304 SYLVA FLORIFERA. 



English shrubbery, we felt as much relieved as 

 one who escapes from the drawing-room on 

 court days to his own domestic hearth. 



" For many a floweret blossoms there, to bless 

 The gentle loveliness whose charms imbue 

 Its border." 



Bradley, who flourished in this country when 

 the hornbeam was in its highest estimation, 

 says, *' Versailles, is the sum of every thing 

 that has been done in gardening." The 

 gardens of the Tuilleries and the Champs 

 Elysees were modelled after the gardens at 

 Versailles, and the taste soon reached this 

 country. Evelyn, in his discourse on the 

 hornbeam-tree, says, " That admirable espalier 

 hedge, in the long middle walk of the Lux- 

 emburgh garden at Paris, than which there is 

 nothing more graceful, is planted of this tree ; 

 and so was that cradle, or close walk, with 

 that perplex canopy which lately covered the 

 seat in his Majesty's garden at Hampton 

 Court." This author speaks in terms of 

 ecstasy of the clipped hedges at Old Brompton 

 Park, then occupied by London and Wise, 

 two eminent nurserymen of that age of clip- 

 ping arid cutting. 



Lord Bacon seems to have been the first 

 who tried to reform the national taste : " I 



