194 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



among us ; they are adventures of too hard atchieve- 

 ment for any common hands ; and, though there may 

 be more honour if they succeed well, yet there is 

 more dishonour if they fail, and it is twenty to one 

 they will ; whereas in regular figures it is hard to make 

 any great and remarkable faults." 



" Fortunately," proceeds Walpole, " Kent and a 

 few others were not quite so timid, or we might still 

 be going up and down stairs in the open air." 



Referring to Temple's description of Moor 

 Park, Herts, in Lady Bedford's time, he goes 

 on to say : 



" But as no succeeding generation in an opulent and 

 luxurious country contents itself with the perfection 

 established by its ancestors, more perfect perfection 

 was still sought ; and improvements had gone on, till 

 London and Wise had stocked our gardens with giants, 

 animals, monsters, coats of arms, and mottoes, in yew, 

 box, and holly. Absurdities could go no farther, and 

 the tide turned. Bridgman, the next fashionable 

 designer of gardens, was far more chaste ; and whether 

 from good sense, or that the nation had been struck 

 and reformed by the admirable paper in the Guardian, 

 No. 173, he banished verdant sculpture, and did not 

 even revert to the square precision of the foregoing 

 age. He enlarged his plans, disdained to make every 

 division tally to its opposite, and though he adhered 

 much to strait walks with high clipped hedges, they 



