'HE first steps of one interested in the formal 

 style of landscape architecture should be 

 directed to Italy, where at the time of the 

 Renaissance the great gardens which have ever since 

 served as models of this method of design came into 

 existence, the form they took being the natural out- 

 growth of the architecture and art of the period. 

 While the other arts of the Italian Renaissance have 

 been exhaustively treated in various forms and lan- 

 guages, there is no existing work of any great latitude 

 treating the subject of gardens, the only one of impor- 

 tance being that of Percier and Fontaine. This is 

 an elaborate book by two Frenchmen who studied the 

 subject, and published, in the early part of this cen- 

 tury, a series of plates representing the ground-plans 

 and several views of each of the important Italian 



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