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time ; for though gardens must have 

 originated soon after man had advanced 

 beyond the mere nomadic life, yet the 

 practice of gardening as a fine art, that 

 is, not merely as a useful occupation, 

 must necessarily have been of a much 

 later date. The hanging gardens of 

 Semiramis are reckoned among the 



constructed in the palaces in Rome, 

 and in which, as Pliny says, nature was 

 counterfeited. But a grotto does not 

 constitute a garden; and that the Ro- 

 mans had no fine gardens, in our sense 

 of the word, is proved by several pas- 

 sages of their authors, and by the ac- 

 counts we have of their gardens. In 



wonders of the world ; but that which | Pliny's description of his Tuscan villa, 

 astonishes is not therefore beautiful. I we find, indeed, all conveniences — pro- 

 Scatlbldmgs, supported by pillars, co- tection against the weather, an agreea- 

 vered with earth, bearing trees, and ble mixture of coolness and warmth ; 

 artificially watered, are, no doubt, won- but everything beautiful relates merelv 

 derful ; but we have no reason to sup- [ to buildings, not to the garden, which, 

 pose them beautiful. The gardens of j with its innumerable figures of box, and 

 the Persians (paradises'; are called by j in its whole disposition, was as tasteless 

 Xenophon delightful places, fertile and i as possible. Ofthe gardens of Lucullus, 

 beautiful ; but they seem rather to have Varro says, that they were not remark- 

 been places naturally agreeable, with able for flowers and fruits, but for the 



paintings of the villa. A fertile soil, 

 and a fine prospect from the villas, 

 which were generally beautifully situ- 

 ated, seem to have satisfied the Romans. 

 Whatever the art of gardening had i)ro- 

 duced among them, was, with every 

 other trace of refinement, swept away 

 by the barbarians who devastated Italv. 

 Charlemagne directed his attention to 

 this art, but his views did not extend 

 beyond mere utility. The Troubadours 

 of the middle ages speak of symmetri- 

 cal gardens. In Italy, at the time of 

 the revival of learning, attention was 

 again turned towards pleasure gardens, 

 some of which were so famous, that 

 drawings were made of them. They 

 may have been very agreeable places, 

 but we have no reason to suppose them 

 to have exhibited much of the skill of 

 the scientific gardener. At a later 

 period, a new taste in gardening pre- 

 vailed in France. Regularity was car- 

 ried to excess; clipped hedges, alleys 

 laid out in straight lines, flower-beds 

 tortured into fantastic shapes, trees cut 

 into the form of pyramids, haystacks, 

 animals, &c., were now the order of 

 the day. The gardens corres])ondcd 

 with the taste of the time, which dis- 

 played itself with the same artificial 



fruit-trees, flowers, &c., growing spon- 

 taneously, than gardens artificially laid 

 outand cultivated. VVhetherthe Greeks, 

 so distinguished in the fine arts, neglect- 

 ed the art of gardening, is a question 

 not yet decided. The gardens of Al- 

 cinoiis (Odyssey, vii., 112 — 132) were 

 nothing but well laid out fruit orchards 

 and vineyards, with some flowers. The 

 grotto of Calypso {Odyssey, v., 63 — 73) 

 is more romantic, but probably is not 

 intended to be described as a work of 

 art. The common gardens which the 

 Greeks had near their farms, were more 

 or less like the gardens of Alcinoiis. 

 Attention was paid to the useful and the 

 agreeable, to culinary plants, fruits, 

 flowers, shadowing trees and irrigation. 

 Shady groves, cool fountains, with some 

 statues, were the only ornaments ofthe 

 gardens of the philosophers at Athens. 

 The descriptions of gardens in the later 

 Greek novelists do not show any great 

 progress in the art of gardening in their 

 time ; and it would be worth while to 

 inquire, whether the same cause, which 

 prevented the cultivation of landscape 

 painting with the ancients, did not also 

 prevent the progress of the art of gar- 

 dening. The ancients stood in a differ- 

 ent relation to nature from the moderns. 



The true art of gardening is probably j stiffness in dress, architecture and poet- 



connected with that element of the ro- i 

 mantic, which has exercised so great an j 

 influence on all arts ever since the re- i 

 vival of arts and letters, and, in some ' 

 degree, ever since the Christian era. I 

 Even the grottoes of the ancients owed 



ry. Lenotre was the inventor of this 

 style of French gardening, which, how- 

 ever, his successors carried to greater 

 excess. Nothing natural was left, and 

 yet nature was often imitated in arti- 

 ficial rocks, fountains, &c. Only one 



their origin morely to the desire for the J thing strikes us as truly grand in car- 

 coolness they afforded. Natural grot- , dens of this sort — the fountains, which 

 toes led to artificial ones, which were were constructed at great expense. 



