OXFORD GARDENS THE FORMAL STYLE. 65 



college-garden." He little thought how soon sturdy 

 Oxford would follow in the fashion of the day, and 

 blunt the point of his period. Still more astonished 

 would he have been to have had his natural style 

 traced to no less a founder than Nero, and even the 

 names of the Bridgeman and Brown of the day 

 handed down for his edification.* 



The same train of thought is followed out in ' The 

 Poetry of Gardening/ p. 86. 



The good taste of the proprietors of Hardwick and 

 Levens still retains these gardens as nearly as pos- 

 sible in their original state ; but places like these are 

 yearly becoming more curious from their rarity. 

 We have heard of one noble but eccentric lord, the 

 Elgin of the topiary art, who is buying up all the 

 yew-peacocks in the country to form an avenue in 

 his domain at Elvaston. Meanwhile the lilacs of 

 Nonsuch, and the orange-trees of Beddington, are 

 no more. The fish-pools of Wanstead are dry ; the 

 terraces of Moor-park are levelled. Even that " im- 

 pregnable hedge of holly " the pride of Evelyn 

 than which "a more glorious and refreshing object" 

 did not exist under heaven " one hundred and 

 sixty foot in length, seven foot high, and five in 



* Tacitus, in the Sixth Book of his ' Annals,' gives us this inform- 

 ation : <; Ceterum Nero usus est patriae ruinis, extruxitque domum, 

 in qua haud perinde gemmae et aurum miraculo essent, solita pridem 

 et luxu vulgata, quam arva et stagna et in modum solitudinum hinc 

 syivse, inde aperta spatia et prospectus ; magistris et machinatoribus 

 Severo et Celere, quibus ingenium et audacia erat, etiam quse natura 

 denegavisset per artem tentare, et viribus principis illudere." We 

 since learn from ' Loudon's Encyclopaedia,' sec. 1145, that this passage 

 was suggested by Forsyth to Walpole, who promised to insert it in 

 the second edition of his ' Essay,' but failed to do so. 



F 



