TREILLAGE 65 



ful, for high upon a hill is a castle, approached by a 

 shadowing avenue of tall thin cypresses. 



These railed-in, quiet gardens seem often the centre of 

 adoring groups. There is another lovely one of the 

 Virgin and small children, who kneel beside her, worship- 

 ping the Child. He lies upon a piece of her blue mantle. 

 The garden consists only of a small grass-plot in the 

 centre, with a step or seat of stonework all round. Stone 

 balustrades stand upon this, and behind them is a thick 

 dark-green hedge, with white and pink roses in it. Some 

 of the flowers have been picked by the children, who 

 have strung them together in a wreath for the Babe 

 to play with. Beyond the rose hedge are tall sentinel 

 cypress-trees, and then an undulating landscape, with 

 lakes, rocks, and winding roads, a truly Tuscan scene. 

 The stone piers surrounding the garden are more archi- 

 tectural, perhaps, than the ones with which we are at 

 present dealing ; but they could be copied in woodwork, 

 as the simple design of this sunk garden lends itself 

 to quiet treatment. 



We have not far to search for many trellis-surrounded 

 gardens. One of the earliest is in that beautiful Flemish 

 fifteenth-century romance, the " Romauntde la Rose," and 

 many are the ideas which come to us for gardens as we 

 turn over the pages of this enchanting illuminated manu- 

 script. 



Does it not seem strange, in the solemn atmosphere of 

 our British Museum, that these lovely garden scenes, 

 painted many hundred years ago, can bring us dreams that 

 are fresh as dawn ? Here are little quiet restful gardens, 

 where flowers, grass, trees, and water are all near 

 together, so that we could be happy all day long, with 

 needlework or music, as those fifteenth-century garden- 

 lovers were. The charm of the trellis as shown in this 

 Rose Romance lies in its simplicity, for it consists only of 



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