174 
Rustic A dornments . 
by clean paths, with the old geometric evergreens and the fanciful arbours 
that delight so many in pictures and descriptions of old English gardens. To 
the formal scene they added the umbrageous coolness of quaint grottoes and 
retired nooks, each in its place ; the rustic scene removed from the immediate 
vicinity of the house, and approached through groves of myrtle, laurel, and 
cypress, all reduced to order by the skill of the gardener. The interior of 
the house itself formed the first portion of the garden. Here was an open 
space surrounded by walks, and enclosing a grassy plot with a fountain in the 
centre. This was the viridarium , sometimes ornamented with the myrtle 
and the plane, and always with the ancestral laurel, a tree sacred to many an 
old divinity, and which is still a household god with us degenerate Britons. 
The inner court or cavce dium , was indeed a sheltered garden, and formed a 
distinct portion of the house; and even the atrium , which was next the 
entrance, had its rows of pillars, its fountain, its plots of grass, and vases of 
flowers, all placed within the daily gaze of the inmates, as essential portions 
of the domestic furniture. Then the tablinum and other choice rooms 
opened upon the peristyle ?, or colonnade, and this was the true Pleasure 
Garden of the affluent Roman citizen. Sometimes the peristyilee were of 
vast extent, with superb fountains, vases, and statuary, and gloomy groves of 
evergreens ; and frequently a forest of umbrageous leafiness, in which singing 
birds found happy homes amid the shadows which gave coolness to the 
retreat. Nor were flowers wanting to perfect the artistic arrangement, spite 
of the sneers that modern writers have heaped upon the old patricians for 
their love of fruits and other eatables, as elements of a well-planned ground. 
Aristophanes frequently alludes to the floral glories of Attica; and every 
classic poet, not forgetting even Juvenal, has in some way or other celebrated 
the elegance of the gardens in and about the imperial city. Virgil describes 
the old Corycian as rejoicing in his “ white lilies," his “ roses in spring," as 
well as his “ apples in the fall " ; and did he “ not so near his labours end," 
he says he would sing, not only of the cucumber and parsley, but of “ flowery 
gardens ,” and of the roses of Poestum, as well as of the narciss, green 
myrtles, and the trailing ivy. 
“ Quoque modo potis gauderent intyba rivis, 
Et virides apio ripae, tortusque per herbam 
Cresceret in ventrem, cucumis : nec sera comantem 
Narcissum, aut flexi tacuissem vimen acanthi, 
Pallentesque hederas, et amantes littora myrtos.’ 
Fourth Georgic, v. 120. 
