CHAPTER V. 



"'Pealing from Jove to Nature's bar 



Bold Alteration pleades 

 Large evidence ; but Nature soon 

 Her righteous doom areads." SPENSER. 



WHY were the old-fashioned gardens destroyed ? 

 Firstly, because the traditional garden of the early 

 part of the eighteenth century, when the reaction 

 set in, represented a style which had run to seed, 

 and men were tired of it; secondly, because the 

 taste for foreign trees and shrubs, that had 

 existed for a long time previously, then came 

 to a head, and it was found that the old type 

 of garden was not fitted for the display of the 

 augmented stock of foreign material. Here was a 

 new element in garden-craft, a new chance of decora- 

 tion in the way of local colours in planting, which 

 required a new adjustment of garden-effects ; and as 

 there was some difficulty in accommodating the new 

 and the old, the problem was met by the abolition of 

 the old altogether. 



As to this matter of the sudden increase of speci- 

 men plants, Loudon remarks that in the earlier 

 century the taste for foreign plants was confined to 



