PROGRESS AND STYLE OF ORNAMENTAL GARDENING. 221 
ticularly from those works of art depicting wild or ornamental scenery, 
called landscape paintings, representing any space or region of a country, 
with its various objects. 
The first ornamental gardens of which we have any good account 
were regular inclosures, with everything they contained arranged most 
symmetrically, justifying the often-quoted sarcastic couplet of our poet, 
Pope:— 
“ Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, 
And one-half the lawn but just reflects the other. 1 ' 
This rectilinear and rectangular style of gardening was, however, 
quite natural to man in the earlier ages of the world ; he saw Nature in 
all her wildest forms around him, and, as lord of the creation, he felt a 
kind of instinctive desire to bring her under his controul; he wished 
a contrast and a disposition of his trees, and boundaries that would 
mark or secure his possessions, and, at the same time, exhibit his skill 
as well as his sovereignty. Art was then his idol, not Nature; and 
everything he did was to show how much the latter was under his 
dominion. 
This artificial style of gardening continued to prevail in every civi¬ 
lised country, from the earliest times till after the beginning of the 
eighteenth century. Before this epoch, Le Notre, a French garden 
architect and ornamental gardener, was extensively employed in almost 
every nation in Europe; and some portions of his designs are still to 
be seen in France, and many imitations of them everywhere, as well in 
this country as on the Continent. 
While Le Notre and his contemporaries were driving every trace of 
Nature from their garden scenes, the painter was at the same time 
enthusiastically engaged in studying her in her wildest forms, and 
copying every incident in real scenery which would improve his studies, 
or enrich his pictures. 
Before the period to which we are alluding, many eminent painters 
had immortalised their fame by the beautiful landscapes which they 
had painted. Among these celebrated paintings, it is remarkable that 
very few trim garden-scenes were represented, especially as the artists, 
both gardeners and painters, were very probably admirers of each other. 
This, however, is only an instance of how much the human mind is 
liable to be enchained by custom or reigning fashion. The idea had 
not yet been entertained, perhaps, that the principles of ornamental 
gardening and landscape painting are the same; for, in practice at that 
time, the artists took directly contrary routes: the painter studied 
Nature only, while the gardener busied himself in cutting and slashing 
