Tolou and Country Delights 



extent of hopeless sterility." This is the classical 

 note ; Nature untamed or untamable by man is 

 repellant. The idea took form in the gardens 

 of the ancients, reproduced in those of the 

 Renaissance. The modern English garden, 

 with its groups of shrubs and its flowers in 

 masses, recalling Nature's own arrangements, 

 its " wild garden " and its " naturalizations " — 

 the "English plan of freakish Nature," as 

 Goethe called it — is based on quite a different 

 set of feelings from those which found expres- 

 sion (to quote a historic sentence) in the 

 " voluptuous parterre, the trim garden, and the 

 expensive pleasure-grounds, where effeminacy 

 was wont to saunter, or indolence to loll." Is 

 not the charm we find in the gardens of the 

 Renaissance, such as those of Tivoli or Frascati, 

 chiefly due to the fact that Nature has reasserted 

 her sway ? Should we find it all if the 

 balustrades were cleansed of their lichens, the 

 broken steps and pillars put into a thorough 

 state of repair, and the gnarled trunks of 

 ancient trees, the dense thickets of ancient 

 shrubs, replaced by the neat greenery of the 

 earlier days ? 



The jaded Roman Emperor offered a great 



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