58 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



then, that Brown discovered the model, for her fair- 

 ness was an established fact or she would not have 

 been so richly apparelled when he lighted upon her. 

 In other words, the love of the Earth " that green- 

 tressed goddess," Coleridge calls her was no new 

 thing in Brown's day : the sympathy for the wood- 

 land world, the love of tree, flower, and grass is 

 behind the manipulated stiff garden of the fifteenth 

 and two succeeding centuries, and it is the abiding 

 source of all enthusiasm in garden-craft. 



How long this taste for landscape had existed in 

 pre-Thomsonian days it does not fall to us to deter- 

 mine. Suffice it to say that so long as there has 

 been an English school of gardening this sympathy 

 for landscape has found expression in the English 

 garden.* The high thick garden- walls of the old 

 fighting-days shall have ample outlooks in the shape 

 of "mounts," from whence views may be had of the 

 open country. The ornamental value of forest trees 

 is well-known and appreciated. Even in the thir- 

 teenth century the English gardener is on the alert 

 for new specimens and " trees of curiosity," and he is 

 a master of horticulture. In Chaucer's day he revels 

 in the green -sward, 



" Ful thikke of gras, ful softe and swete." 



* " English scenery of that special type which we call homely, and 

 of which we are proud as only to be found in England, is, indeed, the 

 production of many centuries of that conservatism which has spared 

 the picturesque timber, and of that affectionate regard for the future 

 which has made men delight to spend their money in imprinting on 

 the face of Nature their own taste in trees and shrubs." (" Vert and 

 Venery," by VISCOUNT LYMINGTON ; Nineteenth Century, January, 

 1891.) 



