The Story of our English Woodlands. 45 



publisliing the Sylca. To use liis own words, it was a pare- 

 nesis ; to use those of a writer in the Quarterly Review of 

 March, 1813, it was " a trumpet note of alarm to the nation on 

 the condition of their woods and forests. It weaned the sport- 

 ing and gormandising gallants from the court of the Merrie 

 Monarch to the pastime of sowing the seeds of future navies." 

 Their royal master himself set the example of patriotic plant- 

 ing, and tilled in some of his own extensive forests with saplings, 

 destined one day to carry Nelson and his sailors into many a 

 glorious victory. Numbers of great landed proprietors followed 

 suit, turning to Evelyn's treatise for designs of woodland and 

 shrubbery and for hints on the habits and culture of trees. 

 But it would be strange if the forest, the garden, and the grove, 

 which add so vastly to the beauties, the comforts, and the pro- 

 fits of land-owning, had been wholly neglected by the country 

 gentry up to this late period. That we know already was in 

 no way the case, for the Renaissance architects regarded the 

 parterre and the terrace as important adjuncts to their designs 

 for basement and storey, and endeavoured to throw out in 

 strong relief, at the same time that they sheltered, their flower 

 beds by a sombre background of evergreen bushes and tree 

 foliage. Then, too, both Worledge and Blith have shown us 

 that it was not for want of materials that the English landlord 

 had hitherto neglected this source of income. English works 

 of instruction cannot be said to have been altogether wanting, 

 for Moses Cooke ^ had published a book of this kind, though 

 more conspicuous for bad poetry than for sound teaching. 

 Hitherto, however, ornamental forestry had been mere archi- 

 tecture in trees and shrubs ; and Evelyn was the first of those 

 earth artists, who, with nature's own materials, brought into 

 being, here in England, the ideal landscapes of Claude and 

 Sal vat or. 



But for purposes of profit, owing as we have shown to the 

 conflicting rights of people and lord, wherever a few trees had 

 grown together on the national wastes, scientific sylviculture 

 had made but slight progress. Even if an industrious- hus- 



^ Manner of Raising , Ordering, and Improving Forest and Fruit Trees; 

 also how to Plant Woods^ etc. Moses Cooke, Cassiobury, Watford, 1679. 



