LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 2,1b 



and Kew. Davis was another landscape gardener of this 

 school, said by his contemporaries to have " displayed con- 

 siderable taste," especially in the alterations he carried out 

 at Longleat. The two views of Narford show how complete the 

 change from a formal to a landscape garden can be. The cascade 

 pond was sketched between 1716 and 1724 by Edmond Prideaux, 

 of Prideaux in Cornwall, when on a tour in Norfolk. The 

 second view is from a photograph taken in 1894 from as nearly 

 as possible the same point of view. The lake which covers 

 seventy acres was made about 1842, and all traces of the stiff 

 pond have vanished. 



Landscape gardening had by this time become the 

 recognized National style of England, and it was copied on 

 the Continent, in France, Italy and Germany. " English 

 gardens " became the fashion, and books were written abroad 

 to extol the English taste, and invite other nations to copy 

 it,* and old gardens were destroyed to give place to the 

 new style. But on the Continent one thing was lacking, 

 which was the redeeming point in all these landscapes, and 

 that was the green turf. Nowhere is the grass so fair and 

 green as in England, and landscape-gardeners appreciated 

 this great advantage. 



It is strange the way in which the writers of this school 



pointed to Milton and Bacon as the founders of their taste. 



They claimed Bacon because he devotes a part of his ideal 



garden to a "natural wildness," and also praises "green 



grass kept finely shorn," and Milton, because he says that 



in Paradise there were :— 



" Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art 

 In beds and curious knots, but nature boon 

 Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain." f 



Yet how opposed to all ideas of landscape gardeners 



would these two men have been. Bacon, who loved the 



green grass, and yet would have his garden full of flowers in 



bloom in every month of the year, would have been shocked 



by the idea of "a garden . . . disgracing by discordant 



character the contiguous lawn," or by being told that " the 



* Del' Afte dei Giariiini higlesi, Milan, 1801, ^:c. f Paradise Lost — Book IV. 



18 * 



