Book I. GARDENING IN FRANCE. SG 



1 53. The operative gardeners in Holland are for the most part apprenticed, and serve 

 as journeymen before they are employed to undertake the care of gardens where several 

 hands are employed ; but so general is horticultural knowledge, that every labourer is 

 considered as capable of cropping and dressing an ordinary tradesman or farmer's garden. 



154. There are few or no artist-gardeners in Holland. Eminent practical gardeners are 

 employed to lay out walled kitchen-gardens ; and artists from Paris, generally called in 

 to lay out parks or pleasure-grounds of more than ordinary extent. 



Subsect. 6. Dutch Gardening, as a Science, and in respect to the Authors it has 



produced. 



155. Horticulture as a science, has been less cultivated in the Netherlands than in 

 Italy or France. The botanists of the country were not among the first to advance the 

 study of physiology, nor has any of their practical men appeared with the science of a 

 Quintiney or a Miller. " The patience and riches," Bosc observes, " which produced 

 so high a degree of florimania in Holland, might have been usefully employed in ad- 

 vancing vegetable physiology; but science owes notliing to the Dutch in this branch." 

 At the present time, when science is so rapidly and so universally spread, the learned 

 in the Netherlands are unquestionably on a footing with those of other countries ; a proof 

 of which may be derived from the remarks of Van Mons, Van Marum, and other Dutch 

 and Flemish correspondents of our Horticultural and Linnaean Societies. The ma- 

 jority of working gardeners may be considered as nearly on a par with those of tins 

 country in point of science, and before them in various points of practice. 



156. The Dutch and Flemings have Jew authors on gardening, and the reason may be, 

 the universality of practical knowledge in that country. Commelin and Van Osten are 

 their principal authors. The former published the Hortus Amslelodamus, in 2 vols, 

 folio, in 1697, and subsequently a small work on orange-trees; and Van Osten, who 

 was gardener at Leyden, published his Dutch Gardener about 1710. Various French 

 works on gardening have been printed at the Hague, and other parts of Holland. 



Sect. III. Of the Rise, Progress, and present State of Gardening in France. 



157. Three ceras mark the gardening of France ; that of Charlemagne, in the eighth ; 

 of Louis XIV., in the middle of the seventeenth ; and that of the Revolution, at the 

 end of the eighteenth centuries. The first introduced the best fruits, and spread the use 

 of vineyards and orchards ; the second was marked by splendor in design ; and the third 

 by increased botanical and scientific knowledge. 



Subsect. 1. French Gardening, as an Art of Design and Taste. 



158. Though tlie gardening of Charlemagne in the eighth century was chiefly of the useful 

 kind, yet he is said (see Nigellius) to have had a noble palace at lngleheim, on the Rhine, 

 supported by a hundred columns of Italian marble. This could hardly be erected, 

 without an accompanying and decorative garden, though the frugal habits of that prince 

 might prevent an extravagant display of design. From the Hortulus of Walafrid, pub- 

 lished in the beginning of the ninth century, it appears that gardens were in these times 

 made only within the walls of castles and monasteries. 



159. Previously to the sixteenth century, any notices of gardening in France chiefly 

 relate to other branches than that under consideration. At the end of this century, 

 Francis the First built the palace of Fontainbleau, and introduced there some traits of 

 the gardening of Italy. Stephens and Liebault published their Maison liustique 

 about this time ; the early editions contain little on the subject of design, farther than 

 directions for forming avenues, arbors, and flower-gardens. 



160. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Hirschfield observes, the gardens of 

 France consisted only of a few trees and flowers, some plots of turf, and pieces of 

 water ; the whole, he adds, according to their own accounts, " totally deprived of taste, 

 and completely wild and neglected." 



161. About the middle of the seventeenth century, and in the second year of Louis the 

 Fourteenth's reign, France was visited by Evelyn, who makes the following remarks on 

 the gardens in and near Paris: — 



The garden of the Tuilleries " is rarely contrived for privacy, shade, or company, by groves, plantations 

 of tall trees, especially that in the middle, being of elms, and another of mulberries. There is a labyrinth 

 of cypress, noble hedges of pomegranates, fountains, fish-ponds, and an aviary. There is an artificial echo, 

 redoubling the words distinctly, and it is never without some fair nymph singing to it. Standing at one 

 of the focuses, which is under a tree, or little cabinet of hedges, the voice seems to descend from the 

 clouds ; at another, as if it were underground. This being at the bottom of the garden, we were let into 

 another, which, being kept with all imaginable accurateness as to the orangery, precious shrubs, and rare 

 fruits, seemed a Paradise." 



St. Germains en Lay. " By the way I alighted at St. Cloes, where, on an eminence near the river, the 

 archbishop of Paris has a garden, for the house is not very considerable, newly watered, and furnished 

 with statues, fountains, and groves ; the walks are very fine ; the fountain of Laocoon is in a large square 

 pool throwing the water near forty feet high, and having about it a multitude of statues and basins, and 

 is a surprising object ; but nothing is more esteemed than the cascade, falling from the great 6tej»s into 



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