ee 
“ wildnefs of form with which nature (fays the elegant Walpole} 
“ has diftinguifhed each various {pecies of trees and fhrubs.” 
This direful engine began its depredations in the. neighbour- 
hood of Dublin, and continued them, with unremitting fury, 
amongft all the noblemen’s and gentlemen’s feats in the king- 
dom. Neither a box nor a yew tree were now to be found 
which had not aflumed the human fhape, or that of fome in- 
ferior animal *. ‘Like Milton’s genius of the woods, to 
 ___ curl the grove 
“© With ringlets quaint,” 
was now the bufinefs of every gardener. Even water was no 
longer permitted to flow in the undulating line of nature: 
checked in its courfe, it was {pread into an expanfe, which a 
mathematical figure was taught to circum{cribe. Such is the 
powerful influence of cuftom, that though “ the mind of man 
“ (fays Addifon) naturally hates every thing that looks like a 
* reftraint upon it, and is apt to fancy itfelf under a fort of 
“ confinement 
* An old gentleman of my acquaintance remembers to have feen in Mr. Fortick’s garden, near 
Drumcondra (Dublin) the figures of men with their arms in various pofitions, cut in yew and box ; 
and the figure of a coloffal goofe in the latter. He recolleéts alfo to have obferved, in the gar- 
den of Beamore in the county of Meath, the reprefentation of a large cock, with briftled 
feathers, cut in yew; and in the gardens of Bullen, in New-ftreet, Dublin, which were laid 
out in the reign of Queen Anne, as already mentioned, there were an hare hunt and a boar 
hunt in box. But this fantaftical fafhion was of earlier date in Ireland ; the anonymous travel- 
ler already quoted (See p. 12.), in defcribing Bifhop Usher’s Palace at Drogheda, fays, 
‘‘here is a prettie neat garden, and over again(t the window, in the gallery end, upon a bank, 
« thefe words in fair great letters are written, OL, Man, remember the laff great day! ‘The bank 
“¢ is bare, the proportion of the letters is framed and cut in grafs.” 
