1 62 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



produce a more smiling and pleasing effect. The turf verdant, 

 yet close and crisp, was strewn with wild thyme, balsam, 

 marjoram, and other sweet-scented herbs : A thousand lustrous 

 wild-flowers were in sight, among which the eye distinguished 

 with surprise some from the garden, which seemed to grow up 

 naturally with the others. I encountered from time to time 

 dark thickets, as impenetrable to the sun's rays as the depths 

 of the forest : these thickets were formed of trees of the most 

 flexible wood, whose branches had been made to bend back, 

 hang on the ground, and take root, by an art akin to the natural 

 habit of the mango in America. 



In the more open places, I saw here and there, unordered 

 and unsymmetrical, bushes of roses, raspberries, and gooseberries ; 

 patches of lilac, hazel, alders, seringas, broom, and clover, which 

 clothed the earth whilst giving it an appearance of being un- 

 cultured. I followed the serpentine and irregular alleys edged 

 with these flowering thickets, and roofed with a thousand garlands 

 of Judaea-vines, virgin-vines, hops, rose-weed, snake-weed, clematis, 

 and other plants of this kind, with which honeysuckle and jasmine 

 deigned to mingle. These garlands appeared to be thrown 

 carelessly from one tree to another, as I had sometimes observed 

 in forests, and formed above us, as it were, draperies, which 

 sheltered us from the sun, whilst under foot we had soft, pleasant, 

 and dry walking upon fine moss, without sand, grass, or rough 

 shoots. Only then I discovered, not without surprise, that these 

 green and bushy shades, which in the distance had looked so 

 imposing, were only formed of these creeping parasite plants, 

 which, trained along the trees, wrapped their heads in the 

 thickest foliage, and their feet in shadow and coolness. I observed 

 too, that by means of a very simple industry, several of these 

 plants had been induced to take root on the trunks of trees 

 and so to spread more, being nearer the top, while requiring less 

 room. You will easily understand that the fruitage is none the 

 better for all these additions ; but only in this spot has the useful 

 been sacrificed to the agreeable, and in the rest of the grounds 

 such care has been bestowed upon the plants and trees, that 



