266 On Modern Improvements of Horticulture. 



Ornamental gardening had hardly showed its graceful head ; 

 the little that had been done of this in England, was only in 

 imitation of the Italian school, though without their accompa- 

 niments of splendid architecture, classical sculpture, and costly 

 fountains. Such a style, in the near neighbourhood of a 

 palace or mansion, is imposing and suitable, but the outskirts 

 of such gardens, which should have been gradually blended 

 with and into the free and beautiful forms of nature, were 

 bounded and deformed by tortuous labyrinths, by complicated 

 folds of nicely-clipped hedges, involving each other for no pur- 

 pose than affording seclusion from the " licentious eye," or a 

 " maze to the intruding foot." 



It may be observed as somewhat unaccountable, the excel- 

 lent taste of their landscape painters was never transferred from 

 the canvass to their style of ornamental gardening. But so it 

 was : the people who had all kinds of assistance from artists 

 of the first order, and from classical and picturesque associa- 

 tion within their own territory, long remained blind to what 

 was so natural and so manifestly within their reach ! 



In useful and profitable gardening, the fine climate of Italy 

 gave great facility for successful cultivation of a profusion of 

 the finest fruits, and being an advanced post for the reception 

 of all valuable plants from both Asia and Africa, it much 

 sooner than other European countries possessed culinary vege- 

 tables in great variety, and of salad-herbs a numerous list. 



From the commencement of the sixteenth century the im- 

 provements in gardening began to take the form of a system. 

 The increasing splendour of the English court, during the reigns 

 of the virgin queen and her father, and the princely establish- 

 ments of some of her courtiers, called the art of gardening into 

 notice and repute, and gave an impulse to the yet dormant 

 powers of horticultural practicability. Continental artists were 

 generally employed in laying out the greater works. The sura 

 of their professional ability was chiefly geometrical, an exact 

 knowledge of straight lines, squares, and curves ; they could 

 line out a polygonal basin to a hair's breadth, and construct a 

 many-tiered jet d'eau in the midst. Such, however, were the 

 principal features admitted into, and which constituted the style 

 of those days, and continued through that and the succeeding 



