French Gardening and Its Master 
of course, that there was no important gardening in France 
before or after his day, or by other men during the period of 
his own activity. The gentle art was indeed practiced with 
keenest delight, and with signal success, by countless genera¬ 
tions of Frenchmen before the man I have named began his 
career; and to so great a degree is this true, that the French 
may fairly be called a nation of garden builders. There has 
always, from the 
very earliest 
times, been, in the 
French character, 
a special fondness 
and aptitude for 
the art of horticul¬ 
ture ; and from 
the earliest times 
there have been 
striking examples 
of gardens whose 
design has been 
developed in obe¬ 
dience to the laws 
not merely of an 
art,—that is to 
say, a science,— 
but of a fine art, 
strictly so-called. 
No medieval 
stronghold or re¬ 
ligious establish¬ 
ment was com¬ 
plete without its 
PLAN OF THE GARDENS OF VERSAILLES SpUCC ( hoWeVCT 
small) set apart 
for the special purpose of a garden—a pleasure-ground 
where flowers and fruit-trees were disposed in such forms 
and in such combinations as to give not only a practical 
result as a matter of agriculture, but a grateful effect from 
the point of view of pure beauty. The French seem always 
to have felt an instinctive delight in the simple pleasures 
of the open air: in flowers and trees, and vistas, and run- 
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