HISTORICAL EPILOGUE ^^^ 



designed by Marot, the King's Architect, and the Gardens of 

 the Count de Nassau,^ Ryswick, Houslaerdyk and SorgvHet. 



From Dr Harris's 'Description of Loo,' (1699) we learn 

 that ' the hedges are chiefly of Dutch elms ; and the avenues 

 of oaks, elms, and limes. The figures into which the trees and 

 'shrubs are cut, are, for the most part, pyramids. On the walls 

 fresco paintings are introduced in various places between the 

 trees. In the arbour walks of the queen's garden are seats, and 

 opposite to them windows through which views can be had of 

 the fountains, statues and other objects in the open garden. The 

 parterres in the queen's garden are surrounded by hedges of 

 Dutch elm about four feet high. The seats and prop work of 

 all the arbours, and the trellis work on the fruit tree walls are 

 painted green. All along the gravel walks, and round the middle 

 fountain are placed orange-trees and lemon-trees in portable 

 wooden frames and flower-pots about them.' 



The copper-plates in Van der Groen's or Van Oesten's Dutch 

 gardening books give a good idea of the Dutch Garden on a 

 smaller scale- — and for an extreme instance of the lilliputian 

 garden we cannot do better than quote De Amicis's description 

 of the gardens at Broek : — 



" The gardens are not less odd than the houses. They seem 

 made for dwarfs. The paths are scarcely wide enough for the 

 feet, the arbors can contain two very small persons standing 

 close together, the box borders would not reach the knee of a 

 child of four years old. Between the arbors and the tiny flower- 

 beds there are little canals, apparently made for toy-boats, which 

 are spanned here and there by superfluous bridges with little 

 painted railings and columns; basins about as large as an ordinary 

 sitz-bath contain a liliputian boat tied by a red cord to a sky-blue 

 post ; tiny steps, paths, gates, and lattices abound, each of which 

 can be measured with the hand, or knocked down with a blow of 

 the fist, or jumped over with ease. Around houses and gardens 

 stand trees cut in the shape of fans, plumes, discs, etc., with their 

 trunks painted white and blue, and here and there appears a 

 ^ See Le Rouge's Designs. '^ See also ante pp. 36-8. 



