GLEANINGS ON GARDENS. 17 



The garden at Moor Park, laid out by the Countess 

 of Bedford, celebrated by Dr. Donne, and which Sir 

 W. Temple declared was * the sweetest place I think 

 that I have seen in my life, at home or abroad : and 

 the remembrance of what it was, is too pleasant ever 

 to forget.'* 



Those magnificent gardens at Boughton, in North- 

 amptonshire, which consisted of ninety acres, 'with 

 aviaries, statues, urns, terraces, wildernesses, and 

 curious fountains.' 



That of Lady Orford's in Dorsetshire, or that at 

 Stanstead, both alluded to by Horace Walpole. 



That which Pope thus describes in a letter to 

 Martha Blount, on his road to Bath : * I lay one night 



termed, without dispute, one of the most affecting elegies in our 



language ' : 



' While speechless o'er thy closing grave we bend, 

 Accept these tears, thou dear departed friend ! 

 Oh, gone for ever ! take this long adieu, 

 And sleep in peace with thy own Montagu.' 



* K. 0. Cambridge, in No. 118 of the World, written in 1755, 

 says, 'Sir W. Temple, in his Gardens of Epicwrus^ expatiates 

 with great pleasure on that at Moor Park, in Hertfordshire ; yet 

 after he has extolled it as the pattern of a perfect garden, for use, 

 beauty, and magnificence, he rises to nobler images, and in a kind 

 of prophetic spirit points out a higher style, free and unconfined. 

 The prediction is verified upon the spot ; and it seems to have been 

 the peculiar destiny of that delightful place to have passed through 

 all the transformations and modes of taste, having exercised the 

 genius of the most eminent artists successively, and serving as a 

 model of perfection in each kind.' 



C 



