NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 



For instance, what better contrast could be desired than that which 

 can be made between the stately pleasure grounds at Wilton House 

 (Plates CXXXIII to CXXXVI) and the quaint, precise, and 

 studied garden at Old Place, Lindfield (Plates XCIV to XCVII). 

 Both are formal in the sense that they owe their beauties to delibe- 

 rate contrivance ; but while Wilton is a typical example of classic 

 design, and has many of the finer characteristics of the Renaissance 

 manner. Old Place is essentially illustrative of the methods of the 

 English designer who had learned to combine into a harmonious 

 whole the best features of English and Dutch gardening. Again, it 

 is interesting to compare the sumptuous and careful elaboration of the 

 formal gardens of Blenheim Palace (Plates XV to XIX) with the not 

 less careful but more quietly effective completeness of Brockenhurst 

 Park (Plates XXVII to XXX) ; or the somewhat exaggerated 

 primness of Longford Castle (Plates LXXXVIII and LXXXIX) or 

 Canford Manor (Plates XXXIII and XXXIV), with the old-world 

 charm of Penshurst Place (Plates CIV to CIX). At Longford, and 

 in a less degree at Canford Manor, the Italian spirit is very perceptible, 

 but at Penshurst the garden laid out, since the middle of the last 

 century, under the direction of George Devey, the architect, revives 

 most happily the particular qualities of the English work of the best 

 period, before the eccentricities practised in the earlier years of the 

 eighteenth century brought formal gardening into disrepute. 

 The same atmosphere which makes Penshurst delightful is very 

 apparent in such places as Groombridge House (Plates LXII to 

 LXIV) and Clevedon Court (Plates XXXVIII to XL), both of 

 which, with their terraces and clipped hedges, their rich masses of 

 foliage and their gay flower borders, are typical instances of garden- 

 making on essentially English lines. They respect tradition, but 

 in the treatment of details they show the degree of freedom 

 necessary to prevent them from becoming merely illustrations of 

 the use of a set convention. Similar qualities distinguish houses 

 like Hatfield (Plates LXX to LXXIII) and Holland House 

 (Plates LXX VI I to LXXXI), where the gardener's craft is used 

 to enhance the architectural effect of noble buildings and where the 

 alliance between nature and art is given the fullest opportunity of 

 making its meaning felt. Montacute House (Plate XCI) is another 

 place of the same kind ; like Hatfield, it derives a most persuasive 

 dignity from the happy combination of architecture with the 

 regulated wildness of nature, and from the use of formal details to 

 give cohesion and consistency to a well-planned design ; and at 

 Ham House (Plates LXV and LXVI), though the combination is 



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