WILLIAM BECKFORD 227 



Fifth's bastards, instead of following my usual track along the 

 sea-shore. ... A great flat space before the garden-front of the 

 villa is laid out in dismal labyrinths of clipped myrtle, with lofty 

 pyramids rising from them, in the style of that vile Dutch maze 

 planted by King William at Kensington, and rooted up some 

 years ago by King George the Third. 



Beyond this puzzling ground are several long alleys of stiff dark 

 verdure, called ruas, i.e. literally streets, with great propriety, 

 being more close, more formal, and not less dusty than High 

 Holborn. I deviated from them into plats of well-watered 

 vegetables and aromatic herbs, inclosed by neat fences of cane, 

 covered with an embroidery of the freshest and most perfect roses, 

 quite free from insects and cankers, worthy to have strewn the 



couches and graced the bosom of Lais, Aspasia, or Lady , 



You know how warmly every mortal of taste delights in these 

 lovely flowers ; how frequently, and in what harmonious numbers, 



Ariosto has celebrated them. Has not Lady a whole 



apartment painted over with roses ? Does she not fill her bath 

 with their leaves, and deck her idols with garlands of no other 

 flowers ? and is she not quite in the right of it ? May 30, 1787. 



At length, after a tedious drive through vast tracts of desolate 

 country, scarce a house, scarce a shrub, scarce a human being to 

 meet with, we descended a rapid declivity, and I once more found 

 myself in the valley of Aranjuez. 



. . . Charles the Fifth's elms in the island-garden close to the 

 palace are decaying apace. I visited the nine venerable stumps 

 close to a hideous brick ruin ; the largest measures forty or fifty 

 feet in girth ; the roots are picturesquely fantastic. The fountains, 

 like the shades in which they are embowered, are rapidly going 

 to decay : the bronze Venus, at the fountain which takes its name 

 from Don John of Austria, has lost her arm. 



Notwithstanding the dreariness of the season, with all its 

 accompaniment of dry leaves and faded herbage, this historic 

 garden had still charms ; the air was mild and the sunbeams 

 played on the Tagus, and many a bird flitted from spray to spray. 



