House & Garden 
sloping grass bank broken by the rough 
bluestone treads of the steps. The second 
is a rubble retaining wall about three feet 
high in front of the garden, and is capped 
by a broad bluestone coping on which stand 
in all manner of old glazed earthenware 
vases and pots, knotted and twisted Japanese 
dwarf trees. Immediately behind these, stand 
huge laurels in Roman terra-cotta pots. All 
the small dividing or retaining walls are built 
of rough field stone, in many instances laid 
without anv mortar or cement in the joints. 
glory, libernum, geraniums, iris, fleurs-de-lis, 
etc. 
Below these, at a slightly lower level, 
comes a splendid box hedge, surrounded at 
various points by its larger clusters, then 
two larger beds of flowers, and finally, ter¬ 
minating the whole, the pergola, standing 
out in its shining whiteness against the mag¬ 
nificent background of the wood. This 
feature could not have been better placed. 
Not only is it the key-note of the plan of 
the garden, but it dominates it from every 
A VENUS AND SATYR GUARDING A PATH 
The first portion of the garden forms a 
geometrical square of four symmetrical beds. 
These are divided, as are all the beds of the 
garden in fact, by small white pebbled paths. 
They encircle a fountain, in the center of 
which a marble Venus crouches on a shell. 
A border, a foot high, of the bushiest imagin¬ 
able box, encloses all the parterres. The 
center of each of the surrounding beds is 
marked by one of the magnificent laurel 
trees, around which grows irregularly a mass 
of flowers of every description: morning 
point ot view from which it can be seen. It 
consists of ten Ionic columns, the two cen¬ 
tral ones, at the entrance, having been omit¬ 
ted. It is constructed of wood. (The 
original pergola, which was destroyed by a 
storm, was a Corinthian order, built of 
cement.) The columns are a little over 
eleven diameters high and copied from those 
of the Erechtheum at Athens, with the modi¬ 
fication of slenderer proportions necessitated 
by the change in material. They support a 
double superstructure of moulded beams, 
205 
