ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



I. — On the Arrangement of Gardens and Pleasure- Grounds 

 in the Elizabethan Age. 



(Communicated by the Vice-Secretary.) 



Before the reign of Elizabeth it would not seem that the laying 

 out of grounds, or even horticulture itself, in the strict sense of 

 the word, had been made the subject of any treatise. That 

 records of the opinions and habits of our ancestors on these 

 matters exist in old MSS., although not reduced therein to any 

 regular system, there is little reason to doubt ; and, as regards 

 horticulture, it would assuredly repay any person who may have 

 the leisure if he should ascertain successfully what were the 

 indigenous plants, and especially vegetables, of this country, 

 tracing carefully the introduction of others into general use. 

 Such information must exist in the British Museum and in other 

 libraries in which the older MSS. are preserved. It would 

 doubtless be a laborious work. Hundreds of pages must be 

 searched with comparatively few though valuable results ; yet 

 the whole result would be as instructive as gratifying. 



Failing this general inquiry, extending from the earliest period 

 on which information can be brought to bear down to our own 

 time, the first period in which information is yielded to us from 

 printed works is in its own way full of interest. Every one has 

 a pretty correct notion of a mansion of the Elizabethan era — its 

 peculiarities as to external style and internal arrangement — and 

 every one is equally aware that in the last few years a consider- 

 able revival of this architectural style has taken place. It was 

 not unnatural, however, that they who have been roused into 

 strong admiration of this style — and if it be admired at all the 

 admiration felt is usually enthusiastic — should imagine the re- 

 vival incomplete unless the mansion were surrounded by gardens 

 and grounds precisely in the taste of the same date. It is not 

 absolutely self-evident that this should be a necessary consequence 

 of reviving the mansion any more than that the same conse- 

 quence should obtain if we should erect a mansion of the Grecian, 

 or Roman, or Saxon, or Gothic, or any other style. So far from 

 it, such a principle must involve a great degree of inconvenience 

 as well as absurdity. The truth, however, is that very few are 

 well informed on the subject ; and I think that nothing would 

 go further to open the eyes of such ultra-enthusiasts than to re- 

 suscitate a complete model of the grounds and garden attached 



VOL. III. B 



