176 
GARDEN ARCHITECTURE. 
This citation is over long, if merely to prove that the words 
are used in common ; but it will be pardoned, as containing the 
" beau ideal ” of an arbour, from one who was no mean judge of the 
beautiful. 
Arbours, often found formed by the hand of Nature, and needing 
but little to render them delicious retreats, are of the highest antiquity; 
their luxury could be more valued in a warmer climate than ours, 
and, accordingly, we find the peaceful days of Solomon described in 
the Sacred Text by the characteristic phrase, that “ Judah and Israel 
dwelt safely every man under his vine, and under his fig-tree, from 
Dan even to Beersheba.” In the gardens of the luxurious Romans 
under the empire, it formed the favourite retreat of their hours of 
pleasure. 
Thus Horace— 
“ Est qui nec \eteris pocula Massici, 
Nec partem solido dernere de die 
Spermt: nunc viridi membra sub arbuto 
Stratus, nunc ad aquae lene caput sacra:.” 
Carm., Lib. i. Od. 1, v. 20. 
And again, 
“ Simplici myrto nihil allabores, 
Sedulus euro : neque te ministrum 
Dedecet myrtus, neque me sub arcta. 
Yite bibentem."* 
Carm., Lib. i. Od. 30, v. 5. 
The same author seems to indicate that the laurel was not an 
unusual arbour plant in his time. 
“ Turn spissa ramis laurea fervidos 
Excludet ictus.” Carm., Lib. ii. Od. 15, v. 9. 
And as the bay (Laurus nobilis ) thrives and grows to an astonishing 
height in Italy, as, for instance, that in the Borromoean Islands, on the 
Lago Maggiore, on which Napoleon inscribed the word “ Battaglia,” 
the evening before Marengo, which is upwards of sixty feet in height, 
it seems probable that it was this plant that was used. To the 
present day, Italy is a land of bowers ; the vines, all over the country, 
either hang festooned between the elms—as when Virgil wrote his 
Georgies—or are trained horizontally on flat trelliages, to catch and in¬ 
tercept the sun, and thus form continual arbours: but we anticipate— 
to trace with laborious minuteness the history of arbours, would 
not be in place here; we therefore proceed to consider the various 
species of arbours, their modes of construction, the proper materials 
for their formation, their various styles, and their suitable localities. 
