434 BUXUS SEMPERVIRENS. 
Gerard, Parkinson, and other writers on gardening and rural affairs; and previously 
to the XVIIIth century, it was in great repute for ger metric gardens, from the 
facility with which it could be made to assume any shape that the caprice or 
ingenuity of the gardener might devise. It was also extensively employed for 
that purpose both as a tree and as a shrub throughout Europe, from the earliest- 
times. As a tree, it lormed, when clipped into shape, hedges, arcades, arbours, 
and, above all, the figures of animals. As a shrub, it was used to border beds 
and walks, and for the execution of numerous curious devices, such as letters, 
coats of arms, &c, on the ground; but of all the uses to which the dwarf box 
was applied, the most important, in the ancient style of gardening, was that of 
forming parterres of embroidery ; it being the only evergreen shrub susceptible of 
forming the delicate lines which that kind of work required, and of being kept 
within the narrow limits of its lines for a number of years. In those days, when 
the flowers used in ornamenting gardens were few, the great art of the gardener 
was to distinguish his parterres by beautiful and curious artifical forms of ever- 
green plants. All the dark parts of the figures, when formed of box, in no part 
were allowed to grow higher than three inches from the ground, and the finer 
lines not to exceed two inches in width. The spaces between the lines or figures, 
in the more common designs, were covered with sand all of one colour ; but in 
the more choice parterres, different coloured sands, earths, shells, powdered glass, 
and other articles were used, so as to produce red, white, and black grounds, on 
which the green of the box appeared to advantage, at all seasons of the year. 
The beauty of these parterres was most conspicuous when they were seen as a 
whole from the windows of the house, or from a surrounding terrace-walk. 
Sometimes, however, they were placed on a sloping bank, to be seen from below. 
The embroidered style of parterre is still occasionally to be met with adjoining 
very old residences, in France and Italy, and even in a few places in England ; 
and, as affording variety, it is at least as worthy of revival as the architectural 
style of building of the age in which it most extensively prevailed. About the 
middle of the X Vllth century, the taste for verdant sculpture was at its height in 
England ; and, about the beginning of the XVIIIth century, it afforded a subject 
of raillery for the wits of the day, soon afterwards beginning to decline. The 
following lines, by West, will give a good idea of a topiary garden : 
" There likewise mote be seen on every side 
The shapely box, of all its branching pride 
Ungently shorne, and, with preposterous skill, 
To various beasts, and birds of sundry quill, 
Transform'd and human shapes of monstrous size. 
***** 
Also other wonders of the sportive shears, 
Fair Nature mis-adorning, there were found; 
Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers 
With spouting urns and budding statues crown'd ; 
And horizontal dials on the ground, 
In living box, by cunning artists traced ; 
And galleys trim, on no long voyages bound, 
But by their roots there ever anchor'd fast."* 
The art of engraving on wood was invented before that of printing with mov- 
able types ; and it is supposed to have been first practised in the early part of the 
XVth century. The first objects to which it was applied were very different in 
their character, namely, books of devotion and playing cards. The mere outlines 
of the figures were rudely cut in the wood with knives, in the direction of the 
grain, and the impressions were taken off by friction, without the aid of a press. 
The earliest specimen of wood-engraving now extant, in England, is said to be 
in the collection of the Earl of Spencer, and represents St. Christopher carrying the 
infant Saviour; bearing the date of 1423. A very curious work was published 
* See Loudon's Arboretum, iii., pp. 1334 et seq. 
