238 Gbe <3ar&en 



Matters, we may well believe, remained long 

 in this situation ; and though the generality of 

 mankind form their ideas from the import of 

 words in their own age, we have no reason to 

 think that for many centuries the term garden 

 implied more than a kitchen-garden or orchard. 

 When a Frenchman reads of the garden of 

 Eden, I do not doubt but that he concludes it 

 was something approaching to that of Ver- 

 sailles, with clipt hedges, berceaus, and trellis- 

 work. If his devotion humbles him so far as 

 to allow that, considering who designed it, there 

 might be a labyrinth full of ^sop's fables, yet 

 he does not conceive that four of the largest 

 rivers in the world were half so magnificent as 

 a hundred fountains full of statues by Giradon. 

 It is thus that the word garden has at all times 

 passed for whatever was understood by that 

 term in different countries. But that it meant 

 no more than a kitchen-garden or orchard for 

 several centuries, is evident from those few de- 

 scriptions that are preserved of the most famous 

 gardens of antiquity. 



That of Alcinous, in the Odyssey, is the most 

 renowned in the heroic times. Is there an ad- 

 mirer of Homer who can read his description 

 without rapture ; or who does not form to his 

 imagination a scene of delights more picturesque 

 than the landscapes of Tinian or Juan Fernandez ? 



