Book I. 



GARDENING IN POLAND. 



61 



276. The head operative gardeners of Russia are almost all foreigners or sons of 

 foreigners. Sometimes a nobleman sends a slave as an apprentice to a gardener, for his 

 own future use ; but generally the assistant labourers are mere Russian boors, slaves of 

 the lord ; or other slaves who have obtained permission to travel and work on their own 

 account for a few years. These boors make very tractable labourers ; for the Russian is 

 imitative and docile, to a high degree. They require, however, to be excited by interest 

 or fear. The freed slaves on the government estates in the Ukraine, Mary Holderness 

 informs us [Notes on the Crimea, &c. 1821.), dig sitting and smoking. 



277. The garden-artists of Russia are the English or German head-gardeners attached 

 to the establishment of the emperor, or of some eminent noble. Gould, Potemkin's 

 gardener, was the Brown of Russia in Catherine's time. This man had a character in 

 some degree analogous to that of his master ; he lived in splendor, kept horses and women, 

 and gave occasionally entertainments to the nobility. A few years ago he returned to 

 England, and died at an advanced age in 1816, at Ormskirk in Lancashire,- his native town. 



A foreigner once established as head-gardener to the emperor, or any of the first nobility in Russia, 

 becomes in some degree a despot, like his master, and unless he commits very gross errors indeed, his 

 conduct is never enquired into, nor docs he lose his place but with life, or return home. He is not very 

 liberally paid, but he enjoys every comfort the state of society there affords ; lives in a house that would 

 be reckoned a considerable mansion in England, and has abundance of servants, and a carriage and 

 horses, at his command. His country, and its broad cloth, procure him the respect of the nobles, and the 

 dread of the slaves ; the former he may render tributary by presents of seeds, and the latter he may kick 

 and boat at pleasure. If at any time he goes too far, a few radishes to the police-bailiffs, or a few peaches, 

 or a melon, to the chevaliers their masters, will restore every thing to harmony. 



SuBSECT. 6. Russian Gardening, as a Science, and as to the Authors it has produced. 



278. Science of evert/ kind stagnates in Russia. However adroit the foreign gar- 

 deners may be, in adapting practices to the climate, it can hardly be expected, in the 

 circumstances in which they are placed, that they should increase the knowledge brought 

 with them. Separated from their friends, surrounded by strangers using a language 

 with which they never become familiar, without the means of procuring new books, and 

 rarely coming in contact with intelligent gardeners or naturalists; much of the know- 

 ledge they carried with them, is unavoidably forgotten or neglected. We regret to add, 

 that it has been remarked by various travellers, that even the moral sense of Englishmen, 

 who settle in Russia, becomes in time contaminated by the baneful influence of Russian 

 manners. The want of common honor and honesty which pervades all ranks of the 

 natives in Russia, from the first minister to the meanest slave, is incredible. One won- 

 ders at first, how such an immoral state of society can exist ; but the refined moral habits 

 of civilised nations, like their refinements in cookery and dress, may all be traced to the 

 simple principle of self-preservation : and as a savage can put up with a homely fare 

 and a coarse garb, so it would appear a barbarous people may hang together by a sort of 

 tattered moral principle. 



279. We know of no original Russian author on gardening. There is a poem. On 

 Gardens, by Samboursky, translated into the French language by Masson de Blamont : 

 there is also a poem on glass, by the Russian poet Lomanosow, which, as containing a 

 eulogium on hot-houses, may be considered as belonging to this subject. Some transla- 

 tions have been published in German ; and various papers on botanical, physiological, 

 and agricultural subjects, appear from time to time, in the Transactions of the Imperial 

 (Economical Society. 



Sect. VIII. Of the Rise, Progress, and j)resent State of Gardening in Poland. 



280. Gardening, as an art of design, was introduced into Poland by the electoral kings 

 about the end of the seventeenth century, and especially by Stanislaus Augustus, the third 

 elector. 



281. In respect to gardens in the geometric style of design, the most ancient royal ex- 

 ample is the Jardin Electoral de Saxe. It was never completed, and is now a public 

 garden. Le Jardin KraszinsJd is another public garden ; but by far the most remarkable 

 is that of Lazienki, or the Bath, formed by the last king, on the site of an ancient park, 

 at Ujasdow, within the suburbs of the city. At the beginning of the reign of Stanislaus, 

 in 1764, it was a marshy wood, planted with alders, with some canals and other stagnated 

 pieces of water, near which was a grotesque edifice, called the Bath, and from which this 

 park takes its name. 



The palace of Lazienki {fig. 25.), a beautiful piece of Roman architecture, from the designs of Camsitzer, 

 a German artist, is placed on an island in a considerable piece of water. It consists of a centre and two 

 wings. The centre is placed in the middle of a narrow part of the lake, and the wings are on opposite 

 shores, and joined to the centre by arches with orangeries over. The entrance is by a carriage -portico, in 

 one of the wings, to which you arrive without seeing the lake ; and on entering the orangery, its first effect 

 is surprising and delightful. On the north shore of this lake is an open amphitheatre of stone with its 

 orchestra on the brink of the water ; and near the margin an island of trees, which served as the prosce- 

 nium. This theatre was at all times open to the public ; and in addition to theordinary exhibitions, ships and 

 naval engagements were occasionally exhibited. The gaiety which reigned here during the first years of 

 the reign of Stanislaus, the singular effect of the illuminations, the ships, and the resounding of the music 



