OLD ENGLISH GARDENS. 37 



In fact, there is much more relation between the two than is 

 usually admitted, or than the ordinar^^ products of practitioners in 

 either art would at all justify us in believing. 



Modern tendencies in gardening have been too much aivay from 

 its character as an art, and the more it is restored to its legitimate 

 position, the more nearly will it be brought into kindred with 

 architecture." 



We confess to a great admiration for these old, stiff, formal 

 gardens, with their accompanying architecture. They are well 

 suited, not only for the squares and parks of cities, but also for 

 country estates, and for small, suburban places in which there 

 is little opportunity for variety and irregularity. In a modified 

 way, they constituted the gardens of our fathers in New England, 

 not only as they knew no other forms, but as the}'^ were pleasant 

 reminders of other shores dear to their recollections. We should 

 like to see them occupying a prominent place in the tastes of the 

 people at the present day, when everything that smacks at all of 

 antiquity is seized upon and treasured. 



William Howitt* speaks thus pleasantly of these old gardens : 

 " The hands of Bridgman, Kent, and Brown, and the pens of Ad- 

 dison, Pope, and Walpole have put all this ancient glory of Roman 

 style to the flight, and driven us, perhaps, into danger of going 

 too far after nature. The winding walks, the turfy lawns, the 

 bowery shrubberies, the green slopes to the margin of waters, the 

 retention of rocks and thickets where they naturally stood — all 

 this is very beautiful, and many a sweet, elysian scene do the}^ 

 spread around our English houses. But in imitating nature, we 

 are apt to imitate her as she appears in her rudest places, and not 

 as she would modify herself in the vicinity of human habitations. 

 We are apt to make too little difference between the garden and 

 the field, between the shrubbery and the wood. We are come to 

 think that all which differs from wild nature is artificial, and there- 

 fore absurd. It has been the fashion to cry down all gardens as 

 ugly and tasteless, which are not shaped by our modern notions. 

 The formalities of the French and Dutch have been sufficiently 

 condemned ; for my part, I like even them in their place. One 

 would no more think of laying out grounds now in this manner, 

 than of wearing Elizabethan ruflTs, or bag-wigs and basket-hilted 



* Kural Life of England. 



