.54.1

GARDENING.

ries, and culture became requisite, seuavate inciosures for fearingherbs grew expedient. Fruits were in the same predicament; andthose most in use, or that demanded attention, must have enteredinto and extended the domestic inclosure. Noah planted a vine-yard, and drank of the wine, d ims we acquired vineyards, asWell as kitchen-gardens, and orchards. No doubt the prototypeof all these sorts was the garden of Eden ; but as Paradise was agreat deal larger than any gardens we read of afterwards, being in-closed by the rivers Pison, Gihun, Hiddekel, and Euphrates ; asevery tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for food grewin it; and as two other trees were likewise found there, of whichnot a slip or sucker remains ; it does not belong to the presentdiscussion. Alter the Fall, nobody was suffered to enter into tin-garden ; and the poverty and necessities of our first ancestorshardly allowed them time to make improvements in imitation ofit, supposing any plan had been preserved. A cottage and a slipof ground for a cabbage and a gooseberry-bush, such as we see bvthe side of a common, were in all probability the earliest seats andgardens: a well and bucket succeeded to tiie Pison and Euphrates .As settlements increased, the orchard and vineyard fallowed ; andthe earliest princes ot tribes possessed just the necessaries of a mo-dern tanner. The eastern gardens appear to have been planted ad-joining to the house or palace to which they belonged. Thus, kingAha-aierus went immediately from the banquet ot wine to. walk inthe garden of the palace. Esther vii. 7. The garden of Cyrus,at Sardis, mentioned by Xenophon , seems t'o have been contigu-ous to the palace; as was that of Attains, mentioned by Justin,t. 30, c. 4. The hanging-gardens at Babylon were not so mucha djacent to the palace'as a part of the palace itself, since severalof the royal apartments were beneath them. Diod. lib. 2. IVcnot certain what the taste for gardening was among the Greeks.

1 he Acadomus'was a wooded shady place ; and the trees appeartO'have been of the olive-species. It was situated beyond the li-tnits of the walls, and adjacent to the tombs of the heroes; andthough we are not informed of the particular manner in which thisgrove was laid out, it may be gathered from Pausanius’s Attica,that it was elegantly ornamented. At the entrance was an altardedicated to Love. Within the Academus, were the altars of* rometheus, the Muses , Mercury, Minerva, and Hercules; and®t a small distance was the tomb of Plato . So that, in all proba-I . lt y, it was highly adapted by art, as well as nature, to philoso-phic reflection and contemplation. A taste for gardening doesdot appear to have prevailed among the Romans, otherwise thans a matter of utility, till a very late period; at least the writershusbandry, Cato, Varro , Columella, and Palladios, make noMention ot a garden as an object of pleasure, but solely with re-Pect to its produ -tiom of herbs and fruits. The gardens of Lu-ollus are the fust we hod mentioned of remarkable magnificence ;louglj indeed from the extravagance to which these were arrived,is evident, they could not be the first. Plutarch speaks of them^ incredibly expensive, and equal to the magnificence of kings.

^ hp y contained artificial elevations of ground to a surprisingei ght, of buildings projected into the sea, and vast pieces of waer upon land. In short, his extravagance was so great, that he^quired the appellation of the Roman Xerxes. It is not iinpro-in a •’ fr° m consideration of Luculhis having spent much timeth 111 a situation wherein he had an opportunity of observingmost splendid constructions of this kind, that these gardens■ P'ght lie laid out in the Asiatic style. The vast masses ot build-; to have been erected, might have borne some resemblance,the arrangement and style, lo the Babylonian gardens. In theeamtings found at Herculaneum are a few traces of gardens, ass seen in the second volume of the prints. r I bey are small

Iarf lare '“closures, formed by trellis-work and espaliers, and regu-> ornamented with vases, fountains, and careutides, elegantly^'"metrical, and proper for the narrow spaces allotted to the gar-bo. 1 ,, a h° use in a capital city. From these remarks, it appearstk naturally and insensibly the idea of a kitchen-garden slid intow ‘‘ich has for so many ages been peculiarly termed a garden,a ni, ° ur ances tors in this country distinguished by the name ofpP'easure-garden. A square piece of ground was parted off infor the use of the family to exclude cattle, and ascer-A$ n • Property, it was separated from the fields by a hedge.nilieUi :l,K * design of privacy increased, the inclosure was dig-“y walls; and in dimes where fruits were not lavished by

the ripening glow of nature and soil, fruit-trees were assisted andsheltered from surrounding winds by the like expedient; for "theinundation of luxuries, which have swelled into general necessities,have almost all taken their source from the simple fountain of rea-son. Wiion nature and prospect were thus excluded, by the cus-tom of making square gardens inclosed with wall-, 1 pomp and soli-tude combined to call tor something that might enrich and enliventhe insipid and inanimated partition'. Fountains,-first inventedtor use, which grandeur loves to' disguise and throw out of sight,received embellishments from co-tly marbles, and at last, to con-tradict utility, as it were, tossed their waste of waters into air inspouting columns. Art, in the hands of rude man, had at firstbeen made a succedancum to nature ; in the hands of ostentatiouswealth, it became the means of opposing nature ;' and the more ittraversed the march of the latter, the -more nobility' thought itspower was demonstrated. Canals measured by the line were in-troduced in lieu of meandering streams, and terraces were hoistedaloft in opposition to the facile slopes that imperceptibly unite tiievalley to the hill. Balustrades defended these precipitate anddangerous elevations, and flights of steps rejoined them to the sub-jacent flat from which tiie terrace had been dug. Va-.es andsculpture were added to the unnecessary balconies, an'd statuesfurnished the lifeless spot with mimic representations of the ex-cluded sons of men. '1 bus difficulty and expence were the con-stituent parts of those sumptuous and seliiah solitudes; and everyimprovement that was made, was but a step farther from nature.The tricks of water-works lo wet the unwary, not to refresh thepanting spectator, and parterres embroidered m patterns like a pet-ticoat, were but the childish endeavours of fashion and novelty to-reconcile greatness to what it surfeited on. To crown tlicse’im-potent displays of false taste, the sheers were applied'to the lovelywildness of form with which nature has distinguished each variousspecies of tree and shrub. Tne venerable oak, the romanticbeech, the useful elm, even the aspiring circuit of the lime, the'regular round of the chesnut, and the almost moulded orange-tree,were corrected bv such fantastic admirers of symmetry. Thecompass and square were n'f more use in plantations than the nursery-man. The measured walk, the quincunx, and the etoile, imposedtheir unsatisfying sameness on every royal and noble garden.'Frees were headed, and their sides pared away ; many French groves seem green chests set upon poles. Seats of marble, ar-bours, and summer-houses, terminated every vista; and symme-try, even where the space was too large to permit its being re-marked at one view, was so essential, that, as Pope observed,

--each alley lias a brother.

And half the garden just rellects the other.

In Kip’s Views of the Seats of our Nobility and Gentry, we seethe same tiresome and returning uniformity. Every house is ap-proached by two or three gardens, consisting perhaps of a gravel-walk and two grass-plats or borders of flowers. Each rises abovethe other by two or three steps, and as many walls and terraces,and so many iron gates, that we recollect those ancient romancesin which every entrance was guarded by giants or dragons. Yetthough these and such preposterous inconveniences prevailed fromage to age, good sense in this country had perceived the want ofsomething at once more grand and more natural. And differentauthors gave descriptions of gardens which they considered as themodels of perfection. But as no succeeding generation in ailopulent and luxurious country contents itself with the perfectionestablished by its ancestors, more perfect perfection was stiltsought; and improvements had gone on, till London and Wisehad stocked all our gardens with giants, animals, monsters, coatsof arms, and mottoes, in yew, box, and holly. Absurdity couldgo no farther, and the tide turned. Bridgman, the next fashion-able designer of gardens, was far more chaste; and whether fromgood sense, or that the nation had been struck by the admirablepaper in the Guardian, No. 173, he banished verdant sculpture,and did not even revert to the square precision of the foregoingage. He enlarged his plans, disdained to make every divisiontally to its opposite ; and though he still adhered much to straightwalks with high-dipped hedges, they were only his great lines:the rest he diversined by wilderness, and with loose groves of oak,though still within surrounding hedges. As his reformation gain-ed footing, he ventured, in the royal garden at Richmond, to in-troduce