370 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



Le Notre was also the creator of St Cloud, where Nature had 

 greater liberty ; he made plans for the Villas Panfili and Ludovisi 

 in Rome, and was invited to England by Charles 11. , where it 

 is said he had a hand in designing St James's Park, but whether 

 this is true or not, it is hardly necessary to say that Le Notre's 

 influence extended to England. No name stands out like his, 

 but John Rose, the best English gardener of his time, served 

 successively the Earl of Essex at Essex House, Strand, in 1665, 

 the Duchesses of Cleveland and Somerset, and Charles II. at St 

 James's. 



His first master sent him to Versailles to study the style of Le 

 Notre, and so the French tradition was established here, and 

 handed on to Mr London, Rose's favourite pupil and successor. 

 Rose was painted presenting the first pineapple cultivated in 

 England to Charles II.; and was the author of 'The English 

 Vineyard' which first appeared in 16; 2, at the end of Evelyn's 

 ' French Gardener.' 



Le Notre's counterpart in the kitchen garden was La Quintinye,^ 

 the constructor of the great ' Jardin Potager ' or kitchen garden, at 

 Versailles, which exists almost unaltered to this day. Here he 

 introduced his famous method of training fruit-trees on espaliers. 

 The translation of La Quintinye's ' Compleat Gardener ' into 

 English by John Evelyn (or his son) brings us to the man who, 

 in the words of Switzer, ' first taught Gardening to speak proper 

 English,' the author of ' Sylva ' and the famous ' Diary ' ; to whom 

 Oxford owes the Arundel marbles, Engraving the first clear ex- 

 position, if not the invention of Mezzotint, Science the foundation 

 of the Royal Society, and England many of her noblest trees. 



Here is his portrait with the autograph inscription to La Quin- 

 tinye. The Journal of his Grand Tour, as we have seen,- is 

 almost that of a tour round the Grand Gardens of Europe ; 

 and he loved to read and write about gardens almost as much 

 as to design and visit them. All through a long life of eighty- 

 seven years, almost contemporary with Le Notre, John Evelyn 

 devoted himself to the improvement of the garden by precept and 

 ^ See ante p. 115. - Ante pp. 103-115. 



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