248 Xan&scape Hrcbitecture 



which the ItaHans view with rapture and admiration : 

 there is Hkewise a long walk of trees extending from 

 the garden gate to the palace; and plenty of shade 

 with alleys and hedges in different parts of the 

 ground, but the groves are neglected; the walks are 

 laid with nothing but common mould or sand, black 

 and dusty; the hedges are tall, thin, and shabby; the 

 trees stunted, the open ground, brown and parched, 

 has scarce any appearance of verdure. The flat, 

 regular alleys of evergreens are cut into fantastic 

 figures ; the flower gardens embellished with thin cy- 

 phers and flourished figures in box, while the flowers 

 grow in rows of earthen pots, and the ground appears 

 as dusty as if it was covered with the cinders of a 

 blacksmith's forge. The water, of which there is a 

 great plenty, instead of being collected in large pieces, 

 or conveyed in little rivulets and streams to refresh 

 the thirsty soil, or managed so as to form agreeable 

 cascades, is squirted from fountains in different parts 

 of the garden through tubes little bigger than common 

 glyster pipes. It must be owned indeed that the 

 fountains have their merit in the way of sculpture 

 and architecture, that here is a great number of 

 statues that merit attention; but they serve only to 

 encumber the ground, and destroy that effect of 

 rural simplicity which our gardens are designed to 

 produce. In a word, here we have a variety of walks 

 and groves and fountains, a wood of four hundred 

 pines, a paddock with a few meagre deer, a flower 

 garden, an aviary, a grotto, and a fish pond, and in 



