entrench himself within his position and recognise his limitations. The 'garden enclosed,' with its ordered grace and sweetness, is not necessarily a 'stone yard,' a mechanic's playground, a Dutchman's fad; nor, on the other hand, does freedom from the trammels of art imply a wilderness. On one side there is the disciple of Nature, to whom the plumb-line, the shears, and the foot-rule are anathema; on the other there is the trained artist, with his quick sensibility and reverence for the antique beauty of a statelier time, to whom a garden represents Nature glorified by its passage through man's mind-the living memorial of a dead past. To one the immortal Brown' is the apostle of a nobler and a living creed. To the other he is a barbarian, who would wheel away the very gods of Greece.

Happily the dispute is none of ours. We are not called upon to walk with Bacon and Temple and Evelyn among their pleached alleys, dappled with tender gloom, nor to appraise the motives of those who swept away their work. It is to Nature, a more exacting mistress than either, that we are called upon to do homage. The true gardener must possess the attributes of both the poet and the artist; and accordingly both factions have laid claim to their advocacy. Milton, Herrick, Herbert, and Donne are suffused with garden imagery. But before we descend to Thomson, as the propounder of a naturalistic style, it must be remembered that it was among the woods and by the streams that Chaucer and many another English bard loved to go a-maying. Gainsborough's school undoubtedly had its influence; but the landscape gardeners -pioneers of the Wild Garden-cannot boast of having infected the national taste with their love of scenery. For, co-existing with the extreme of artificiality in garden craft, there ever lingered in the English character the love of woodland, flower, and field. Our climate may be toujours affreux, but it is favourable to scenic effect. There are loftier scenes,' as Hawthorne says, 'in many countries than the best that England can show; but for the picturesqueness of the smallest object that lies under its gentle gloom and sunshine there is no scenery like it anywhere.'

Before passing to the general consideration of our subject we must notice one of the latest contributions to the swelling tide of garden literature. The pleasant scenes which the author of 'Wood and Garden' conjures up before her readers' eyes have the merit of realism, being a record of work achieved. The catalogue of failures, of which works of this nature too often consist, may provide amusement to some and afford a warning

to others. But they suggest the inquiry, Why not subordinate your hopes to the conditions under which you have to work? Success is, on the whole, a healthier diet than disappointment. Miss Jekyll pays a just tribute to the influence which Mr. Robinson's publications have exercised upon the art of gardening; yet, while disclaiming any desire to rival the plantlore collected in his works, she gives horticultural hints which the tyro will welcome and the expert will not despise.

The assumption that we have seen the last of the dreary formalism of the interregnum is to bury the dead past too summarily. It ignores the caprice of fashion, against which even a thing of beauty cannot strive successfully. The value of varieties is in no way called in question by suggesting that a novelty is not necessarily more beautiful than the type, while it is very commonly inferior in hardihood. There is true enthusiasm for the beautiful in Miss Jekyll's work, and there is a clear perception of the fact that in proportion as the gardener makes this his aim, he will contribute to the world's happiness and to the restfulness of his own spirit. Sweet peas on tiptoe for a flight' need not be grown prosaically between rows of sticks; and if the ruling grace' that tended Shelley's garden was too ethereal for mortal imitation, her spirit still haunts the gardener's ideal.

6

The reaction against the traditional formal garden set in during the early part of the eighteenth century. Increased formality-and that often of a vulgar and puerile character-had come in the train of the Dutch dynasty. The work of the great masters of their craft had been debased in its passage through feeble hands, and fell a ready prey to the destructive criticism which was the fashion of the hour. Horace Walpole had little difficulty in bringing ridicule upon the taste which condescended to embellish our gardens with giants, animals, monsters, coats of arms, mottoes in yew, box, and holly.' These were the stock-in-trade of the London gardeners of the day, who dealt in fine-cut greens and clipt yews in the shape of birds, dogs, men, and ships.' Pope lent the aid of his raillery, and the tribe of critics and essayists extolled the charms of Nature, which were not powerful enough, however, to entice them from their congenial coffee-houses. The world seems to have grown captious and to have outlived its enthusiasms as we contrast the well-poised phrases of Addison with the joyous outburst of Gerarde: 'Go forwarde in the name of God; graffe, set, plant, nourishe up trees in every corner of your ground.' Revolution was in the air. There was a craving for deliverance from dogmatic laws. Had the apostles of freedom been

prepared with a new and positive faith to take the place of that from which they emancipated themselves, all might have been well. But so intent were they upon destruction that irretrievable mischief had been wrought before the task of reconstruction could be undertaken. Opening out, pulling down, and levelling were their watchwords; and the result was the bare even surface which taxed all the ingenuity of those who undertook to repair their errors. It is curious to note the enthusiasm with which the new ideas were hailed. Brownacclaimed 'the immortal' by his contemporaries—was their chief exponent. To him and his coadjutor Kent is due the destruction of many of the most finished specimens of formal garden craft which ever adorned a country.

A little more Nature might have been admissible, but not the drastic remedy of wheeling away terraces and walls, and laying open the 'garden enclosed' as a foreground to the distant landscape. When this change had been effected it was found too often that the landscape was not Nature. It bore the mark of man's handicraft—the only difference being that it was of a coarser character. It needs the kindly Heimweh of an American to find sanctity, as Hawthorne did, in an English turnip-field. It was quickly discovered that our forefathers valued a screen for other reasons besides the peaceful seclusion which it afforded. Hence arose the necessity of making Nature. Rocks, mounds, and lakes had to be improvised, which failed of their effect because they were not in keeping with the surroundings. Expenditure the most lavish, and taste the most consummate, can never cure what we term Nature's defects.

That our gardens were not more entirely wrecked in their transition from Art to that parody of Nature which was substituted for it, is due to the genius and perseverance of Humphrey Repton. It is indicative of his liberal mind that having begun by blessing he came near to cursing. He inveighs bitterly against the puerilities perpetrated by Brown, whose habit it was to destroy the natural contour of the ground by lowering every hillock and filling every hollow, and whosuch was his penchant for what in this sense may be properly termed artificial water'-ventured to excavate his lakes without any regard to the naturalness of the situation. Repton's philosophic mind divined that the old must be blended with the new. Instead of trying to teach Nature better ways, he took her into partnership. His catholic taste appeals to us from his pages. His drawings, in which a plan of the new grounds fits over the old-with spaces cut out to show such

portions as were to be retained-prove that, like every true gardener, he had a picture of the future in his mind's eye.

How difficult was his task may be gathered from the frequent references to the obstacles which he encountered. It must be remembered, too, in appreciating his work, that his best designs were often marred by the mischievous intervention of his patrons. Not unnaturally he demurs to the dictum that one who is always on the spot must know best. If so, a constant attendant is, in time of need, a better adviser than a physician. In the Advertisement, which explains the scope of his treatise, published in 1803, he says:

'So difficult is the application of any rules of Art to the works of Nature that I do not presume to give this Book any higher title than "Observations tending to establish fixed Principles, in the Art of Landscape Gardening."'

'In every other polite art there are certain established rules or general principles to which the professor may appeal in support of his opinion; but in Landscape Gardening every one delivers his sentiments or displays his taste, as whim or caprice may dictate, without having studied the subject.'

To prove that Art and Nature are not irreconcilable, it may suffice to summon one typical witness, of whose inborn sensitiveness to every phase and mood of Nature it were superfluous to speak. Read Wordsworth's idea of a garden, and mark how fairly he, who in garden craft was the equal of Bacon and Evelyn, could hold the balance between the rival schools. In a letter to Sir George Beaumont, quoted by Mr. Myers, he

says:

Laying out grounds, as it is called, may be considered as a liberal Art, in some sort like poetry and painting, and its object is or ought to be to move the affections under the control of good sense, that is, of the best and wisest; but, speaking with more precision, it is to assist Nature in moving the affections of those who have the deepest perception of the beauties of Nature.'

We have noted the disestablishment which overtook the old English garden-reform degenerating into iconoclasm; the attempts, always unavailing, to reconstitute the past; the chaos which ensued. We are still in the transition state, but that is the fashion of the day. Good may come of evil, but it behoves us to remember that the break-up of a system leaves us the difficult task of reconstruction without the aid of rules. The wondrous enthusiasm which shed its glamour over the garden in

era,

Elizabethan days has not spent itself. In our sober English fashion we still love flowers, though our praise takes something of that saddened tone which is appropriate to a disillusioned In the garden at least there is no room for despondency. The world's floral treasures which have been poured so lavishly upon us are not yet exhausted. The horticulturist, at any rate, may view with complacency the opening up of China and the dark places of the earth.

The man of the world will see in all this nothing but the swing of fashion's pendulum. But there are epidemics of sentiment as well as of disease, which have to be reckoned with. The weariness of life, which is affected by many, is felt in all its reality by the few. Man carries with him a double nature: the civilisation of centuries coexists with primitive savagery. The stronger the character, the greater the impulse towards reversion. Minds of a primitive type decline to be 'lulled by the singer of an empty day'; the trim paths of life irritate them. Such men as Rousseau, Gautier, and Thoreau might well be credited with this yearning towards wildness.' But Cowley spoke for others besides himself when he desired that his garden should be—

'Painted o'er with Nature's hand, not Art's.'

In the polished and decorous Addison we find an even more unexpected advocate:

'I have often,' he says, 'looked upon it as a piece of happiness that I have never fallen into any of these fantastical tastes, nor esteemed anything the more for its being uncommon and hard to be met with. For this reason I look upon the whole country in springtime as a spacious garden, and make as many visits to a spot of daisies, or a bank of violets, as a florist does to his borders or parterres.'

This is, however, no disparagement of a garden. Burns took his walk to see the linnet's nest and the rosebud bending its thorny stalk. We would not outrage his artistic sense by turning his wild rose into a standard budded with different varieties of the flower; nor would we affront Addison's cultured taste by overlaying Nature with Art. Who would not sympathise with Juvenal's lament over Egeria's fountain 'prisoned in marble,' or with Byron's delight at seeing the flowers and ivy once more asserting their claim? If Nature is at times coerced, she revenges herself with a sweet wilfulness. Many a ruin looks fairer in its decay than when it left the builder's hands. The Colosseum, before the archæologists intervened, harboured four hundred and twenty species of plants. Shelley