

HATFIELD HOUSE 211 



the open-work stone wall of which has on the inner 

 side a low, primly cut hedge ; from this Terrace 

 the Gardens are reached by a wide flight of steps 

 which project like a bridge across the path below. 

 In a line with the flight of steps is a broad gravel 

 walk ; on each side six Yew trees are planted in 

 the green turf, out of which the Parterres are cut. 

 The Flower-garden, with its elaborately designed 

 geometrical Parterres are now, as in Cecil's time, 

 worked into the initials B and S. From old 

 designs it appears that these upper Gardens were 

 never completed, and even what remains of them 

 is not as originally planned, when they possessed 

 beautiful fountains and were to have had others 

 even more elaborate, but they, like " the water- 

 works " in the Vineyard, were never finished owing 

 to Cecil's death. Lying somewhat lower than this 

 Garden, and entered by steps cut in the grass slope, 

 is a beautiful Bowling Green a feature without 

 which no Garden of that period was complete. 

 Then, sunk again at the foot of another grass 

 bank, is the Maze, with its windings and intricate 

 turnings planned in squares, the top of its hedges 

 being on a level with the Bowling Green, thus 

 recalling the remark of William Lawson in his 

 " New Orchard and Garden" : " Mazes well framed 

 a man's height may perhaps make your friend 

 wander in gathering of berries, till he cannot re- 

 cover himselfe without your helpe." 



