GARDENS IN LITERATURE 



set on poles, and knots of flowers in regular display, 

 seem quaintly attractive and most fitting with the 

 dress and manners of their day; just as the conscious 

 wildwood tangle of the eighteenth-century garden 

 suited the sentimental artificiality and Rousseau- 

 simplicity that masqueraded in a silk and satin home- 

 spun. 



In our own day, or but little removed from it, a gar- 

 den now only to be seen in the pages of a book is that 

 described in E. V. B.'s "Days and Hours in a Gar- 

 den." The foundation of this place was sufficiently 

 ancient, having been known to Evelyn, in whose 

 writings it finds an appreciative mention, but when the 

 Boyles came into possession, all that was left of the old 

 garden were "two symmetrically planted groups of 

 elms in the park field ... a square lawn laid out 

 in flower beds ... a broad terrace walk, old pink 

 walls with stone balls on the corners, two or three 

 wrought-iron gates in the wrong places . . . with a 

 few pleasant trees." 



Month by month we see the garden change, increase 

 in beauty: "Close-trimmed yew hedges eight feet six 

 inches high and three feet through . . . yews cut 

 in pyramids and buttresses against the walls, and 

 yews in every stage of natural growth . . . borders 

 filled with the dearest old-fashioned plants. . . . In- 

 stead of the stable-yard turf and straight walks and 

 a sun-dial and a parterre . . . green walks between 



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