THE LURE OF THE GARDEN 
flowers caked in gold, with bees buzzing round them; 
a wilderness of pinks and hot-glowing peonies; poppies 
run to seed, the sugared lily, and faint mignonette. 
And before Hazlitt comes Horace Walpole, upholding 
a “Natural Taste in Gardens,” and ridiculing the geo¬ 
metrical designs that had so inspired the admiration 
of Temple. “The compass and square,” he says, 
“were of more use in plantation than the nursery¬ 
man. The measured walk, the quincunx, and the 
6toile imposed their unsatisfying sceneries on our 
royal and noble gardens. Trees were headed, and 
their sides pared away; many French groves seem 
green chests set upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours, 
and summer-houses terminated every vista, and sym¬ 
metry, even where the space was too large to permit 
its being remarked at one view, was an essential . . . 
knots of flowers were more defensible, subjected to the 
same regularity. ‘ Leisure,’ as Milton expressed it,— 
. . . In trim Gardens took his pleasure ! 
In the gardens of Marshal de Biron at Paris, consisting 
of fourteen acres, every walk is buttoned on each side 
with flower pots, which succeed in their seasons. 
When I saw it, there were nine thousand pots of 
Asters. ...” 
Looked at through print, those measured walks but¬ 
toned by flower-pots, the trim hedges and green chests 
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