134 



Garden and Forest. 



[March 20, 1889. 



as we have been able to discover, no such v\'ork exists 

 in our language. Innumerable theoretical and practical 

 treatises on the art of gardening have been written in 

 English, and in some of them a certain amount of his- 

 torical information is given. But we believe there is no 

 English work that deals historically with the whole subject, 

 or looks at it from the most instructive point of view — as 

 an individual and independent manifestation of the 

 artistic instinct, yet one which has a vital kinship with 

 all the others, and a vital relation to the general 

 course of human development. Indeed, even the most 

 learned and voluminous German historians have either 

 neglected to emphasize the close tie which binds garden- 

 ing to architecture, or, while professing to do so, have not 

 followed the best historians of architecture with regard to 

 the points in question. We believe that this fault has been 

 avoided in the present series of articles. Of necessity the 

 articles will be brief, but they will give all essential his- 

 torical facts and conclusions, with sufficient description of 

 individual works to make their significance clear. 



It may be granted that the history of gardening is less 

 rich and varied than those of some of the other arts. 

 Nevertheless, it is far more varied and significant than 

 most persons realize. It is only when attention is con- 

 centrated upon any subject that its full interest appears, 

 and but little attention has in our country been given to 

 this one. What does Emerson say ? " Each work of genius 

 is the tyrant of the hour and concentrates attention on 

 itself. For the time, it is the only thing worth naming to 

 do that — be it a sonnet, an opera, a landscape, a statue, an 

 oration, the plan of a temple, of a campaign, or of a voyage 

 of discovery. Presently we pass to some other object, 

 which rounds itself into a whole as did the first ; for ex- 

 ample, a well-laid garden ; and nothing seems worth doing 

 but the laying-out of gardens." 



Nor was there ever a time or place when the laying-out 

 of gardens was of more vital concern than it is with us 

 to-day. Here in America we are confronted with problems 

 more numerous, more varied and more important than 

 those which any other age or country has seen. There 

 is no reason why the art of gardening should not be car- 

 ried in America to a higher development than any of which 

 European history tells. And the surest way to foster such 

 a development is for artist and public to acquaint them- 

 selves with the creations of the past. In this art, as in 

 architecture, the time for ignorant experiment has gone 

 by. Only catholic knowledge and cultivated taste can 

 serve as the starting points for progress. 



Longleat. 



LONGLEAT HOUSE, of which an illustration is given 

 on page 139, is one of the most famous among the 

 great Elizabethan homes of England. It stands some five 

 miles from the town of Warminster, in Wiltshire, and its 

 founder was Sir J. Thynne, who caused its erection between 

 the years 1567 and 1579. It is now the seat of the Mar- 

 quis of Bath, and is in perfect preservation. The architect 

 is supposed to have been John of Padua, which is 

 probably the fact, for the touch of an Italian hand would 

 explain the greater simplicity in outline and massing that 

 we note when Longleat is compared with other houses of 

 its time and class, while classic feeling also speaks from 

 many of the details of its treatment. But in building this 

 English country-home the artist by no means imported his 

 scheme ready-made from Italy. He wisely accommo- 

 dated himself to local tastes and adopted many local archi- 

 tectural devices. For example, the windows are without 

 conspicuous pediments, and are divided by the transoms 

 and muUions which so long survived in England after that 

 Gothic art had perished to which they owed their origin. 

 Moreover, instead of the straight fa9ades which we find in 

 Italian Renaissance palaces, here each of the four great 

 fronts is provided with bays, having those side windows 

 so beloved in England because so essential to the full reve- 



lation of the surrounding landscape. The front, most 

 prominently shown in our picture, has three such bays, 

 while the main or entrance front towards the left has four, 

 with a stately doorway and flight of steps in the centre. 

 The four great wings thus formed encircle a large interior 

 court, in the centre of which, just back of the entrance, is 

 a superb great staircase. The main wings are 220 feet in 

 length, and the side wings 164. A second entrance leads 

 into the gardens on the side-front opposite to that shown 

 in the illustration. 



The grounds around Longleat are of vast extent and 

 great beauty. One of the entrance-gates is two and a half 

 miles from the house, and from another a straight drive of 

 a mile in length leads through one of the most stately 

 avenues in England to the main doorway. The flower- 

 gardens are divided from the deer-park by a charming sheet 

 of water, and the park itself, some thirty miles in circum- 

 ference, feeds more than a thousand deer. Gilpin, in his 

 "Forest Scenery" (1791), speaks thus of the beautiful 

 situation of Longleat: "A great house stands most nobly 

 on an elevated knoll, from whence it may overlook the dis- 

 tant country, while the woods of the park screen the regu- 

 larity of the intervening cultivation. Or it stands well on 

 the side of a valley which winds along its front, and is 

 adorned with woods, or a natural stream hiding and dis- 

 covering itself among the trees at the bottom. Or it stands 

 with dignity, as Longleat does, in the centre of demesnes 

 which shelve gently down to it on every side." 



The Art of Gardening-. — An Historical Sketch. — 1. 



'T'HE art of gai-dening means the art of arranging surfaces of 

 -^ land and water, with all the forms of vegetation they sup- 

 port and all such works of architecture or sculpture as may be 

 thought desirable, according to some settled design or scheme. 

 Its productions may vary in character between the most formal 

 and the most natural-looking effects; and in size between the 

 smallest bit of verdurous ground in a city street and the widest 

 rural park. But they may always be distinguished by the fact 

 that organized beauty has been sought in their creation. 

 Horticulture aims at the development of beautiful individual 

 plants. Economic gardening, like its sister craft of agriculture, 

 so disposes the surface of the ground and the individual plants 

 that cultivation can be most easily pursued. But when we 

 speak of the art of gardening we imply a result in which, 

 though individual plants are valued and usefulness is largely 

 served, a beautiful general effect has been the main concern. 

 Of course not all the results we see as the outcome of effort in 

 this art are beautiful, but as much may be affirmed of any 

 other art, and the aim, the intention, is the thing with which 

 we must reckon in defining the field that an liistorical sketch 

 should cover. 



Gardening is thus a very complex art, serving (as I have 

 said), not beauty alone but utility also, and demanding the 

 assistance of architecture, of horticulture, botany and engineer- 

 ing. Yet it is a distinct and individual art, and its history 

 shows many periods and phases, and is always expressive, 

 to a most interesting degree, of the spiritual temper and the 

 intellectual development of the peoples who have practiced it. 

 But in tracing all the earlier stages of its story we must rely, 

 to a far greater degree than with any other art, upon mere 

 written and pictured testimony. Not only the huge monu- 

 ments of tl^e ancient architect, but the most fragile products 

 of the potter, the glass-blower and the weaver, have come 

 down to us from gray antiquity. But the gardens of the old 

 world have wholly perished, and even those which were cre- 

 ated only a few centuries ago have almost all been altered into 

 something very unlike their first estate. A garden carries 

 within itself the seeds of decay, and scarcely the most careful 

 attention could preserve it forever. We can fancy, some old 

 Roman garden, tended from age to age by skillful cultivators, 

 renewing itself time after time, and reaching us in a flourishing 

 condition. But even so, it would not be the same garden that 

 the Roman artist had created. The main outlines of its scheme 

 might be the same, but all its vegetation would have been 

 often replaced, and could hardly have been replaced in entire 

 accord with the first arrangement. And, of course, no ap- 

 proach to such care as this has ever been bestowed upon a 

 garden. Being half the work of nature, gai'dens were even less 

 likely to be cherished under difficulties than other works 

 of art ; and none decayed so quickly and entirely when once 



