364 THE GARDEN-CRAFT OF SHAKESPEARE 
paths either quite straight or in some strictly mathematical 
figures— 
‘ ‘ And all without were walkes and alleyes dight 
With divers trees enrang’d in even rankes ; 
And here and there were pleasant arbors pight, 
And shadie seats, and sundry flowring bankes, 
To sit and rest the walkers’ wearie shankes.” 
F. Q., iv. x. 25. 
The main walks were not, as with us, bounded with the turf, 
but they were bounded with trees, which were wrought into 
hedges, more or less open at the'sides, and arched over at the 
top. These formed the “close alleys,” “covert alleys,” or 
“ thick-pleached alleys,” of which we read in Shakespeare and 
other writers of that time. Many kinds of trees and shrubs 
were used for this purpose ; “ every one taketh what liketh 
him best, as either Privit alone, or Sweet Bryer and White 
Thorne interlaced together, and Roses of one, two, or more 
sorts placed here and there amongst them. Some also take 
Lavender, Rosemary, Sage, Southern-wood, Lavender Cotton, 
or some such other thing. Some again plant Cornel trees, and 
plash them or keep them low to form them into a hedge; and 
some again take a low prickly shrub that abideth always green, 
called in Latin Pyracantha ” (Parkinson). It was on these 
hedges and their adjuncts that the chief labour of the garden 
was spent. They were cut and tortured into every imaginable 
shape, for nothing came amiss to the fancy of the topiarist. 
When this topiary art first came into fashion in England I do 
not know, but it was probably more or less the fashion in all 
gardens of any pretence from very early times, and it reached 
its highest point in the sixteenth century, and held its ground 
as the perfection of gardening till it was driven out of the field 
in the last century by the “ picturesque style,” though many 
specimens still remain in England, as at Levens 1 and Hard- 
wicke on a large scale, and in the gardens of many ancient 
English mansions and old farmhouses on a smaller scale. It 
1 For an account of Levens, with a plate of the Topiarian garden, see. 
“ Archaeological Journal,” vol. xxvi. 
