The Ancient and Modern Arbour. 75 



Tales (1526), where the fair young lady 

 admits to her confessor to having been 

 guilty of an indiscretion in a pleasant green 

 arbour. 



But before Bacon's time, and even so 

 early as the fifteenth century, the arbour, 

 in the modern acceptation, had become 

 a regular institution, and in the pleasure- 

 grounds of royalty and the wealthy was, 

 constructed of carpenter's work, and often 

 expensively decorated. It formed at once a 

 pleasant retirement for members of the family 

 and a convenient place for amours. 



A sort of survival of the Arbour of our 

 romances appears in the garden-house of the 

 early drama. The institution was at this 

 time in a transitional state from what it had 

 been a villa in grounds to what it has 

 become among ourselves, a mere summer- 

 house. The old garden house is stigmatised 

 by Stubbes in his Anatomy of Abuses (1583) 

 as a medium and theatre for intrigues and 

 assignations. 



But in 1644, when A. Looking-Glass oj 

 the World was written (as I presume) by 



