THE HISTORY OF GARDEN-MAKING 



which did their utmost to satisfy the new taste. The clipped trees, 

 which had been previously not without a certain architectural appro- 

 priateness, became utterly unnatural and unmeaning incongruities, 

 which did not fit in well with any properly considered scheme of 

 design. They introduced a touch of comicality into formal garden- 

 ing, and brought upon it a measure of discredit. 



There was, indeed, a change coming over the spirit of the gardener's 

 art, and the misuse of topiary work was at the same time one of the 

 effects and one of the causes of this change. The influence of 

 Le Notre had done something to unsettle English gardeners, inas- 

 much as it had induced many of them to extend their boundaries 

 and to consider the possibility of going outside the four walls within 

 which the older gardens had been confined. They began to have 

 ambitions to direct and discipline nature, and out of these ambitions 

 soon grew the idea that what their predecessors had done was too 

 much according to rule, and therefore too narrowly conventional to 

 be accepted by reformers who aspired to solve nature's secrets. As 

 a protest, conscious or unconscious, against these new notions, the 

 followers of the earlier school were led into topiary extravagances, 

 and thereby gave themselves over to the enemy. The advocates of 

 what was called progress were provided with many a text for attacks 

 upon the principles of design which they were trying to destroy by 

 the men who were theoretically most anxious to see these principles 

 strictly upheld. 



Many able writers, Pope and Addison at their head, threw themselves 

 into the struggle between the opposing schools of gardening, and for 

 the most part advocated the ideas of the new school. An article 

 which appeared in "The Guardian" in 1712 is worth quoting as an 

 example of the support given to the believers in change : " How 

 contrary to simplicity is the modern practice of gardening ! We seem 

 to make it our study to recede from nature, not only in the various 

 tonsure of greens into the most regular and formal shapes, but even 

 in monstrous attempts beyond the reach of art itself; we run into 

 sculpture, and are yet better pleased to have our trees in the most 

 awkward figures of men and animals than in the most regular of 

 their own. A citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews 

 but he entertains thoughts of erecting them into giants like those at 

 Guildhall. I know an eminent cook who beautified his country seat 

 with a coronation dinner in greens, where you see the champion 

 flourishing on horseback at one end of the table, and the queen in 

 perpetual youth at the other. 



" For the benefit of all my loving countrymen of this curious taste, 

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