248 tlbe (Barren 



returning uniformity. Kvery house is ap- 

 proached by two or three gardens, consisting 

 perhaps of a gravel- walk and two grass- plats, 

 or borders of flowers. Bach rises above the 

 other by two or three steps, and as many walls 

 and terraces ; and so many iron gates, that we 

 recollect those ancient romances, in which 

 every entrance was guarded by nymphs or 

 dragons. At Lady Oxford's, at Piddletown, in 

 Dorsetshire, there was, when my brother mar- 

 ried, a double enclosure of thirteen gardens, 

 each, I suppose, not much above a hundred 

 yards square, with an enfilade of correspondent 

 gates ; and before you arrived at these, you 

 passed a narrow gut between two stone ter- 

 races, that rose above your head, and which were 

 crowned by a line of pyramidal yews. A bowl- 

 ing-green was all the lawn admitted in those 

 times ; a circular lake the extent of magnificence. 

 Yet, though these and such preposterous in- 

 conveniences prevailed from age to age, good 

 sense in this country had perceived the want of 

 something at once more grand and more natu- 

 ral. These reflections, and the bounds se*. to 

 the waste made by royal spoilers, gave origin to 

 parks. They were contracted forests and ex- 

 tended gardens. Hentzner says that, accord- 

 ing to Rous of Warwick, the first park was that 

 at Woodstock. If so, it might be the founda- 



