WO HORTICULTUBAii TOUR. 



sessed the best garden in this quarter. We found the 

 grounds extensive and well varied, considering the mono- 

 tonous flatness of the country. They are laid out in the 

 old Flemish style, with regular serpentine walks, berceaus 

 of lime-trees having openings like windows, and with long 

 straight walks, terminating in studied vista views. Where 

 the straight walks cross each other at right angles, the 

 centre of the point of intersection is shaped into an oblong 

 parterre, resembling a basket of flowers, and containing 

 showy geraniums in pots, and gaudy flowers of a more 

 hardy kind planted in the earth. 



Some things are in very bad taste. At every resting- 

 place, some kind of conceit is provided for surprising the 

 visitant : if he sit down, it is ten to one but the seat is 

 so contrived as to sink under him ; if he enter the grotto, 

 or approach the summerhousc, water is squirted from con- 

 cealed or disguised fountains, and he does not find it easy 

 to escape a wetting. The dial is provided with several 

 gnomons, calculated to shew the corresponding hour at the 

 chief capital cities of Europe ; and also with a lens, so 

 placed, that, during sunshine, the priming of a small can- 

 non falls under its focus just as the sun reaches the meri- 

 dian, when of course the cannon is discharged. 



The principal ornament of the place consists in a piece of 

 water, over which a bridge is thrown. At one end of the 

 bridge is an artificial cave, fitted up like a lion's den, the 

 head of a lion cut in stone peeping from the entrance. 

 Above the cave is a pagoda, which forms a summerhouse 

 three storeys high. At the top is a cistern, which is fill- 

 ed by means of a force-pump, and which supplies the mis- 

 chievous fountains already mentioned. 



The little lawns near the mansion-house are decorated with 

 many small plants of the double pomegranate, sweet bay, 



