HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE. 71 



among such scenery puts our senses on the alert, 

 and the impressions of natural phenomena supply 

 our device with all its images. 



The English people had not to wait till the 

 eighteenth century to know to what they were in- 

 clined, or what would suit their country's adornment. 

 From first to last, we have said, the English garden 

 deals much with trees and shrubs and grass. The 

 thought of them, and the artistic opportunities they 

 offer, is present in the minds of accomplished garden - 

 masters, travelled men, initiated spirits, like Sir 

 Thomas More, Bacon, Shaftesbury, Temple, and 

 Evelyn, whose aim is to give garden -craft all the 

 method and distinctness of which it is capable. 

 However saturated with aristocratic ideas the cour- 

 tier-gardener may be, however learned in the cir- 

 cumspect style of the Italian, he retains his native 

 relish for the woodland world, and babbles of 

 green fields. A sixteenth-century English gardener 

 (Gerarde) adjured his countrymen to " Go for- 

 warde in the name of God, graffe, set, plant, and 

 nourishe up trees in every corner of your grounded 

 A seventeenth-century gardener (Evelyn) had orna- 

 mental landscape and shady woods in his garden as 

 well as pretty beds of choice flowers. 



"There are, besides the temper of our climate," 

 writes another seventeenth-century garden-worthy 

 (Temple), "two things particular to us, that con- 

 tribute to the beauty and elegance of our gar- 

 dens, which are the gravel of our walks and the 

 fineness and almost perpetual greenness of our turf; 



