Park: originally in England a portion of a forest enclosed for keeping deer, trapped or otherwise caught in the open forest, and their increase. Grants for this purpose were made by the sovereigns to the nobles. Rich land of an open pastoral character, with trees sparingly distributed and having broad stretches of greensward pasturage, would naturally be chosen for this purpose; and this character would be intentionally increased by felling a portion of the trees and unintentionally by the effects of the browsing of the confined deer. Hence the word is used to describe this sort of scenery. Parks of this character at length became very numerous. In the reign of Henry VII. there were in Kent and Essex alone 100, each of several miles in circumference. The earl of Northumberland possessed 21 in three of the northern counties, containing 5,771 head of deer, besides others in the south. At that time, tenants sufficient to cultivate the land being difficult to obtain, parks were enclosed from motives of profit. As the country became more densely occupied and the landlords more numerous, sites for residences were generally taken within the parks for their proprietors. Thus the mansion was originally fitted to the park, not the park to the mansion. Parks at length came to be considered luxurious appendages to the dwellings of the rich, and to be formed and planted for this purpose.

There yet remain a large number of private parks of considerable size in England. There are more than 50 in the single county of Warwick, each from one to 5 miles in diameter. Most of these are open to the public, with some reasonable restrictions, and in many cases the whole people of the neighboring farms and villages have rights of way in footpaths through them. Not unfrequently parish churches are situated in the midst of old private parks. Most of the parks formed and held for the king’s use came gradually to be considered in a measure as public grounds. Even earlier than the reign of George II., the use of [347] the park of St. James in the suburbs of London had been so long enjoyed and was so highly valued by the people, that when the queen asked what it would cost to transform it to a garden, suitable to be attached to the palace which fronts upon it, closing it to the public, Horace Walpole says that his father replied: “Only three crowns,” meaning a revolution. As England has advanced from feudalism, and the power of the people has increased, the royal parks have more and more been adapted to the wants of the citizens.

Almost every large town in the civilized world now has public pleasure grounds in some form. Those of London are the following: Kensington gardens (262 acres), Hyde park (389), Green park (55), St. James’s park (59), Regent’s park and Primrose hill (473), Victoria park (248), Greenwich park (185), Battersea park (175), and Kennington park (35). The first four are in a chain (though not at all connected in plan), being partly separated by streets. There are also a great number of small pleasure grounds, termed squares, comprising about 1,200 acres. Besides these there are several large royal parks and grounds in the vicinity of London, much resorted to by its inhabitants; for instance, Windsor (3,800 acres), Hampton Court and Bushy (1,842), Richmond (2,468), and Kew (684). These can all be reached in less than an hour from the central parts of London, as can Epping forest, and several large commons, which are equally pleasure grounds for all the people. Thus, there are of free public pleasure grounds, within the town, above 3,000 acres, and suburban at least 10,000. In addition there are several noblemen’s parks which are in a measure open to the public, and the grounds of societies, as the horticultural and the crystal palace, to which the public are admitted on payment of a gate fee. The crystal palace company’s grounds comprise 200 acres, laid out by Sir J. Paxton, and 50,000 visitors have been in them at one time. The number ordinarily using the public parks of London has not been accurately ascertained, but on certain Sundays when music has been performed more than 100,000 persons have been counted at the gates of Victoria park in a day. The largest number counted was 130,000 in a day, in the Ring road in Hyde park; it is about 3 m. in length, and varies from 27 to 60 feet wide. The fashionable riding course of London is in the same park, and is popularly called Rotten Row, a corruption of la route du roi, or the king’s road, its official name; it is 90 feet wide, and a mile in length. Kensington gardens, Green park and St. James’s are only skirted by carriage roads and there is but little carriage road in either of the other metropolitan parks. That of Victoria park is but 22 feet wide, and seldom crowded.

Phoenix park at Dublin (1,752 acres) is a fine upland meadow fringed and dotted with trees. In its natural character it is the best public park in the world, but it is badly laid out and badly kept, being much larger than the town requires or than government can afford to maintain for it. Birkenhead park is a piece of ground of 185 acres in a suburb of Liverpool, and is surrounded by villas, the grounds of which connect with it. Though small, it is by its admirable plan the most complete, and for its age the most agreeable park in Europe. It was [348] designed and its construction superintended by Sir Joseph Paxton and Mr. Kemp. Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford, and other manufacturing towns of England have each recently acquired parks by subscriptions of citizens or by joint stock companies formed under the limited liabilities act. To that at Birmingham a charge of a penny is made for entrance, and this affords a fund by which, after the payment for improvements and maintenance, the cost of the land is being rapidly defrayed; as soon as paid for, the admission will be free. At Halifax an admirable park has been formed and given outright to the town by a benevolent citizen. Derby is provided in the same way with an arboretum. Most of the small towns of England have some place of general promenade, as for instance the old city walls and the river bank above the town at Chester, the common and the old castle grounds at Hereford, the river banks at Lincoln, and the cathedral green at Salisbury and Winchester. These consist in each case either of a long, broad, walk, pleasantly bordered and leading to fine views, or a few acres of smooth turf well shaded, where, after church on Sunday or on a fine summer evening, considerable numbers of the largest classes of the people may always be seen in their best presentation of themselves. Most villages in England have a private park near them which the people are allowed to use; when this is not the case, it is rare that even a hamlet is found that has not at least a bit of cricket ground or common, where, on benches under a patriarchal oak or elm, the old people meet to gossip and watch the sports of the vigorous youth.

The old towns of the continent have generally provided themselves with pleasure grounds by outgrowing their ancient borders of wall and moat and glacis, partly razing the wall, filling part of the moat, and so, with more or less skilful arrangement of the materials, making the groundwork of a garden in the natural style. This is done admirably at Frankfort, Leipsic, and Vienna. Elsewhere, simple broad roads bordered with trees have been laid out upon the levelled ramparts, as is the case with the circuitous portion of the boulevards of Paris. The boulevards of Brussels are simply straight streets about 125 feet wide, and with in some cases different classes of communications running through their length, each divided from the other by a row of trees; one, for instance, has on the outside a gravelled walk 21 feet wide, next a macadamized carriage road 36 feet wide, next a soft gravelled horseback road 21 feet wide, next a paved business road 30 feet wide, and then another walk, which is perhaps flagged for rainy weather. Town houses of a good class front upon this boulevard, removed from the too close observation of promenaders by the interposition of small private gardens or forecourts. Brussels also has an old park and two botanical and zoological gardens.

The newly formed Avenue de l’Imperatrice at Paris is a straight promenade, between Paris and the Bois de Boulogne. It consists of a carriage way 60 feet wide, there being a pad for saddle horses on one side and a gravelled walk on the other, each 40 feet wide, and separated from the carriage road by a simple wooden hand rail; on the outside of all is a slope of turf planted in the rear with [349] groups of trees and shrubs in the natural style; back of this, on both sides, a narrow road adapted to heavy traffic is carried, which also gives access to a line of detached villas, the grounds of which, being outside of all, form the background of the view from the promenade.

The Bois de Boulogne is an ancient royal forest of some 2,000 acres, in the suburbs of Paris. The soil is naturally sandy and poor, and the scenery flat and uninteresting. The trees are generally thickly grown, stunted, and weak. Several departmental roads—broad, straight, paved wagon ways—pass through it. Except [for] its vicinity to Paris, and the refreshing wildness of a large and entirely untrimmed forest, it offered as late as 1855 but little to attract a visitor. It was, however, already a favorite resort of the Parisians, and Napoleon III. saw, in the very neglect to which it had been abandoned, the opportunity of making one of those sensations to the frequent succession of which he owes so much of his popularity with his subjects. The coarse silicious soil, although unfavorable to fine old trees, is much less costly to handle than better earth, and its form may be remodelled with ease and rapidity. Good roads are cheaply graded in it, and the materials of a sufficiently firm superstructure for so porous a base may be had on the spot by simply screening its pebbles; for the same reason, scarcely any artificial drainage, so important in heavy soils, is necessary. There were some large open meadows in the vicinity reaching to the banks of the Seine. All these circumstances were skilfully taken advantage of, and the various opportunities they afforded for the purpose in view [were] adroitly combined. Possession was obtained of the meadows, and roads [were] cut through the old wood in such a way as to lay open all that was most agreeable in it, at the same time bringing its close scenery before the visitor in rapid alternation with the open expanses of the meadows. Long and narrow lakes, the largest having two long and narrow islands in the midst of it, were excavated, and the excavated material [was] thrown into hillocks along the shores. Thus, with but a very short removal of the light material, a very rapid change of scenery, and this in views of no inconsiderable distance, was effected.

Rocks of soft stone were then selected at Fontainebleau, split into fragments convenient for transportation, floated down the Seine till opposite their intended site, and then moved to the banks and hillocks of the lakes and put together again in their original form. This, with an addition of artificial rock, made chiefly of water cement, and an admirable planting of evergreens, furnished bits of really picturesque scenery. Each of these pieces of rock-work, however, is only excellent in itself; they are rather studies of rock pinned against the landscape of the wood than naturally incorporated with it. The principal rock-work is much more like an operatic fairy scene than any thing in nature; and as its great size prevents it from being regarded as puerile or grotesque, like Chinese garden scenes, it may be considered to have been conceived in an original style to which the term romantic may be rightly applied. In its way it is admirably done. It contains 58,015 cubic feet of rock, and, with the reservoir of [350]

Avenue de l’Imperatrice in Paris

[351]

Rockwork in the Bois de Boulogne

All the above works, commenced in 1855, together with a race course and a great number of rustic architectural structures, the planting of 420,080 trees and shrubs, of which 1,550 were too large to be lifted by hand, and a general improvement of the surface throughout the wood and meadow, had cost, at the end of the year 1858, $1,414,000; and no money ever better effected the object of its expenditure, nothing else done under the auspices of the present emperor being regarded by all classes of the people of Paris with such universal admiration and satisfaction. The Bois de Boulogne contains, with the meadow, 2,155 acres, thus divided: wood, 107 acres; open turf, 675; water, 74; roads, 265, nurseries and flower beds, 71. The length of carriage road is 86 miles, varying from 24 feet 6 inches to 32 feet 8 inches in width; of bridle road 7 miles, generally 16 feet in width; of walks 16 miles, generally from 8 to 10 feet in width. Much of the wood is still in an unimproved state.

The Bois de Vincennes is a close natural forest on the opposite side of Paris from the Bois de Boulogne, the improvement of which, in a manner similar to that of the latter, was commenced some years ago, but has been [352] discontinued. It encloses a vast plain used for heavy gun and shell practice, drilling in field fortification, and manoeuvres on a large scale.

The garden of the Tuileries with the Champs Élysées forms the most magnificent urban or interior town promenade in the world. Its central feature is an avenue of horse chestnuts, which leads straight from the clock tower of the palace, through the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Élysées, and the triumphal arch, to the bridge of Neuilly, a distance of 3 miles. In its centre, on the Place de la Concorde, stands the obelisk of Luxor, with fountains near it, and there are at different points other fountains which give brilliancy to its vista. On either side in the gardens are groves, shrubberies, and parterres of flowers; and in the Champs Élysées, gay coffee houses, concert halls, and booths for the exhibition and sale of playthings. The garden of the Luxembourg is another interior promenade of Paris. It is also in the formal style, with a central avenue, groves, and flower beds, music and coffee houses, but is especially notable for its rose garden; it is about a mile in circumference. Both gardens are open to the public, and in fine weather an immense crowd of all classes of the people daily make use of the privilege. At certain hours thousands of children, attended generally by their nurses, may be found in them at play.

The interior pleasure grounds at Vienna have been already mentioned. Its principal rural promenade is the Prater, the chief feature of which is a straight carriage road, over a mile in length, with a walk on one side and an equestrian pad on the other. It contains near the town a great number of coffee houses and play houses; but being 5 miles in length, considerable portions are thoroughly secluded and rural. Before the recent improvements of the Bois de Boulogne it was the most frequented park in the world, all classes of the Viennese, from the emperor to his most humble subject, resorting to it at certain seasons almost as if it supplied a necessity of life. The English garden at Munich was laid out under the inspiration of Count Rumford, by the Freiherr von Skell, and its scenery, in the English style, is more agreeable than that of any other large public park on the continent. It is about 4 miles long and half a mile wide. The Thiergarten at Berlin contains over 200 acres of perfectly flat land, chiefly a close wood, laid out in straight roads, walks, and riding paths. Its scenery is uninteresting. The Prussian royal gardens of Sans Souci, Charlottenburg, and Heiligensee are all extensive grounds, the two former in mixed, the last in natural, style. The public gardens of Dresden, Stuttgart, Hanover, Brunswick, Baden, Cassel, Darmstadt, Gotha, Weispar, Worlitz, Schwetzingen, Töplitz, Prague, and Hamburg, are all worthy of mention. Coffee houses are important adjuncts of all the German public gardens. The refreshments furnished are generally rather coarse, but of a wholesome sort, and the prices very moderate. Many families habitually resort to them for their evening meal, especially when, as is frequently the case, there is the additional attraction of excellent music furnished by the government. The gardens of Antwerp, the Hague, and Warsaw are also remarkable.

The famous summer gardens of St. Petersburg are not extensive, being [353] but half a mile in length by a quarter in breadth, and formal in style. They contain very fine trees, are rich in statuary (boxed up in winter), and are the most carefully kept public gardens in the world, so that it is said a policeman watches every leaf to catch it, if it falls, before it reaches the ground. In the exceeding luxuriance, freshness, and vigor of the plants and flowers, and in the deep greenness of the turf, this care finds its reward. During the evenings of the short summer the garden is crowded with loungers, and it is here that the ancient annual wife fair is held—marriageable girls, tricked out with every evidence of wealth in trinkets which their parents can manage to obtain, standing for hours together, for the express and avowed purpose of affording an opportunity to those wanting wives to make their selection. The more fashionable promenade of St. Petersburg is in the gardens of Catharinehoff, where on the 1st of May “all St. Petersburg” turns out, and there is an endless procession of carriages headed by that of the emperor. The gardens are full of bowling alleys and restaurants. Many of the islands of the Neva contain pleasant gardens, both public and private, their chief distinguishing characteristic being the abundance of glass and the success with which exotics are cultivated. One of the most remarkable gardens in the world is that of Tzarskoe Selo, in which is the residence of the imperial family, about two hours’ ride from St. Petersburg. It consists of about 350 acres of diversified scenery, wooded and open, and contains, besides the palace, temples, banqueting houses, and theatres, a complete village in the Chinese style, a pyramid and obelisks in the Egyptian style, a Turkish mosque, a hermitage, and numerous monuments of military and other achievements. Notwithstanding this great and incongruous variety of artificial objects, beautiful and secluded rural scenery is not wanting. The keeping of the grounds employs 600 men, and costs $80,000 per annum.

Stockholm has a great variety of delightful waterside rural walks, and the chief object of pride with its people is the Djurgard, or deer park, which is a large trace of undulating ground about 3 miles in circumference, containing grand masses of rock and fine old trees. It is beautifully kept. The Haga park, also at Stockholm, is very picturesque in character, and has the peculiarity of natural water communications between its different parts and the city, so that it is much visited in boats. The environs of Copenhagen contain many grounds of public resort, but the notable promenade of the city is the royal deer park (Dyrhave), a noble forest. In the midst is a large green where a great annual fair is held.

In all the Italian cities, the chief public rural resorts are gardens attached to the villas of ancient noble families. The cascine of Florence are pastures of the ducal dairy, on the banks of the Arno, passing through which are broad straight carriage drives. These contain little that is attractive within themselves, but command delicious views. At a space where the different roads concentrate, a band of music usually performs at intervals during the promenade hours; and it is the custom for carriages to assemble just previous to the commencement of each piece of music, and rapidly disperse at its end, taking a short drive and returning. [354] The fashionable carriage drive of Rome is on the Pincian hill, which has little natural attraction except in its magnificent distant views. At Naples the fashionable world turns out in carriages upon a broad street called the Riviera di Chiaja, near the bay, but separated from it by the public garden of the Villa Reale, the length of which is about 5,000 feet, breadth 200. The garden is partly in the Italian and partly in the natural style; but with the bay of Naples to look out at, the visitor finds little in its scenery to hold his attention.

Most Spanish and Portuguese towns, and towns founded anywhere in the world by the Spanish and Portuguese, are provided with a place of promenade under formal avenues, to which at certain hours custom brings the ladies in open carriages and gentlemen on foot or horseback.

In the United States there is, as yet, scarcely a finished park or promenade ground deserving mention. In the few small fields of rank hay grasses and spindle-trunked trees, to which the name is sometimes applied, the custom of the promenade has never been established. Yet there is scarcely a town or thriving village in which there is not found some sort of inconvenient and questionable social exchange of this nature. Sometimes it is a graveyard, sometimes a beach or wharf, sometimes a certain part of a certain street; sometimes interest in a literary or a charitable, a military, or even a mercantile, enterprise is the ostensible object which brings people together. But in its European signification the promenade exists only in the limited grounds attached to the capitol and to the “white house” at Washington, and in the yet half-made park of New York. It is a remarkable fact that in the second year after any portion of the roads of the latter are open, and while they are still incomplete and encumbered with the carts of the workmen, and there is but the faintest suggestion of park scenery, the promenade seems to have been fully established as an institution of the city. There are indeed few gayer or better attended promenades in Europe, it having been not at all unusual during the last year (1860) for 2,000 carriages and 10,000 persons on foot to enter the gates of a fine autumn afternoon, while, although 5 miles distant from the city hall, 100,000 have been drawn to it on special occasions.

The central park of New York is being formed on two pieces of ground a little less than a mile apart, one of 331 acres, the other of 166, connected by two narrow strips containing together 137 acres, between which stand two great artificial reservoirs of water for the supply of the city, which occupy 142 acres. The park enclosure will therefore contain 776 acres, to which an addition of 68 is contemplated. The site of the central park, having been chosen on account of the impracticability of extending the ordinary street arrangements of the city over it, presents great obstacles to satisfactory park arrangements. In overcoming these, many peculiarities, by which it will be distinguished from all other parks, must result. The plan, which is still incomplete in details, contains about 9 miles of carriage road, 5 of bridle road, and nearly 20 of walks. A lake, which, with many deep bays, occupies 20 acres, is furnished with pleasure boats in summer; and in [355] winter, its depth being reduced to 4 feet, at which elevation its banks are terraced, forms a skating field to which sometimes as many as 50,000 persons have resorted in a day, furnishing a scene of gayety and intricate motion almost without parallel. Fifty acres in different parts of the park are prepared especially for the recreation of ball playing. A district called the ramble, which can only be entered on foot, consists of a series of walks carried, in constantly changing grades and directions, through 80 acres of ground of very diversified character, the aspect of natural arrangement being everywhere maintained, while the richness of cultivation is added. The profusion of rocky surface, without the barrenness of vegetation which usually accompanies it, renders this very interesting and attractive; and, in the incomplete condition of the rest of the park, it is often inconveniently crowded. At a point where the best interior view of the park is to be had, exterior scenes being obscured, and where the various communications are so arranged that visitors must pass near it, a series of terraces, staircases, and arcades offer temptations and facilities for a large number of people to tarry and so dispose of themselves while resting or lounging as not to be in each other’s way. This is effected by a peculiar architectural arrangement, the details of which themselves invite observers to leisurely contemplation.

Mr. F. L. Olmsted and Mr. C. Vaux are the designers of the plan, which was obtained by a remarkable competition, the commissioners appointed to layout the park having offered premiums amounting to $4,000 for the best, which induced 35 studies to be presented to them, some coming from Europe. It is chiefly remarkable as an effort to reconcile the necessities of a park which is to be the centre of a crowded metropolis with scenery, the predominating quality of which shall be rural and in some parts even rudely picturesque. Its purely constructive features are for this purpose kept below the general plane of sight, and to some extent are completely subterranean. Its artistic intentions are described in a recent report of a legislative committee to be, “in the first place, to obtain large unbroken surfaces of smooth meadow-like ground wherever the natural obstacles to this mode of treatment are to be overcome, even by heavy expenditure. The immediate borders of these spaces are planted in a manner to hide or disguise any incongruous quality in the grounds beyond. The rocky and broken surface which originally characterized the whole site, however, admits of the application of this evident preference of the designers to but a small portion of the grounds thus far finished; and elsewhere its capabilities for picturesque effects have been revealed. The different classes of communications are so arranged that, by a peculiar system of arched passages, it never becomes necessary for a person on foot to cross the surface of the carriage roads, or the horseman’s track, or the horseman to cross the carriage roads, though he may ride upon them if he prefer.”

Philadelphia, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Hartford, and Detroit have each recently taken steps to obtain a park. In Philadelphia some fine old villa grounds, beautifully situated on the Schuylkill near the Fairmount water works, have been [356] purchased. These contain 128 acres, upon which operations adapting them to public purposes have been commenced, and it is intended to add to them 80 acres on the opposite bank of the river, the two sections to be connected by bridges. The alterations to be made are designed and superintended by Messrs. Sidney and Adams. There are fine trees already on the grounds, and they possess many very valuable advantages in position, character of soil, and beauty of natural surface. At Hartford a competition of plans was held, but the committee having the matter in charge were dissatisfied with all that were offered, and undertook to form one for themselves which should avoid all the objections they found to each of them. The result was an ill-digested design, badly fitted to a rather difficult piece of ground. At Baltimore, Mr. Daniels, who had previously laid out a number of rural cemeteries, has been employed to adapt a very beautiful old private park to public purposes. The Brooklyn park commission is acting under the advice of Lieut. E. L. Viele, formerly of the U. S. army, but has not yet adopted a plan. Mr. Olmsted has been consulted with reference to the Detroit park, but nothing is yet determined in regard to it. Near St. Louis private munificence has formed and opened to the public a botanic garden. The common of Boston is a piece of undulating ground of 48 acres, in most of which trees have been planted without method, and a great many walks laid out with no other purpose than to offer short cuts through it from every entrance in all directions. It has a few fine trees, and the Beacon street mall, a broad avenue walk by the side of one of its boundaries, has a unique though perfectly simple character. The old public grounds of Cambridge, New Haven, and other towns often exhibit the beauty and value which trees acquire with age, when planted with ever so little art. These grounds are matters of town pride, and are assumed to have great value to the communities which possess them; but they are inconveniently arranged, badly kept, and bear a similar relation to a well designed and well kept park that a wigwam does to a well appointed mansion. Savannah has a great number of small public squares, some few of them laid out and planted with taste, but most of them mere untidy spaces, too small for a walk or any purpose of recreation, except playing a game of marbles, and which apparently serve no purpose but to increase the distances between the houses of the town and enlarge its geographical size. At the Bonaventura cemetery, near Savannah, a natural assemblage of old live oaks, hung with moss, forms one of the finest scenes of druidic beauty in the world.

Landscape gardening in the United States has hitherto been chiefly directed to the improvement of naturally wooded scenery, and that on a small scale, yet in many instances, of which the best are on the banks of the Hudson, with admirable results. Publicly the art has been chiefly directed, also, to the improvement of naturally wooded, picturesque scenery in the formation of rural cemeteries. The motive of economizing space for graves, the association of funeral solemnity with shade, gloom, and seclusion, and the custom of yielding the planting of each allotment of ground for a family to the caprice or confined [357] local purpose of its purchaser, have in these cases rendered the application of true art scarcely possible. Yet, though our rural cemeteries invariably contain much that is hideous, particularly in iron and marble, and are entirely without breadth or repose of scenery, many of them are very beautiful; and the older ones especially, although yet in their youth of the best tree life, exhibit the wealth of the country in elements for landscape art. The rural cemetery, which should, above all things, be a place of rest, silence, seclusion, and peace, is too often now made a place not only of the grossest ostentation of the living but a constant resort of mere pleasure seekers, travellers, promenaders, and loungers; and this indicates, as much as any thing else, the need that exists in every town and village for a proper pleasure ground.

The most notable pleasure grounds of remote antiquity of which we have any clear account, were those formed by Nebuchadnezzar, at Babylon, to satisfy the longing for picturesque scenery of his home-sick Median bride. If we credit the accounts of Diodorus and Strabo, nothing has been attempted in modern times to compare in magnificence with what was there achieved. The ancient Persian gardens seem to have been designed with the same motives which rule in those of modern Turkey. The intention in these is to secure a luxurious repose, which is to be accomplished by establishing a sense of security and privacy; hence “the wall about” is an important feature, and is not hidden from view. Trees are planted in rows, in order that the wind may draw currents between them. Small fountains of water or streams of running water, to increase the sensation and association of coolness, are required. Flowers are cultivated for perfume and beauty. Inducements to exercise are not desired. Distant views, which would be calculated to distract the mind from the present enjoyments, are not sought for. The proprietor commonly proceeds, on entering his garden, immediately to a seat near its centre, where he remains until he is ready to leave. Enclosures were sometimes made by the Persians for keeping wild beasts, and aviaries were common. Terebinthinate evergreens were esteemed a luxury.

The Greeks derived their ideal of gardens from the Persians, and seldom attempted any essential improvements upon it; which leads Lord Bacon to remark that “men came to build stately sooner than garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection.” Athens had its public park, however, called Academia, which in the height of its civilization seems to have wanted nothing that we should deem essential for the purpose, considering the climate and the different customs of the people. Originally a rugged piece of ground, it was laid out by Cimon, who formed pleasant walks, introduced a stream of water, and planted groves. Facilities were designedly offered for robust exercises as well as for contemplative recreation. At the entrance the first altar, dedicated to Love, was placed. Scattered through the grounds were statues and monuments to the most worthy citizens. The best evidences of Athenian civilization are connected with this park.

When Rome was in her glory, her citizens were proud of their country [358] houses and pleasure grounds. The sites for these were chosen with the greatest care, and shaped elaborately in stately terraces about the mansion. The grounds were profusely furnished. Pliny’s Tusculan villa was provided with a court for chariot exercise, and another for horseback riding; with terrace walks suitable for the general assemblage of his guests, and retired paths for those disposed for solitude. In the grounds were an enclosure for wild animals, an apiary, a snailery, and a dormice house. There was also a flower garden, with fountains flowing from marble vases. Adjoining the house proper, the park was strictly formal and symmetrical with the architecture; the walks were lined with box and plane trees sheared to the shape of walls, and in some parts trained in fantastic figures. These have been generally considered as mere puerile conceits, but no one who has thoroughly felt the peculiar charm of Italian landscapes can fail to comprehend how they may have been used to add to the enchantment of the view of which they furnished the foreground; and it is to be remarked that Pliny describes at length how his seats and windows, even his bath and place of rest, were arranged with express reference to the best distant views over the Campagna. It is then probable that the shearing of his trees was intended to make them subordinate to the highest beauty of the natural scenery beyond his own possessions. This must be assumed, or we are left to suppose that a style of landscape improvement which was the foundation of all essays in rural art in Europe till the earlier part of the last century, and which had its origin in the golden age of Roman architecture and in the closest connection with it, was itself without any basis of art.

We have no need to trace its lapses and revivals, its advances and degradations. As practised in England, at least, it had long lost the slightest element of the artistic feeling, which still in Italy it cannot be denied to possess. This is shown in the opinion of Sir William Temple that the best example of gardening at home or abroad was that at Moor Park, a garden which, according to Walpole, would have lost none of its beauty if designed by one “who had never stirred out of Holborn”—in other words, if utterly dissevered from all sentiment of nature. The real artistic qualities of the ancient style were thus entirely overlooked, and its mere excrescences and frivolities had come to be considered its essential features. In Addison’s ridicule of these (“Spectator,” No. 414), and in his praise of a shrubbery which Bridgman, the court gardener, had formed out of some old gravel pits in the palace grounds at Kensington, the first evidence of the practical revival of art in gardening is found. It is supposed that the earliest innovations upon the fashionable style were suggested by travellers’ descriptions of the somewhat grotesque imitations of nature which for centuries had been the delight of the Chinese in their gardens. They were made very cautiously, usually as a mere incident of nature within a formal garden. Years after Addison’s paper in the “Spectator” appeared, it was considered a bold eccentricity which carried the Serpentine through a corner of Kensington gardens with shores aligning with nothing in their vicinity. The first garden in which formality was attempted to be laid aside, and the intricacy of nature aimed at, is believed to [359] have been that of Pope at Twickenham. Addison’s garden, laid out also in defiance of the fashion by himself, and still existing near Rugby, is informal without being picturesque.

The first man to attempt to form really a landscape in England was Kent, who had been a student of art in Italy, and who on his return was recommended by Lord Burlington to paint the ceilings at Stowe, and afterward as an architect, in which capacity he first gave his attention, as all architects should, to the connection of his buildings with the landscapes of their vicinity. Naturally enough, seizing in his design upon that which was most important, he swept away the rubbish which now represented the ancient style, and undertook the creation of scenery upon the ground at his command on the same principles that he would select a subject in nature for his canvas. The new style soon became the fashion, but like all fashions it was too generally adopted with little appreciation of the real basis it had in art. To avoid “three trees in a line,” to form meaningless slopes, tame rivers, and monotonous groves, was not a difficult task even to the old gardeners, whose box Venuses and hornbeam hedgehogs had become dead stock. A host of servile followers after Kent supplied the demand for change which rapidly extended to almost every country seat of importance in the kingdom; and in their haste to demonstrate the landscape capabilities of the ground which they were called to improve, too often the destruction of noble avenues and terraces was involved, the value of which when rightly placed had probably been disregarded by Kent merely out of disgust with their general misplacement.

In the latter part of the 18th century, landscape gardening, in the hands of most of its professors, had thus well nigh again become a mechanical business, instead of the liberal art which Kent had made it. The ground was made to suit a plan the features of which were constantly repeated, instead of a plan being made to meet the suggestions of the ground. “Most of our large gardens,” says a writer of the day, “are laid out by some general undertaker [contractor], who introduces the same objects at the same distances in all.” Thus, except where proprietors became artists themselves, talent was not demanded nor sustained, and the monotonous repetitions, the dulness, and the common marks of the respectability of fashion characterized nearly all the gardening of the time, until poetic and artistic genius again combined to criticize and create, as in the time of Pope, Addison, and Kent. In the various “Picturesque Tours” of Gilpin, and the voluminous “Essays on the Picturesque” by Sir Uvedale Price, the true principles of art applicable to the creation of scenery were laboriously studied and carefully defined. Shenstone, Mason, and Knight, by their poems, materially aided the revivification of the art. In more recent times the good service of Repton, Loudon, Paxton, Kemp, our own Downing, and other artists and writers on the subject during the present century, merits warm acknowledgment. Downing’s works especially should be in every village school library.

The natural style had soon after its adoption in England become fashionable on the continent, and writers there treating of it had even exercised some [360] influence on the improvement of taste in England. An artistic sense is more generally perceptible in the detail of grounds on the continent than in those of England itself. In all close scenery, as well as in vistas, peeps, and what a landscape painter would consider “good bits” for sketches, the continental gardeners are often faultless; but the formation of entirely artificial complete landscapes, or the improvement of broad scenes throughout their whole scope and to remote distances, all in imitation of nature, is to this day the peculiar art of England.