INTRODUCTION. 



A I HOI i. II, ..x the title of this series ,,f 

 volume- tells, it is i.t' gardens lx>th old and 

 new that we aim at presenting pictures and 

 giving descriptions to our reiders, yet it 

 must he confessed that the number which m.iv 

 :ly and correctly be termed old is somewhat 

 small. \Ve have many ancient places and venerable 

 houses, but these attributes seldom fit their gardens. 

 A garden is subject to constant work and alteration, 

 and Nature and man are at one in not leaving it 

 alom I n where the effect aimed at and the 'im- 

 material used admit of pruning knives and shear-, 

 growth and decay are apt, as years go by, to 

 aJter, if not destroy, the original plan and intention 

 and force renewal and new making. Yet not 

 thus, for the most part, have old gardens been 

 lost; it is not Nature, but man, who is the arch- 

 destroyer and revolutionist Novelty in gardens is 

 as strong a human passion as novelty in hats, and 

 the improvements of one age are made on the ruins 

 ot those of the previous one. This is, in some 

 measure, true even of our own day, with its compre- 

 hensive love of what is old, and its tendency to copy 

 rather than to create. We look rather askant e at 

 the work of our immediate predecessors, however 

 much we may prize that of our remoter forbears, 

 and are apt to tear up what we find, on the plea of 

 restoring what was there yet earlier. Still, on the 

 whole, our sympathies are broad and inclusive, and 

 even the hot controversy of a few years ayo lx.-tween 

 the protagonists of the formal and those of the natural 

 school has cooled down with the mellowing of the 

 fanatical spirit that can tolerate only its own narrow 

 opinions. If formalism is perhaps now the more fashion- 

 able mode, it is by no means the exclusive one. We 

 welcome the wilderness as much as the terrace ; the 

 trim cut yew shares our joy with the undipped 

 thicket ; we pass, with unchecked delight, from 

 the square lily pool in the Dutch garden, to the 

 meandering brooklet in the rocky dell. But this 

 catholicity of taste is something of a modern product. 

 Conviction of the superiority of their own contem- 

 porary taste has been the dominant feeling of past 

 generations, and the zealous translation of this 

 principle into practice accounts for the infrequent 

 remains of gardens dating, in their full scope and 

 general features, much earlier than the middle of the 

 eighteenth century. So completely did the land- 

 scape school of Kent and Brown obliterate all 

 previous work that Rcpton, writing in 1 806, declares 

 that "no trace now remains" of the Italian style 

 of garden, which he defines as consisting ot 

 " balustradcd terraces of masonry, magnificent flights 

 of steps, arcades and architectural grottos, lofty 

 clipped hedges, with niches and recesses enriched by 

 sculpture." Indeed, he fancied that all this had been 

 swept away long before by the advent of the Dutch 

 system, whose features he limits to " sloped terraces 

 of grass, regular shapes of land and water, formed by 

 art, and quaintly adorned with trees in pots, or 



planted alternatelx, and dip|ed, to preserve tht- most 

 perfect regularity of shape." Si that he asks us to 

 believe that it was such gardens alone, and not 

 also architectural work, that Brown destroyed. 

 Luckily, rare specimens of both styles remain ; ami 

 though it is true that most of the tine formal gardens 

 of to day .ire either attempts to put b.uk what Brown 

 tore away, .isaf Wilton {page :i ',}, or completely new 

 creations such as Castle .\shby (page <><)), yet we 

 have survivals from the days of Hi/abeth, as at Mon- 

 tacute .page KIJ), and of William III., asat Westhury- 

 on-Severn (page xxxv.). It is of such, and still earlier 

 gardens, that we will speak in this Introduction, 

 leaving the developments produced by Pojx-'s i ry 

 for a return to Nature until a later date, when 

 we hojx.- to gather together, in another volume, 

 illustrations of some of the more remarkable pl.u es 

 whose gardens and parks were considered by Kent, 

 Brown and Kepton as their masterpiece-. 



The fanciful call to Nature was the product of 

 a highly developed and artificial civilisation. To 

 man in a primitive stage, Nature appears a- a tyrant 

 and an enemy, and it is only after he has brought 

 her under considerable control that heln-gins to look 

 upon her with feelings of admiration rather than 

 of terror. There is, therefore, no early desire to 

 closely imitate her methods, and the ideas and 

 products of ancient communities were essentially 

 artificial. If, as the Brownian school held, "Nature 

 abhors a straight line," that was all the more reason 

 why man should resolutely adhere to it, and so 

 the geometric tendency became strongly developed. 

 Architectural formality in the garden was a proof 

 that civilisation was triumphing, and 1,300 years 

 before the beginning of our era an Kgyptian wrote : 



I 111 >;.l'<l<-ll l tixl.iv in ll x : 

 I l n '"! .1 |..ill.(ir 



The characteristics of the garden here alluded to, we 

 can gather from wall-pictures in the tombs. It would 

 be a parallelogram entered by a great [xirtal and 

 enclosed by a wall. Vines would IK- trained on to 

 rafters resting on pillars, in what we call pergola 

 fashion. Straight walks and palm tree alleys, canals 

 and pools geometrically built, storeycd buildings and 

 small kiosks would form its principal features. 



The same principles, modified in detail to suit 

 local, racial and climatic differences, obtained later 

 on in Persian gardens. Xenophon tells us how 



Meier, when Cyrus showed him "The Paradise 

 of Sardis," was "struck with admiration of the 

 beauty of the trees, the regularity of their planting, 

 the evenness ot their rows and their making regular 

 angles one to another." Roman gardens of the 

 Republican period were comparatively simple, and 

 largely used for the skilful and profitable growth 

 >t truit and vegetables, but amenity and formalism 

 were the groundwork of the design ; and even 

 the stern Cato demanded that gardens, es|x-cially 

 if in or near the city, should IK- " ornamented with 

 all possible care." But with the imperial purple 



