. Sir William, by advice of his son-in-law,
Mr Ellis, has hacked and hewed these groves, wriggled a
winding-gravel walk through them with an edging of shrubs,
in what they call the modern taste, and, in short, has desired
the three lanes to walk in again — and now is forced to shut
them out again by a wall, for there was not a Muse could
walk there but she was spied by every country fellow that went
by with a pipe in his mouth.' ^ Pope divides the literary honours
of his generation with Addison who, humorist himself, in his
equally famous 'Spectator' on the 'Pleasures of a Garden,'
declared Nature should be humoured, instead of being coerced.
^ Letter to Sir Horace Mann, June 20th, 1760.

385

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HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 389

He objected to ' trees rising in cones, globes and pyramids ' and
thought 'an orchard in flower looked infinitely more delightful
than all the little labyrinths of the most finished parterre.'

I believe Addison's garden at Bilton in Warwickshire still wears
much the same aspect it bore in his own day.

Stephen Switzer in his ' Ichnographia Rustica ' declares him-
self a partisan of Pope, and of the ' Rural ' style which slowly
superseded the Grand Manner of Le Notre ; although Batty
Langley tried to show the world how the Grand and Rural
manners might lie down together in perfect amity.

Johnson (the Historian of Gardens) considers this book one of
the Classics of Gardening. Switzer gives a discursive History of the
Art up to his own day, lays down the principle that Design should
be founded on variety, and is of opinion that a little regularity
should be allowed near the main building and then a gradual
procession from finished Art to Wild Nature.

Of the numerous bird's eye views of Gardens to be found in
Kip's ' Britannia lUustrata ' or Beeverel's ' Delices de la Grande
Bretagne,' such as Longleat, Badminton and Chatsworth,
Blomfield and Inigo Thomas's 'Formal Garden' has treated so
fully, that there is no necessity to go again over the same ground.

The Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge ^ often preserved the
integrity of their old-fashioned Gardens through various changes
of style around them — and in Loggan's view of Wadham College
in 1675 ^'^^y be seen the Mount, and the Palissades or Groves
looking in Horace Walpole's words, ' like Green Chests set upon
Poles.' A view is given here of the Gardens of Trinity College,
Oxford, on the left of which may be seen the peculiarly designed
grove or labyrinth. " Even so ardent a ' Landscapist ' as Humphry
Repton has declared that he should ' doubt the taste of any im-
prover who could despise the congruity, ability, order and sym-
metry of these Gardens of Trinity.' But we have lingered long
enough in the formal garden.

1 See D. Loggan's ' Oxonia lUustrata,' 1675, ' Cantabrigia Illustrala,' Willis
and Clark's History of the University of Cambridge, and the various College
Histories.

390 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

The reaction in favour of the natural garden was largely assisted
by the letters of the French Jesuit Missionaries describing the
Chinese Emperor's gardens at Pekin.

The Pere Attiret's description of the ' Garden of Gardens ' was
translated by Joseph Spence in 1752 and the spark kindled a flame
of enthusiasm throughout Europe. Here is one of the innumer-
able scenes of this Panorama of Gardens, taken from a Chinese
painting of the same period in the National Library in Paris. ^
The Chinese trace back the origin of their gardens to the re-
motest antiquity (2600 B.C.). Attiret describes the artificial hills
20 to 60 feet high with little valleys interspersed, rivers and rivulets
running together through these to form lakes with pleasure-houses
to the number of 200 on their banks ; the rough irregular rock-
work — twisting and winding paths, and bridges which also ser-
pentised. One of the lakes was nearly five miles round, studded
with islands and rocks and with infinitely varied banks.

Sir William Chambers, the King's Architect, who as a youth

had lived in China, wrote an enthusiastic panegyric of their

gardens, and on being appointed Superintendent of the Royal

Gardens, proceeded to lay out Kew with Pagodas in the Chinese

style. ^ The Chinese way of following Nature was a peculiar

one, and consisted in creating mountains where they did not

exist. It is true that they made these mountains to resemble

* natural ' ones as closely as possible, but they were none the less

artificial for all that, — then they came to the conclusion that nature

abhorred a straight line, so all their paths and approaches were

made to serpentine. Landscape gardening, as understood in the

18th Century, may be defined as the curved versus the straight

line. As William Mason versified it : —

To melt in fluent curves whate'er is straight,
Acute or parallel . . .

Fair variety
Lives only where she undulates and sports
In many a winding train.

^ See also Le Rouges' ' Recueil des I'lans des plus beaux Jardins,' Paris,
1 787- 1 790.

' See ante pp. 183-186.

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HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 393

Hogarth's ' Line of Beauty ' was at first substituted for that
of the Builders and Architects — later on, however, the curves
became less manageable, and finally zig-zagged to such a degree,
that a witty Frenchman, following a hint from George Mason's
Essay, suggested that in order to design an English or Natural
Garden all that was requisite was to intoxicate your gardener and
follow his footsteps.

To supplement the Gospel of ' Nature,' Samuel Richardson,
Jean Jaques Rousseau ^ and others had invented the Epistle of
Sentiment or Sensibility, and so the Landscape Garden besides
writhing and meandering in imitation of so-called Nature had also
to display feeling, emotion, and sympathy with the varying moods
and fluctuating passions of Humanity.

Lord Kames about the middle of the i8th Century wrote : * the
most perfect idea of a garden requires the several parts to be
arranged so as to inspire all the different emotions that can be
raised by gardening.'

Of this Emotional or Sentimental Garden — this ' Jardin Lar-
moyant ' as the genre may be called — the poet Shenstone was the
most successful exponent in England, by his creation of ' the
Leasowes ' in Shropshire ; where by means of vines, weeping
willows, urns, trophies, garlands, columns, mottos and inscriptions
he sought to ' raise emotions ' appropiate to the peculiar character
of the ground, whether grand, savage, melancholy, horrid or
beautiful, and to caress and cherish the corresponding human
sentiments. For all Goldsmith's good-natured banter and John-
son's sarcasm, so good a judge as George Mason thought that ' of
all the amateur and professional gardeners of the day the most
intimate alliance with Nature was formed by Shenstone ' — and
his ' Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening ' are still agreeable
desultory reading.^

^ Rousseau made the dawn visible to people who had never risen till noon,
the landscape to eyes that had only rested hitherto upon drawing-rooms and
palaces, the natural garden to men who had only walked between tonsured
yews and rectilinear flower-borders.'— Taine, ' L'ancien Regime.'

- See ante pp. 167-169.

394 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Kent was practically the originator of modern park scenery,
the landscape-painter's garden ; he, in the words of Walpole, being
' the first to leap the fence and show that the whole of Nature 1
is a garden ' ; Bridgman by the invention of the 'Ha Ha ' or
sunk fence having made it possible to unite the garden with
the park and the surrounding country, without any visible break.

Kent began life as a coach-painter, and by a singular revolution
of the wheels of fortune found himself, under the patronage
of the Earl of Burlington, an architect and landscape-painter.
However monotonous Kent's ' Nature ' may seem to us now,
and nothing is proof against the power of fashion, there is no
doubt that he dictated the style of gardening to the whole of
Europe for a very long period.^

The great principles on which Kent worked, writes Walpole
again, were ' perspective, light and shade. Groups of trees broke
too uniform, or too extensive a lawn — evergreens and woods were
opposed to the glare of the champaign. . . . Where objects were
wanting he introduced temples, etc., but he especially excelled
in the management of water. The gentle stream was taught to
serpentine seemingly at its pleasure.'

He followed Nature even in her faults. In Kensington
Gardens he planted dead trees (a genuine instance of 'laying
out ') but was soon laughed out of this excess. Here is a
view of one of his greatest reputed triumphs — Esher, ' where
Kent and Nature vied for Pelham's Love.'

To us now the design, with the house almost below the
level of the ground, seems simple to baldness — but we must look
at it with the eyes of 1730, accustomed to the artificialities of
the f>ench manner, and there is little doubt that the extreme
reaction had something of genius in it. George Mason wrote in
panegyric of Kent : ' All that has since been done by the most
deservedly admired designers, by Southcote (at Wooburn Farm),
Hamilton (at Pain's Hill), Lyttelton (at Hagley), Pitt (at Hayes)
Shenstone (at the Leasowes), and Morris for themselves ; and by
Wright ( Kent's successor) for others ; all that has been written on

^ See ante p. 140.

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HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 397

the subject, even the Garde ni7ig didactic poem and the Didactic
Essay o?i the Picturesque^ have proceeded from Kent.'

We may take Blenheim as another instance of Kent's success,
No one better understood how to mould flat ground into gentle
unevennesses, the process called by the French, ' vallonner,' and
a good instance of this was his plantation at Chiswick compared
with what Whately considers Bridgman's ' phlegmatic plantation '
in the same garden.

' Capability ' Brown, so nicknamed from his favourite habit
of speaking of the ' capabilities ' of the ground he had to view,
is the man who, perhaps more than any other, converted the
older gardens of England into parks. His method has been
shortly summarised thus : — ' His declivities were all softened
into gentle slopes ; plantations belted the estate, while clumps
and single trees were sprinkled over its area.' Brown probably
sat for the satirical portrait of ' Lay-Out ' in Peacock's ' Crotchet
Castle,' ^ and although he regarded himself as holding his own
with Nature on her own ground, he was undoubtedly a very
strong and very limited mannerist. He was so overcome at the
result of his treatment of water at Blenheim, that he was heard
murmuring to himself in gentle reproach, ' Thames, Thames,
thou wilt never forgive me.'

The poet Gray, who had a fine instinct for beauty in Nature,
hailed the dawn of Natural Gardening as the only Art, which
the English could properly call their own. The literary counter-
parts of the school are George Mason's ' Essay on Design in
Gardening' and Horace Walpole's still more famous Essay,-
(which has often been quoted); and, chief of all, Thomas Whately's
^ Observations on Modern Gardening.' This according to Loudon
is 'the grand fundamental and standard work on English Garden-
ing.' Whately claims for gardening that 'it has ceased to be
mechanical ' and become a fine art, joining utility to pleasure :
no longer for the mere pleasure of the senses, it aspires to
entertain the imagination — high ground creates a feeling of

^ And perhaps for Mr Milestone in ' Headlong Hall.' See ante pp. 252-3.
^ See ante pp. 172-8 and 203-4.

398 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

grandeur — small valleys, woods overhanging them and rivers with
steep banks form a romantic disposition : grounds gently falling
and rising with fine verdure suggest cheerfulness, creating little
or no sentiment. But the quotation above ^ gives sufficient
idea of Whately's principles. His views on the formal garden
are, that in a situation of a dead flat, art is called in to aid
nature, by means of bosquets, statues, vases, trees cut into arches,
cascades, basins, temples, vistas and plantations, mounts and
buildings of all kinds : the imagination having no scope, play
must be given to the senses and flowers should be planted in
beds and parterres.

After the peace of 1762 the English style of gardening passed
into France and the ideas of the new school were perhaps even
more successfully applied by that most susceptible nation. It has
even been asserted that Dufresny was the founder of the school,
and certainly the Abbe Delille's poem ' Les Jardins ' both for
matter and manner far surpasses its English rival by William
Mason.- But practice is better than precept, and the example given
by the Marquis de Girardin ^ at Ermenonville, near Paris, laid out
under his own eye by N. Morel and the landscape-painter G. F.
Meyer, exercised a wider influence than his description of it
published in 1777. In this he writes very modestly of the dis-
covery of his own mistakes as the result of experience in ' com-
posing ' the landscape. He began under the impression that all
that was necessary was to substitute curves for straight lines and
replace a rectangular garden by a winding one. He thought he
could produce variety in a small space by 'clapping the uni-
verse between walls ' ; but admits that he confounded simplicity
with letting loose Nature, and found he was only exchanging
Nature mutilated and circumscribed for Nature vague and
cofifused.

The most famous features of Ermenonville were a desert, a
lake, a cascade, a grotto, and the Isle of Poplars where Rousseau
was first buried, having died in the ' Philosopher's Cottage.' Besides

^ See ante pp. 194-8. - See ajite pp. 182-3 and 206-8.

* See ante pp. 202 and 209-10.

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HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 401

advising at Ermenonville, Morel was responsible for the Due
d'Aumont's Pare at Guiscard and a seat near Chateau Thierry.
Watelet was the creator of ' Moulin Joli ' and also of an ' Essai
sur les Jardins.'^

Other historic gardens of this period were Morfontaine, Mere-
ville, the Park of the Fermier-General Laborde, designed by Joseph
\'ernet and Hubert Robert ; and Maupertuis (now the Elysee)
belonging to the Marquis de Montesquiou.^ But in designing some
of their chief Jardins Anglais, the French had the assistance of
I'homas Blaikie, a Scotsman, who between 1776 and the Revolu-
tion, laid out many of the best French gardens, including
Maupertuis, ' Bagatelle ' in the Bois de Boulogne for the Comte
d'Artois (in 1779) and alterations made in the Jardin (now
Pare) Monceau(x) for the Due de Chartres, which had been laid
out b)- Carmontelle. Here is one view by the latter of the
Chinese portion of the garden, which went through many vicissi-
tudes, some of the original features (for instance, the pyramid
from the ' Bois des Tombeaux ' ) still surviving.

One more name brings us to an end of our list of the old
school of landscape gardeners, that of Humphry Repton, the
first to call himself professionally by the title. Repton's method
when called on to improve a place was to prepare a description and
plan of it in its existing state with his suggestions for its alteration.
By an ingenious system of slides over his illustrations he was able
to show a plan as it was, and as he proposed it should be.

' Amenity ' Repton has very distinctly told us what he considers
the requisites of perfect Landscape Gardening : viz., first ' to display
the natural beauties and hide the natural defects of every situa-
tion ; secondly, to give the appearance of extent and freedom
by disguising or hiding the boundary ; thirdly, to conceal every
interference of art, however expensive, making the whole appear
the production of nature only ; and fourthly, to remove or conceal
all objects of mere convenience or comfort if incapable of being
ornamental or of becoming proper parts of the general scenery.' "

' See ante pp. 178-181. - See ante })p. 199, 20S-12.

•"' See aii!t' pp. 21S-20.

402 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Just as the Natural or ' Landscape ' School was a reaction
against the extreme formality or symmetry which had preceded
it, so the Landscape gardeners in their turn had to fight against
the opposition levelled against them by the critical group of
what has been called the ' Picturesque ' writers,^ William Gilpin,
Uvedale Price and Payne Knight, who steered a sort of middle
course between the excesses of both the Formalists and Land-
scapists. To them perhaps we owe it that there is a single old-
fashioned garden remaining unconverted into a park. Payne
Knight in particular was a virulent opponent of Brown and
Repton in prose and verse, and was satirically severe upon the
desolate mansion standing

' 'Midst shaven lawns that far around it creep,
In one eternal undulating sweep
And scattered clumps that nod at one another
Each stiffly waving to its formal brother,'

and he yearns for the moss-grown terraces, the yew and the
ancient avenue 'to mark the flat insipid waving plain.'

So the prophets of ' Nature ' did not finally escape the same
charge of artificiality and uniformity brought against their more
intentionally ' Formal ' predecessors.

Price, while strongly advising that the formal garden shall be
modified rather than destroyed, thought that the principles of
Claude shall be followed as a safe guide. To us, now looking
back, it hardly seems that a placid landscape of Claude or the
more savage Salvator Rosa lend themselves to imitation or re-
production in a garden. Windham, in a letter to Repton, asks
very pertinently : Does the pleasure that we receive from the
view of Parks and Gardens result from their affording subjects
that would appear to advantage in a picture ? and answers : That
places are not to be laid out with ' a view to their appearance in
a picture, but to their use and the enjoyment of them in real life.'

At this point we will break off our sketch of English gardens

1 Besides their writings quoted in the text {ante pp. 212-217), consult
'Gilpin's various ' Picturesque Tours' and Payne Knight's 'The Landscape' (a
didactic poem) 1794.

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 403

to take a rapid glance at those of Germany, Spain, India and
Japan.

Germany has been in the main a follower rather than a leader
in garden design ; but she has played an important part in
spreading knowledge upon the theory, and in producing tasteful
and skilful designers in the modern ' natural ' style. Hirschfeld ^
in 1770 deplores the Gallomania which pervaded Germany,
resulting in numerous copies of Versailles, Trianon and Marly ;
and later in imitations of the English taste. Solomon de Caus's
plan of the Gardens at Heidelberg, published in 1620,- is not
very different from those of other formal gardens of the period.
The Episcopal Gardens at Wiirzburg were long reckoned the
finest in Germany, first laid out in servile imitation of Versailles,
and then treated in a mixed style by Mayer ; ^ they are still
deserving attention as the Public Gardens of the city. Krafft
considered the gardens of Schw^etzingen in Baden as the most
splendid in Germany, and they are fully described by Dr Granville
in ' In Autumn near the Rhine.'

Worlitz and its gardens near Dessau, engage a good deal of the
attention of the Prince de Eigne in his ' Coup d'oeil sur les
Jardins.' The same writer regards Hirschfeld (whose book
is one of the leading authorities on the subject) as ' touched with
Anglomania,' and Mayer, like many other German designers,
learnt much of his art in England.

The ' English Garden ' at Munich, the first of its kind in
Germany, was laid out in 1789 under the direction of Count Rum-
ford (the founder of the Royal Institution), by Louis Sckell, who in
his day enjoyed a great reputation, and also designed an English
Garden at Nymphenburg.

A few other gardens famous in Germany and Austria are : —

Schonbrunn, laid out in the French style, by the architect Fischer
of Erlach, was in 1 775-1 780 enlarged by Steckhoven, a Dutch
artist. Hadersdorf, designed by the celebrated Marshal Loudon :

^ Theorie de I'Art des Jardins. Leipzig, 1770, 5 vols. 410.

- See ante p. 342.

^ Pomona Franconica, 1776, by John Mayer.

404 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

Sans-Souci at Potsdam, in the mixed style of Switzer, chiefly
designed by Manger, a German architect, and Salzmann, the Royal
Gardener, (see History of the Gardens, published by Nicolai) :
and the Gardens at Magdeburg, laid out by Linne, landscape
gardener, in 1824. Hamburg has always been a garden-city and
maintained its reputation in this respect by the great ' Garten-
Ausstellung' held there in 1897.^

The earliest Spanish gardens are the creation of the Moors, and
bear the Arabian stamp of their origin, half Asiatic, half African.
Perhaps their design has the strongest affinity to the gardens of
Persia, with their shallow waters running down the centre over
coloured tiles, and their innumerable fountains, for water in one
form or another is the predominant feature.

The oldest garden is at Seville, the A/cazar, the Moorish word
for ' Royal Palace.' These gardens were laid out by Charles V., in
the sixteenth century, upon old lines, the compartments being
arranged in patterns of Eagles and his coat of arms : the levels
vary and the plots are divided by orange-clad walls.

The Generalife at Granada (' Jenatu-L'arif,' meaning the
Garden of the Architect, who sold the site to the Sultan in
1320), has been called 'A Villa of Waters.' The canal of the
Darro flows under evergreen arches, (the subject of one of
Lord Leighton's early pictures,) an open colonnade overlooks

^ For other references to German Gardens, may be consulted :

Laurenbergi ij'etri , Horticultura, Lil) II. Plans of gardens by Meiian.
Prankfort, 1 631.

Sal. Kleiner, \'era et accurata delineatio omnium Templorum . . in urbe
\'iennce, 1724-1737.

Sal. Kleiner, Maisons de Plaisance Imperiales, 33 plates.

Nuremberg Hesperides, by J- C. \'olckamer, 1700, folio.

' Die Garten Kunst,' von J. F. Bloss, 28 copper plates and plans drawn
by Siegel, and described by Dr. Ch. Stieglitz, 3 vols. Svo. Leipzig, 1798.

J. C. Krafift, Plans des plus beaux Jardins Piltoresques de France, d'Angle-
terre et d'Allemagne, 2 vols, oblong folio, 192 plates. Paris, 1809-10.

Dr W. Beattie, 'Journal of a residence in Ciermany,' 1830.

Also the numerous ' Garten-Kalendar.'

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 405

the' Alhambra and the Sultana's cypresses date back to the
Moors. ^

The 2:ardens of the Escurial and Ildefonso in Madrid and of
Aranjuez near Toledo, were laid out under Philip lY. at the
beginning of the seventeenth century. The park of Aranjuez
(from Ara Jovis) is several leagues in circumference, intersected
by wide alleys, three or four miles long, framed of double rows of
elms, with a canal running between them, and the Tagus dividing
it. A^lasquez has painted these gardens and their fountains, which
the French under Soult converted into a wilderness, and the Duke
of \A^ellington enjoined upon General Hill to protect.-

The Gardens of Hindostan are of much the same general char-
acter as those of Persia : famous especially were those of the
Mogol emperors at Delhi and Bangalore : the gardens of Kalimar
at Delhi were created at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
at the cost of a million pounds. At Agra were the Imperial Park
(Rom-Bagh) ; the tomb of Akbar, and the Taj-Mahal, erected
by the Emperor Shah Jehan to his favourite wife. At Ahmadah
was Akbar's ' Garden of Conquests,' where he collected every kind
of fruit-tree cultivated in his empire : the Kajah-Mahal of Shah-
Soudjah was on the Ganges; he was conquered in 1659 by his
brother Aurungzeb, the last of the great Mogols, who laid out the
Park of Farrah-Bagh, near Ahmehnagora, at the end of the seven-
teenth century, to affirm his conquest of the Deccan. These and
many other Indian gardens are described by Bishop Heber in his
'Narrative of a Journey through India.' Other remarkable
gardens of India are the Nashim-Bagh (Garden of Breezes),
Nishat-Bagh (Garden of Delight), and Shalamar-Bagh (Garden of

^ See Illustration by Mr G. Elgood, ai/tc' p. 86.

- Some books of reference upon Spanish gardens are :

Gabriel Alonso de Herrera, ' Libro de Agricultura,' folio, Toledo, 1546.

' Theatrum Hispanice,' Amsterdam, 1660.

Ford's 'Handbook of Spain' (first edition .

Th. Gautier's * Voyage en Espagne.'

La Gasca, ' Beautes Naturelles de I'lvspagne.

Inglis's 'Spain in 1830.'

4o6

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

the King) at Cashmere ; the Royal Gardens of Shah Leemar
near Lahore, the Garden of Madura at Mysore, and the Rose
Fields of Ghazepoor, near Allahabad.^

The Japanese derived their landscape garden originally from
the Chinese, but besides imitating Nature, they endeavour to im-
part to their designs a symbolical character, expressing an abstract
idea or sentiment such as ' Retirement,' ' Meditation ' or ' Fidelity.'

Japanese Mountain Garden in the ' Shin ' or ' Finished Style.'

According to Mr Conder,^ gardening in Japan was first cultivated
as an art in the regency of Ashikaga Shogun Yoshimasha (between
1449 and 1472) in connection with tea-drinking ceremonies. As

^ See an/e pp. 40-42.

^ For the following remarks I am mainly indebted to Mr Josiah Conder's
paper on 'The Art of Landscape Gardening in Japan,' at present only acces-
sible in the 'Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan,' but I hope it may
before long be published independently.

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 407

in the Chinese gardens, hills are a fundamental feature, but the
Chinese gardens abound more in small kiosks and balustraded
galleries, and rockeries honeycombed with caves and grottoes —
and the Chinese also employ more flowering plants than the
Japanese.

Historical examples of old Japanese gardens are those of
Ginkakinzi (silver Pavilion) in Kyoto, and also in old conventual
.establishments, which have served as models for later artists.

As described in their books the art of laying out gardens is very
abstruse, fanciful and superstitious ; it is made highly complicated
so as to be purposely puzzling to the uninitiated.

There are three styles: i. Shiti^ i.e. Finished Style; 2. Gio., i.e.
Intermediate Style ; 3. So., i.e. Free or Bold Style. The mixture
of conflicting styles is carefully avoided, and the character of the
proprietor and the predominating sentiment either of the natural
scene or of an abstraction, such as Happiness, is considered in
the composition.

One of the chief methods (the ' Distance-lowering ') of laying
out, was to plant large trees in the foreground and lower ones ta
the distance, with a view of adding to the perspective ; further
hills were made lower than the nearer ones and the distant water
higher. Another school was in favour of ' Distance -raising.'
Then there is the Garden of Artificial Hills, and space is suggested
by blank spaces and obliterations. In the ' Shin ' style are five
principal hills of different character. Waterfalls are indispensable,
in imitation of the famous Cascade in Chiang-So. Of Lakes their
ideal is that called Seiko, famous for its Lotuses. Four kinds of
islands are introduced into water scenery — the Elysian Isle, the
Windswept Isle, the Master's Isle and the Guest's Isle.

The selection and arrangement of stones has been said to^
constitute the skeleton of the garden. Every stone is symbolic,,
and has a name according to its situation ; there are whole path-
ways of stepping-stones and groups of stones round lanterns and
water-basins.

A Sand carefully raked, sometimes in patterns, is an important
leature, especially in the smaller gardens. The one here given

40 8

THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

of an Inn Garden at Nara, is chiefly of sand, with large stones
out of which grow shrubs scattered about ; and bronze cranes.
To our Western ideas there is a certain poverty and bareness
about these lesser gardens. Trees are planted so as to show
contrasts, and if clipped at all, it is done consistently with their
general character and growth, as for instance the native pine-
{matsii). There are very strict rules as to the placing of trees,
and names (such as ' view-perfecting tree,' ' tree of solitude ')
are given them according to their position. The flower-beds are
usually in a flat area, opposite the ladies' apartments. Stone

lanterns and water-basins ot various shapes are placed in appro-
priate positions. The garden walls are of tiles and mud alter-
Inately, and fences of split bamboos are largely used.^

^ Besides Mr Conder's invaluable Essay and Kaemp.er's ' History of Japan
(see ante pp. 128-9), the following may be consulted on Japanese Gardens : —
MrF. T. Piggott's 'The Garden of Japan,' Mr Chamberlain's 'Things Japanese,'
Mr Charles Holme's Essay in The Studio, July 1899, ' Notes on japan ' by Mr
Alfred Parsons, A.R.A., and Murray's ' Handbook to Japan.'

^.'

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 409

To return to our own country. In the nineteenth centur\',
no one better than Sir Walter Scott has held the just balance
between the two rival schools, and his ' Essay on Landscape
Gardening,' written in 1828, might almost be said to embody the
prevailing views of to-day upon the subject. Its keynote is a wise
eclecticism, the choice of the best that has been done in design-
ing, laying out, ' composing ' or building gardens in every age,
adapted to the particular site, and its natural and architectural
surroundings.
J Scott's Essay seems the neutral ground upon which those
desperate rivals, the Architects and Landscape Gardeners — the
partizans of the Formal and of the Natural Garden — may meet
half-way. For the former there is the comfort of the famous sen-
tence, ' Nothing is more completely the child of art than a
garden,' and the longer passage on the architectural garden :—
' The result was in the highest degree artificial, but it was a
sight beautiful in itself — a triumph of human art over the elements,
and connected as these ornamented gardens were with splendid
mansions, in the same character^ there was a synmietry and har-
mony betwixt the baronial palace itself, and these its natural
appendages, which recommended them to the judgment as well
as to the eye,' — and he can justify even ' the magnificent cascades '
of Versailles. He shows the difference between the Italian and
Dutch taste with its ' paltry imitations.' ' A stone hewn into a
gracefully ornamented vase or urn has a value which it did not
before possess, a yew hedge clipped into a fortification is only
defaced. The one is a production of Art, the other a distortion
of Nature.' Yet even so, he thinks that existing gardens in the
Dutch taste ' would be much better subjects for our modification
than for absolute destruction.' Then he shows how excellent
was the ruling principle of Kent's innovation, but that Kent
failed in execution from his limited view of Nature, through
being 'tame and cold in spirit,' and unfamiliar with her grander
scenes ; thus ' his meagre and unvaried slopes were deprived
of all pretension to a natural appearance ' ; and ' his style is
not simplicity but affectation labouring to seem simple.' Scott

4TO THE PRAISE OF GARDENS

looks forward to the day when the profession of 'landscape
gardener,' which he thinks rather unhappily named, (and it is
even less appropriate now than seventy years ago), would be ' more
closely united wdth the fine arts,' and believes that 'a certain
number of real landscapes, executed by men adequate to set the
example of a new school, which shall reject the tame and pedantic
rules of Kent and Brown, without affecting the grotesque or
fantastic — who shall bring back more ornament into the garden,
and introduce a bolder, wilder, and more natural character into
the park, would awaken a general spirit of emulation.' Are there
not such men and women at work in the garden now' on these
lines — painting pictures with Nature's own canvas, forms and
colours? But the time has, happily, not yet come to include
them in an historical sketch.

Antoine Watteau's 'Bosquet de Bacchus' is an instance of
a garden that descends lineally from no school and cannot be
called representative of any style, except that of Watteau himself —
* le style c'est I'homme meme.'

Architecture, aided by sculpture, has been taken as the type of
one kind of garden design. Painting of another ; may we not say
of Watteau that he represents the Music of gardens? And as
we see him, in his own portrait, palette in hand, standing behind
his friend. Monsieur de Julienne, who holds his violoncello
between his knees, with music-book upon the turf; and in
the background a statue canopied by that 'tree-architecture, of
which those moss-grown balustrades, terraces, statues, fountains
are really accessories ' ; or as we gaze upon the groups in his
' Fetes Galantes ' ' half in masquerade playing the drawing-
room or garden comedy of life,'^ and seem to hear the music of
lutes and viols, the murmur of falling waters and waving boughs,
we feel that here at last we have realised the ideal garden, 'the
chosen landscape,' the perfect fusion of Art with Nature, that'

1 Walter Pater, ' A Prince of Court Painters* (Imaginary Portraits).

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411

I

I,

HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 413

blending and inter-penetration of all the Arts, of which Music is
the archtype and symbol to the soul :

Votre ame est un paysage choisi

Que vont charmant masques et berganiasques

Jouant du luth, et dansant, et quasi

Tristes sous leurs deguisements fantasques.

Et leur chanson se mele au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau

Qui fait lever les oiseaux dans les arbres

Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau

Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

FINIS.

INDEX

( The figures printed in the darker type are the referejtces to the quotations from

the authors)

Addison, 134, 141, 183, 384, 389

Adinaphur, garden at, 40

Adonis, gardens of, 6

^.lian, 86

Agra, gardens at, 405

Ahmadah Gardens, 405

Albanum, 20

Albury, 1 13

Albyterio, 45

Alcazar, 404

Alcibiades, gardens of, 18

Alcinous, garden of, 22, 173, 242

Alcott, A. B., 260

Aldobrandini, villa, 161

Alhambra, 405

Alison, A., 194, 221

Althorpe, 113

Amherst, Hon. A., 327, 331

Avniel, 276

Androuet du Cerceau, 45, 51, 175,

332, 357
Anet, Chateau d', 51, 61
Annunzio, G. d', 309
Apothecaries' garden at Chelsea^ 352
Aranjuez, 286, 405
' Arcadia,' Sidney's, 65
Aristophanes, 320
Aristotle, 77, 8
Arnold, T., 257
Arnold, M., 263 «, 291
Ars Topiaria, 16, 57, 246
Athens, 6, 13
Attiret, Pere, 156, 390
Audiat, 51
Audley End, 112
Aulus Vettius, Garden of, 322
Austen, R., 373
Austin, Alfred, 301
Avignon, Petrarch's Garden near, 32

Babylon, Hanging Gardens of, 12,

2>6, 94, 173, 318
Bacon, F., 67, 141, 241, 251, 342, 352
Badminton, gardens at, 389
Bagehot, W., 317
Bagh-e-Kilan, 41
Bagh-e Vafa, 41

Baianum, Seneca's Villa at, 20, 321
Baiae, 321

Bangalore Gardens, 405
Barberini Gardens, 321
Baudelaire, 275
Beaugensier, 90
' Beaumont, Sir H.,' 156
Beaumont, the gardener, 378
Beauvais, Vincent de, 22
Beckford, W., 223
Bedford, Countess of, 120
Beloeil Gardens, 198-9
Belvedere Gardens, 86
Bentinck's Dutch garden, 223
Berceaux, 52, 342
Berlin, botanical garden at, 232
Berkeley House, 113
Bilton, Addison's garden at, 389
Biran, Maine de, 230
Biron, Marechal de, 175
Blaikie, the gardener, 211, 401
Blenheim, 169, 202, 267, 397
Blith, Walter, 115
Blois, gardens at, 332
Blomfield, R., 303, 389
Boboli Gardens, 102, 224, 225
Boccaccio, 35, 287, 295
Bois de Boulogne, 45, 320, 401
Bolingbroke, 139
Bordeaux, gardens at, 236
Botanical Gardens, 38, 45, 57, 60, 62,
113. 351 '^
2 E 415

4i6

INDEX

Bouchardon, 363
Botilingrins, see Bowling Greens
Boutin, 199

Bowling Greens, as part of a garden,
80, 176

,, at Christchurch, 282

,, at Audley End, 112

„ at Marlboro', 291

,, at Piddleton, 176

,, at Wanstead, 1 31
Boyceau, gardener, 321, 363
Boyle, Hon. Mrs, 310
Box Hill, 112
Bradley R., 190
Bramante, 338
Branch Work, 126
Bridgman, 140, 176, 385, 394> 397
Bright, H. A., 298
Brithnod, 328
Broek, gardens at, 379
Brompton Park Nursery, 125
Brooke, Lady, in
Brown, L., 169, 171 «, 211, 218,252,

281, 383, 397
Browne, Sir T., 94, 114, 237, 373
Brunetto Latini, 33
Brussels, gardens at, 103
Bunyan, iiB
Burgh, W., 141, 182
Burleigh, Lord, 62, Tl, TS, 342, 346
Burlington, Lord, 140, 144, 384, 394
Burton, Robert, t,^, 85
Busch, gardener, 201
Byron, 253, 363

Cambridge, Colleges, 389 n

Campbell, Lord, 247

Cannons, 132

Cantelow, Lord, 86

'Capability Brown,' 169, 171?^, 211,

218, 252, 281, 383, 397
Carlton House, 141 n, 197
Carmontelle. 401
Cascade in Chiang- So, 407
Casello, garden at, 54
Cashiobury, 113
Casinum, Varros' Villa at, ii
Cato, 9, 13, 19, 53. 96, ii4> 320
Caus, Isaac de, 342
Caus, Solomon de, 342, 403
Cavendish, 337

Celsus, 19

Cerceau, A. du, 45, 51, 175, 332, 357

Cesio, gardens of, 55

Chabas, I

Chambers, Sir W., 183, 211, 390

Chantilly, 102, 208

Chardin, Sir J., 126, 319

Charleton, Dr W., 8

Chateau —

d'Anet, 51, 61

d'Ecouen, 45

de la Chenaie, 271

de Meudon, 102

de Madrid, 45

de Nesle, 45

Thierry, 401
Chatham, Earl of, 157
Chatsworth, 389
Chaucer, 328, 331
Chaulnes, 45

Chelsea Gardens, 145, 352 n
Chenaie Gardens, 271
Chenonceux, 45
Chesterfield, Lord, 144, 148
Chinese Gardens, 127, 156, 171, 176,
184, 196, 204, 211, 254, 383, 390,
401
Chiswick, 140, 196, 397
Chou-tun-I, 28
Cicero, 10, 247, 321
Cimon, 18, 320
Citroniere, 1 05
Clagny, 117
Clairvaux, 32
Claremont, 140, 202
Clusius, 346
Cobbett, W., 228
Cobham Gardens, 88

Lord, 144, 169, 182, 383
Coesalpinus, 58
Colbert, 102
Collins, M., 279
Cologne, physic garden at, 346
Colonna Fra, 46
Columella, 19, 77, 114, 191
Comenius, T. A., 87
Conde, 102, 209
Constantine Arch, 105
Corbie, gardens of, 327
Cotton, Charles, 54
Cowley, A., lOO, 251, 280

INDEX

417

I

Cowper, W., 191
Cradle-walk ,112
Crispin de Pass, 346
Croome Gardens, 169
Curzon, Lord, 127, 319
Cyrus's garden, 95
Czarsokojeselo, 201

Dallaway, 218

Damascus, gai-den of, 274

Darwin, E., 191

Davy, Sir H., 247

D'Annunzio, 309

De Amicis, 377

De Brosscs, 159, 318, 321 ;^

Decker, 131

De la Quintinye, 61, 1 15, 166

De Nesle, Chateau, 45

DeSerres, 43, 44, 45, 58, 61, 357

De Vries, 58, 346

D'Ecouen, Chateau, 45

Defoe, 131, 380

Delhi, Gardens at, 405

Delille, L'Abbe, 197, 2o6, 247, 398

D'Este, Villa, 55, 312, 338

Deyverdun's Gardens, 204

Dials, 74, 79, 151, 230, 239, 240

Diderot, 166

" Didymus Mountaine," 77

Disraeli, I., 91 n^ 231

Disraeli, B., 265

Dodonaeus, 346

Doria Pamphili, Gardens, 341

D'Orias, Prince, IIO

Douglas, Gawen, 39

Drayton, M. 75

Du Cerceau, 45, 51, 175, 332, 357

Du Perac, 61

Dufresny, C, 127, 398

Durdans, 132

Dusseldorf, Court Garden of, 259

Dutch Gardens, 36, 197, 224, 374

Dutch Garden, books on, 383

Eden, garden of, 203, 316

Egyptian Gardens, I

Elizabethan Gardens, 62, 342

Elyot, 19

* Enoch's Walk,' 92

Epicurus, gardens of, 4, 8, 13, 243, 320

Erasmus, 36, 42

Ermenon villa, 178, 199, 202, 209, 398

Escurial Gardens, 86, 405

Essex, Earl of, 113

Esher, 196, 394

Estienne, 43, 357

Evelyn, John, 14 «, 46, 91 «, loi «,

103, 115, 116, 124, 228, 232, 251,

257, 370

Falconer, Dr, 318

Farelli, 112

Farnese Gardens, 55

Farrah Bagh, 405

Farnham Castle, 228

Ferme Orn^e, 140

Ferrara Schottus, Zd

Fiacre, St, 115

Fischer, of Erlach, 403

Fisherwick, 169

Fitzherbarde, 42

Flourishings, 126

Fontainbleau Gardens, 60, 61, 86, 102,
107, 256, 324, 357

Fossiiw garden, 176

Foster, Mrs J. F., 304

Fouquet, N., 102

Fountains at Aranjuez, 287
,, at HafF, 103
,, at Hampton Court, 112
,, Laocoon, 105
,, at Nonsuch, 74
,, at Pagliavam, 226
,, at Versailles, 363
,, in Greek Gardens, 4
,, in Luxembourg Gardens,

108
,, in Temple Gardens, 239.

French Garden, books on, 369 n

Fulham, 102

Fuller, T., 98

Gaillon, Chateau, 51, 332

' Garden of Love,' 331

' Garden of Gardens ' (Chinese), 390

' Gardener's Lodge,' 1 15

Gardens, size, 11, 69, 88, 98, 107,

.I45>. 345
,, situation of, 196

Garth, Samuel, 196, 203
Gassendi, 90, 91 «
Gautier, T., 272, 363, 364
Genoa, no

4i8

INDEX

Gerard, Lord, garden of, 373
Gerarde, 62, 98, 231, 346
German Gardens, 230, 403

,, books on, 403

Gestatio, in Pliny's Garden, 15
Ghazepoor Gardens, 406
Gibbon, 204

Gilbert, A., Gardener, 87
Giles, Herbert, 24, 281
Gilpin, W., 402
Ginkakinzi Gardens, 407
Girardin, Marquis de, 1 99, 202, 209, 398
Girardon, 363
Goethe, 213 ^ ,

Goldsmith, 186

Goncourt, Ed. de, 277 j

Googe, B., 52 1

Goujon, Jean, 46
Granada, gardens at, 86, 313, 404
Gray, T., 171, 397
Gray's Inn Gardens, 241
Greek Garden, i, 320
Grilli, 45
Grotto at Chateau d'Ecouen, 45

,, at Ermenonville, 398

,, at Hafif. 103

,, at Rueil, 106

,, at Tuileries, 45

,, at Twickenham, 332

,, at Villa Borghese, iii

„ at Wotton, 373

,, of Calypso, 332

,, of Pausilippo, 113 «
Guerin, M. de, 271
Guiscard, park at, 401

Hacknes, 81

Hackney, gardens at, ill

Hadersdorf, 403

Hagley, 204, 394

Hague, 103

Hall, Bishop, 85

Hall Barn, 197

Hallam, H., 245

Ham, 113

Hamburg, 404

Hamilton, C., 140, 394

Hampton Court, 74, 88, 112, 169,

331. 332, 337, 378
Hanging Gardens of Babylon, 12, 89,

94, I73> 318

Harrison, W., 88

Hartlib, S., 102, 115

Hartrigge, 247

Hatfield Gardens, 342

Hawthorne, N., 266

Hayes Place, 157, 394

Hayley, 157, 197

Heber, Bishop, 405

Hebrew Gardens, i

Heidelberg, 342, 403

Heine, H., 259

Helps, Sir A, 286

Hentzner, P., 73, 75, 176, 332, 342

Herbalsy 62, 98, 346, 351

Herbert, George, 89

Herculaneum, gardens at, 173, 321

Heresbach, C, 52

Herodotus, 318

Hesperides, gardens of, 64, 94, 223, 317

Hill, T., 77

Hinton, St George, 123

Hirschfeld, 402

Hodges, Anthony, 27

Hoereduim, 13

Holborn Physic Garden, 351

Holland House, 342

Holland, Philemon, 14

Holmes, O. W., 270

Home, Henry, 154

Homer, 3, 22

Home, 226

Hort-yard, 331 «

"Horti Pensiles," 318

Houghton, garden at, 172

Houslaerdyk, 379

Howell, James, 92

Huet, 122, 317

Hugo, Victor, 262, 273

Humboldt, A. von, 6, 28, 232

Hunt, Leigh, 249, 298

Hyde Park, 104

IcoLMKiLL, Abbey of, 327
Ildefonso Gardens, 405
Indian Gardens, 405
Irving, Washington, 248
Isola Bella, 159, 311, 318
Italian Gardens, 338

,, books on, 341

James L of Scotland, 331

INDEX

419

James, T,, 280 I

Japanese Gardens, 94, 128, 406-8 j

,, books on, 408 n

Jardine Royale of Paris, 104
larditi Anglais, 312, 401, 403

,, Larmoyaiit, 393
Jerome, St, 23
Jerrold, D., 264
Johnson, Samuel, 158
Johnson, G. W., 328 n, 352 n, 389
Josephus, 95 n
Joubert, J., 220, 259 w
Julius, Pope, gardens of, 55
Juvenal, 20

Kaempfer, 128

Kajah- Mahal Gardens, 405

Kames, Lord, 154, 208, 393

Kant, I., 191

Karnak, 3, 318

Karr, A., 268

Kelso, gardens at, 282

Kenilworth Castle, 83

Kensington Gardens, 394

Kent, William, 140, 141, 155, 170,

177, 183, 195, 196, 378, 383, 394
Kew Gardens, 228, 346 ?z, 390
Kinglake, A., 274
Kip, 176

Knebworth, 263 n
Knight, R. P., 214, 217, 402
Knotted Beds, 337
Krafft, 403

Laborde, 199

Labyrinth, 50, 75, 76, 80, 117, 234

,, at Chantilly, 209

,, at Hampton Court, 378

J, at Kensington, 227

,, at Theobalds, 342

, , at Trinity College, Oxford,

389
,, at Versailles, 364

Lahore, 406
Lamartine, 255
Lamb, Charles, 238
Langley, Batty, 148, 389
Landor, W. S., 220, 242
Laneham, R., 82

Landscape Gai'dens, requisites of, 219
,, origin of, 167, 177, 315

Landscape Gardens, debased formof, 297

Laocoon, fountain, 105

Latini, Brunetto, 33

Laurentine, villa of Pliny, 15, 321

Law, Ernest, 337, 378 n

Lawson, W., 57, 78, 303

Le Notre, 61, 102, 116, 117, 122, 127,

145, 166, 199, 262, 364, 378
Leasowes, 188, 203, 393
Lebanon, 3
' Lee, Vernon,' 295
Leland, J., 57
L'Estrange, R., 38
Levens, gardens at, 378
Lewes on Goethe's Garden, 213
Liancourt, Comte de, 106
Liebault, 43, 45, 357
Lientschen, 28
Liger, 125

Ligne, Prince de, 198, 403
Linne, gardener, 404
Linnaeus, 145
Lipsius, Justus, 20
Livy, 320
Long Melford, 92
Longleat, 389

London, George,i2S,i33, 135, 370,380
Longus, 25
Loo, 374, 377
Loudon, 20, 194, 211, 218, 233, 321 «,

374
Loudon, Marshal, 403
Low Laxton, 151
Lucian, 21
LucuUus, 18, 225
Ludlam's Hole, 229
Ludovisi Gardens, 160, 321, 341, 370
Luther, 39

Luxemburg Gardens, 107, 117
Lydgate, 328
Lyly, J., 64
Lyte, 346
Lyttelton, 394
Lytton, Bulwer, 263

Machiavelli, 35

Madura, gardens at, 406

Magdeburg gardens, 404

Mago, 19

Magdalen College, Oxford, 373

Malmesbury, W. of, 28

420

INDEX

Mandelslo, 126

Manger, 404

Mansfield, Lord, 202

Marie de Medici's gardens, 104, 107

Marius, garden of, 52

Markham, G., 45, 82, 115, 303

Marlborough, Duke of, 202

Marlborough College, 291

Marlia, 245

Marly Gardens, 139, 161, 403

Marot, 377

Martial, 321

Marvell, A., 240, 373

Maschal, L., 80

Mason, G., 194, 202, 393, 394, 397

Mason, W,, 182, 390, 398

Matius, 16

Maundeville, 33

Maupertuis, 211, 401

Mayer, 403

Maxwell, Sir W. S., 286

Maze, 50, 75, 'jd^ 80, 117, 234
,, at Chantilly, 209
,, at Hampton Court, 378
,, at Kensington, 227
,, at Theobalds, 342
,, at Trinity College, Oxford, 389
,, at Versailles, 364

Meager, L,, 119

Medici Gardens, 55, 226, 341

Melmoth's Pliny, 18

Mereville, gardens at, 199, 401

Meudon, Chateau de, 102

Meyer, 202

Meynell, A., 296

Mickleham, 112

Mignaux Gardens, 127

Milbank, Svvitzer's garden at, 133

Miller, P., 145, 234, 352

Milner, George, 299

Milton, 96, 141, 175, 176, 203, 253, 317

Moat at Wressel, 58

Mohammad, 27

Mollet, 61, 321, 357

Monceaux, 61, 401

Montargis Gardens, 332

Montaiglon, 50

Montaigne, 53

Monte Cavallo Gardens, 55, no

Montesquieu, 144

Montesquiou, 211

Montmorency Gardens, 45

Montpellier Physic Garden, 45

Moor Park, Herts, 120, 378
,, Farnham, 229

More, Sir T., 38, 119

Morfontaine Gardens, 209, 401

Morel, 202, 398, 401

Morine, 109

Morris, 394

Morris, W,, 292

Moulin-Joli, 178, 199, 401

Mound 2Lt jNIarlborough, 291

Mount Garden at Hampton Court, 337

Mozints, 57, 70, 76, 79, 80
,, at Low Laxton, 151
,, at Theobalds. 126, 342
,, at Twickenham, 384
,, at Wadham College, 3S9
,, at Wressel, 57
,, in Roman gardens, 322

Muhammed, 40

Munich, gardens at, 403

Nara, Japan, garden at, 408

Nashim-Bagh, 405

Nassau, Comte de, gardens, 377

Neckam, 30, 328

Negroni Gardens, 226, 321

Nekht, 3, 318

Nero, 19

Newman, Cardinal, 261

Nishat-Bagh, 405

Noisy-le-Roi Gardens, 358

Nomentanum, 20

Nonesuch, 74, 75, 88, 113, 132, 176,

194, 332
Norman Gardens, 328
Notre, A. Le, 61, 102, 116, 117, 122,

123, 127, 145, 166, 199, 262, 357,364
Nymphenburg, gardens at, 403

Oatlands, 204

Orangery, 134, 225

Orbicular form of garden, 75

Owen, 19

Oxford, Christ Church, 282
,, New College, 266
,, Magdalen College, 373
,, St John's College, 266, 281
,, Trinity College, 389
,, Wadham, 389

J

INDEX

421

Pagliavam, 226

Pains Hill, 140, 197, 203, 204, 394

,, Cottage, 291

Palermo Gardens, 213
Palladio, 114
Palladius, 19, 22
Pallissy, B., 45

Pamphili Gardens, 161, 312, 370
Paradise, Persian, 4

,, of Sardis, 5
Pare de Vaux, 102
Parkinson, J., 75
Parsons, A. , 408 n
Pater, W., 9, 95 n, 294, 410 n
Pausanias, 6
Peacocks, 26
Peacock, T. Love, 252
Peiresc, 90, 232
Pekin, garden at, 390
Pembroke, Earl of, garden of, 87,

202, 342
Penshmst, 87, 342, 352
Pensiles, Horti, 318
Pepys, S., 124
Peresfield Gardens, 204
Persian Gardens, i, 4, 12, 94, 127,

319

Petrarch, 31, 56

Peutexoire, Isle of, 33

Phaedrus, 6

Physic Gardens, 38, 57, 60, 62, 351
,, ,, at Cambridge, 351

,, ,, at Chelsea, 352 n

,, „ at Cologne, 346

,, ,, at Hamburg, 351

,, ,, at Holborn, 317

,, „ at Kew, 346

,, ,, at Lambeth, 352 71

,, ,, at Montpelier, 45

,, „ at Oxford, 113, 351

,, ,, at Salerno, 351

,, ,, at Venice, 351

at Wells, 346

Piddleton, 176

Pilois, 117

Piscinae, 113, 1 14, 244

Pitt, 394

Piatt, Sir Hugh, 345

Plato, 5, 6

Pleachwork, 87, 281, 342, 352

Pliny the Younger, 15, 256, 321

Pliny the Elder, 12, 13, 63, 96, 114,

I73> 320
Plutarch, 18, 320, 322
Poe, E. A., 271
Pompeii, 323
Pompey, 18
Pompylus, 8
Pond-garden, at Hampton Court, 331 n,

Poole, 27

Pope, 141, 175, 183, 253, 332, 383

Poplars, Isle of, 210

Portuguese Gardens, 313

Pratolino, grotto at, 54

Price, Sir U., 212, 214, 217, 402

Prizy garden at Hampton Court, T^yj

QuAMSi, 187

Quinctmx, 21, ^^n, 373

Quintilian, 21, 95

Quintinye, de la, 61, I15, 125, 370

Rabi's Garden at Bordeaux, 236

Rapin, Rene, de Hortibus, 123, 206,
236, 245, 246

Ray, J., 118

Fea, J., 373

Reid, J., 374

Renaissance Gardens, 30-61, 338

Renan, E., 279

Repton, H., 171 n, 217, 2i8, 252, 401

Reux Gardens, 45

Riario, gardens of, 55

Richardson, S. , 393

Richelieu, 105, 109, 357

Richmond Green, 131

Robert, Hubert, 274, 364, 401

Robinson, P., 308

Robinson, R., 35

Robinson, W., 305

Roman Gardens, i, 13, 55, 225, 296,
320, 322
,, Cato's description of, 9

,, Modern, 257, 296

Rosamond's Labyrinth, 75

Rose, J., 370, 378

Rousham, 140

Rousseau, l6l, 202, 209, 273, 364,

393
Rueil Garden, 102, 108, 357

Rumford, Count, 403

h,

422

INDEX

Ruskin, J., 289
Ryswick Gardens, 377

St Anthony's garden, 327
,, Bernard, 32, 86
,, Bertin Gardens, 327
,, Cloud, 102, 105, 161, 370
,, Fiacre, 115

,, Gall, gardens of Abbey of, 327
,, Germain, 60, 61, 322, 332
,, James' Park, 370
,, Jerome, 23, 327
,, Martino Gardens, 209
,, Remy Gardens, 327
Saint-Hilaire, 7
Saint-Simon, 102, 139
Sainte-Beuve, 198
Sallust, 53, 321
Salzmann, 404
Sand, George, 264
Sandwich, 100
Sans-Souci, 404
Sardis, Paradise of, 5
Savage, 92

Sayes Court, ill, 373
Sceaux, 102
Schiller, 222
Schonbrunn, 403
Schopenhauer, 254
Schwetzingen, gardens of, 403
Scipio's garden, 321
Sckell, L., 403

Scott, Sir W., 229, 233, 234, 409
Seneca, 20, 323
Serle, J., 144 «, 3^4
Serres, de, 43, 44, 45) S^, 61, 351 n, 357
Sevigne, Madame de, 117
Sforza Gardens, 55
Shaftesbury, Earl of, II5
Sheen, Temple's garden at, 378
Shelley, 256

Shenstone, 167, 188, 204, 281, 393, 394
Shere Gardens, 228
Shalamar Bagh, 405
Shiraz, gardens of, 319
Siculus, Diodorus, 12, 318
Skelton, 337

Sidney, Sir P., 65, 202, 352
Smith, Adam, 182
Smith, Sydney, 238
Socrates, 5

Solomon, 3, 63, 237, 319

Sorgvliet, 377

South Lodge, 157

Southcote, Philip, 140, 394

Southey, 235

Spanish Gardens, 211, 226, 243, 404
,, books on, 405 n

Spence, Joseph, 156

Stael, Madame de, 230

Statues, 73

Steckhoven, 403

Stephens, Charles, 43, 357

Sterne, 165

Stidolph, 112

Stowe Garden, 140, 202, 383

Stuart Gardens, 62

Stc?}imer Hall, 38

,, House, 66, 73

Sun Dials, 74, 79, 151, 240
,, at Moor Park, 230

,, in Temple Gardens, 239

Sunderland, 113

Sunk Fence {Yia.-Yisi), 179

Surflet, 43

Sutton Court, 131

Swift, 133, 229, 378

Switzer, S., 133, 389, 404

Syrian Gardens, i, 12

Tacitus, 19

Taine, 322, 341, 364

Tanks, 2

T 'Ao Yuan-ming, 23, 28

Tarquinius Superbus, garden of, 320

Tasso, 55

Tatius, Achilles, 25

Tavernier, 319

Taylor, John, 87, 342

Temple Gardens, 239

Temple, Sir W., 4, 15, 75. 95 '^ "9.

176, 229, 330, 378, 383
Temple, Lord, 202, 383
Temples in Gardens, 202
Tench, Sir F., 151
Tennyson's garden, 300
Terrace in Roman gardens, 16
Thalysia, 9

"The Water Poet," 87
Thebes, i, 3
Theobalds, garden of, 75, 88, 126, 176,

332, 342

llNJJJCyA

423

critus, 9

phrastus, 7, 243

saly, 80

IS, in Roman Garden, ii

las, Inigo, 303, 389

eau, H. D., 275
. ney Abbey, 28
TiiO.nley, George, 25
Tibault (Theobalds), 88
Tissaphernes, 18
Tivoli Gardens, 199, 311
Transtevere Gardens, 55
Treveris, 57, 346
Trianon, 210, 256, 264, 403
Trinity College, Oxford, 389
7'sudo, 128
Tuileries, 45, 48, 60, 61, 105, 117,

160, 332
Turkish Gardens, 86
Turner, W., 346
Tusculan, Pliny's villa, 15, 321
Tusculum, Lucullus' villa near, 18
Tusser, 1 15 /
Twickenham, Pope's garden at, 144

Ursino Gardens, 55

Vanbrugh, 140.

Varro, II, 18, 19, 77, 114, 191, 323

Vatit.an, no, 338

Vau:. le Villars Garden, 358

Vegctius, 19

Vergil, Polydore, 42, lOO

Vernet, J., 401

Versailles, 75, 162, 173, 196, 246,

256, 262, 273, 276, 341, 357, 403
Vervlam, Lord, 67
VerNille, B. de, 46
J ^illa Albani Gardens, 341

,, Aldobrandini, 161
Villa Borghesi, no

,, D'Este, gardens, 297, 312, 338
Vinet, 44

^%g:l, 19, 20, 55, 246
Voltaire, 148

Wai>h AM College, 113, 389

IVaL<: in gardens replaced by fosse,

17^ . , o

, ,, by clairvoyees, 378

Waller, Sir W., 92, 98, 182

Walpole, Horace, 75, 95 w, 141 w, 156,
170, 172, 197, 200, 317, 321, 384,

394, 397
Wanstead, 131
Ware Park, 84
Warner, C. D., 308
Warwick Castle, 173 w
Water, Kent's treatment of, 178
Watelet, C. H., 178, 199, 401
Watson, Forbes, 287
Watteau, 277, 281, 410
Waverley Abbey Gardens, 229
Wells, physic garden at, 346 n
Wentworth Castle, 204
Weston, R., 345 n
Whateley, T., 140;/, 157, 170, 193,

I94> 397
Whewell, W., 258
White, G., 181
Whitehall Gardens, 73
Whitinson, 10
Wilkes, J., 186
Wilkin, 94 n

Wilkinson, Sir J. G., 3, 318
Wilson, J., 250

Wilton, gardens at, 87, 112, 342
Windham, W., 217
Windsor Park, 204

„ Garden, 331
Winter Garden, 136
Wise, Henry, 125, 133, 135, 233, 378
Wooburn, 197, 397
Woodstock, 75
Worcester College, 113
Wordsworth, W, , 233
Worlidge, J., 129
Worlitz, 403
Wotton, Sir H., 84, 352
Wotton Gardens, in, 114, 373
Wressel Castle, 58
Wright, 394
Wlirzburg, gardens at, 403

Xenophon, 4, 53, 319
Xysitis, 16

Young, Arthur, 59, 202, 208

Zarsokojeselo Gardens, 201
Zehir ed-din Muhammad, 40
Zola, 302

2 F

PRINTED BY

TURNBULL AND SPEARS,

EDINBURGH

«fl^|

GARDEN LITERATURE.1v

Those who feed their minds on the literature of the Past, though they
may have to forego that doubtfT?) advantage known as keeping pace with
the times, are at least sure of good fare. Nothing superfluous or rubbishy ;
nothing that does not hold a spark or two of genius to keep it alive
survives the destroying hand of JTime. Modern literature, however,
makes such an exciting clamour around us that it is extremely difficult
to avoid being enthralled by its voice, to the extent of thinking that
newer, more wonderful things are being written nowadays than
were ever written before. Nothing could be more opportune at
the present moment, when we are being inundated with books
about gardens, than Mr. Sieveking's reissue of " In Praise of Gardens"
— a collection of essays and extracts on the subject, made from the
writings of the immortals from earliest even prehistoric, times to the
present day. Truly there is nothing new mder the sun. Here we read of
gardens in the early years of the Christian Era that, with all our talk of
progress and development, would dwarf to insignificance anything that we
can produce at the present day. It is possible that the love of gardening
was not so widespread as at the present day — that every one who owned a
square yard or two of ground was not so set on turning it into a garden as
nowadays ; but one certainly feels after reading this book that there is no
form of gardening on a large scale that is not as old as the hills.

In some respects there has been a sad falling-off in modern times.
One of these is in the use of water. Water plays an important part iu
all the descriptions of old gardens. The stream, the foimtaia, th^ pcHvi^
or, at least, the reservoir, is deemed as important a feature, as great a
necessity from the point of view of ornament as the flowers and trees.
The modern gardener is apt to regard water from the strictly utilitarian
point of view; to carry it in niggardly bucketsful, to lead it in india-
rubber tubes, or such-like base implements, to his plants, and this often
when his resources would permit of a liberality in the matter, which
would be both beneficial to the trees and plants and add greatly to the
beauty of his ground.

A glance through the extracts, many of them essays which have a place
in literature quite apart from their subject, surprises one with the number
of well-known writers who have said something in praise of gardens.
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Montaigne, Bacon, Sir Philip Sydney, Milton, Pope,
Addison, Cowper, Lamb, to mention a few only of those best known to
English readers, all have a voice in the book. Mr. Sieveking's selection is
made with a nice care and taste. There is nothing in the book that is not
i worth reading. There is much to revel in. It is a book to possess, and
I to read, not in a rush, but a page or two at a time when one is in the mood
for gentle scholarly chatter on one of the most delightful subjects in the
world. Some excellent copper-plate engravings add interest to the book.

t "In Praise of Gardens." By Albert Forbes S'cveking, F.S.A. (London:
Pent and Co.)

i

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