European and Japanese Gardens 
more frequently being brought into the great scheme by means 
of long straight avenues cut across through the thickest woods 
and giving centers of interest from which again new lines of 
view were opened out, and out, till wide regions, many miles 
in extent and of the most diversified character, were held in 
PLAN OF THE PALACE AND GARDENS OF FONTAINEBLEAU 
leash, as it were,—their wildness preserved as their most pre¬ 
cious quality, yet netted and meshed across by lanes, round 
points, paths and avenues, which give them a fascinating sem¬ 
blance of complete submission to civilizing influences. Who 
has traversed the marvelous forest of Fontainebleau, for exam¬ 
ple, but with a new sense of the wildness, the strangeness, the 
indomitable spirit of nature? Yet all that wild territory is but 
a vast garden, its design composed and adjusted with the last 
degree of skill, and cultivated with a care as extreme in its 
large way as that with which, in their more intimate fashion, 
the Luxembourg gardens, for instance, are dressed and cod¬ 
dled. 
The principal professional garden-makers of the Renais¬ 
sance were the three Mollets, Bernard Palissy, and Olivier de 
Serres, the last being rather a practical man than a designer. 
The Mollets seem to have been a sort of dynasty in the art, the 
first of the name having created for the Due d’Aumale the 
famous gardens about the Chateau d’Anet, of which practically 
nothing is left. The castle itself has been razed, with the 
exception of some of the loveliest portions, which were removed 
to the court of the School of Fine Arts in Paris. Claude Mol- 
107 
