GARDENS IN LITERATURE 
set on poles, and knots of flowers in regular display, 
seem quaintly attractive and most fitting with the 
dress and manners of their day; just as the conscious 
wildwood tangle of the eighteenth-century garden 
suited the sentimental artificiality and Rousseau- 
simplicity that masqueraded in a silk and satin home- 
spun. 
In our own day, or but little removed from it, a gar¬ 
den now only to be seen in the pages of a book is that 
described in E. V. B.’s “Days and Hours in a Gar¬ 
den.” The foundation of this place was sufficiently 
ancient, having been known to Evelyn, in whose 
writings it finds an appreciative mention, but when the 
Boyles came into possession, all that was left of the old 
garden were “two symmetrically planted groups of 
elms in the park field ... a square lawn laid out 
in flower beds ... a broad terrace walk, old pink 
walls with stone balls on the corners, two or three 
wrought-iron gates in the wrong places . . . with a 
few pleasant trees.” 
Month by month we see the garden change, increase 
in beauty: “Close-trimmed yew hedges eight feet six 
inches high and three feet through . . . yews cut 
in pyramids and buttresses against the walls, and 
yews in every stage of natural growth . . . borders 
filled with the dearest old-fashioned plants. . . . In¬ 
stead of the stable-yard turf and straight walks and 
a sun-dial and a parterre . . . green walks between 
I 75 
