62 H I S T O lU C A L S K E T C H . 



France and Holland had preceded England in all the departments of 

 rural economy ; but no advancement had been made, in either country, in 

 the embellishment of public or private grounds, in conformity to those 

 principles of landscape gardening which are based upon the beautiful, the 

 picturesque and the grand in natural scenery. Quadrangles, circles and 

 straight avenues, defined by edgings of box and symmetrically arranged 

 rows of trees, clipped into arbors, pyramids, obelisks, spheres, quadrupeds, 

 birds and other fantastic forms, were the elements of the elaborate and 

 expensive system of ornamental cultivation, which was munificently patron- 

 ized by sovereigns, and adopted by all classes of the people, from the 

 noble to the peasant. It was of Roman origin, and first employed by 

 Caius Martius, a favorite of Augustus Ceesar, and the effect being admired 

 and celebrated by Pliny, under the name of Topiary-work, it was greatly 

 extended by the prevalent passion of the exalted and affluent for magnifi- 

 cent villas, in the midst of their immense estates, or on the coast and 

 isles of the sea, and in the fertile vallies of the Apennines ; and finally 

 descended to the imperial colonies of Western Europe, where it survived 

 the fall of the empire. With the rise of modern nations it again claimed 

 precedence, especially in the Netherlands, from whence it was introduced 

 into Great Britain. 



During the era of the house of Lancaster, and especially that of the 

 succeeding family, this style was universally adopted, and the gardens 

 of Nonesur^h, Theobalds, Greenwich, Hampton Court, Hatfield, Moor 

 Park, Chatsworth, Beaconfield, Cashiobury and Haw, with many others, 

 presented superb examples of that stately formality which Henry and 

 Elizabeth so much admired, and in Avhich the Surreys, Leicesters, Essexes, 

 Wolseys and Burleighs, and the nobles and ladies of the dynasties of the 

 Tudors and Stuarts appeared on gala days, in the spkndid costumes of 

 that age of courtly ostentation, gallantry and extravagance. 



At last the correct and refined principles which had been announced by 

 Bacon and Milton began to be comprehended ; and their names, with those 

 of Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, Evelyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, Cowley, 

 Waller and Cowper, will ever be remembered in connection Avith the 

 history of gardening. Although living in an age when the stiff, monot- 

 onous and inelegant system of rural decoration was held in the highest 

 estimation, the capacious mind of Milton was as unafTecled by the errors 

 of taste in the arts, as it was uncontaminated by the licentiousness of 

 manners ; and his disenthralled genius triumphantly soared into the bright 

 regions of truth and purity, far above and beyond the deleterious influence 

 of both. He had, in a pre-eminent degree, a clear and vivid conception 

 of the requisites for producing those admirable results, which have since 

 justly rendered the country residences of the gentlemen of England models 

 for imitation in every civilized country throughout the globe. This is 



