5o6 



Garden and Forest. 



[October 23, i88g. 



in vigorous life, civilization itself would decay. Without 

 these higher moral qualities a nation would not fight even 

 for freedom, though it might try to buy it. The need of 

 serious thought and hard work is not to be altogether re- 

 gretted, or regarded as a discouraging condition ; and even 

 such a manifestation as the raid on Central Park may 

 have its use in making this need still more apparent and 

 urgent. The necessity of struggle is abiding, normal and 

 stimulating. 



Chatsworth. 



IN the heart of the beautiful Derbyshire country lie, twelve 

 miles from one another, two of the most famous counti'v 

 homes of England — Haddon Hall, one of the residences of the 

 Duke of Rutland, and Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of 

 Devonshire. At Haddon Hall the house itself is the chief ob- 

 ject of interest, being a most picturesque and beautiful struc- 

 ture, no part of which is of later date than the fifteenth century; 

 the once magnificent park was plowed up for cultivation 

 some seventy years ago, the chief residence of the duke being 

 now Belvoir Castle. At Chatsworth, however, the grounds are 

 even more magnificent and famous than the house. The es- 

 tate is said to have been granted by William the Conqueror to 

 his natural son, William Peveril, and is familiar to readers of 

 Scott's " Peveril of the Peak." In the reign of Elizabeth it was 

 bought by Sir W. Cavendish, who commenced a residence 

 that was finished l.^y his widow, the famous Countess of 

 Shrewsbury. But this house was swept away in the first years 

 of the eighteenth century to make room for an imposing 

 structure to which wide-spreading wings were added by the 

 sixth Duke of Devonshire, Avho made its grounds to rank 

 among the wonders of the world.* 



When the first of American landscape-gardeners, A. J. 

 Downing, visited England in 1850, this duke and his head 

 gardener, Joseph Paxton, gave him hospitable entertainment, 

 and, from a long letter which he wrote home to the Horticul- 

 turist, we shall take many of the following descriptive pas- 

 sages : t 



The house — palace would be a better word — stands in a val-' 

 ley, and therefore makes a less imposing effect as the visitor 

 approaches than do some other English homes of perhaps 

 smaller architectural pretensions. But if the site is thus dis- 

 advantageous in one way, it conduces vastly in other ways 

 to the beauty of the domain. The surrounding hills, of pic- 

 turesque outline and from 300 to 400 feet in height, form from 

 every point of view a beautiful background and setting for the 

 park ; and, their sides being tilled with prolific springs, it has 

 been possible to utilize water in the pleasure-grounds to a far 

 greater extent than in any other English estate. 



The park measures about nine miles in circumference, and 

 its surface is beautifully diversified with hill and dale. The 

 visitor usually enters it by the Edensor Gate, which takes its 

 name from a little village near by, which was wholly rebuilt 

 by the sixth duke, and, with its thirty or forty charming cot- 

 tages, is, says Downing, " precisely what everybody imagines 

 the possibility of doing and what no one but a king ora subject 

 with a princely fortune and a taste not always born with 

 princes, could do." Each cottage has its garden and stands 

 among beautiful trees, and a wide village green, a village 

 play-ground, school, drying-ground and fountain serve the 

 common comfort as well as delight the eye by their tasteful 

 disposition. From the village to the house "is about two 

 miles through a park, which is a broad valley, say a couple of 

 miles wide by half a dozen long . . . backed by wooded hills 

 and sylvan slopes . . . with a lovely English river, the Derwent, 

 running like a silver cord . . . andgrouped with noble droop- 

 ing Limes, Oaks and Elms that are scattered over its broad sur- 

 face. . . . After driving about a mile the palace bursts upon 

 your view, the broad valley-park spread out below and before 

 it, the richly-wooded hills rising behind it, the superb Italian 

 gardens lying around it . . . the whole, a palace of Arcadia." 

 The house forms a great quadrangle, in the centre of which is 

 a magnificent fountain. The Italian gardens are a "series of 

 broad terraces on two or three levels, which surround the pal- 

 ace, and which, containing half a dozen acres or more of 

 highly-dressed garden scenery, separate the pleasure-grounds 

 and the house from the more sylvan and rural park. ... Of 

 course, the Italian gai'dens are laid out in that symmetrical 

 style which best accords with a grand mass of architecture, 



* Mary Queen of Scots was confined for thirteen years in tlie old house at Chats- 

 worth, and here the pliilosopher Hobbes passed many of his days. 



tThe Horticulturist, vol. v., p. 217, November, 1850. See also vol. i., p. 297, where 

 another pen likewise describes the wonders of Chatsworth. 



and are decorated with fine vases, statues and fountains. . . . 

 A surface of real dark green velvet of a dozen acres would 

 scarcely soothe the eye more by its look of softness and 

 smoothness than the turf in the Italian gardens at Chatsworth. 

 . . . But the crowning glory of Chatsworth is its foun- 

 tains. . . ." From the gardens, which extend along the whole 

 house-front of 800 feet, one sees the "carpet of velvet divided 

 by broad alleys enriched by masses of the richest flowers and 

 enlivened by foimtains of various forms." And further away 

 is a " mirror-like lake, set in turf and overhung by a noble ave- 

 nue of drooping Lime-trees, beyond which you catch a vista 

 of the distant hills. . . . Out of this limpid sheet springs up a 

 fountain so high that as you look upward and fairly hold your 

 breath with astonishment, you almost expect it, with its next 

 leap, to reach the sky; and yet, with all this vast power and 

 volume, it is so light and airy and beautiful . . . that you will 

 not be convinced that it is not a production of nature like Niag- 

 ara. This is the ' Emperor fountain,' the highest in the world 

 — about the height, I should say, of Trinity Church steeple. J 

 It is only suffered to play on calm days, as the weight of the 

 falling water, if blown aside by a high wind, would seriously in- 

 jure the pleasure-grounds. . . . As the eye turns to the left the 

 wooded hill which forms the rich forest background to this 

 scene seems to have run mad with cataracts." Towards the 

 base of the liill stands a circular water temple, from which the 

 water rushes out with tremendous force to fall at the back of 

 the gardens down a long flight of very broad marble steps, 

 giving the effect of a waterfall more than a hundred feet high." 



Beyond the terraces and flower gardens and more formal 

 lawns "the path becomes wild, and, after a turn, you enter 

 upon a scene the very opposite to all that I have been describ- 

 ing. You take it for a rocky wilderness. The rocks are of 

 vast size, and, indeed, of all sizes, with thickets of Rhododen- 

 drons and Azaleas growing among them, Ivy and other vines 

 climbing over them, and foot-paths winding through them." 

 Here, again, are many waterfalls and streams. " Nothing can 

 well look wilder or more natural than this spot ; and yet this 

 . . . rock-garden of six acres has all been created. Every one 

 of these rocks has been brought here — some of them from two 

 or thi^ee miles away. It is just as wild a scene as one finds on 

 the skirts of some wooded limestone ridge in America . . . 

 yet all traces of art are obliterated. You wish to go onward. 

 No, that you see is impossible ; a huge rock weighing fifty or 

 sixty tons exactly stops up the path. Your companion smiles, 

 and with a single touch of his hand the rock turns slowly on 

 its centre and the path is unobstructed. There is no noise 

 and nothing visible to explain the mystery. . . . One of the 

 greatest beauties of Chatsworth lies in the diversity of surface, 

 which . . . offers excellent opportunities for the production of 

 a succession of scenes now highly ornate and artistic . . . now 

 romantic and picturesque." 



Closely connected with the name and fame of Sir Joseph 

 Paxton is the magnificent conservatory which stands at about 

 five minutes' walk from the house in the centre of a level for- 

 est glade surrounded by fine old trees. It is 300 feet in length 

 and 145 in width, and covers about an acre of ground ; and 

 directly through it runs the wide carriage-drive. " All the 

 riches of the tropics," says Downing, " are grown hei'e, planted 

 in the soil as if in their native climate. . . . The surface is not 

 entirely level, but there are rocky hills and steep walks wind- 

 ing over them ; and lofty as the roof is (seventy feet), some of 

 the Palms of South America have already nearly reached the 

 glass." A large pond forms a feature of this conservatory, 

 and a gallery is carried all around it, whence the best view of 

 its tropical splendors can be obtained. One notable plant in 

 Downing's time was an Amhcrstia iiobilis, the only specimen 

 in Europe, which had been procured in Burmah by a collector 

 specially sent by the Duke. Paxton's success in building this 

 conservatory, which he covered not with flat panes of glass, 

 but according to what is called the " ridge and furrowsystem," 

 induced him to send in a competitive design when the gov- 

 ernment was contemplating the erection of a great structure 

 for the first "World's Fair" in 1851, and so great seemed the 

 practical utility of his novel scheme that his services were 

 chosen in preference to those of any architect. The triumph 

 he achieved in his exhibition-building is a matter of history, 

 and no one thought him too highly honored by that " handle 

 to his name," which had never before been bestowed upon a 

 man in his position. The building itself, transferred to Syden- 

 ham, is the famous "Crystal Palace" of to-day. 



But in the grounds of Chatsworth, as well as in the conserv- 

 atory, the sixth duke revealed his passion for horticulture and 



t The height of this fountain is 267 feet. The next highest in the world, at Wil- 

 helmshohe near Cassel, is 190 feet, while the loftiest jet at Versailles rises only to 

 a height of ninety feet. 



