HISTORICAL NOTICES. 
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embellished scene, filled with rare trees, fountains and 
statues, may, however artificial, be termed a landscape gar- 
den, the classical gardens are fairly included in a retrospec- 
tive view. 
All late authors agree in these two distinct and widely 
differing modes of the art ; 1st, the Ancient, Formal or 
Geometric Style ; 2d, the Modern, Natural or Irregular Style. 
The Ancient Style. A predominance of regular forms 
and right lines is the charateristic feature of the ancient 
style of gardening. The value of art, of power, and of 
wealth, were at once easily and strongly shown by an artifi- 
cial arrangement of all the materials ; an arrangement the 
more striking, as it differed most widely from nature. And 
in an age when costly and stately architecture was most 
abundant, as in the times of the Roman empire, it is natural 
to suppose, that the symmetry and studied elegance of the 
palace, or the villa, would be transferred and continued in 
the surrounding gardens. 
Nothing fills so grand a place in the history of the gar- 
dening of antiquity, as the great hanging gardens of Baby- 
lon. A series of terraces supported by stone pillars, rising 
one above the other three hundred feet in height, and 
planted with rows of all manner of stately trees, shrubs and 
flowers, interspersed with seats, and watered and supplied 
with fountains from the Euphrates ; all this was indeed a 
princely effort of the great king to recall to his Medean 
queen the beauties of her native country. The “ Paradises 77 
of the Persians, seem not only to have had straight walks 
bordered with blossoming trees, and overhung with exquisite 
lines of roses and other odoriferous shrubs, but to have been 
interspersed with occasional thickets, and varied with foun- 
tains, prospect towers, and aviaries for singing birds. 
