xl. 



INTRODUCTION. 



the fruit gardens on each side of it and leading down 

 to the pleasant beech-shaded lawn at the bottom 

 (page xxxii.). Levens was bought by Colonel Grahame 

 when his King, patron and fellow - religionist, 

 James II., lost his throne, and the Colonel's past 

 history and present sympathies made it desirable for 

 him to live in seclusion. With him to Levens 

 came a French gardener, who had had a hand in 

 Charles's II. work at Hampton Court, named 

 Beaumont, and to him we owe these gardens, though 

 some of the cut yews claim an older date. A yew 

 peacock in a cottage garden is charming, and so 

 may be a single specimen in a small enclosure as at 

 Tyninghame (page xxvi.). A certain, but fairly 

 restrained number of elaborate topiary forms are 

 right enough in a large garden if they take their 

 place in the ordered and disciplined array 

 of the general formal scheme as at Bradfield (page 

 123), or at Heslington (page xxi.) ; but even the 

 very entertaining forms that top the gre..t hedge at 

 Fulford (page xx.) approach the grotesque and the 

 fantastic, though this may be quite excusable in so 

 small and simple a place. But anything like the 

 disordered array, the bewildering number, the un- 

 balanced variety which we find at Levens are wholly out 

 of place as part of a general pictorial scheme, and in a 

 position whe e they are unavoidably and constantly 

 seen, and not specially visited as an occasional 

 diversion. As a rare example and precious survival 

 of such work Levens is most interesting ; but 

 when such, and still more, elaborate and eccentric 

 collections were met at every turn, no wonder 

 they brought disrepute on the style of which they 

 were an outgrowth, and induced Pope to publish 

 his sarcastic condemnation in the Guardian, and 

 attempt a different manner at his Twickenham villa. 

 To-day the "landscape" school annoys us, because 

 we know that it never got near to that Nature which 

 it aimed at, while it destroyed the interesting products 

 of centuries of Art. Yet it had high ideals and an 



immense vogue in a cultured period of our history. 

 \Ve hope, therefore, to have, ere long, an opportunity 

 ot considering its views and its achievements, as 

 well as to notice its fall and the gradual revival of 

 formalism which followed it. Of that last phase 

 this volume contains many examples. The " Italian " 

 garden at Wilton (page 213) is the earliest example 

 of these. The traditions of De Caus had never died 

 out, and early in the nineteenth century something 

 of his scheme was modestly restored on different 

 ground, but with the help of such scattered fragments 

 of arch tecture and statuary as had survived the 

 irruption of the landscapist Huns. Somewhat later 

 are the Castle Ashby terraces dating from 1865 

 (page 81). They have neither the elaborate work 

 nor quaint enclosure of old examples. They lac!: 

 the amusing conceits and quaint mystery with 

 which the seventeenth century endowed its gardens. 

 They have all the obviousness of the Canons 

 design of Defoe's time without the fine ironwork. 

 But we can say of them that they are, in summer, 

 a fine and glowing expanse of colour on varied 

 levels and relieved by good balustrading, and they 

 will grow more interesting if the low hedges, shown 

 in our illustrations, are allowed to obtain height and 

 give variety of composition. The Arley gardens 

 (page 309) are of a totally different type. They 

 show a distinctly clever conception of older ideals, 

 and have great charm and persuasive amenity. 

 More recent still are such dignified terrace work 

 as that at Hardwicke in Oxfordshire (page xxxix.) and 

 Batsford in Gloucestershire (page xxiii.), and such 

 charmingly homely and local features as the thatched 

 wall garden at Clouds (page xxvi.). Newest of all 

 are the Easton and Sonning gardens, whose excellent 

 and varied features, teeming at once with both 

 ancient history and modern originality, we have 

 already had occasion to refer to in this short review. 

 We accept them as the type of much good work 

 in the present, and of still more to come. 



