REMARKS ON THE HOLLY. 199 



I can show in my now ruined garden at Say's Court, thanks to the 

 Czar. 



Mr. Evelyn was evidently a good Christian, but he appears to 

 have overlooked the passage in Scripture, which says, 



"Put not your faith in princes." 



for it does not appear that the emperor of Russia made him the 

 least recompence for the devastation he had committed, both in 

 the garden and the mansion ; and he was certainly an unrewarded 

 slave to Charles the second. 



Mr. Evelyn informs us that Lord Dacres had a park in Sussex, 

 environed with a holly hedge, so as to keep in any game ; and he 

 adds, " I have seen hedges, or if you will, stout walls of holly 

 twenty feet in height, kept upright, and the gilded sort budded 

 low, and in two or three places one above another, shorn and 

 fashioned into columns and pilasters, architectionally shaped, and 

 at a due distance ; than which, nothing can possibly be more plea- 

 sant, the berry adorning the intercolumniations with scarlet fes- 

 toons and encarpa." 



At the time this author flourished, landscape gardening did not 

 exist, and all the gardens in Europe were laid out on geometrical 

 principles, therefore, these shorn hedges were well adapted to the 

 formal and gloomy dignity of the gardens of that age of avenues, 

 right angles and octagons ; yet we are of opinion with Mr. Lou- 

 don, that this style is not altogether to be condemned, it is well 

 adapted to the palace at Versailles and of the Thuilleries, and all 

 edifices which unite formality with splendour. 



Few trees are better adapted for the lawn than the holly, as 

 the colour either of the darkest or the most silvered, contrast 

 equally well with the turf, and when 



The cherish'd fields 



Put on their winter rohe of purest white." 



It shines still more conspicuous; for the snows slip off the slippery 

 leaves, as if dissolved by the fiery colour of its fruit, around 

 which the feathered tribe crowd to claim the boon which nature 

 has provided for them when other food is buried deep beneath 

 the fleecy waters. 



