European and Japanese Gardens 



more frequently being brought into the great scheme by means 

 of long straight avenues cut across through the thickest woods 

 and giving centers of interest from which again new lines of 

 view were opened out, and out, till wide regions, many miles 

 in extent and of the most diversified character, were held in 



PLAN OF THE PALACE AND GARDENS OF FONTAIN EBLEAU 



leash, as it were, — their wildness preserved as their most pre- 

 cious quality, yet netted and meshed across b}' lanes, round 

 points, paths and avenues, which give them a fascinating sem- 

 blance of complete submission to civilizing influences. Who 

 has traversed the marvelous forest of Fontainebleau, for exam- 

 ple, but with a new sense of the wildness, the strangeness, the 

 indomitable spirit of nature ? Yet all that wild territory is but 

 a vast garden, its design composed and adjusted with the last 

 degree of skill, and cultivated with a care as extreme in its 

 large way as that with which, in their more intimate fashion, 

 the Luxembourg gardens, for instance, are dressed and cod- 

 dled. 



The principal professional garden-makers of the Renais- 

 sance were the three Mollets, Bernard Palissv, and Olivier de 

 Serres, the last being rather a practical man than a designer. 

 The Mollets seem to have been a sort of dvnasty in the art, the 

 first of the name having created for the Due d'Aumale the 

 famous gardens about the Chateau d'Anet, of which practically 

 nothing is left. The castle itself has been razed, with the 

 exception of some of the loveliest portions, which were removed 

 to the court of the School of Fine Arts in Paris. Claude Mol- 



107 



