GOLDEN AGE OF TOPIARY 15 
Produced too slowly ever to decay ; 
Of form and aspect too magnificent 
To be destroyed.” 
- Heslington, near York, still boasts an ancient Topiary 
garden, where all the clipped trees are of yew. ‘This, 
as well as the clipped hedges of Rockingham, and the 
hedges and clipped trees at Erbistock, date, accord- 
ing to the Hon. Alicia Amherst, from about 1560. 
Other trees and shrubs were also used by the tonsile 
artists, and even Rosemary was not omitted. Barnaby 
Googe (about 1578) observed that the women folk 
planted it and trimmed it into shapes ‘‘as in the fashion 
of a cart, a peacock, or such things as they fancy.” 
William Harrison, Rector of Radwinter, and Canon of 
Windsor, who wrote ‘‘ A Description of England” con- 
tained in ‘‘ Holinshed’s Chronicles,” has already been 
referred to. He was a most observant man and one 
who in his own picturesque language ‘‘ had an especiall 
eye unto the truth of things”; from 1586 to 1593 he 
was Canon of Windsor, and therefore anything he has 
to say about gardens is of unusual interest. His keen 
patriotism shines brightly through all his writings, and 
his high opinion of his own land is not in any way 
reduced when he comes to discourse upon gardens, 
for he writes: ‘<I am persuaded that, albeit the gardens 
of the Hesperides were in times past so greatly 
accounted of, because of their delicacy, yet, if it were 
possible to have such an equal judge as by certain 
knowledge of both were able to pronounce upon them, 
I doubt not but he would give the prize unto the 
gardens of our days, and generally over all Europe, in 
comparison of those times wherein the old exceeded.” 
Early in the succeeding century, however, we come 
upon some more positive evidence of the use of Topiary 
work. Lawson, in 1618, shows more clearly that 
Topiary had become an important branch of the art of 
