482 



Garden and Forest. 



[October 9, i88g. 



own. Under the conditions of our modern life some op- 

 portunity for summer rest, recreation and change of place 

 is of great importance to our people. For the inhabitants 

 of the interior of the country, a few weeks by the sea has 

 a greater vitalizing and restorative effect than any other 

 accessible experience. But the time is not far before us 

 when no one who does not own land along the shore will 

 have any right to camp near the ocean, or even to walk 

 over the ground, on any part of the coast that is fit for 

 comfortable occupancy. Parks and pic-nic-grounds along 

 the shore will be fenced in and rented to those who are 

 able to pay for them, and a fee will be charged for admis- 

 sion to places where the view of the sea is good, as peo- 

 ple formerly had to pay for every glimpse of the Falls of 

 Niagara. The best places will be taken first, then those 

 not so good, until only the swamps and marshy shores 

 will be left for outsiders, for the people who cannot be- 

 come proprietors along the coast. 



Men who are not yet old have spent summers in delight- 

 ful solitude at places on the Atlantic coast where there are 

 now streets of costly houses. These changes are inevita- 

 ble, and they will go on with increasing rapidity. Some 

 good places along the shore ought to be kept free to all 

 orderly visitors forever, to the end that men may walk and 

 meditate by the waves and have their souls uplifted by 

 musing unforbidden where 



" Still shouts the inspiring sea." 



Such seaside parks might be owned by the state, or by 

 the towns in which they are situated, or by churches or 

 incorporated societies. The method of holding them is a 

 matter of expediency or convenience, but land for this pur- 

 pose should be secured at many points within the next few 

 years. The matter is of grave and far-reaching importance. 

 Our children are likely to see an almost continuous town 

 along all the healthful and accessible portions of the At- 

 lantic coast-line, with all the land so improved and occu- 

 pied as to exclude all but the owners. The people of the 

 whole country, through all the generations of coming time, 

 should have some right in the encompassing ocean and 

 along its shores. 



The Art of Gardening — An Historical Sketch. 



XL— Rome. 



" TT* HE trees," says Pliny the elder, "formed the first tem- 

 -^ pies" of the gods of the Romans. Useful gardens seem 

 from the first to have been more beloved in Rome than in 

 Greece. The kings, according to Pliny, cultivated them with 

 their own hands ; and early attempts at horficulture are im- 

 plied in the familiar anecdote which represents Tarquinius 

 Superbus symbolically decapitating the Poppies of his garden. 

 Pliny mentions window-gardens as of comparatively early 

 origin, although it is impossible to determine the exact period 

 to which he refers. " In former times," he says, " the inhabit- 

 ants of Rome, with their mimic gardens in their windows, day 

 after day presented the reflex of the country to the eye, when 

 as yet the multitude of atrocious burglaries, almost innumera- 

 ble, had not compelled us to shut out all such sights with bars 

 from the passers-by." 



But it was only when intercourse with Greece, and through 

 her with the customs of Persian luxury, became close and 

 constant, that pleasure-gardening was pursued on any exten- 

 sive scale. The first great Roman gardens of which we know 

 were formed during the last century of the Republic, but even 

 then many conscientious citizens thought pleasure-gardening 

 a reprehensible form of luxury. Cato would have allowed 

 only gardens of utility, and the rich Pomponius Atticus pub- 

 licly protested that he had no more than " a little pleasure- 

 wood" near his dwelling. It was during the first three cen- 

 turies of the Chrisfian era that Rome itself developed into a 

 veritable city of gardens, and that its wealthier citizens luxu- 

 riated in vast country homes amid a wealth of architectural 

 and natural or semi-natural beauty which the modern imagina- 

 fion can hardly picture. 



In these sumptuous days important city homes had, of 

 course, their court-yards decorated with trees and flowers, 

 while the crowded state of the city brought roof-gardens 

 (^solaria) into general use. The roof was carefully prepared 

 with successive layers of Larch-wood, Beech-boards, broken 



stones and mortar, and potsherds, and then finished with a 

 pavement of stone, brick or even mosaic* The plants were 

 cultivated in large square boxes and in vases of stone or lead, 

 or even set out in beds as though upon the solid earth. f 

 Large trees were grown on these roofs, and a constant feature 

 was the Vine-arbor or pergola, which is still familiar to the 

 eyes of all travelers in Italy. Seneca makes bitter complaint 

 of the extravagance shown in these silvce iti tectis. 



The design of several small suburban gardens is preserved 

 at Pompeii, and, although it was a Grecian city, similar ar- 

 rangements prevailed in those of Roman origin. They were 

 formal little spots, with walls and colonnades, altars and small 

 temples, basins and sculptured figures. In one can be traced 

 twelve large beds, evidently for the cultivation of flowers; but 

 the inhospitable lava-soil usually prescribed the use of great 

 boxes or long stone troughs. Climbing plants covered the 

 walls, or else these were painted with garden scenes, ficti- 

 tiously extending the narrow area. In the larger provincial 

 towns an outer garden was often connected with the inner 

 one, sometimes forming a vineyard or orchard, but sometimes 

 a little wood or a diversified bit of natural-looking landscape, 

 with grottoes and rills and multitudes of ornamental birds. J 



It is almost impossible, within brief limits, to give even 

 a faint idea of the condition of Rome itself when its urban 

 and suburban gardens were in their prime. Towards the end 

 of the third century after Christ, says Lanciani,| " there were 

 in ancient Rome eight campi, or commons, green spaces set 

 apart mostly for foot-races and gymnastic exercises, . . . and 

 about thirty parks or gardens which, first laid out by wealthy 

 citizens, . . . had been absorbed into the public domain by 

 right of purchase, by bequest or by confiscation." To this 

 list of open planted spaces, free to the people at all hours of 

 the day or night, must be added the cemeteries, " those mar- 

 ble cities of the dead, shadowed by stately Cypresses and 

 Weeping Willows ; || the sacred enclosures of temples, with 

 their colonnades and fountains, . . . and lastly the great 

 thermcE," which, nominally baths, were really " gigantic 

 clubs," furnished with every convenience for the enjoyment 

 of in-door and out-door pleasures. 



The largest of the "commons "was the Campus Martins, 

 a vast level space — filled with buildings and play-grounds and 

 water-works, and surrounded literally by miles of sumptuous 

 colonnaded porticoes enclosing beautiful gardens — which lay 

 beside the Tiber and extended from the foot of the Pincian 

 Hill as far as the present Vatican Bridge in one direcfion, and 

 to the Arch of Titus in another.^ The parks and gardens 

 proper were simply omnipresent. " The city," writes Lan- 

 ciani, " was not only surrounded and enclosed by them but 

 intersected in every direction. . . . Rome occupies the ^^«/- 

 weg of the Tiber, a plain less than a mile wide and about three 

 miles long, flanked east and west by parallel ranges of hills. 

 . . . Both ranges were covered with gardens. Let us begin 

 with the east range overlooking the Campus Martius. The 

 Pincian Hill, the promenade of modern Rome, was occupied 

 by the magnificent gardens of Acilius Glabrio. . . . Where 

 the Villa Medici . . . now stands were the gardens of the 

 Anician family. . . . The southwest slope of the same Pin- 

 cian Hill . . . was occupied by the gardens of Lucullus. . . . 

 The valley between the Pincian and the Quirinal, ... a 

 charming and undulating district with glens and overhang- 

 ing rocks, rivulets of pure water and other natural attractions, 

 was the seat of the gardens of Sallust, the finest and most 

 celebrated of ancient Rome." Farther south lay a long line 

 of private and imperial gardens, larger and smaller, " all 

 forming one stretch of verdure more than two miles long and 

 over half a mile broad." In earher times these hillside dis- 

 tricts had been covered with burial-grounds ; but, as Profes- 

 sor Lanciani has recently discovered by excavation, these were 

 gradually but systematically buried beneath enormous masses 

 of pure earth, and turned from " pestilential dens into smiling 

 gardens." Maecenas began the work on the Esquiline Hill, 

 prompted by a desire not more for the aesthetic than for the 

 sanitary benefit that would result* 



*Jaeger, Gartenkunst und Gaerten Sonst und yetzt. 



t Becker, Gallus. 



X Martial calls these suburban gardens rus in urbe, now a familiar phrase. 



§ "Ancient Rome in the Light of Modern Discoveries," 



W The Weeping Willow was first introduced into modern Europe from the Levant 

 about the year 1720. It would be interesting to know whether our learned author has 

 documentary evidence for the satementthat it was a familiar tree in ancient Rome. 

 The Chinese have known it, however, for many centuries, and that there was a 

 certain amount of commerce between China and imperial Rome is proved by the 

 fact that in the great collections of objects of art and curiosity displayed beneath 

 some of the public porticoes. Professor Lanciani cites some or Chinese origin. 



IF Jaeger. 



* See Horace, Sat. i., 8, 14. 



