ON TIIE EFFECT OF CLIPPED TREES IN DECORATIVE GARDENING. 
59 
siderably. It is by the power of the winds that obnoxious gases, &c., which, if they remained, would 
be the death of plants, are borne away at a rapid rate. 
Guy Lussac, to whom we are indebted for many very valuable observations on the atmosphere, 
especially by the means of balloons, made some very important experiments with respect to our 
atmosphere, by collecting flasks of air at various heights above the earth’s surface, and afterwards 
analyzing them, from which it was found that the proportion of the constituents of the air is precisely 
the same at the elevation of four and a quarter miles as it is at the sea level. 
ON THE EFFECT OF CLIPPED TREES IN DECORATIVE GARDENING, AND 
HOW FAR THEY ARE ADMISSIBLE. 
By II. NOEL HUMPHREYS, Esq. 
lAjlHE first attempts at decoration, in many branches of art, consist in simply subduing the irregularity 
Ja of natural forms to geometric shapes, in the regularity and repetition of which the eye of the most 
untutored recognises at once the existence of certain laws of order, which are necessarily the earliest 
steps of every advance in civilization, whether social, political, or artistic. Thus, the Indian savage 
pares away the rugged bark of his club, and in its place carves with laborious care a series of zig-zag, or 
serpentine lines, the evenness and regularity of which constitute, in his estimation, then’ greatest merit. 
But there arises, sooner or later, an epoch in the advance of art when formality in its turn gives way, 
and a return to natural outline takes place. It is then that we find another race of artists disdaining 
the regular patterns of the half savage, and positively imitating, by laborious and painstaking manipu¬ 
lation, the rugged bark and knots which were pared away by the earlier carver to make way for his 
symmetrical notching. So, in gardening, the first steps in the direction of ornament have always 
been clipping and cropping; first, merely to obtain regularity of line, squaring and levelling being 
the highest aim of the earliest practitioners in the art. These simple ends are soon accomplished, and 
more ambitious views succeed, when temples and amphitheatres, colonnades and porticoes of verdure 
become the great objects of a race of architects in foliage. In Italy the art rarely passed these bounds ; 
but in the north, especially in Holland, Belgium, and^England, trees were clipped into human figures, 
and these leafy monsters became a positive rage: the Yew, the Box, and other trees whose close 
growing foliage rendered them most suitable for torturing into these unnatural shapes, being cropped 
and sheared till it was supposed they resembled shepherds and shepherdesses, dogs, peacocks, and 
other forms; to add to the reality of which, painted faces and hands, &c., &c., were added,—such 
additions rather increasing the absurdity, than aiding the wretched imposture. The return to nature 
(as in the case of the carver of the club, and his successor of a later period) was as violent as its 
departure; and a race of “ landscape gardeners” arose, who swept away with relentless hand the 
avenues, the bowers, and the quaint figures which the foliage of the slow growing Yew had, with the 
most careful clipping and tending been a century in producing. We have in England but few old 
gardens remaining which can show remnants of this exploded taste; but in Holland many may yet be 
found revelling in all their pristine formality and stiffness; and in Hanover the curious gardens 
created by George the Second for his too famous mistress,—mentioned in the entertaining memoirs of 
Lord Hervey,—are still in their original state, a kind of German Trianon, in which all kinds of cropt 
absurdities are still carefully maintained and trimmed. 
But the object of the present article is to suggest the partial revival of the best features of this 
taste, in proper situations and under suitable circumstances, and it is from some of the best Italian 
gardens that we shall be furnished with the best hints for the partial readoption of architectural and 
other simple and severe forms in foliage. The garden seat, from the villa Strada near Rome, backed by 
a screen of carefully cropped Limes, the outline of which harmonizes with that of the seat itself, is a 
good example of a style, and an extent, to which symmetrical cropping may be safely resumed with good 
effect. Let us imagine a tolerable extent of shrubbery formed of well-grown timber trees, with an 
undergrowth of Laurels and other evergreens, intersected in various directions by means of winding 
walks* In the midst of this shrubbery, let us suppose an open space of quadrilateral form, each side 
occupied by a seat and cropped screen of foliage similar to the annexed engraving—a square plot of 
grass, with a fountain, a sun-dial, or merely a large vase filled with flowering plants in the centre, 
surrounded by a broad trimly-kept gravel walk, and it will be easy to conceive that such a combination 
of regular forms occurring in the midst of a shrubbery similar to the one described, would create a most 
pleasing contrast, and be a spot often sought during the summer months for quiet meditation ; as there 
would always be one shady side, and the surrounding trees would diffuse a pleasing general coolness. 
The engraving (p. 61), also from a celebrated Italian villa, is termed the Theatre of Cypresses. With 
