RAMBLES ROUND TORONTO. 



some pretty tufts of fruit-trees, and 

 arbours with seats set in some decent 

 order." 



By the way, talking of the much 

 abused, old-fashioned formal gardens, 

 with their quaint, but not very tasteful 

 art of " vegetable sculpture " — trees and 

 hedges clipped into various shapes — 

 pyramids, vase forms and such like, and 

 even figures of birds and animals, we 

 must, at least, concede that they were 



days." In another passage he says, " You 

 are to frame some of the alleys for 

 shelter, that when the wind blows sharp 

 you may walk as in a gallery, and those 

 alleys must be likewise hedged at both 

 ends to keep out the wind, and those 

 closer alleys must be finely gravelled 

 and no grass because of going." Our 

 modern home grounds have not the 

 comfortable arrangements the old gar- 

 dens had, nor indeed, in towns especial- 



FiG. lo73. — In the Valley of the Don— near Toronto. 



designed for use and comfort, for Bacon 

 goes on to speak of not setting the trees 

 too thickly, but " to leave the main 

 garden so it be not close, but the air 

 open and free. For as for shade I would 

 have you rest upon the alleys of the side 

 grounds, there to walk if you be so dis 

 posed in the heat of the year or day ; 

 but to make account, that the main 

 garden is for the more temperate parts 

 of the year, and in the heat, for the 

 morning and the evening or overcast 



257 



ly, have they sufficient privacy to make 

 their use enjoyable to their owners. 

 The tendency seems to be more and 

 more all the time to make the grounds 

 merely for the wayfarer. In Buffalo, 

 Detroit, and other American cities, this 

 principle is carried to an extreme and 

 one walks for miles on streets with love- 

 ly lawns and gardens, unenclosed, un- 

 used by their owners, and in effect 

 mere boulevards. 



But to return to our Toronto rambles, 



