ON THE PROGRESS AND PRINCIPLES OF ORNAMENTAL GARDENING. 43 



In searching for causes for this similarity, the most probable would seem to 

 be, in the first place, that though the character of the civilisation of the two 

 periods is different as far as political influences are concerned, yet that many 

 other circumstances continued the same, and many, both of climate and social 

 custom, continue their influence over agricultural and horticultural pursuits, in 

 modern as they did in ancient Italy, and so still impart a similar character to the 

 villa * or pleasure-garden. 



Secondly, that neither ancient nor modern Italy advanced farther than those 

 periods of civilisation, where art arrived progressively at perfection, abuse, and 

 decline ; and in neither had the degree of prosperity necessary to the stimula- 

 tion of art continued long enough to reach that epoch when a necessary return to 

 nature and first principles takes place, producing a new combination, where nature 

 leads, embellished, but not encumbered by art ; a combination more nearly 

 attained in the best examples of landscape gardening in England than perhaps in 

 any other ornamental gardens ever attempted. The style of ancient and modern 

 Italy, that of terraces, fountains, and temples, which may be called architectural 

 gardening, for even the trees were constrained by the shears to form straight lines 

 or arcades, found its way from Italy to France, where it was carried to its 

 highest pitch of perfection and abuse under Louis XIV. in the gardens of 

 Versailles, for which the famous Boboli gardens of Florence served as the model. 

 This taste soon afterwards began to be practised in England, but not upon a 

 large scale until imported from the Continent by William the Third, from which 

 circumstance it was erroneously called the Dutch style. It reigned supreme, 

 however, for but a short time, when the increasing prosperity of the nation 

 brought us to that period when certain impulses of art having passed through the 

 phases of their highest perfection, abuse, and decline, — first principles and nature 

 are again resorted to, by which, if the stimulation of prosperity continue, the most 

 beautiful results are effected. 



The first attempts at ornamental gardening must be deviations from nature — 

 squaring, levelling, &c. &c. ; in short, art applied in its simplest and most obvious 

 forms — this impetus of deviation from nature once given, must go on increasing 

 to a certain point, and^ in a regular and progressive advance from the squaring 

 and levelling of the first gardener, arrive eventually at a state similar to that of 

 the Italian or French style, evolving in its progress many new elements of effect 

 and beauty. Then comes the decline, and then, naturally, the return to the 

 first simple principles, which had given the original impetus to the work : yet 

 not with the paucity of means possessed by the first squarer and leveller, but with 

 a mass of principles and rudiments which enables the newly-inspired artist to 

 recommence the race at a point very far in advance of his original predecessor. 

 The return to simpler and purer principles of beauty in this country was doubtless 



* In Italy a villa does not mean so much the residence as the garden,— the Villa Reale at Naples, is a public 

 garden or promenade, without any residence. 



G 2 



