1 6 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND i 



is a mere convention. Sainte-Beuve said of the 

 Abbe Delille that he sincerely believed in his 

 love of the fields, " c'etait la mode de la nature, 

 on admirait la campagne du sein des boudoirs." 

 Our landscape gardeners take themselves too 

 seriously ; as the late Charles Blanc pointed out, 

 their pretensions to be natural have landed them 

 in the worst of all vices — " le faux naturel." 



Two other charges are brought against the 

 formal garden : first, that it involves much 

 building and statuary ; secondly, that it requires 

 much space. Neither the one nor the other 

 is more necessary to the English formal garden 

 than it is to the landscape garden. In regard 

 to the first, Mr. Milner gives some very remark- 

 able designs of rustic boat-houses, and summer- 

 houses, and porticoes, as part and parcel of the 

 landscape garden ; and it will appear that the 

 wholesale and immoderate use of temples, 

 statues, grottoes, made ruins, broken bridges 

 and the like, originated with the landscape 

 gardener, not with the formal school. In point 

 of fact, though statuary was used in the old 

 English garden, it was used much less than in 

 the French and Italian gardens. Those who 

 attack the old English formal garden do not 

 take the trouble to master its very considerable 

 difference from the continental gardens of the 

 same period. They seem to consider the 

 EngHsh Renaissance as identical with the 

 Italian, and the public, seeing such dismal 



