WILTON HOUSE, 

 SALISBURY. 



THE gardens of Wilton House have alwa\s 

 been famous among the greatest of those in 

 England. Originally they were designed 

 by Isaac de Cans, son or nephew of that 

 old Solomon dc Caus who described for posterity 

 the castle gardens at Heidelberg, in his " Hortus 

 Palatinus Heidelbergx cxstructus," i'>:o. In the 

 same way did Isaac de Caus, twenty years later, figure 

 the " Hortus Penbrnchianus," or "Jardin de Wilton," 

 as may be seen in his curious picture, given in the 

 Introduction where this old garden is described. 



John Evelyn, in 1654, said the garden had In-cn 

 regarded as the noblest in Mr. gland. Its position w.is 

 in a large "handsome plain," with a grotto and 

 water-works, which Evelyn thought might In- 

 improved. He regarded a-, its chief charm its near 

 neighbourhood to "the downs and noble plains." 

 The old gardens with their elaborate water surprises 



which squirted and wetted the unwary visitor in 

 the manner which Italians hived and the English 

 copied, were well described by Celia I-'ienncs, who 

 visited them about the year 1700. They succumbed 

 to the landscaping rage introduced by Kent and 

 Brown, and the present fine Italian gardens stretching 

 from the House to the Holbein pavilion lie, not 

 to the south of the house, as did the old ones, but to 

 the west, and date from the early part of the nine- 

 teenth century, some of the ornaments, such as the 

 fountain, being original ones. They had been, 

 however, at a discount at the time when the old 

 garden and its water-works were destroyed, and the 

 Earl of Pembroke of that date gave them freely 

 away. Bishop Pococke, visiting Little Durntord, on 

 the other side of Salisbury Plain, in 1754, finds a 

 Mr. Young laying out a garden and using "statues 

 given him by Ix>rd Pembroke from the grotto at 



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