HISTORICAL NOTICES. 29 



but proposed winter or evergreen gardens, and rude or 

 neglected spots, as specimens of wild nature. " As for the 

 making of knots or figures," says he, " with divers colored 

 earths, they be but toys. I do not like images cut out in 

 juniper or other garden stuff: they are for children."* 



One gets a condensed idea of the taste of this and the 

 previous century or two by a work published at Oxford by 

 Commenius during the Commonwealth. "Gardening," 

 says he, " is practised for food's sake in a kitchen garden 

 and orchard, or for pleasure's sake in a green grass-plot and 

 an arbor." In his details of the ornamental garden he 

 adds, " the pleacher (topiarius) prepares a green plat ot 

 the more choice flowers and rarer plants, and adorns the 

 garden with pleach-work ; that is, with pleasant walks and 

 bowers, &c., to conclude with water-works." He also in- 

 forms us, respecting the parks, that " the huntsman 

 hunteth wild harts, whilst he either allureth them into pit- 

 falls, or killeth them, and what he gets alive he puts into a 

 park." 



In the reign of Charles II. the fame of Versailles, the 

 most superb of all geometric gardens, created a sensation 

 in England. Le Notre was of course immediately sent for 

 by this monarch. He planted St. James and Greenwich 

 parks, and thus aided by royal patronage, inspired the no- 

 bility with a desire for some of the more splendid formations 

 of the French school of design. Chatsworth, the magnifi- 

 cent seat of the Duke of Devonshire, was laid out in a 

 grandly formal manner, and the Earl of Essex and Lord 

 Capel were among the foremost to emulate the glories oi 

 Versailles in their country places — the former nobleman 



• Encyclopedia of Gardening. 



