94 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



let for their love of, their elation at, the sight of beauti- 

 ful things, and behind them lay the background of 

 far-reaching traditions to encourage, inspire, protect 

 experiment with the friendly shadow of authority. 



An accomplished French writer has remarked 

 that even the modest work of Art may contain 

 occasion for long processes of analysis. " Very great 

 laws," he says, " may be illustrated in a very small 

 compass." And so one thinks it is with the ancient 

 garden. Looked at as a piece of design, it is the 

 blossom of English genius at one of its sunniest 

 moments. It is a bit of the history of our land. It 

 embodies the characteristics of the mediaeval, the 

 Elizabethan and Jacobean ages just as faithfully as 

 do other phases of contemporary art. It contains 

 the same principle of beauty, the same sense of form, 

 that animated these ; it has the same curious turns 

 of expression, the same mixture of pedantry and 

 subtle sweetness ; the same wistful daring and 

 humorous sadness ; the same embroidery of nice 

 fancy half jocund, half grave, as shall we say 

 Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, Spenser's "Faerie 

 Queene," Milton's "Comus," More's "Utopia," Bacon's 

 Essays, Purcell's Madrigals, John Thorpe's architec- 

 ture at Longleat. The same spirit, the same wit and 

 fancy resides in each ; they differ only in the medium 

 of expression. 



To condemn old English gardening, root and 

 branch, for its " false taste " (and it was not peculiar 

 to Walpole to think in that manner), was, in truth, 

 to indict our nation on a line of device wherein we 



