to Ifntrofcuction 



"English garden" is a singular indication of 

 the rapid spread of the ideas of Kent ; and, al- 

 though Jussieu, who as early as 1745 had set 

 out many of the trees, and Antoine Richard, the 

 queen's gardener, may not have read the enthu- 

 siastic pages of Walpole, they were clearly in- 

 fluenced by what they well understood to be the 

 English taste in gardening and landscape art. 



The time was then hardly ripe for a general 

 reaction against the excesses of the artificialists, 

 but the little dairy and farm-yard, the wild 

 growths and simple farm-yard of Marie An- 

 toinette's retreat, mark the real beginning, on 

 the Continent at least, of that freer and broader 

 treatment of nature which is now regarded as 

 the underlying principle of the art. 



The alternation between the artificial and the 

 natural schools represented by the " Italian 

 garden " dn one hand, and the " English gar- 

 den," or, as it is sometimes called in many a 

 charming English park, the " American gar- 

 den," is based upon fundamental and ever- 

 existing differences in taste which are recur- 

 ring in other domains of art, as in the varying 



