European' and Japanese Gardens 



eighteenth centuries. It is e\ident that the lo\e of nature, as 

 nature, for its own sake, is a purely modern sentiment, clue in 

 lart^'e measure to the influence of the poets of the eii^fhteenth 

 and nineteenth centuries. The ancients reg'arded nature as a 

 ser\ant, not a mistress, and indulsj;ed little sentiment for nature 

 in the abstract. The same is largely true of the Renaissance 

 gardeners. They did not seek to counterfeit the meadows and 

 forests, the hills and \ales of wild nature or to bring trees and 

 shrubs and topographv into anv semblance of the picturesque 

 and accidental combinations of a natural landscape. Their 

 gardens, and jDreeminentlv those of Itai\', were each designed 

 as a decorati\'e setting to the palace or \illa, or as pleasure- 

 grounds in which what was most pleasing was the human ele- 

 ment — the e\"idence of design, s\'mmetr\', order, balance, con- 

 trast, ornament ; not the aspect of natural growth, but the 

 evidence of nature subdued to human control. 



II. 



The steps by which the Renaissance garden, based upon 

 these suggestions, reached final form, I ha\e been unable to 

 trace. No very early example remains to us, at least in the 

 shape in which it was designed. With the progress of the art 

 and changes in taste the earlier gardens must ha\e all been made 

 over, for a garden is not, like a building, a finalitv when once fin- 

 ished. It changes from season to season, and the growth and 

 decay of its \egetation alike alter its pristine aspect. W'e 

 know, however, that before the close of the fifteenth centurv 

 the gardens of Naples were celebrated for their beautv, for 

 Charles \TII, of France, writing in 1495 to Pierre de Bourlion, 

 waxes eloquent in praise of those which had come into his pos- 

 session in that city. But it was not till about 1540 that anv 

 garden received the form in which we know it to-dav, e\en in 

 its general features. The classical tendencies of architecture 

 and decoration had by this time reached their highest and finest 

 development in the works of men like Peruzzi, Antonio da San 

 Gallo the Younger, Vig^nola, Giulio Romano, Pirro Ligorio, and 

 others. The influence of the taste of Bramante and Raphael 

 was still potent, and the extravagances of the Baroque stvle 

 were still in the future. The papal court had then reached its 

 greatest splendor, and Roman societv had begun to be domi- 



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