NINETEENTH CENTURY 
305 
plants to a foremost place led people to read what old writers 
had to say of them, and the study of forgotten books probably 
hastened the movement in favour of the formal garden. 
From time to time the old-fashioned formal method had had 
its adherents, even when the rage for Italian gardens was at 
its height. Some beautiful specimens of the English styles 
in vogue prior to the “ landscape ” craze were made between 
1840 and i860. Penshurst in Kent, Arley 1 in Cheshire, 
Blickling in Norfolk, and Montacute in Somerset, are all well- 
known examples. A representative type of the later revival 
in favour of the “ formal,” which was started in opposition 
to the “ wild garden,” can be seen at Ascott. 2 Here there is a 
remarkable collection of quaint cut yew and box trees, some of 
which were transplanted from neighbouring cottage gardens ; 
but many were brought home from Holland, and arranged as 
if they were growing in a seventeenth-century garden. 
The advocates of these opposite schools waged a fierce war 
in print, and the nineteenth century closed when the con¬ 
troversy was at its height. The truce arrived at was a com¬ 
promise, and a fusion of the best of both contending parties, 
and a new phase of gardening was entered upon, which will be 
dealt with shortly in the following chapter. 
1 Belonging to P. Egerton Warburton, Esq. See illustration. 
2 Near Leighton Buzzard, belonging to Leopold Rothschild, Esq. 
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