KENAISSANCE GAKDENS. 



341 



The adornment of a Renaissance garden becomes the style more 

 reserved and sparing than in the landscape style common with us ; there 

 are certain deciduous, as well as evergreen trees and shrubs, which 

 especially grace it. The oak when well grown, the elm, and particularly 

 the Wheatly elm on account of its erect growth, the Lombardy poplar 

 used sparingly, the evergreen oak, the common and Irish yew and box, 

 and particularly the cedar of Lebanon, the cypress family and the Scots 

 fir, and more especially the stone pine, where it flourishes. The clean, 

 stately trunks of the latter and the rich colouring of the branches are a 

 complement to the stone columnar groups. 



Our English examples of Renaissance garden design are so well 

 known and the views of them are abundant, such as Chatsworth, 

 Melbourne, Blenheim, Castle Ashby, Trentham, Brockenhurst Park, 

 Harewood House, &c, but we are not so familiar with modern American 

 Renaissance designs, and I fear we often greatly misjudge our American 

 cousins. Although, as becomes a democratic Government, there is much 

 of what happened in the days of the Judges — every man doing what is 

 right in his own eyes — and it is the seed-bed from whence come all the 

 sports, vagaries, and startling surprises, yet they are on the whole a 

 people who incline to solid and traditional lines, and their gardens 

 lean towards the solid dignity and repose of the best features of the 

 Renaissance. 



I read a letter the other day which shows to what a pitch vulgarity 

 descends when men follow their own novelties undisciplined and 

 what silly lengths it leads them to, and it serves to show that the rule of 

 order and discipline always comes out at the top ; after all, our extrava- 

 gancies and novelties produce in the end the louging desire for Renaissance 

 order and sanity. This is the letter : 



" Here in America is the home of the grotesque as well as of the 

 picturesque. Aristocracy and democracy jostle each other, and aristocracy 

 gets the worst of it. We had a boiler explosion here lately, and among 

 the emblems sent to the victims' funeral was a floral clock set for the 

 hour of the explosion ; a theatrical treasurer's club sent a floral pass, 

 1 Admit one.' Gates ajar, open windows with plaster doves thereon, and 

 tawdry wire frames showing through pillars of red and yellow flowers, all 

 tend to vulgarize funerals and to inspire the words ' No flowers.' When 

 the city council is inaugurated then are the florists busy. Gigantic keys, 

 Indian clubs, desks, chairs, all are in hand ; the natural flowers distorted 

 to suit perverted tastes. We need a Renaissance in art to strike the florists 

 here, and strike them hard.'" 



A study of the Renaissance in garden design in America shows how 

 in the end if you give mere novelty rope enough it will eventually hang 

 itself, and that which has law and order in the end prevails. Man- 

 kind as a race is orderly, and the more the individual has to do with 

 business or with government, or with any stable pursuit which can be 

 named, the more does he incline towards the stable and the established, 

 the balanced and the orderly. 



