542 



Garden and Forest. 



[November 13, 1889. 



secrets, that modern horticulture has reached its present 

 state of development. 



Do not attempt too much in the garden or on the farm. 

 Do not undertake more than can be done thoroughly well. 

 There will be pleasure and profit in following this piece 

 of advice. 



The Art of Gardening — An Historical Sketch. 

 XIII. — Roman Country-Seats. 



(Continued.) 



WHEN we read Pliny the younger's account of his Tuscan 

 country-seat, the strongest impression we receive is of 

 formality — a semi-architectural symmetry. Yet, a little con- 

 sideration of his words shows that natural beauties — or those 

 which seemed natural — must have played a considerable part 

 in the effect of his domain as a whole. He does not describe 

 them as he does the artificial features, perhaps because he 

 thought it less needful, perhaps because he would have found 

 it more difficult ; but his keen appreciation of them is evident, 

 and the same feeling shows in many other passages of his 

 letters. Nor were his formal arrangements inappropriate in 

 the immediate neighborhood of a house so splendid. Noth- 

 ing, indeed, could be more thoroughly in keeping with the de- 

 mands of a refined taste than the garden immediately in front 

 of his bouse, as described in the first passages, which I 

 quoted, were it not for the omnipresence of fantastically 

 clipped trees and shrubs. The presence of such topiary work 

 was, of course, more offensive here, where a beautiful natural 

 landscape appeared beyond it, than in the smaller enclosures 

 of the villa urbana, whence little was visible, very often, ex- 

 cept the neighboring gardens. But we may feel sure that in 

 any place a Greek would have protested against it, and so, too, 

 did many Latin poets. Nevertheless, it was greatly loved in 

 ancient Italy, and was, doubtless, the offspring of local taste. 

 The records of Egypt tell, indeed, of clipped trees and of shorn 

 hedges along the borders of the roads ; * but the severity 

 of Egyptian taste would hardly tolerate anything beyond 

 spherical, columnar or other simple shapes, harmonious with 

 the architectural forms about them, while the Romans had 

 hunting scenes, ships, climbing serpents, and a whole gallery 

 of like fantastic forms. 



Villas, still more splendid than Pliny's, were scattered 

 throughout the length and breadth of Italy, thickly bordering 

 the sea-coast north and south of Rome, dotting the slopes of 

 the Apennines, and nestling by the shores of Como andGarda. 

 So numerous did they become, and so vast were the spaces oc- 

 cupied by their ornamental grounds, even in the time of Cicei'o, 

 that he complained that no fields would be left for the hus- 

 bandman to fill, and Seneca cried : " There is not a hill which 

 is not covered with your gardens, that is not encircled by your 

 parks, nor far and near a lake where the roofs of Roman 

 grandees do not rise." Nor does Pliny's description give us a 

 complete idea of the extravagance displayed in these pleasure- 

 grounds, and severely satirized by many moralists. He does 

 not speak of their great vivaria and aviaries, their costly 

 green-houses, and parterres of colored flowers, .nor of the 

 magnificence often attained in the water-works which formed 

 all kinds of fountains and cascades, and even turned clocks 

 and ran organs that yielded sweet music. The chief gardener 

 was called the topiarius, so great was the love for clipped trees 

 and shrubs ; but an aqiiarius had special charge of the water- 

 works, and innumerable lesser officials attended to the utili- 

 tarian parts of the domain. The topiarius is the only one 

 whom Pliny the Elder dignifies by the name of "artist." The 

 fact that the actual designer of the grounds is not specialized 

 leads us to believe that the architect laid them out when he 

 built the house, and their character well supports the assump- 

 tion. 



Sometimes we can understand an almost wholly formal ar- 

 rangement of the pleasure-gardens ; but the larger they were, 

 the more features of a natural sort, of course, they were likely 

 to contain, and after a while there seems to have been at least 

 a partial reaction against symmetry and stiffness. One is in- 

 clined to fancy that it may have been brought about by the 

 protests of the poets, as was the similar reaction in northern 

 Europe in the eighteenth century. Here, as in the urban 

 pleasure-ground, Nero again appears as the exponent of a 

 taste for natural loveliness. A villa which he possessed in the 

 Apennines, and which was excavated not long ago by Profes- 

 sor Lanciani, lay in a wild gorge, cut by the Anio, which fell 



*Ebers : "An Egj^ptian Princess." This book, like those of Becker, is a ro- 

 mance, but its author is prominent among the Egyptologists of our day. 



in three cascades into the valley below. Dams retained the 

 water in three large lakes, but their artificiality was not appar- 

 ent, and from the domain as a whole "art had been thor- 

 oughly banished," says the explorer, "and everything left to 

 the free play of nature." Hunting-ledges stood on either side 

 of the gorge, connected together by a daring bridge, and the 

 lakes were overshadowed by great rocks and enormous Oaks. 

 Indeed, as time went on, a truly romantic feeling for wild 

 mountain scenery seems to have developed in these Romans, 

 satiated with symmetrical splendors. Trajan built himself a 

 hunting-lodge high above Nero's, at the very source of the 

 Anio, 3,200 feet above the sea-level, where the prospect was 

 of alpine grandeur and variety ; and the ruins on the top of 

 Mount Etna are believed to be those of a villa built by Hadrian, 

 3,631 feet higher than the summit of the Rigi, 3,277 feet higher 

 than the summit of Mount Washington.* 



No place was more famous for its multitude of splendid 

 country-seats than Tibur, the modern Tivoli. Here lay Cicero's 

 estate, with winter and summer dwellings, great baths, now 

 with hot water and again with cold, two gymnasiums after the 

 Grecian pattern, numerous basins and grottoes, and water- 

 works so well supplied that he jestingly called the place his 

 " Nile." Pompey and Hortensius, Crassus and Brutus and 

 LucuUus were his neighbors, each with a stately domain; and 

 the mother of Augustus, like Tiberius himself, was attracted 

 by the natural beauty and the fashion of the place. In later 

 years came the Emperor, Hadrian, too, creating, a few miles 

 from the modern hamlet, the villa which history still ranks 

 among the wonders of the world. It is now a mass of almost un- 

 decipherable ruins, but its circuit can be traced for about half 

 a dozen miles ; and though some modern pleasure-grounds 

 have been even larger than this, none of them can give us a 

 true idea of the splendor of Hadrian's home. No accurate 

 description has come down to us, but we know that every- 

 thing that had been attempted elsewhere was here achieved 

 in a more magnificent way. A whole army of artists traveled 

 in the Emperor's service, buying Greek and Egyptian works, 

 or copying originals that could not be purchased, or studying 

 how to imitate them at home. Everything was reproduced, 

 including seven great temples typical of seven different for- 

 eign countries, and, to take a striking contrast, the abode of 

 the dead, as poets had pictured it. But the most interesting 

 fact to note is that, amid this multitude of buildings, statues, 

 paintings and formal pleasure-grounds, at least one spot was 

 transformed into the likeness of a romantic natural glen. The 

 famous Vale of Tempe, in Greece, was copied as accurately 

 as human skill could compass. When we remember that this 

 was but the chief among many villas which Hadrian owned, 

 that Tiberius had twelve in various places, and that even pri- 

 vate citizens seldom contented themselves with one or two, 

 we gain a faint idea of what the aspect of Italy must have been 

 in the golden days of the imperial power. 



The Romans, like the Greeks, learned the lavish use of cut- 

 flowers only in the later years of their national life. The ex- 

 tent to which the cultivation of flowers, and especially of Roses, 

 must, however, then have been carried on, is implied in many 

 familiar anecdotes. Nero's dining-room, for instance, had an 

 ivory ceiling, artfully contrived to shower Roses upon his 

 guests ; Heliogabalus caused the floors of his apartments, and 

 even his porticoes, to be thickly strewn with Roses, over which 

 a golden net was stretched to keep the mass in place ; and in 

 water-festivals, the surface of the lake was sometimes so 

 closely covered with floating flowers that it wholly disap- 

 peared from view. Many large areas in Italy were devoted 

 to the growing of Roses for Rome, and, in winter, whole car- 

 goes were imported from Egypt. It would be interesting to 

 know what methods were used to keep them fresh on the long 

 journey, f 



The Violet, Narcissus, Gladiolus, Lily, Hyacinth, Iris, Crocus, 

 Amaranth and Poppy were especially common in Roman gar- 

 dens — the Lily, by Pliny's witness, being esteemed next to the 

 Rose. But their list of flowers was very short, indeed, com- 

 pared with ours, and the gardener must have been chiefly oc- 

 cupied in arranging his materials well, not, as too often to-day, 

 in increasing their variety.! 

 New York. M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



* Lanciani : "Ancient Rome in the Light of Modern Discoveries." 



t Pliny speaks of garlands being brought from India, and even from countries 

 further to the eastward, but it must be thought that these were of artificial flowers, 

 and the idea is borne out by his statement, that no Rose-garlands were at all 

 esteemed in his day unless entirely composed of petals sewn together with the 

 needle, while the "most refined" custom of all was to "present garlands com- 

 posed of nard leaves or of silk of divers colors steeped in unguents." 



X Wuestemann is the best authority on the horticulture of the ancients. I have 

 been unable to obtain his books, but Becker quotes freely from them in the notes 

 to his "Gallus." See, also, De Candolle's "Origin of Cultivated Plants." 



