GARDEN DESIGN IN THE NETHERLANDS 



163 



lands were situated was the battleground of Europe, and during these troublous 

 times most of the noble families to whom the estates belonged were ruined by 

 revolution, their houses pillaged and burnt. As a result, it is hardly possible 

 to find a chateau of the seventeenth century in the Netherlands that retains 

 its garden surroundings unaltered ; here and there the remains of some arbour, 

 or perhaps a moss-covered fountain, long past repair, serve to mark what might 

 once have been a gay pleasaunce, but we may search in vain for any complete 

 scheme. 



Fortunately we are able to know the chateaux as they existed in the 

 first half of the 

 seventeenth cen- 

 tury by the splen- 

 did engravings of 

 such artists as 

 Wenceslaus Hollar, 

 Peeters, Bruyn, 

 Harrewyn, Van- 

 weerden and 

 others, collected 

 in several compre- 

 hensive volumes. 

 Chief among 

 these are : A. San- 

 dremius' Flandria 

 Illustrata, 1641 ; 

 Brabantia Sacra et 



Projana ; the very early work Artzinger's De Leone Belgico, and Castellorum 

 et Praediorum Nobilium Brabantiae. The last deals exhaustively with the 

 provinces of Louvain, Brussels, Antwerp and Bois-le-Duc and gives 

 quaintly-executed bird's-eye views of chateaux and their gardens that 

 enable us to restore, mentally at least, these beautiful homes of the old 

 Dutch and Flemish nobility. 



A survey of these volumes must fill us with regret for all the fine 

 chateaux that have been destroyed. We can hardly peruse them without 

 realizing to what an extent the artistic influence of the Netherlands made 

 itself felt in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, Germany, 



A CASTLE GARDEN. 



