HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE. 91 



which Laud had conducted Charles and Henrietta, 

 the bowling-green at Christ Church of Cranmer's 

 time all are gone. 



The ruthless clearance of these gardens of 

 renown is sad to relate : " For what sin has the 

 plough passed over your pleasant places ? " may be 

 demanded of numberless cases besides Blakesmoor. 

 Southey, writing upon this very point, adds that 

 " feeling is a better thing than taste," for " taste " 

 did it at the bidding of critics who had no " feeling," 

 and who veered round with the first sign of change 

 in the public mind about gardening. Not content 

 with watching the heroic gardens swept away, he 

 must goad the Vandals on to their sorry work by 

 flattering them for their good taste. For what Horace 

 Walpole did to expose the poverty-stricken design 

 and all the poor bankrupt whimsies of the garden of 

 his day, we owe him thanks ; but not for including 

 in his condemnation the noble work of older days. 

 In touching upon Lord Burleigh's garden, and that 

 at Nonsuch, he says : "We find the magnificent 

 though false taste was known here as early as the 

 reigns of Henry VIII. and his daughter." This is 

 not bad, coming from the man who built a cockney 

 Gothic house adorned with piecrust battlements and 

 lath-and-plaster pinnacles ; who spent much of his 

 life in concocting a maze of walks in five acres of 

 ground, and was so far carried away by mock- 

 rustic sentiment as to have rakes and hay-forks 

 painted as leaning against the walls of his paddocks ! 

 But then Walpole, in his polished way, sneered at 



