CONTINENTAL LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 37 



strip the country of all artistic tendency but removed from those 

 great creations of the garden world already existing much that was 

 at one time the pride of Emperors. 



Art, as such, cannot flourish under the adverse influences of un- 

 settled social conditions ; it is an evidence of prosperity and of social 

 harmony . The only evidence of the least tendency towards art in 

 the gardening world during this long period is to be seen in the 

 Monastery gardens. This much unsettled condition led to the 

 establishment by little bands of people known as monks, a number 

 of monastery gardens. These monasteries established by St. 

 Gregory and St. Benedictine grew through the natural desire of 

 certain orders of monks to be away from the open exposure to 

 political warfare, and to live in their own communities without 

 fear of molestation. Situated among the hills of France and 

 Germany, and at a later date in the lowlands, these self-supporting 

 communities practiced the art of gardening merely as a means of 

 support. No pretence from the standpoint of a decorative art was 

 made. While this barren period of garden history is far from 

 interesting to the student as such, it is a portion which bears an 

 important relation to our discussion. Society, as such, having been 

 demolished, business and commercial interests remaining unstable, 

 the country showed but little evidence of progress. It seems 

 necessary that we should cite this bit of history as a connecting link 

 between the decline and the new birth of the continental art. 

 Gradually social conditions changed, commercial prosperity in 

 various cities flourished and with both the desire for homes out of 

 the city became stronger. Small cities such as Florence, Venice, 

 Bologna, Milan and others gradually emerged from this darkness 

 as brightly illuminated spots of thrift in their relative commercial 

 industries. It was thus but natural to assume that with this opening 

 of the Renaissance period in the fifteenth century, evidenced first 

 in northern Italy, the art of gardening should again flourish with the 

 other arts. 



Florence became the focal center of this outburst of art in general, 

 and the villas seen today overlooking the city and the Arno were 

 many of them conceived at this very period. The motives which 

 inspired their construction were similar in character to those evi- 

 denced in our great American cities today, namely, the desire to be 



