ART. VII.-1. Flowers and Gardens: Notes on Plant Beauty by a Medical Man. By FORBES WATSON, M.R.C.S. London: 1872.

2. A Year in a Lancashire Garden. By HENRY A. BRIGHT. Second edition. London: 1879.

3. Days and Hours in a Garden. By E. V. B.' London: 1884.

4. The English Flower Garden. By W. ROBINSON. London and New York: 1883.

5. The Wild Garden. By W. ROBINSON. London and New York: 1881.

6. Garden Craft, Old and New. By JOHN D. SEDDING. London: 1891.

7. The Formal Garden in England. By REGINALD BLOMFIELD and F. INIGO THOMAS. London: 1892.

8. The Garden that I Love. By ALFRED AUSTIN. London: 1894.

9. In Veronica's Garden. 1895.

By ALFRED AUSTIN. London:

10. In a Gloucestershire Garden. By Canon ELLACOMBE. London: 1895.

THE influences that have determined the developement of gardens within the last thousand years must be looked for in those of ancient Rome. In Rome itself, gardens of highly wrought architectural character were an actual part of the imperial palaces and of those of the patrician class; and recent examination clearly proves, what has long been vaguely known, that a large portion of the vast area of the Campagna was occupied by villas with their gardens and farms. Professor Lanciani's recent works of exploration and excavation show how this now barely inhabited waste was once a thickly populated suburb, composed of the villas of the wealthier class, with busy streets branching out of the Appian Way and other main thoroughfares. Rome, the all-conquering, subdued not only distant kingdoms, making them her provinces, but, close at home, conquered fever and death, creating smiling gardens and groves where they had lately reigned. As she grew in power and wealth and population, her governing and patrician class required country houses of convenient access, in many cases more than one, for use at different seasons of the year. Marshy

VOL. CLXXXIV. NO. CCCLXXVII.

M

hollows were drained and filled up, and permanent roads were built, with raised footways and pleasant fountains and places of rest for wayfarers. Frequent cross-roads gave access to the various properties, which increased in size as they lay at a greater distance from the city, till the villa included not a palace and garden mainly, as in those nearer home, but large properties, comprising farms and whole villages of thriving peasant population. An abundant watersupply, secured by the magnificent system of aqueducts that brought pure water from the hills, and a well-organised arrangement for carrying off surface water, provided an ample supply and an efficient overflow. Not only were houses and gardens built and planted in the plains and small valleys of the Campagna itself, but imperial villas of vast size occupied commanding sites on the slopes of the neighbouring hills. The ruins of the villa of Hadrian, a town in itself, show terraces, colonnades, fountains, and pools of magnificent design, indicating a garden of the first order; while the remains of the villa of Domitian on one of the slopes of the Lake of Albano point to the former existence of another of great importance. Pliny the younger gives a detailed description of his villa in Tuscany in his 'Letter to Apollinaris in the year A.D. 62. In these ancient gardens topiary work was in general practice. Trees and shrubs were trained and trimmed into walls, ornaments, and figures of wild beasts; it became a fashion that was carried to a great excess. A certain amount of such work was no doubt in harmony with the architecture, green niches of box, yew, and cypress being admirable backgrounds for the many works of sculpture which decorated the greater gardens. Only in the remoter parts, and in the case of the groves surrounding the family mausoleum, which found a place within the grounds of each great villa, were the ilex, pine, cypress, myrtle, and pomegranate allowed to grow into their own beautiful forms. Where the zeal of the topiarius or the whim of his master tortured the bushes into extravagant forms, the taste of the practice is questionable, but an explanation may be sought in the excess of slave labour, or in the want of variety of garden material. The number of flowering plants on record as known in these ancient gardens was so limited that it was an object to seek as much variety as possible in the methods of treating them. We hear of a wealth of roses; of violets, iris, poppy, lily, narcissus, hyacinth, and crocus; of ivy, jasmine, myrtle, and pomegranate, and of little else.

The arrangement of the villa usually followed certain rules. The palace and upper terrace were on the highest ground; then followed a succession of terraces with massive retaining walls, porticoes with niches for sculpture, pools, canals, and fountains. Everywhere the sound or sight of water; rushing or gently murmuring; boldly splashing or falling in finest spray; everywhere the cool quietude of green alleys, some open to the sky between high walls of close-cut greenery; some arbour-like, of trellis covered with closely trained ivy or vine; direct ancestors of the pergola of modern Italy, and distant foreshadowing of the covert alley of Tudor England.

Happy is a country, as to her present beauty and everlasting renown, when her men of high place and great wealth are, as it were, born artists; when, as in Athens of old, nothing offensive to the eye is tolerated or can be erected; when no commercial considerations are allowed to outweigh the supreme obligation of making every human work that is to be seen sightly and gracious and fit and of due proportion. We know that this was the happy state of the great centres of Italian civilisation in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. The princes of Florence of the house of the Medici were at the same time the princes of trade and finance. They were men of strangely mixed character, many of them cruel, tyrannical, licentious; but it was their will and pleasure so to expend their vast accumulation of wealth that it became a precious heritage for all later ages. Then it was that these great bankers and merchants revived the study of Greek literature and of their own classics-that they searched out, and chose with just discrimination and fostered, the men who have enriched the world with the greatest works of art that Italy had produced for many centuries.

It was among these influences, between three and four hundred years ago, and about twelve centuries after the destruction and abandonment of the ancient villas, when Italy was again the home of all that was greatest in art and literature, that the famous gardens of the Renaissance were built and planted.

They followed the ancient villa closely as to their main plan and arrangement, for their purpose was the same; they were for men of the same race and class, in the same climate, under the same sky. The garden was an open-air continuation of the house, the terraces and groves the scenes of state banquets, and of gatherings whether social, artistic,

political, or commercial. How often have the remains of their fountains, groves, and marble benches, aided by historical record, inspired the painter to bring again to life the personages of noble family giving audience and honour to poet, minstrel, inventor, and discoverer! How often, within our own day, have they been painted, either for their own beauty's sake, or with some incident of human interest of gorgeously cloaked cardinal and old-world liveried lackey!

Happily, enough is left of these great gardens of Italy to show how beautiful they must have been in their maturity. As we see the best of them to-day, they are battered, ruined, weatherworn, neglected; but where enough of the original structure remains, there is an unity of design with absence of conscious effort, a princely grace that unites impressive dignity with the modesty that comes of refinement and due proportion; a charm only to be likened to the human charm of a perfect manner. On a steep hillside terrace rises above terrace, with broad easy steps in flights never too long, and spacious landings and resting-places; all with the beauty of proportion and fitness of purpose that mark all good work. Abundance of water, leaping, rushing, spouting, and fallingthe fountains and channels fed by copious streams that gush out of the hills above, and flow in willing abundance to fulfil the will of the designer.

How much of the charm of these old gardens is due to the magnificent tree-growth, of cypress as at the Villa d'Este, or of ilex as in the grounds of the Villa Borghese, or of pine in other examples, it is difficult to estimate, or whether they can have been as beautiful when 'white from the 'mason's hand' as now, when their ruin is partly veiled by graceful tangles of wild growth. Probably they were best at from fifty to a hundred years after building, or perhaps even later, when they were on the point of becoming overgrown, but were still in full-dressed and well-kept beauty. The architect may do as he will with stone and marble, but he must wait many years for the green things to grow and be trained to his design, and for the untrimmed trees of the surrounding groves to develope into the fitting background of his dressed work.

The Villa d'Este, near Tivoli, must have been one of the noblest of the gardens of the Renaissance. Even now, in a state of ruin and decay, it is most impressive. The great stairway still towers up, flight above flight, with noble fountains on the wide landings, and refreshing variety of straight or winding steps, till it reaches the highly ornate

garden-portico; the whole being the more striking from the severe simplicity of the main building of the palace. The direct ascent of the steep hillside could hardly have been more nobly treated, and through all the defacement and decay, and the mutilation of the original design occasioned by the removal of the sculptures, one cannot help feeling impressed by the nobility and grace of the whole. The almost unchecked growth of wild underwood, and the giant stature of the great cypresses, are not out of harmony with the ruined architecture. The great trees, perhaps at first clipped into shape and forming only a subservient part of the design, seem now to guard and protect the old garden, and with the other tangles of wild bushes to strive to hide the ravages of decay and neglect. Kindly Nature clothes the ruin with her own beauty; were it stripped of this gracious mantle, and all its mutilation and decay laid bare, how much of its mysterious, poetical charm would be lost!

What a living link with a most ancient past are the everflowing waters of these old fountains! Who knows what yet older ones may have been there before them, or what woodnymph may have bathed in the same rill two thousand years ago? In what other country of the world can one receive such impressions of poetry and mystery as among the waters and groves of Italy? The very names of growing things have a musical sound with an ancient echo-myrtle, olive, vine, pomegranate! No wonder that such scenes played on the sensitive imagination of Nathaniel Hawthorne as on a sympathetic instrument, inspiring his celebrated story of the present century, whose central figure, both in form and character, shows traces of descent, through centuries of noble lineage, to a woodland ancestor in the dim ages of mythology! Much to be mourned are the old Roman villas that within the last quarter of a century have been wiped out for ever to make room for modern building, and happy are those amongst us who knew Rome in their youth only, before the time when so much that was beautiful of old grove and garden had been destroyed. However, nothing is likely to rob Rome of her waters, and they are the more to be treasured as day by day her other delights are vanishing. No record remains of any gardening in England during the time of the Roman occupation. We cannot doubt that the villas whose foundations and highly decorated pavements have been already discovered, and are still being unearthed, had suitable gardens. Certain of our kitchen vege