xxrc. 



GARDENS OLD AND NEW. 



of John Evelyn. Thus is one garden of the time 

 described : 



" My garden sweet, enclosed with walles strong 

 Embanked with benches to sytt and take tny rest, 

 The knots so cnknotted it cannot be exprest 

 With arbors and alves so pleasant and so clulce." 



The great garden of the Countess of Bedford, which Sir 

 William Temple described so well, was one of the best old 

 examples of the rectangular garden. Such square parterres 

 were often duplicated and multiplied. They displayed the old 

 spirit of enclosure, and gave unrivalled opportunities to the 

 terrace builder and the garden hedger. 



The greatest possible contrast is found between such 

 gardens as these and that imaginary garden which Addison 

 describes in the Spectator. Ad- 

 mitting that there were as 

 many kinds of gardening as of 

 poetry, he spoke of his own 

 as a place which a skilful 

 gardener would not know what 

 to call. " It is a confusion of 

 kitchen and parterre, orchard 

 and flower garden, which lie 

 so mixt and interwoven with 

 one another, that if a foreigner 

 who had seen nothing of our 

 country should be convey'd 

 into my garden at his first 

 landing, he would look upon 

 it as a natural wilderness, and 

 one of the uncultivated parts 



of our country 



As for my self, you will find, 

 by the account which 1 have 

 already given you, that my 

 compositions .in gardening are 

 altogether after the Pindarick 

 manner, and run into the 

 beautifu: wildness of Nature, 

 without affecting the nicer ele- 

 gancies of Art." There can 

 scarcely be a question as to 

 which is the better garden of 

 the two that which is ordered 

 and planned, or that which 

 seems no garden at all. Some 

 things Addison certainly advo- 

 cated which are excellent. He 

 would have had many ever- 

 greens in the garden, and often 

 wondered that those who were 

 like himself, and loved to live 

 in gardens, had never thought 

 of contriving a winter garden, 

 which should consist of such 

 trees only as never cast their 

 leaves. That lesson has surely 

 been learned, and in all our 

 great gardens evergreens, 



either in formal shape or 



in natural profusion, largely 



abound, so that in the winter-time the garden is neither 



cheerless nor bare. 



Doctor Johnson looked with some tolerance upon the 

 landscape features of gardening, which had come in when 

 he wrote. In his "Life of Shenstone " he speaks of his 

 subject's delight in rural pleasure and his ambition of rural 

 elegance. We may suspect a little sense of humour where 

 the ponderous doctor tells how the Arcadian poet began to 

 point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his 

 walks, and to wind his waters. " Whether to plant a walk in 

 undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where 

 there is an object to catch the view to make water run 

 where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be 

 seen ; to leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, 

 and to thicken, tlu plantation where there is something 



THE ITALIAN COLUMN WITH LEAD FIGURE, WILTON. 



to be hidden demand any great powers of the mind 1 

 will not inquire. Perhaps a surly and sullen spectato- 

 r-nay think such performances rather the sport than the 

 business of human reason." Yet Johnson saw merit in a 

 man who was doing best what multitudes were contending 

 to do well. 



In France, Rousseau in "Julie" describes a garden that 

 was unordered and unsymmetrical. There were rose bushes, 

 raspberries, and gooseberries ; patches of lilac, hazels, alders, 

 syringas, broom, and clover, which clothed the earth whilst 

 giving it an appearance of being uncultured. He imagined 

 that a rich man from Paris or London, becoming master of 

 such a place, would bring with him an expensive architect to 

 spoil Nature. Pope's objection to formality though he had a 



, formality of his own has 



been referred to. He sneered 

 at symmetry. 



" Each alley has a brother, 

 And half the garden just reflects 

 the other.' 



Wai pole could see 

 nothing in Kip's " Views of the 

 Seats of the Nobility and 

 Gentry" but tiresome and 

 returning uniformity every 

 house approached by two or 

 three gardens, consisting per- 

 haps of a gravel walk and 

 two grass plats or borders of 

 flowers, each rising above the 

 other by two or three steps, 

 and as many walks and ter- 

 races, and having so many 

 iron gates that he was re- 

 minded of those ancient 

 romances in which every 

 entrance was guarded by 

 nymphs or dragons. We have 

 seen that he greeted the ha-ha 

 as the step to freedom, and 

 Kent as the man who leapt 

 the fence. " Adieu to canals, 

 circular basons, and cascades 

 tumbling down marble steps, 

 that last absurd magnificence 

 of Italian and French builders. 

 The forced elevation of 

 cataracts was no more. The 

 gentle stream was taught to 

 serpentize seemingly at its 

 pleasure, anJ where discon- 

 tinued by different levels, its 

 course appeared to be con- 

 cealed by thickets properly 

 interspersed, and glittered 

 again at a distance where 

 it might be supposed naturally 

 to arrive." 



T o Goldsmith, in that 

 time when the old English 

 gardening was dispraised, it 

 appeared that the English had not yet brought the art 

 of gardening to the same perfection as the Chinese, though 

 they had lately begun to imitate them, and were yet 

 far behind in the charming art! Thomas Whately, whose 

 "Observations on Modern Gardening" appeared in 1770, 

 thought that the new art was as superior " to landskip 

 painting as a reality to a representation." It was an exertion 

 of fancy, a subject for taste, and all Nature was within its 

 province. The art had started up from being mechanical 

 10 the rank of the fine arts, which joined utility with 

 pleasure. Repton, in his " Sketches and Hints on Landscape 

 Gardening," 1794, seems best to have expressed the ideal 

 of those who practised the art. The garden must display 

 natural beauties and hide natural defects in every situation. 

 It should give- the appearance of extent and freedom, by 



