European and Japanese Gardens 
cipal remaining features of the rather chilling and over-sym¬ 
metrical decoration of the Italian gardens, in which everything 
seemed obedient to a single demand, — coolness, shade, 
mystery.” 
The transition from the dark ages to the Renaissance was 
marked in gardening more by a change of scale than by a 
change in kind, or point of view. Whereas the old-time castle 
THE CROSS OF FRANCHARD 
FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU 
garden, or cloister garth, had been a small and confined 
area,—what could without too much sacrifice of security and 
increase of protective garrison be afforded within the moat,— 
the fifteenth century brought in larger ideas, and not only the 
desire, but the possibility of using wider spaces. Gardens 
expanded, accordingly, from cramped, walled spaces, strictly 
within the precincts, to wide free fields stretching far out over 
the plain, and even into the forests,—themselves more and 
