THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



5 



can possibly be contrived : keeping in mind the notion 

 that a flower-garden is a sort of open-air apartment, it- 

 should harmonize, both in style and magnitude, with the 

 residence of which it forms a part. Only one discre- 

 pancy is permissible ; a small but handsome and tasty 

 cottage may stand in the midst of large and luxurious 

 gardens. Even then, the disproportion should not be 

 too glaring. But, except in the largest cities, a vast 

 house, a semi-palatial abode, with only a few square 

 yards of court, and no garden, or only a tiny apology for 

 one, is as offensive to good taste as it is inconvenient 

 and uncomfortable to its occupants. The style, also, of 

 the flower-garden must correspond with that of the 

 house and grounds, and carry out the date of the archi- 

 tecture. An Italian mansion, on the slope of a hill, should 

 have its terraces, vases, balustrades, and flights of steps 

 leading to the several levels of horizontal flower-beds, form- 

 ing something like what Sir T. Browne called " the pensile 

 or hanging gardens of Babylon." If the park is laid out 

 in avenues, and the house is either in the Dutch or the 

 Elizabethan style, then a geometric garden, with formal 

 evergreens, with clipped yew hedges, and even with ver- 

 dant, living sofas, obelisks, peacocks, statues, and ships 

 of box and yew, will be in harmony. While a park in 

 the Brownean style of landscape-gardening, allows the 

 flowers to be distributed in their place in the artificially- 

 natural mode (as if the gardener were composing a pic- 

 ture, or a scene for the opera), which is known all over 

 Europe as eminently the English style of gardening. 

 As a rule, the more wild and secluded the district in 

 which the house is located, the more highly finished and 

 well dressed ought the garden to be. In the highlands 

 of Scotland, in the valleys of Wales, on the moors of 

 Cornwall and Devon, the traveller h£s seen enough of 

 thickets and rocks, and of wild nature in general ; but a 

 distant glance of his trim and regular garden, a peep at 

 the top of trees and ^shrubs which are not to be found 

 on the mountain-side, recall him at once, in idea, to his 

 home, and forestall the realities of repose and comfort. 



