warm shadows about the names of lovers long since forgot or dead, wrought upon the tablet leaves of aloes or of cactus. There mesembrianthemums shine still, sunned over as of old with rayed discs of red and yellow, while basking lizards at your approach rustle away under the leaves. Lean over the low parapet wall and watch the waves dash in white foam against the jagged rocks below. The old cliff blooms out into cistus and spikes of purple stocks; midway the sea-birds scream and play above the little fishing-boats, tossing like fairy nut-shells on the crisp blue summer sea. From the sunny Mediterranean and that narrow strip of hanging garden, dream on into the black cypress shades of Tuscany. In all Italy the land of flowers, the garden of the worldthere are no gardens more stately, nor any nobler cypress-trees, than at Villa d'Este of Tivoli. In the spring, by the straight smooth ways under the ilexes and cypresses, all day the golden gloom is made rosy where ever and anon red Judas-trees shower down their bloom. Marble stairs lead up through terraced heights to paved walks under the Palazzo walls. There the air is faint with rich fragrance of the orange-trees. The lofty spires of ancient cypresses reach up above the topmost terrace; far below in the garden, between their dark ranks sparkle the upspringing fountains. Beyond, above the tallest cypresses, rise brown crumbling walls of the old town, piled up with open loggie and arched gates and overshadowing roofs: and high over these, great barren hills crowned with ruined fortresses and shattered keeps. To the west rolls out the ocean of the wide Campagna, undulating far away where Rome is lost in the sunset. Dream on, until you sigh with the wondrous sweetness of Rome herself in the wild wood-garden of the Vatican, where in April days ten thousand odorous cyclamen flowers, flush with crimson all the moss beneath the trees. Dream on, till you see once more the swaying of the tall pines and bathe your steps in tracts of flowery grass in the green Pamphili Doria, and watch the mystic fountain, most like the form of an inconstant spirit, like a pale blue-robed 1 See Illustration in Appendix. 'E. V. B.' 313 Undine uncertain if to leave her source, trembling betwixt desire and fear. Fain would we linger in the gardens of Portugal, under the sweet-scented camellias of Cintra-lost in golden reveries amid her rose-wreathed thickets. Strange is the remembrance of the beautiful Montserrat cathedral water-aisles, whose torrents foam down in long cascades beneath the high-arched Tree-ferns! And in Spain, like a scene in the Arabian Nights, comes back to us the old Moorish garden of Granada, with marble-lined canal and lofty arcades of trimmed yew, topped with crescents, pyramids, and crowns.1 1 This beautiful rhapsody, addressed to the Garden-loving Reader,' formed the Prelude to the first edition of this book. HISTORICAL EPILOGUE THE HE foregoing collection of extracts contains, perhaps, in essence a sufficient History of Gardens; but there may be readers who prefer a less broken thread of narrative, and to them is offered the following clue to the labyrinth of garden literature. Ever since the gardening art has been anything more conscious and definite than the haphazard planting of fruit-trees, herbs and vegetables in orchards and kitchen-gardens for practical use, garden design may be said broadly to have adopted one of two forms or styles, each capable of infinite variation and modification in treatment, and each liable at times to trespass upon the territory and overlap the limits, of the other. One of these styles has been distinguished by such various names as Architectural, Classical, Formal, Regular, Rectangular, Symmetrical and Geometrical; or has been called Italian, French, or Dutch, according to the country of its origin. As the terms denote, the exponents of this style chose for model and inspiration the art of the architect, who designed, or 'built' the garden in harmony with the plan of the house, of which it was a sort of open-air extension; for detail and decoration it laid under contribution the art of sculpture, in the form of clipped hedges and trees (known as 'topiarian work '), statuary, vases and fountains. The second school endeavoured to follow Nature more closely, believing that, with this aim in view, the sister art of painting was a surer guide, and has been variously called the Natural, Irregular, Landscape, Romantic, English or Chinese School; these two nations. having had most influence in its creation or development. This later school in its designs 'lays out' or 'composes' its gardens as a painter his landscapes, and employs so far as possible the irregular curves of Nature and her dispositions of rock, wood and water, rather than straight lines and geometrical curves; but in the hands of mannerists these irregular windings and serpentisings often become as arbitrary, unnatural and monotonous as the more intentional regularity of the architect.1 Broadly it may be said that the 'landscape-garden' in its purity resembled a park, and that the landscape-gardener was a creator of park scenery; but it is clear that the division into two styles is only for the purposes of rough classification, and that between the two are innumerable gradations and shades. Gardens may be and have been made of the greatest beauty, which would resist all attempts to force them into any æsthetic categories; while no more definite plan of design, 'laying out' or 'composition' may have been followed than dictated by the instinct of beauty, taste and the love of Nature and Art. In an historical account of gardens the precedents are in favour of beginning with the Garden of Eden, which undoubtedly claims priority in time; but until we know whether Major Seton Karr, 1 It may be interesting to note a few of the many names that have from time to time been put forward as claimants to the honour of initiating, prophecying or suggesting the principle of the Modern, Natural or Landscape Garden :— 1. Homer's Grotto of Calypso; Elian's Vale of Tempe (Böttiger). 2. Nero in Tacitus (Loudon). 3. Petrarch's 'Vaucluse.' 4. Tasso's Garden of Armida (Eustace). 5. Christopher Wren (father of the Architect), inventor of the serpentine 6. 'Bacon the prophet, Milton the Herald' (W. Mason). 9. Huet, Bishop of Avranches. 10. Dufresny (Gabriel Thouin). 11. Hogarth's 'Line of Beauty.' 12. William Kent. 13. Pope in the Guardian, and at Twickenham, 14. Addison in the Spectator. 15. The English (Gray). 16. The Chinese (Geo. Mason and W. Chambers). |