302 SYLVA FLORIFERA. 



cedency in the groves of our ancestors ; and it 

 is now deemed high treason, in the statutes 

 alamode, to name either this tree or a right 

 angle in the dominions of a modern British 

 gardener. 



" Say, shall we muse along yon arching shades, 

 Whose awful gloom no brightening ray pervades ?" 



The clipping of trees, we are told by Mar- 

 tial, was first introduced by Cneius Matius, a 

 friend of Augustus ; and in the account which 

 Pliny the younger gives of his Tusculan gar- 

 dens, we read that the trees were planted to 

 form circles and semicircles, and that the box- 

 trees were cut with shears, so as to form ani- 

 mals, obelisks — and even the name of Pliny 

 was represented in verdant box. This style of 

 laying out gardens seems to have been followed 

 on a larger scale by Le Notre, who planned the 

 celebrated gardens of Versailles, which cost 

 Louis XiV. between eight and nine hundred 

 thousand pounds sterling; and which are well 

 calculated to display courtly pomp, and that 

 kind of magnificent revelry which this monarch 

 indulged in. But to us this heavy grandeur 

 appears more gloomy than the thickest forest, 

 excepting when the alleys and walks are 

 crowded with company, and the waterworks 

 in full action; then every beholder must be 



