8 GARDEN MANAGEMENT. 



were recklessly pulled to pieces; in the words of Sii' "Walter Scott, *'Down 

 went many a trophy of old magnificence — coui't-yard, ornamented 

 enclosure, fosse, avenue, barbican, and every extensive monument of 

 battled wall and flanking tower." Sir Uvedale Price, who went a 

 certain length with the prevailing mania, which he afterwards was still 

 more active in arresting, expresses bitter regret for the destruction of an 

 ancestral garden on the old system which he condemned to destruction 

 before he found out his error. He was afterwards led to write strongly 

 in favour of the preservation of the remains of ancient magnificence still 

 untouched, with modifications calculated to redeem them from the charge 

 of barbarism. 



15. "It was, indeed, high time that some one should interfere," con- 

 tinues Sir Walter Scott. " The garden, artificial in its structure, its shel- 

 ter, its climate, and its soil, which every consideration of taste, beauty, 

 and convenience recommended to be kept near to the mansion, and main- 

 tained as its appendage, has by a strange and sweeping sentence of 

 exile been condemned to wear the coarsest and most humbling form." 

 Sir Uvedale Pi'ice soon recognized a threefold division of the domain. 

 For the architectural terrace and flower garden, in the direction of tho 

 house, he admits the formal style ; for the shrubbery or pleasure- 

 ground, a transition between flowers and trees, which he is wilUng to 

 hand over to the improver ; but for the park, which belongs to the pic- 

 turesque — his own subject — he gives full scope to the most picturesque 

 disposition, provided it is not frittered away in trifling details. Tliis 

 style of laying out, in wliich the lawn is imperceptibly lost in the 

 distant park, has been called the English style. "Nothing," says 

 Scott, "is more completely the child of art than a garden." Who would 

 clothe such a child in the gipsy garb, however picturesque it may be? 



1 6. Xor was the revolution in gardens confined to this countiy . Tho 

 rage for English — or, as the style was sometimes called, the "natm-al" — 

 style, spread rapidly on the Continent, and especially in France, — of 

 course with variations and indi\'idual as well as national idiosyncracies : 

 thus at Ermonville, the seat of Vicomte Girardin, a garden in ruins 

 was considered not out of place with an accompanying band of music, 

 while madame and her daughters walked about as Amazons in 

 black hats, and the young men of the family dressed in imitation of the 

 country people. Another proprietor, M. Watelet, who had written a system 

 of gardening on strictly utihtarian principles, while he adopted the 

 eystem so far as to erect temples and altars about his gi'ounds, felt 

 himself bound, in consistency, to employ a body of worshippers ; to 

 which the Prince de Ligne gave ridiculous ^clat when he said, in a fit of 



