16 



HISTORY OF GARDENING. Part I 



Chap. III. 



Chronological History of Gardening, in continental Europe from the Time of the Romans 

 to the present Day, or from A. D. 500 to A. D. 1823. 



67. The decline of the Roman Empire commenced with the reign of the emperors. 

 The ages, Hirschfield observes, which followed the fall of the republic, the violence 

 committed by several of the emperors, the invasion of the barbarians, and the ferocity 

 introduced by the troubles of the times, extinguished a taste for a country life, in pro- 

 portion as they destroyed the means of enjoying it. So many injuries falling on the 

 best provinces of the Roman empire, one after another, soon destroyed the country- 

 houses and gardens. Barbarism triumphed over man and the arts, arms again became 

 the reigning occupation, superstition allied itself to warlike inclinations, and spread 

 over Europe a manner of thinking far removed from the noble simplicity of nature. 

 The mixture of so many different nations in Italy did not a little contribute to corrupt 

 the taste ; the possessions of the nobles remaining without defence, were soon pillaged 

 and razed, and the earth was only cultivated from necessity. Soon afterwards the first 

 countries were considered those where one convent raised itself beside another. Archi- 

 tecture was only employed in chapels and churches, or on warlike forts and castles. 

 From the establishment of the ecclesiastical government of the Popes in the eighth to the 

 end of the twelfth century, the monks were almost the only class in Europe who occu- 

 pied themselves in agriculture ; many of these, carried away by their zeal, fled from the 

 corruption of the age, and striving to overcome their passions, or indulge their gloomy 

 humor, or, as Herder observes, to substitute one passion for another, retired into 

 solitary deserts, unhealthy valleys, forests, and mountains ; there they labored with 

 their own hands, and rendered fertile, lands till then barren from neglect, or in a state of 

 natural rudeness. 



68. Thus the arts of culture were preserved by the monks during the dark ages* The 

 sovereigns, in procuring pardon of their sins by bestowing on the monks extensive tracts 

 of country and slaves, recompensed their activity as rural improvers. The monks 

 of St. Basil and St. Benedict, Harte informs us, rendered many tracts fertile in Italy, 

 Spain, and the south of France, which had lain neglected ever since the first incursions of 

 the Goths and Saracens. Others were equally active in Britain in ameliorating the soil. 

 Walker (Essays) informs us that even in the remote island of Iona, an extensive estab- 

 lishment of monks was formed in the sixth century, and that the remains of a corn-mill 

 and mill-dam built by them still exist ; and indeed it is not too much to affirm, that 

 without the architectural and rural labors of this class of men, many provinces of Europe 

 which at present nourish thousands of inhabitants would have remained deserts or 

 marshes, the resorts only of wild beasts, and the seminaries of disease ; and architecture 

 and gardening, as arts of design, instead of being very generally diffused, would have 

 been lost to the greater part of Europe. 



69. At length the dawn of light appeared with the art of printing, Luther, and Hen. VIII. 

 Commerce began to flourish in Italy and Holland, arts of peace began to prevail, and 

 the European part of what was formerly the Roman empire gradually assumed these 

 political divisions which it for the greater part still retains. We shall take a cursory 

 view of the progress of gardening in each of these states, from the dark ages to the present 

 day. 



Sect. I. Of the Revival, Progress, and present State of Gardening in Italy. 



70. The blessings of peace and of commerce, the remains of ancient grandeur still 

 existing, and the liberty which some cities had acquired through the generosity and splen- 

 dor of some popes and princes, united with other causes in the revival of the arts in Italy 

 rather than in any other country. 



Subsect. 1. Italian Gardening, in respect to Design and Taste. 



71. The earliest notice of Italian gardening is in the work of Pierre de Crescent, a 

 senator of Bologna. He composed in the beginning of the fourteenth century a work 

 on agriculture, which he dedicated to Charles II. king of Naples and Sicily. In the 

 eighth book of this work the author treats of gardens of pleasure. These he divides 

 into three classes ; those of persons of small fortune : those of persons in easy circum- 

 stances ; and those of princes and kings. He teaches the mode of constructing 

 and ornamenting each ; and of the royal gardens observes, that they ought to have 

 a menagerie and an aviary ; the latter placed among thickets, arbors, and vines. Each 

 of the three classes ought to be decorated with turf, shrubs, and aromatic flowers. 



72. Gardening, with the other arts, was revived and patronised by the Medici family in the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century, and the most celebrated gardens of these times, as 

 Roscoe informs us, were those of Lorenzo de Medici, and of the wealthy Bernard Ru- 



