50 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



In the arrangement and culture of trees and plants in the 

 ancient style of Landscape Gardening, we discover the evi- 

 dences of the formal taste, though abounding with every pos- 

 sible variety of quaint conceits, and rife with whimsical ex- 

 pedients, so much in fashion during the days of the Henry's 

 and Elizabeth, and until the eighteenth century in England, 

 and which is still the reigning mode in Holland and parts of 

 France. In these gardens, nature was tamed and subdued, or 

 as some critics will have it, tortured, into every shape which 

 the ingenuity of the gardener could suggest ; and those kinds 

 of vegetation which bore the shears most patiently, and which, 

 when carefully trimmed, assumed gradually the appearance 

 of verdant statues, pyramids, crowing cocks, and rampant 

 lions, were the especial favourites of the gardeners of the old 

 school.* The stately etiquette, and courtly precision of the 

 manners of our English ancestors extended into their gardens, 

 and was reflected back by the very trees which lined their 

 avenues, and the shrubs which surrounded their houses. 

 "Nonsuch, Theobalds, Greenwich, Hampton Court, Hatfield, 

 Moor-Park, Chatsworth, Beaconsfield, Cashiobury, Ham, and 

 many another," says William Howitt, "stood in all that 

 stately formality which Henry and Elizabeth admired, and in 

 which our Surreys, Leicesters, Essexesj the splendid nobles 

 of the Tudor dynasty, the gay ladies and gallants of Charles 

 n.'s court, had walked and talked, fluttering in glittering pro- 

 cessions, or flirting in green alleys and bowers of topiary 

 work : and amid figures, in lead or stone, fountains, cascades, 

 copper-trees dropping sudden showers on the astonished pas- 

 sers under, stately terraces with gilded balustrades, and cu- 



* The well known picture of the " Garden of Eden," by one of the old Dutch 

 artists, with sheared hedges, formal alleys, and geometric plots of flowers, for 

 the entertainment of our first parents, is doubtless familiar to our readers. 



