English Pleasure Gardens 



CHAPTER I 



CLASSIC PLEASURE GROUNDS 



T is not such a far cry as might be 

 imagined from the famous pleasure 

 grounds of remote antiquity to the gar- 

 dens, both "wild" and "formal," in 

 England at the present day. Our en- 

 vironment more closely resembles the luxurious sur- Theconnec- 



t ion 1)6- 



roundings of our Roman conquerors than the comfortless tween the 

 domains of our own forefathers after they were freed present, 

 from the Roman yoke and had lost sight of Roman 

 culture. Without much effort we modern Anglo-Saxons 

 in England or America can picture ourselves revelling 

 in an elegant Pompeian villa or in an airy Athenian 

 peristyle ; but we should dread being doomed to suf- 

 focate in a smoky ancestral hut or to be cooped up in 



