176 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



have consecrated a pleasing idea of a royal residence, of which we 

 now regret the extinction. Havering in the Bower, the jointure of 

 many dowager queens, conveys to us the notion of a romantic scene. 

 In Kip's views of the seats of our nobility and gentry, we see 

 the same tiresome and returning uniformity. Every house is 

 approached by two or three gardens, consisting perhaps of a 

 gravel-walk and two grass-plats, or borders of flowers. Each rises 

 above the other by two or three steps, and as many walks and 

 terrasses ; and so many iron gates, that we recollect those ancient 

 romances, in which every entrance was guarded by nymphs or 

 dragons. At Lady Oxford's at Piddletown in Dorsetshire, there 

 was, when my brother married, a double enclosure of thirteen 

 gardens each I suppose not a hundred yards square, with an 

 enfilade of correspondent gates ; and before you arrived at these, 

 you passed a narrow gut between two stone terrasses, that rose 

 above your head, and which were crowned by a line of pyramidal 

 yews. A bowling-green was all the lawn admitted in those times, 

 a circular lake the extent of magnificence. 



(Then follows reference to Hentzner, and the origin of parks, 'the 

 principle of modern gardening ' : — 



Eulogy of Milton's idea of Paradise, about which he says : ' He seems with 

 the prophetic eye of taste to have conceived, to have foreseen modern garden- 

 ing. . . . The description of Eden is a warmer and more just picture of the 

 present style than Claud Lorraine could have painted from Hagley or 

 Stourhead.' — 



Analysis of Milton's description : ' And recollect that the conceits in 

 Italian gardens, and Theobalds and Nonsuch, were the brightest originals that 

 his memory could furnish.' — 



Censure of Sir William Temple's idea of a garden : quotation from his 

 essay, describing Moor Park in Hertfordshire. 



Spence's account of Chinese Emperor's garden. — ) 



But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed, 

 was (I believe the first thought was Bridgman's) the destruction 

 of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses — an attempt 

 then deemed so astonishing that the common people called them 

 Ha ! Ha's ! to express their surprise at finding a sudden and 

 unperceived check to their walk. 



