174 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



But it was to the Hollanders that London 

 and his partner were indebted for that 

 preposterous plan of deforming Nature by 

 making her statuesque, and reducing her 

 irregular and luxuriant lines to a dead and 

 prosaic level through the medium of the 

 shears. Gods, animals, and other objects were 

 no longer carved out of stone ; but the trees, 

 shrubs, and hedges were made to do double 

 service as a body of verdure and a sculpture- 

 gallery. The free growth of the box, the 

 yew, and the holly was sacrificed to the 

 mania for the quaint and grotesque in art, 

 and from the occasional survivals of this 

 bastard style one gets some imperfect con- 

 ception of what it must have been, when 

 it was in its full glory. 



As far back as 1715, the founder of 

 Lee's Nursery at Kensington came up to 

 London, and acquired extensive grounds 

 adjacent to the Holland House estate; it 

 was a flourishing concern during the whole 

 of the last century and the first half of this ; 

 the firm grudged no labour or expense in 

 obtaining the rarest plants, trees, and 



