92 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iv 



chaos which followed was due to the abuse 

 of the system itself. The note of warning 

 uttered by Rea and Worlidge was not heeded. 

 The designer became so intent on showing his 

 skill in design that he forgot that a garden is a 

 place for real flowers and grass, and not for 

 conventional flowers mapped out on the ground 

 in different coloured sands. Some of the designs 

 for parterres in James's translation are melan- 

 choly instances of perverted taste. Formal 

 gardening fell into its dotage, and the vanity 

 of technique overpowered the reserve and 

 sobriety and genuine love of nature which 

 guided the earlier masters, and this was the 

 justification, in fact, of the violent change that 

 occurred in the eighteenth century. But the 

 change was thrust upon us by people who not 

 only had no sympathy with the older system, 

 but by their absence of training were quite 

 unqualified to judge whether that system was 

 good or bad. The consequence was that the 

 good went down with the bad, and the funda- 

 mental principle of the relation between the 

 garden and the house was completely lost sight 

 of, though that principle had been accepted as 

 a matter of course throughout all the greatest 

 periods of English art. 



