xviii 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



general cultivation are the cabbage tribes, including the Brus- 

 sels sprout, white beet, parsnep, carrots, yellow and white tur- 

 nips, peas, beans, kidney-beans, potatoes, &c. : the fruits are 

 currants, apples, and pears, and the vines are often trained upon 

 their cottages. Their flowers are double wall-flowers, rockets, 

 stocks, pinks, roses, and honey-suckles. 



Gardening in France was little attended to before the eighth 

 century, when Charlemagne introduced some particular fruits, 

 and recommended the use of vineyards and orchards. Louis 

 the Fourteenth, about the middle of the seventeenth century, 

 introduced splendour in design ; and about the close of the 

 eighteenth century, English gardening began to be adopted in 

 France, and was pursued for a time with considerable enthusiasm. 

 The works of the French on gardening are luminous, and exhibit 

 an enlarged knowledge of the subject, but the charge against 

 them is not without foundation, that their practice has not kept 

 pace with the science which their writings display. English 

 gardening in France, during the Consulate was little attended to ; 

 several places were, however, laid out or altered by Blaikie. 

 Since the Revolution little has been done in the way of improve- 

 ment : the unsettled state of the people may be some excuse. 



Few cottagers in France are without their little gardens, and 

 they display, particularly in the northern parts, considerable 

 neatness in the management of them. The gardeners of the 

 nobility, for the most part, are very illiterate, and ignorant of 

 the first and most common principles of their profession : they 

 are no better than the common labourers employed in digging 

 an English garden ; and, under such circumstances, gardening 

 cannot be expected to make any rapid strides towards per- 

 fection. 



Buflbn, the celebrated naturalist, was so enamoured with his 

 garden, that he erected a pavilion in it, in which he could study 

 without interruption. To this retreat this great man daily 

 retired at five o'clock in the morning, and was then inaccessible 

 to all visitors. This retreat was justly styled the cradle of natural 

 history, by Prince Henry of Prussia. 



Gardening is supposed to have been introduced into Germany, 

 4ustria, Prussia, Saxony, and Denmark, by the Romans, and 

 after the decline of that empire, preserved l)y the monks, who, 



