GARDEN DESIGN -COMPARATIVE, HISTORICAL, AND ETHICAL. 305 



The aspect which we consider the primary one in a garden, namely, 

 the appeal to the senses of rest and delight amidst beauty, they con- 

 sidered secondary and a means to an end. That end, as I see it, was that 

 they should gain honour and be extolled behind their gardens and their 

 intricate designs as well as by their powerful works. Although their 

 hieroglyphic records would at first sight make it appear, to those unac- 

 customed to garden plans, that they were very stiff, yet a person initiated 

 in the various modes of garden design can well see that there was 

 a singular witchery in these effective contrasts of broad lights and 

 shadow-play (a lost art to-day is the science of shadows), the combinations 

 of walls, masonry, massive and columned gateways, interspersed with 

 the fine perspective effect which canals of water always yield; these 

 perspectives further enhanced by the bordering avenues of stately date 

 palms and similar erect growing trees, which, so far as I can gather from 

 the representations, were of the Cypress family, avenues of which produce 

 such a sensation of weirdness in the Italian gardens. With the capacious 

 rest-house as the central object— its heavy overhanging roof, flat of 

 course — all enclosed, embedded almost, within the precincts and the 

 privacy of an imposing though not forbidding embattled wall (for walls 

 are welcome objects of shade in the East and not half so forbidding as 

 with us), and the canals sweeping up to its steps fronting the deep 

 shadowy recesses behind the flanking columns, the pleasing interchange 

 of foliage and abundantly productive fruit-trees and water, the fruitful 

 vines clambering over trellis and pergolas and resting thereon their loads 

 of luscious fruit, one can imagine these prototypes of the gardens of Italy, 

 offshoots from the lagoons, alluring us with a dreamy web as of a lotus- 

 eater's afternoon, such as is experienced by visitors to the gardens 

 surrounding the ancient Moorish temples and cathedrals of Spain. 

 There was a fair variety of plants, nuts and spices, each tree uniting to 

 produce the desired effect of subduing the mind. With all who are 

 susceptible to such influences, who possess the power of introspection, of 

 turning inward with a sense of pleasure, there is an indescribable potent 

 charm emanating from every plant and flower which finds an answering 

 note within, and perhaps is more subtly diffused by grateful odours and 

 the aroma of soft spice-laden breezes than by gorgeous colours and 

 resplendent forms. The ancient Egyptians knew this and used it in the 

 aggregate combine of features to enhance their glory. Some trees and 

 plants even were acclaimed as sacred, and as such were only permitted to 

 be grown by sanction of the priests. 



Now I say, after a careful survey of the Egyptian ideal of civilization 

 that this air of mysticism and awe within their gardens was intended, 

 and accords with the peculiar mysticism of their national beliefs as 

 represented by the oft-recurring Sphinx, the goddess with the body of a 

 lion and the face of a young woman, generally accepted as the repre- 

 sentative of a being who sat by the wayside and propounded mysterious 

 riddles to the passers by, whom she devoured on the spot if they could 

 not answer her ; it accords with their ideals as represented by Neitb, the 

 beauteous heroine of the Egyptians, whose many supposed attributes 

 cannot be given in any short summarized statement ; Thoth, the 

 recording angel of judgement ; Pasht, symbolic of the moon, with the 



