ENGLISH IDEALS OF GARDENING 209 



regular planting and planning of a cottage garden, 

 which are pleasing when they are made necessary by 

 its smallness, become merely chaotic when they oc- 

 cur in a large space where there is no need for them. 

 Our older garden designers of the fifteenth and six- 

 teenth centuries knew this thoroughly. At their best 

 they could design gardens that were both stately and 

 simple, perfectly suited to the noble houses which 

 they surrounded, and with no pretence to be either 

 wild or palatial. Then, as there were houses fitted 

 for every station of life, so there were gardens fitted 

 for every kind of house. The first invasion of this 

 happy state of things was made by the Dutch fash- 

 ion of over-elaboration and formality against which 

 Marvell protested in some beautiful verses. Then 

 came the French and Italian palatial ideals, which, 

 however, never got much hold in this country; and 

 then the violent reaction of landscape gardening, 

 which ended in a chaos, from which we have not yet 

 emerged. The cottage garden has delivered us from 

 the minor, but most disastrous, fashion of bedding 

 out. It has given us back some of our old delight in 

 gardens, but it cannot by itself give us back the true 

 principles of design. These, probably, can only be 

 recovered with the true principles of architecture. 

 It is certain that garden design deteriorated and fell 

 into chaos just as architecture deteriorated and fell 

 into chaos, also that the present improvement in 

 domestic country architecture has been accompanied 

 by an improvement in garden design. The English 



