68 Xan^scape Brcbitecture 



And here were gardens bright and sinuous rills 

 Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree, 

 And here were forests ancient as the hills 

 Unfolding sunny spots of greenery. 



Evidently the poet, under the untrammelled inspira- 

 tion of his imagination, dreamed something much 

 nearer the best type of gardens and lawns than the 

 lines of the old chronicler would indicate. This is 

 easy to understand: Coleridge was an EngHshman of 

 the nineteenth century, and was doubtless more or less 

 familiar with the modern schools of landscape garden- 

 ing. The strangest part is that it seems that Oderic 

 of Pordenone, a Venetian and a Franciscan friar, went 

 to Cathay in the fourteenth century, many years after 

 Marco Polo, and in his account of his travels verified 

 the truth of the narrative about the fountains and 

 gardens of the Xanadu of Marco Polo, and also related 

 how the Chinese architects built these wonders of the 

 age in accordance with instructions of the Great Khan 

 Kabula, who had dreamed a pcture of how they should 

 be designed. Doubtless his dream was based on a 

 knowledge of the landscape gardening of his day, just 

 as Coleridge was unconsciously influenced by his re- 

 collections of the parks of England. This comparative 

 identity of ideas becomes more evident when we read 

 in Marco Polo's narrative how the Khan built in one 

 part of his park a mount, a hundred paces across the 

 top and a mile in circuit at the base. This hill he had 

 covered with large evergreen trees moved from a dis- 

 tance with the assistance of elephants, hence the name 



