THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
CHAPTER I. 
INTRODUCTORY. 
The Spirit of the Italian Garden- The Influence of Antiquity^Baroque and the analogy of Nature- 
Villa^ Farm and Garden— The Italian note in PInglish Garden Design— Work of Sir Charles Barry. 
W HATEVER may have been the vanished charm that placed the mysterious Hanging 
Gardens of Babylon among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it is 
hard to believe that it surpassed the achieved magic of the Italian gardens of the 
Golden Age of the Renaissance. The Villas of Italy have ever been the despair 
of the garden architects of the whole of Europe. The very madness of the imitation has not 
succeeded in obscuring the great lessons that they continue to teach. Whether we regard the 
garden as a creation by itself, or as the outdoor continuation of the house and of the life 
originating within it, it is to Italy that we turn in our search for a model. The best examples 
teach the lesson of a sane and artistic adaptation of means to ends — the reconciliation of man s 
handiwork with the surrounding creation of Nature. 
To the end of time there will be those who are unable to form their own synthesis of 
a style, and to judge of the achievements and tendencies of an art from more than one, or 
possibly two examples. Thus it is that knowledge of one Italian garden, real or alleged, is 
sufficient to give them a distaste for the Italian School of architecture and gardening as a whole. 
The critic is welcomed who talks of midget-haunted ponds, damp fountains, tedious flights of 
steps, useless balustrades and an ensemble based on a stonemason’s yard. To such the Italian 
might fitly reply in the sense of Dante : “ With them I held no converse ; I looked and passed on.’ 
The attraction of Italy for the Northern races, and for the 'Hnglese” in particular, 
is a fact not only of long standing and historical interest, but also of ever-fresh recurrence. The 
first essential should be a stay of such continuous duration, combined with such wanderings 
through the less known parts of the peninsula, as will impress on the mind of the English visitor 
certain fundamental 
points of likeness and dis- 
similarity. Of these, first, 
perhaps, in importance is 
the historic sense that is 
woven through the fabric 
of Italian life. That 
Sanctuario on the hill is, 
no doubt, of the latest 
barocco, but climb up the 
hillside and on the way 
vou will pass the hewn 
caves of the Etruscans. 
The very church walls 
themselves embed solid 
massive relics of the con- 
structions of Republican 
or Imperial Rome. All the 
Middle Ages, passing in 
a flash, have left a mere 
trace in some altar-piece 
— ITALIAN RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE OF THE EARLY PERIOD, BY 
LEONARDO DA VINCI. 
