234 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



for modification than for absolute destruction. Their rarity now 

 entitles them to some care as a species of antiques, and unquestion- 

 ably they give character to some snug, quiet, and sequestered 

 situations which would otherwise have no marked feature of any 

 kind. We ourselves retain an early and pleasing recollection of 

 the seclusion of such a scene. A small cottage, adjacent to a 

 beautiful village, the habitation of an ancient maiden lady, was 

 for some time our abode. It was situated in a garden of seven or 

 eight acres, planted about the beginning of the eighteenth century, 

 by one of the Millars, related to the author of the Gardener's 

 Dictionary, or, for aught we know, by himself. It was full of long 

 straight walks between hedges of yew and hornbeam, which rose 

 tall and close on every side. There were thickets of flowering 

 shrubs, a bower, and an arbour, to which access was obtained 

 through a little maze of contorted walks, calling itself a labyrinth. 

 In the centre of the bower was a splendid Platanus, or oriental 

 plane — a huge hill of leaves — one of the noblest specimens of 

 that regularly beautiful tree which we remember to have seen.^ 

 In different parts of the garden were fine ornamental trees which 

 had attained great size, and the orchard was filled with fruit-trees 

 of the best description. There were seats and trellis-walks and a 

 banqueting house. Even in our time this little scene, intended 

 to present a formal exhibition of vegetable beauty, was going fast 

 to decay. The parterres of flowers were no longer watched by 

 the quiet and simple frie7ids under whose auspices they had been 

 planted, and much of the ornament of the domain had been 

 neglected or destroyed to increase its productive value. We 

 visited it lately, after an absence of many years. Its air of 

 retreat, the seclusion which its alleys afforded, was entirely gone ; 

 the huge Platanus had died, like most of its kind, in the beginning 

 of this century ; the hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed up 

 and the whole character of the place so much destroyed, that I 



^ It was under this Platanus that Scott first devoured Percy's Reliques. I 

 remember well being with him, in 1820, or 1821, when he revisited the favourite 

 scene, and the sadness of his looks, when he discovered that ' the huge hill of 

 leaves was no more.'— y^. G. Lockhart : Life of Sir Walter Scott. 



