14 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
The Athenians borrowed their taste in gardens from 
Persia. The lime tree and the box lined their walks, and 
bore patiently the shears of symmetry ; and a passion 
for fragrant flowers seems to have been greatly indulged 
by them. Their most celebrated philosophers made the 
sylvan, or landscape gardens of their time, their favourite 
schools. And the gardens of Epicurus and Plato appear 
to have been symmetrical groves of the olive, plane, and 
elm, enriched by elegant statues, monuments and temples, 
the beauty of which, for their peculiar purpose, has never 
been surpassed by any example of more modern times. 
Among the Romans, ornamental gardening seems to have 
been not a little studied. The villas of the Emperors Nero 
and Adrian were enriched with every thing magnificent 
and pleasing in their grounds ; and the classically famous 
villas of Cicero at Arpium, and of Pliny at Thuscum, with 
Caesar’s 
“ Private arbors, and new planted orchards, 
On this side Tiber,” 
are among the most celebrated specimens of the taste 
among the ancients. Pliny’s garden, of which a pretty 
minute account remains, — filled with cypresses and bay 
trees, planted to form a coursing place or hippodrome, 
adorned with vis-a-vis figures of animals cut in box trees, and 
decorated with fountains and marble alcoves, shaded by 
vines — seems, indeed, to have been the true classical type of 
all the later efforts of modern continental nations in their 
geometric gardens. 
Of the latter, the Italians have been most successful in 
their ornamental grounds. Their beautiful marbles seem 
to have been supplied by Art in too great profusion to be 
