8 ARRANGEMENT OF GARDENS AND PLEASURE-GROUNDS 



predominant ones. Among other things it may be observed, 

 that from the earliest work on the subject to the time of Bridgman 

 and Kent no publication of any pretension was without a wood- 

 cut of a maze. Indeed a garden without a maze would scarcely 

 have deserved the name. There is certainly no harm in this 

 feature of a garden taken simply as a source of amusement. In- 

 deed one old author frankly confesses this to be their main ob- 

 ject. " Mazes," he says, " well framed — a man's height — may 

 perhaps make your friend wander in gathering of berries till 

 he cannot recover himself without your helpe." But a maze 

 might quite as well be placed in some other part of the grounds, 

 for assuredly to the eye of the elevated spectator it yiehls no ob- 

 ject of beauty — it affords no pleasure, but the amusement caused 

 by seeing a very eager and earnest fellow-creature bewildered in 

 an especial quandary. That was one of the Elizabethan garden 

 beauties then : add to it a bowling-green and a place for " a paire 

 of buttes to stretch the armes," and that feature of the arrange- 

 ment is complete — that portion, I mean, which supplies pleasure 

 of a certain sort — but pleasure quite apart from that which springs 

 from the sight of garden and grounds tastefully laid out. There 

 was another sort of beauty however, or rather combination of 

 beauties, which was thought indispensable. This was the intro- 

 duction of works of art to embellish the scene ; or, as the same 

 author candidly says, " the showing what nature corrected by art 

 can do." He gives us in a few words a general idea of what was 

 seen and admired in tliose days : and the concluding passage 

 proves how warm the admiration of such objects must have been : 

 " 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) with staires of precious workmanship: 

 and in some corner or more a sun-diall or clocke, and some an- 

 tique works, and especially silver-sounding musique, sweet instru- 

 ments, and voices gracing all the rest — how will you be rapt 

 with delight I" 



Bacon's ' Essay on Gardens ' fully proves my assertions on 

 these and other points, as well by the practices which he con- 

 demns and would abolish, as by those which he would continue and 

 make more extravagant. Some trivialities he censures, thereby 

 proving their then existence. " I, for my part, do not like 

 images cut in juniper or other garden stuff; they be for children." 

 ..." As for the making of knots or figures — they be but toys : 

 you may see as good sights many times in tarts." But in some 

 other respects, while his main views were greatly in advance of 

 his age, he is guilty of as marked absurdity as William Lawson. 

 For he will have the formal mount and artificial work more 

 bizarre than even that enthusiastic wortiiy could suggest. His 



