'knotted' beds are railed with painted wands (the royal colours being green and white) or surrounded with low fences of trelliswork. Cavendish in his life of Wolsey sings: 'My Garden sweet, enclosed with walles strong Mounts at the corners, galleries, dials, cabinets of verdure, columns and pyramids of marble, topiarian work and fish-ponds complete the details. Skelton, a Tudor poet, paints the following picture of a garden of his day : 'With alys ensanded about in compas The bankis enturfid with singular solas, The gardens of Hampton Court covered altogether 2000 acres and consisted of the Mount Garden, the King's Newe Garden (now called the Privy Garden) with gravel paths, raised mounds, sun-dials, and railed beds-and the Pond yard or Garden (now alone remaining, and the subject of our illustration) which retains something of its ancient Tudor aspect, being still divided into its original rectangular enclosures by low brick walls overgrown with creepers, in the corners of which may be detected the bases of the stone piers that supported the heraldic beasts 'bearing vanes and shields with the King's arms and badges.' 2 In a drawing by Antonius Wynngarde in the Bodleian Library and privett cutt into a handsome fashion-at every angle a faire cherrie tree, and a 'Ciprus' in the middle of the knotts-also a Marble fountaine. "The Privie Garden has a Quadrangle or square squadron Quicksett hedge 9 feet high, with four round Arbours and seats at each corner and two Doorways to each Arbour, between which a Roman T pointing to 3 paire of Staires and a Mulberry walk.' (Shortened from the original MS. in Record Office, transcribed by Miss Amherst.) 1 Skelton's 'Garlande of Laurell.' 2 Ernest Law, 'History of Hampton Court.' these heraldic beasts are the most conspicuous feature, bristling over the whole garden.1 As an introduction to the Elizabethan garden we must return to Italy, which, in gardening as in literature, at this time exercised so potent an influence over our ancestors. The medieval Italian gardens are founded upon the Roman villas evolving into fortified castles or monasteries, of which many of them occupy the sites. Meason traces the relationship in the later use of one of Lucullus's villas. One of the oldest is Bramante's Vatican garden, on the site of the present Library of the Vatican. In 1549 the same architect laid out the Villa d'Este at Tivoli for the Cardinal Hippolito d'Este, the friend of Ariosto, upon the site of the Emperor Hadrian's villa. A view is here given of the Villa d'Este as it appeared about 1765, 'darkly grav'd by Piranesi's hand,' in which some of the many cypresses said to have been planted by Michael Angelo are conspicuous. 'Terrace rises upon terrace and water rushes down an artificial rock, spreading in a beautiful manner as it descends.' 12 The terraces rendered necessary by the hilliness of the ground, with flights of steps leading to the different levels; the piazzas for shade and air; avenues and plantations of olive, vine, and myrtle; fountains, statuary, urns, and vases; these are the decorative elements of the later stately architectural Italian Gardens with their fine perspectives.3 1 The Inventory of 'Beestes in freeston barynge shyldes with the kynges armes and the Queeny's,' is thus entered in the Chapel House Accounts, transcribed by Mr Law :-'foure dragones, seyx lyones, five grewhoundes, five harttes, foure unicornes, serving to stand about the ponddes in the pond yard;' and the 'paynting of 180 postes with white and greene in oyle, and sixteen brazin dials for the newe garden,' is also chronicled. 2 Wood's 'Letters of an Architect.' 3 Much ridicule has been levelled at the Italian Gardens for being only a means of walking up and down stairs in the open air; but a witty writer has retorted that the Italian finds but little pleasure in the melancholy monotony of an English Park, and least of all in a large extent of level lawn; and that if you tell him that in this he was to contemplate Nature dressed, he would probably reply that he saw in it only Nature shaved. HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 341 The villas Ludovisi, Medici, Doria Pamphili, the gardens of the Quirinal and others may be studied in Giovanni Battista Falda's copper-plates of Roman gardens. The gardens of the villa Albani, outside the Porta Salaria, planned by the great Cardinal-Antiquary, Alessandro Albani, the patron and friend of Winckelmann, are taken by Taine as the text for an eloquent æsthetic sermon upon the art and arrangement loved by the "grand seigneur homme de cour" of Italy :— 'No liberty is left to nature, all is artificial. The water leaps out in jets and plumes, and has no bed save vases and urns. The lawns are hemmed in by enormous hedges taller than a man, thick as walls, and forming geometrical triangles of which the apexes all point to one centre. In the foreground stretches a compact alley of small cypresses planted in a row. 'You ascend from one garden to another by large stone staircases like those at Versailles. The flower-beds are enclosed in small box frames; they compose designs and resemble wellbordered carpets in a regular medley of gradated colours. This villa is a wreck, as it were the fossil skeleton of a life that lasted two centuries, whose chief pleasure was conversation amid beautiful surroundings, with the customs of Salon and Ante-chamber.'1 1 The following are some of the chief authorities on Italian villas and Gardens: Pietro Crescenzi, 'Opus Ruralium Commodorum,' Bk. viii., 1471. M. Bussato, 'Giardino d'Agricoltura,' Venetia, 1612. I. B. Ferrarius, 'de Florum Cultura,' Rome, 1633. Israell Silvestro, Alcune vedute di Giardini e Fontane di Roma e di Tivoli,' Paris, 1646. Melchior Kysell, 'Recueil des Jardins Italiens,' Augsburg, 1682. G. B. Falda, 'Li Giardini di Roma,' 1670. Evelyn's Diary. R. Castell's 'Villas of the Ancients,' 1728. L. Vanvitelli, Disegni del Reale Palazzo di Caserta,' 1756. |