i8 GLEANINGS ON GARDENS. 



at Rousham, which is the prettiest place for water- 

 falls, jetts, ponds, inclosed with beautiful scenes of 

 green and hanging wood, that ever I saw.' 



The ancient garden at Denton Court, in Kent, 

 with its high clipped hedges, terraces, and mount, and 

 near which winds for a mile or two a most beautiful 

 green valley that affords the most pleasing sequestered 

 walk, and where the poet Gray (I am quoting from 

 that most pleasing compilation, the Topographer) used 

 to delight in many of its recluse scenes. 



Mr. Braithwaite's gardens at Durham, in Glouces- 

 tershire, the description of which rural garden takes up 

 no less than fourteen of Switzer's pages, * notwithstand- 

 ing the happy possessor bears no higher character than 

 that of a private gentleman. I never in my whole life 

 saw so agreeable a place for the sublimest studies as 

 this is.' 



The gardens of Lord William Russell (beheaded in 

 1683) at Stratton, near Winchester, 'one of the best 

 of masters, as well as gardeners ; ' and whose severe 

 fate Switzer most gratefully laments.* 



* The Rev. John Lawrence, in his Clergyman's Recreation, thus 

 mentions another garden near Winchester : ' I have myself seen the 

 summer Bon Cretien in the garden of my worthy friend, Dr. Wickart, 

 now Dean of Winchester, bear plenty of noble, large fruit, betwixt 

 twenty and thirty feet 1 high. There also I have eaten excellent figs 

 from a prosperous tree, even the same that afforded some to King 

 James I., near a hundred years ago, as appears (I think) from a 

 memorandum on the wall.' 



