PART I. 



GARDENING CONSIDERED IN RESPECT TO ITS ORIGIN, PRO- 

 GRESS, AND PRESENT STATE AMONG DIFFERENT NATIONS, 

 GOVERNMENTS, AND CLIMATES. 



1. The history of gardening may be considered chronologically, or in connection with 

 that of the different nations who have successively flourished in different parts of the 

 world ; politically, as influenced by the different forms of government which have pre- 

 vailed ; and geographically, as affected by the different climates and natural situations of 

 the globe. The first kind of history is useful as showing what has been done ; and what 

 is the relative situation of different countries as to gardens and gardening ; and the 

 political and geographical history of this art affords interesting matter of instruction as 

 to its past and future progress. 



BOOK I. 



HISTORY OF GARDENING AMONG ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS. 



2. The chronological history of gardening may be divided into three periods ; the ages 

 of antiquity, commencing with the earliest accounts and terminating with the foundation 

 of the Roman empire ; the ancient ages, including the rise and fall of the Roman empire ; 

 and the modern tunes, continued from thence to the present day. 



Chap. I. 



Of the Origin and Progress of Gardening in the earliest ages of Antiquity, or from the 

 10th century before the vulgar cera to the foundation of the Roman Empire. 



3. All ancient history begins with fable and tradition ; no authentic relation can reach 

 farther back than the organisation of the people who followed the last grand revolution 

 sustained by our globe. Every thing which pretends to go farther must be fabulous, 

 and it is only the primeval arts of war and husbandry which can by any means go so far. 

 The traditions collected by Herodotus, Diodorus, Hesiod, and some other authors, when 

 freed from the mythological and mysterious terms in which they are enveloped, seem to 

 carry us back to that general deluge, or derangement of the surface strata of our globe, 

 of which all countries, as well as most traditions, bear evidence. As to gardening, these 

 traditions, like all rude histories, touch chiefly on particulars calculated to excite 

 wonder or surprise in ignorant or rude minds, and accordingly the earliest notices of 

 gardens are confined to fabulous creations of fancy, or the alleged productions of princes 

 and warriors. To the first may be referred the gardens of Paradise and the Hesperides ; 

 and to the others the gardens of the Jews, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks. 



Sect. I. Of the fabulous Gardens of Antiquity. 



4. The fabulous gardens of antiquity are connected with the religions of those times. 

 These religions have been arranged by philosophers {De Paw's Dissert.) in three divisions ; 

 Barbarism, Scytkism, and Helenism. To the latter belong the Hebrew, Greek, and 

 Mahomedan species. Each of these has its system of creation, its heaven and its hell, 

 and, what chiefly concerns us, each system has its garden. The garden of the Jewish 

 mythology is for the use of man ; that of the Grecian polytheism is appropriated to the 

 Gods ; and the Mahomedan paradise is the reward held out to the good in a future 

 state. 



5. Gan-cden, or the Jewish Paradise, is supposed to have been situated in Persia, 

 though the inhabitants of Ceylon say it was placed in their country, and according to the 

 Rev. Dr. Buchanan (Researches in India, Sec), still point out Adam's bridge and Abel's 

 tomb. Its description may be considered as exhibiting the ideas of a poet, whose object 

 was to bring together every sort of excellence of which he deemed a garden susceptible ; 

 and it is remarkable that in so remote an age (B. C. 1600) his picture should display so 

 much of general nature. Of great extent, watered by a river, and abounding in timber 

 and woodiness, paradise seems to have borne some resemblance to a park and pleasure- 

 grounds in the modern taste; to which indeed its amplified picture by Milton has been 

 thought bv "Walpole and others to have given rise. When Adam began to transgress in 



B 2 



