254 ENGLISH PLEASURE GARDENS 



jumped over with ease. Around houses and gardens 

 stand trees cut in the shape of fans, plumes, disks, etc., 

 with their trunks painted white and blue, and here and 

 there appears a little wooden house for a domestic ani- 

 mal, painted, gilded, and carved like a house in a puppet 

 show." 



Mmera- The bizarre effects suggested in the preceding descrip- 



gardens. tion are still more evident in accounts of the mineralogi- 

 cal gardens in Holland. Here vegetation was barely 

 allowed to subsist on a few narrow strips of ground. 

 Walls were ornamented with shell-work, parterres with 

 variegated pebbles and statues made of cockle-shells. 

 Grottoes. Evidences of Dutch taste were shown in England by 



the frequent introduction of dwarf trees, choice tulips, 

 and canals of water. Although the dampness of the 

 climate made grottoes peculiarly unattractive, they also 

 were favourite accessions. Travellers early in the 

 seventeenth century often described the famous grotto 

 at Wilton, but this was rather in the Italian than the 

 Dutch style. Evelyn designed one at Albury with a 

 "crypta through the mountain thirty perches in length." 

 Defoe mentions gardens at Richmond and Sutton Court 

 where besides canals there were several grottoes, and 

 others are described by various contemporaneous writers. 

 Inconsistently such an example of laboured artificiality 

 was the pride of Pope, as he was among the first to 

 ridicule many lesser absurdities. 



