XX. 



GARDENS OLD AND NEW. 



keenest eye can detect a limit. "Sometimes you wandered 

 in those arched and winding walks dear to pensive spirits. 

 Sometimes you emerged on a plot of turf blazing in the 

 sunshine, a small and bright savannah, and gazed with 

 wonder on the group of black and mighty cedars that rose 

 from its centre, with their sharp and spreading foliage. 

 The beautiful and vast blended together ; and the moment 

 after you had beheld with delight a bed of geraniums or 

 of myrtles, you found yourself in an amphitheatre of Italian 

 pines." In all this there is much that is attractive, and much 

 that is satisfying to the sense, but the domestic character is 

 not there. The link that binds the house to the garden is 

 wanting, and, in attempting to imitate the wilfulness or the 

 wildness of Nature, the designer has, indeed, made a garden, 

 but not one that forms, as the domestic garden should, a part 

 of the house to which it belongs. 



We must look, indeed, for something more than the sloping 



style of the later Renaissance. In those southern gardens 

 where noble stairs led up through terraced steeps, amid ilex 

 and lemon, and where the air was heavy with the fragrance of 

 the orange trees, marble deities looked out over the spires of 

 the cypresses, or stood reflected below in the silent pool. In 

 Le Notre's Theatre d'Eau at Versailles, with its curtain and 

 wings, Jupiter on an Eagle, and Mars and Pluto were at the 

 ends of the formal alleys. Cupids of bronze held vases in the 

 Allee d'Eau from which water fell into marble basins, and for 

 the Bassin de Neptune, Bouchardon, Lemoigne, and Adam 

 sculptured the sea god, with trident, and Tritons and children. 

 English gardens had like adornments, and 



"The Herald Mercury 

 New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill," 



the Kneeling Slave, and the richly wrought vase, were 

 frequently produced in lead. Terminal figures stood in 

 rows or semi-circles against hedges of yew, and the sages 



THE TERRACE AT RISLEY. 



Li/c." 



mead, the woodland park, and the winding lake ; we must 

 hope to find something in the way of enclosure, something 

 of good architecture, something, perhaps, of good garden 

 sculpture. The terrace that borders the house will lend itself 

 to the gardener's hand. It may be shadowed by noble trees, 

 it may be bordered by the greenest turf, and be festooned with 

 a host of climbers, but it will he an architectural feature, and 

 our first step from the house to the garden. Good garden 

 architecture is indeed a necessity in any garden of character. 

 If there be sculpture, it must be of the best, and not always 

 will the gleaming marble appear so suitable against some dark 

 bank of trees as the more subtle tones that gather upon the 

 ancient figure of lead. 



In the work of the sculptor we have, indeed, an aid to 

 garden effect that no school of gardening has ever despised. 

 It appeared least, perhaps, in the earlier gardens of England, 

 but its use was common in Italy and France in the stately 



of Greece and Rome looked out over the gardens of 

 Englishmen. 



But sculpture is as much in place in the landscape as in 

 the formal garden, and is even more necessary in order to 

 replace the features of a more strongly marked style, 

 as the creators of such gardens quickly recognised. Yet 

 there is, perhaps, no more difficult thing than to use 

 garden sculpture well. It should occupy the right place, 

 or none at all, and only the judicious eye can direct the 

 choice. This is especially true of the human figure, for the 

 urn and vase are sometimes almost necessary upon the terrace 

 or by the garden stair. A peculiarly happy effect, full of 

 suggestion in its character, is that of the ascent to the upper 

 lawn at Clifton, which we illustrate here. 



But in truth ihe garden world is inexhaustible in character 

 and variety, as this book will show. Here the florist and 

 the architect have had their common ground, and here the 



