196 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



doubtful enough, and part of the improved 

 scheme, for which he claims credit on behalf 

 of Bridgman, had been shadowed out, and 

 even more, by Bacon. 



"One of the first gardens planted in this simple, 

 though still formal, style, was my father's, at Hough- 

 ton," Walpole informs us. "It was laid out by Mr. 

 Eyre, an imitator of Bridgman." 



The latter artist was followed by Kent, a 

 famous name in the annals of horticulture. 

 Walpole characterises him as 



"painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, 

 bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, 

 and born with a genius to strike out a great system 

 from the twilight of imperfect essays. " " He leaped 

 the fence," says our author, " and saw that all nature 

 was a garden." 



From Walpole's account of Kent's peculiar 

 bent of mind and cast of feeling, the con- 

 clusion comes to us that he, partly, doubtless, 

 owing to the lessons and suggestions which 

 he derived from Bridgman, was the real father 

 of the modern school of gardening, breaking 

 so much more completely away from the old 



