6 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



without all these must not pretend to any perfection. It ought to 

 lie to the best parts of the house, so as to be but like one of the 

 rooms out of which you step into another. The part of your garden 

 next your house (besides the walls that go round it) should be a 

 parterre for flowers, and grass-plots bordered with flowers ; or if, 

 according to the newest mode, it be cast all into grass-plots and 

 gravel walks, the dryness of these should be relieved with foun- 

 tains, and the plainness of those with statues." 



He then quotes the garden at Moor Park, made 

 by the Countess of Bedford, as "the perfectest 

 figure of a garden I ever saw." He says, "the 

 length of the house, where the best rooms or of 

 most use or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth 

 of the garden : " the " great parlour " opens upon 

 a broad terrace walk, and then three flights of 

 steps descend to a very large parterre, with its 

 standard laurels, its fountains, and its statues. 

 This garden must obviously have been a garden 

 of an architectural rather than of a horticultural 

 character, and was not at all the ordinary garden 

 of the ordinary country house. But the garden, 

 which we properly associate with those described 

 by the poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries, was the garden " enclosed by walls," 

 within which were flower-beds and herb and 



