INTRODUCTORY. 
9 
II. — GANYMEDE: BOBOLI GARDENS. 
and from the confusion 
of modes has arisen that 
variety which, under the 
guise of the “ English or 
natural garden,” has 
wrought so much havoc 
a m o n g the old villa 
gardens of Italy. It is 
needless to elaborate the 
point here, for, indeed, 
too much has already been 
written on the subject. 
Except in so far as the 
“ English garden ” is a 
r e a c t i o n against the 
crudities of the later 
barocco, with its theatrical 
and false naturalism, it is 
unlikely that a school so 
out of touch with archi- 
tecture can ever find a permanent home in Italy. At present some Italians who have not 
thought much on the subject are misled by the idea that the English garden stands for 
Nature, and is thereby in some mysterious way freer and better than Art. Inasmuch as nature, 
however, does not rain down houses ready fitted to selected beauty spots, it is obvious that by 
no reasoning can we eliminate the art of man. The capital defect of the natural school lies 
precisely in this, that it provides no setting for the indispensable house. To be complete in 
its logic according to the natural scheme the house should be built on the cut-and-cover 
principle, and then by a boulder-strewn gorge the natural man might emerge after the manner 
of a rabbit. At present this school has got no further in this direction than a futile drapery 
of creepers, as though a house were a clothes horse for damp greenery. The hillsides, lake 
shores and boundless plains of Italy will always compel a “ lay-out ” of the garden area around 
the house in accordance with its architecture and the dictates of a traditional good taste. 
Relations between 
Italy and England, always 
constant and cordial, have 
had their periods of closer 
contact at certain 
memorable epochs. 
Passing over the earlier 
ages with a brief 
reminiscence of Abbot 
Ware’s visit to Rome in 
1260, which gave us in 
Westminster Abbey, the 
Opus Alexandrinwn pave- 
ment and tombs with 
inlays of Roman Cosmati 
we come direct to Shute’s 
famous visit in 1550. We 
know that the first English 
work on architecture, the 
First and Chief Groundes, 
published 1563, has left 12.— SARCOPHAGUS as a water trough, villa borghese, 
its mark on the design of FRASCATI. 
