HISTORICAL NOTICES. 
17 
school, it need scarcely be said that it embraces broad 
gravelled terraces, long alleys of yew and hornbeam, vast 
orangeries, groves planted in the quincunx style, and 
water-works embellished with, and conducted through 
every variety of sculptured ornament. It takes the middle 
line between the other two geometric schools — admitting 
more sculpture and other works of art than the Italian, but 
not overpowered with the same number of “ huge masses 
of littleness” as the Dutch. There is more of promenade, 
less of parterre ; more gravel than turf ; more of the de- 
ciduous than the evergreen tree. The practical water-wit 
of drenching the spectators was in high vogue in the 
ancient French gardens ; and Evelyn, in his account of 
the Duke of Richelieu’s villa, describes with some relish 
how 1 on going, two extravagant musketeers shot at us 
with a stream of water from their musket barrels . 5 Contri- 
vances for dousing the visitors— especially the ladies 5 — 
which once filled so large a space in the catalogue of every 
show place, seem to militate a little against the national 
character for gallantry ; but the very fact that every thing 
was done to surprise the spectator and stranger, evinces 
how different was their idea of a garden from the home and 
familiar pleasures which an Englishman looks to in his . 55 
It is scarcely necessary for us to say, that this new splen- 
dor of the French in their gardens was more or less copied, 
at the time, all over Europe. u Ainsi font les Frangais — 
voild ce quefai vuen France f was the law of fashion in the 
gardening taste from which there was no higher court of 
appeal. But, in copying, every nation seems to have min- 
gled with the “ grand style 55 some elementary notions of 
its own, expressive of national character or locality. 
The most marked of these imitators were the Dutch, whose 
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