202 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



still less would they have been aware of the right 

 manner of growing them. It was because gardening 

 was a national art practised by the poor for love, and 

 not as a fashionable amusement, that it recovered 

 so suddenly from those perversities of taste which 

 infected nearly all arts in the nineteenth century. 

 But it would not have so recovered unless the tastes 

 of rich and poor had been really alike, unless the 

 rich had found in the gardens of the poor what they 

 desired in their own gardens. This is the great dif- 

 ference between gardening in England and in other 

 countries, that in England the cottage garden sets 

 the standard, whereas in other countries the standard 

 is set by the garden of the palace or the villa. And 

 the reason for this is that, though circumstances have 

 made us herd together in towns, we remain at heart 

 a country people, unlike the French or the Italians, 

 and more even than the Germans. This may be 

 clearly seen in our architecture, with which, of course, 

 our gardening, so long as it remains an art, is closely 

 connected. Even in the Middle Ages the great French 

 Cathedrals were designed as town buildings, and made 

 to tower above the houses close about them. But 

 the more lowly English Cathedrals were intended to 

 be seen in broad closes, and half of their beauty is 

 lost without a close, just as half the beauty of a French 

 Cathedral is lost when it is isolated. But the peculiar 

 genius of the English builders has been shown more 

 in village churches and tithe barns and country houses 

 even than in Cathedrals; whereas the peculiar genius 



