no A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



effective and appropriate around our palaces, castles, 

 and other stately homes. For these it forms a 

 beautiful floor and fringe. It prevents too sudden 

 a transition from architecture to horticulture,^ With 

 the pleasure-grounds around opening upon the park, 

 and with the general landscape in the distance 

 beyond, the amalgamation of art and nature is 

 excellent. Nor do I deny for a moment that in 

 all gardens, if introduced in modest and due pro- 

 portion, it is the most becoming framework for our 

 summer flowers ; but my complaint is, that this giant 

 Geometry has taken possession of our small gardens 

 not as an ally, but as an autocrat — ejecting old 

 tenants and dismissing old servants like some heart- 

 less conceited heir, extruding them disdainfully, as 

 the usurping cuckoo thrusts the eggs from a 

 sparrow's nest. Just as that sensational system of 

 gardening which goes by the name of * Bedding- 

 Out,' has expelled in so many instances our beautiful 

 herbaceous plants and our lovely flowering shrubs, 

 so the geometrical style has destroyed too frequently 



^ 'His* (Sir C. Barry's) 'idea was, that the definite artificial lines 

 of a building should not be contrasted, but harmonised, with the free 

 and careless grace of natural beauty. This could only be effected by 

 a scheme of architectural gardens, graduated, as it were, from regular 

 formality in the immediate neighbourhood of the building itself, 

 through shrubberies and plantations, less and less artificial, till they 

 seemed to melt away in the unstudied simplicity of the park or wood 

 without.' — 'Memoir of Sir C. Barry,' by his Son, p. 113. 



