cised the art that "mends nature," at | ford was embellished with walks and Woburn Abbey, Cobham Hall, and other hedges, and four large, round phillyreas, seats as beautiful perhaps, was possibly smooth-clipped and raised on single stems a better landscape gardener than Kent only because he lived later, and could therefore avail himself of the ideas of his predecessors, and of the new plants which the great patrons of gardening and the tree mongers, as Horace Walpole styled them, had introduced. Sylva Evelyn, an accomplished horticulturist as well as planter, who visited all the noted gardens of his time, furnished many graphic pictures of the formal style which then prevailed, and which, although we have supplanted it by the ephemeral graces of flower beds, was undoubtedly, at its best, a style of great magnificence. He says of the garden of Lord Essex at Cashiobury, "No man has been more industrious than this noble lord in planting about his seat, adorned with walks, ponds, and other rural elegancies." Grottos, sirens, waterworks, and statues were the indispensable furniture of almost all the gardens visited by Evelyn, and at one of them he found, for want of better orna ment, "two mummies and a grot," in which the owner "lay in hammock like an Indian." Ham House, near Twickenham, the splendid residence of the Duke of Lauderdale, which still remains thickly wooded among its own riverside elms and evergreens, was considered by Evelyn "inferior to few of the best villas of Italy itself, the house furnished like a great prince's; the parterres, flower-gardens, orangeries, groves, avenues, courts, statues, perspectives, fountains, aviaries, and all this on the banks of the sweetest river in the world, must needs be admirable." We should not think so now. We should not care for an orangery of Charles the Second's time, nor for the artificialities that prevailed at that period, when flowers and shrubs were less abundant than they are now. Most persons have heard of Albury, the favorite Surrey residence of the Duke of Northumberland. Evelyn himself, who resided only four miles distant from Albury, originally laid out the gardens there, and speaks of them as follows: "Found the garden exactly done to the design and plan I had made, with the crypt through the mountain in the park thirty perches in length. The canal was digging, and the vineyard planted." The famous yew hedge which borders the canal is now a noble specimen of that kind of ornament, though several generations must have passed before it attained its growth. Evelyn's own garden at Dept from the ground; and the same sort of garden architecture was displayed at Holland House and Hatfield, and at scores of other places where trained yews were substituted for the graceful shrubs and conifers which have since been introduced. The Italian style of that time consisted in a formal terrace ornamented both with vegetable sculpture, if we may call it so, such as trimmed orange-trees in boxes, and pyramids and obelisks in box and yew, intermixed with urns, vases, and statues. were Happily, the garden architects succeeded in course of time by landscape. gardeners like Wise and Bridgeman, who laid out Blenheim, Castle Howard, Bushy Park, and Althorp, and who introduced winding walks and a shrubbery in Queen Anne's gardens at Kensington. It was at that time that the great improvements in the parks and gardens of London commenced. George the Second's accomplished queen, Caroline, whose reception of Jeanie Deans and the Duke of Argyll in the grounds at Richmond forms a most attractive episode in "The Heart of Midlothian," was among the great improvers of the period. By the queen's command Bridgeman, her gardener, one of a succession of royal gardeners of note, laid out Kensington Gardens and enlarged them by the addition of three hundred acres taken from Hyde Park. The same queen and gardener formed the winding Serpentine, taking the idea, it is said, from Lord Bathurst, who, in widening a brook in his domain, had followed the natural lines of the valley, a proceeding so extraordinary and so entirely opposed to the Dutch canal, that a neighbor, mistaking his motive, inquired how much more it would have cost him to have made it straight. com. A period of great activity in reference to improved gardening had now menced, and although many of the countries from which collectors of rare plants have derived the novelties of later times were not yet under English rule or open to our commerce, we may estimate the extension of our possessions by the introduction of numerous plants from Canada and the Mediterranean. Archibald, the Duke of Argyll just mentioned, played the admirable part of a tree-monger, both at Whitton, near Hounslow, and at Inverary, where his silver firs, natives of the Alps, and known here as early as 1605, are more numerous and magnificent in size now that they are full-grown than at ley. any other place in the United Kingdom. | afterwards created another artificial lake The cedar of Lebanon was among the at Blenheim in the short space of a week numerous exotic trees which the duke by adroitly throwing a dam across a val. cultivated successfully at Whitton; and in consequence of his distribution of its seeds it became one of the commonest, and it certainly is one of the most beautiful ornaments on the lawns of many Thames side gardens. In the absence of a general demand for garden novelties the progress of horticulture was dependent on patrons, and as millionaires and gentlemen of wealth and taste connected with trade were not nu merous till recently in the rural districts, the most famous gardens of our predecessors were necessarily those of the aristocracy, royal gardens such as that at Kew from the period of its purchase by George III. till it was relinquished by the queen in 1840, or the various botanic gardens, or the garden of the Royal Horticultural Society at Chiswick. Stowe can hardly be omitted from an account, however brief, of famous English gardens. It long headed the list of notable gardens by virtue of its noble owner's large outlay, his novel designs, and the distinction of his guests and intimates who spread his name abroad. Pope and Gray visited Stowe, and helped to make it famous by verses as misplaced as some of Lord Cobham's artificial decorations. Horace Walpole, who visited many of the great seats throughout the country, praised the garden of his friend, till at length, growing older, some damp festivities brought on an attack of rheumatism and induced plain speaking. No doubt "Cobham's cubs," as the world called some of his younger friends, increased the celebrity of his gardens, since they included several budding statesmen, Lyttletons and Grenvilles, and above all a certain young cornet of dragoons, an ardent gardener, afterwards known as William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, whose garden at Hayes, near Bromley, laid out by himself and planted partly by torchlight in his eagerness, was the greatest possible contrast to Stowe, and in far better taste. We would not decry Stowe, however, though it cannot be recommended as a model of English gardening. It was undoubtedly a place of great magnificence, as well as a nursery of professional gardeners of a new school, such as Brown, afterwards royal gardener at Hampton Court, planter of the great vine there in 1769, who founded his fortune by a lake at the Duke of Grafton's place, Wakefield Lodge, Buckinghamshire, and who With regard to the style of our famous gardens, it varies greatly, as might be expected when we consider its origin. As a useful art gardening is as old as agriculture, but it was scarcely practised as an art of imagination, in Europe at all events, before the last century. We im ported the original style of our gardening from abroad. The Duke of Devonshire originated the famous gardens of Chatsworth in the reign of Charles II., when there was positively no available style of gardening for his selection but the Dutch and the French. Hampton Court had been laid out in the former style till Charles II. improved and extended the grounds in the French style, adding those various appropriate ornaments -summerhouses, jets d'eau, labyrinths, and statues, which remained in high esteem dur. ing the reign of Anne, and have not been yet entirely effaced. Hartwell, near Aylesbury, the seat of an ancient family, and the retreat of Louis XVIII. during his exile, is one of the old residences where the successive styles from the earliest period have been displayed. In ancient times, as the residence of a Saxon thane, it was a place buried in woods well stocked with game, and without any ornamental margin around the house. Some preliminary landscape gardening appears at length to have heralded the approach of civilization, and the neighborhood of the dwelling was cleared into grassplots, and copses with interminable avenues. The Dutch school of gardening was then introduced, and we find it recorded in 1695 that the grounds at that time were laid out in squares, divided by clipped evergreen fences, with sculptured yews, muddy canals, formal parterres, and tonsured hedges, with arcades and avenues and terraces graced with numerous statues. Sir Thomas Lee, the first baronet, whose grandsire, the good knight Sir Thomas, built the house on the site of an older one in 1570, was descended from the ancient Leighs of High Legh and Lyme in Cheshire. married the heiress of Hartwell, a Hamp. den of Saxon lineage like himself; and, as a man of consequence, whose sonfrom whom the present owners are descended was lord chief justice of En. gland, his gardens were, as they are now, in the best style of the period. He At the present time the grounds at Hart well consist of seventy acres laid out in | English as the natural style, which is now shrubberies, grass, and pleasure-grounds, exemplified in gardens generally, and while the rill of water that fed the canals which in the last century began to spread has been expanded into a lake. The En- from England, its place of birth, to the glish style of gardening can hardly be various countries of Europe. We have described; but we may say of the gardens shown that in the previous century this at Hartwell, as of many others, that they country derived ideas of gardening from ceased to be Dutch in the eighteenth cen- abroad, but in the eighteenth century a tury, and that in becoming graceful in reaction set in. The art which creates form and free of plants mutilated by hand- exquisite gardens, and the taste which icraft, they became English. renders them general, must be preceded by mental cultivation, by some amount of special training, and by pastoral poetry, or at all events by great natural love of the country and of home. In some respects the characteristics of the Dutch and French styles did not greatly differ. They were alike in regard to symmetry and in the reliance on abundant ornament which often assumed a frivolous character, as in the case of the "artificial music" which Evelyn notices in the description of the gardens of the Hague. Louis the Fourteenth's gardens at Versailles formed a striking illustration of the French style, resembling their owner in irksome pomp and formality, and like him lacking the "touch of nature" which, in gardens or men, should never be wanting. They were, however, the creation of the most famous gardener of his time, Le Notre, and a German writer who had seen them may be quoted as having experienced at Versailles "a foretaste of Paradise." This was exactly the idea of a Scotch lawyer who visited a beautiful place in Sussex, and replied to a query how he liked the grounds, " For a lawyer, your grace, I was never so near heaven before!" Some one has remarked far more aptly of the gardens of Versailles that they were imposing when filled with company. Lord Byron observed of them, "Such symmetry is not fit for solitude." And Lord Kames, philosopher, improver, and agriculturist, and author of those "Essays on Gardening and Architecture" which introduced the modern style into Scotland, said of them, "These gardens would tempt one to believe that nature was below the notice of a French monarch, and therefore monsters must be created for him as being more astonishing productions." The style of Le Notre, though possessing the same defects, introduced some variety into that which preceded it, and as variety is an object of ceaseless search to active natures, the French style was introduced into this country, and Chatsworth and scores of other places, besides Hampton Court, were modified to satisfy the new fancy. It is said that Olney, in Bucks, has attracted a larger number of foreign visitors than any of our other shrines, because it was the home of Cowper, the poet of nature, of English scenes and gardens. Many of these, no doubt, came from a country whose greatest novelist has inscribed on one of his most delightful books the sweet English title, Mosses from an old Manse." No wonder if the gardens of America and England are alike, so far as climate will permit! But the countries of Europe, too, have followed a good example. We may not follow this subject further here, but we may be permitted to give two examples perhaps. The English style appeared in Germany as early as 1750 in the laying-out of the Garten der Schwob. ber, near Pyrmont, in Westphalia; while the empress Catherine introduced it, in 1768, even into Russia. We have now brought the reader, with as much detail perhaps as he may care for, to the period when English gardens generally lost their formality and began to assume something of their present character. That interesting old book, Miller's "Gardener's Dictionary," in its several editions, gives us a key to the improvements in gardens in recording the introduction of new plants. The number of evergreens available for the adornment of gardens at the period of the first edi tion of that work in 1724 did not exceed twelve, including the native yew, holly, and Scotch fir, and such lesser shrubs as the broom and butcher's broom. The Christmas rose at that time was a rare plant, and the list of known geraniums contained only seven sorts. Between the editions of 1731 and 1768, when the eighth and last edition was published, the number of cultivated plants It is needless to attempt a learned dis-had more than doubled, though the dis course on the further changes in the style coveries and importations which steam of gardening. We should describe the traffic have rendered possible were still in the distant future. Mr. Loudon's | ria is no doubt a different thing from works and his successful serial, the Gar- monarchy in England, and if Queen Vicdener's Magazine, not only exhibited the toria were per impossibile to essay to govrapid progress of modern gardening, but ern in just the same manner as King assisted it in rendering every kind of Max" as he was usually styled the knowledge relating to the art easily attain attempt might not unreasonably be called able. The Royal Horticultural Society, a "reactionary" one. But it was avowedly the guardian of the Lindley Library, which as the representative of constitutional, is free to the public under certain limita in the place of absolute, monarchy that tions, and would be far more largely used Maximilian II. ascended the Bavarian, if this were generally known, has done as William III. ascended the English, much to spread abroad a refined taste and throne. His father and predecessor, the a knowledge of horticulture. too famous Louis I., who in the event sur In recent years the increase of garden-vived him, was compelled to abdicate in ing papers has been unexampled, and they include several which are published at a penny each, and are yet well illustrated. These journals are now taken within the boundaries of towns and villages, where the gardens are often famous in regard to their excellence, though they are sometimes extremely limited in size. But the best patrons and promoters of good gardening, the best customers of the great firms of nurserymen and seedsmen, are "the million." It is said that the gardens and grounds of citizens connected with commerce and residing in country houses, with from one-eighth to a hundred acres or more attached, with every variety of flower-garden, pleasure-ground, and kitchen garden, are in general the best managed in Britain. These are the grounds and gardens of our suburban districts, and they have so extended themselves that they now form the principal scenery and ornament of the neighborhood of large towns, those around London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Edinburgh being especially prominent. The poorer classes may be said to possess their own gardens in the public parks and grounds, and among these, easily accessible to all, are some of the most famous examples of modern gardening, especially at Kew. H. E. From The Saturday Review. THE abrupt and tragical close of the career of the late unfortunate Louis II. of Bavaria will recall to those at all familiar with recent Bavarian history some curious recollections. The Times in commenting on his end has twice gone out of its way to describe his father, Maximilian II., as illiberal and "reactionary," and therefore unpopular with his subjects. The precise opposite is the fact. Monarchy in Bava 1848, not only or chiefly, as is sometimes said, “because he made a fool of himself with Lola Montez " as of course he did very conspicuously but because he refused to accept constitutional government. And it was as a constitutional sovereign that his son was called to succeed him. Nor did Maximilian II. betray his trust. If he could not emulate the artistic taste of his father, which chiefly contributed to make "the city of frescoes" what it isa kind of pinchbeck modern Athens - - he was free from the arbitrary temper and erratic follies which made Louis 1. more like Pisistratus than Pericles. By men of weight and judgment, such as Dr. Döllinger who is a conservative in the best sense of the word, but very far indeed from being an obscurantist or reactionary - he was both respected and beloved. Dr. Döllinger preached at the solemn requiem for him in the royal Theatine Church, of which he is provost, and the discourse, which was published, contains an eloquent and elaborate tribute to his character, both as a man and as a constitutional sovereign, for the preacher emphasized the latter point, taking the English as the true type of constitutional monarchy. Soon afterwards Dr. Döllinger had an opportunity, in delivering an address before the Royal Academy of Science at Munich, to speak more minutely of his personal recollections of the character and opinions of his late master, with whom he had been on intimate terms of friendship, and his earnest endeavors to promote the moral and intellectual improvement of his subjects. Of the popu larity of King Max no one who happened to be in Munich at the time of his terribly sudden death in the spring of 1864, and witnessed the universal demonstration of feeling it evoked, could entertain a doubt. His illness lasted less than a day. became unwell in the afternoon of March 9 that year. -a fact which was not generally known at the time and died next He day before noon. The first public announcement of his illness was conveyed by the tolling of the cathedral bell at 5 A.M., on March 10, which intimated to the Munichers, who are an early-rising people, that the last sacraments were being conveyed to the royal sufferer. For several hours before his death the great salon of the Residenz was crowded by a dense throng of citizens of all classes and both sexes, many of them in tears, anxiously awaiting the successive messages which issued at brief intervals from the adjoining bedchamber, and Keine Hoffnung mehr was repeated from lip to lip, as the end drew near, in tones of unmistakable | grief. And this recognition of the king's sterling qualities was the more remark able, because he was not a man of brilliant or popular gifts. But it was generally felt and acknowledged that during the sixteen years he had filled the throne since the abdication of Louis I. he had loyally discharged his trust, and honestly devoted himself to the best of his power to the welfare of his people. "Are you married or not?" She an to do him justice - did his unfortunate son, so far as he concerned himself at all with public affairs. He took that line very decidedly at the time of the Vatican Council. It may be hoped that in this respect Prince Luitpold, the new regent, will follow the same policy, and not, as seems to be feared in some quarters, play into the hands of the reactionary clique. The danger of his doing so would indeed have been much greater under the last pontificate, for Leo XIII. is not likely to give any encouragement to such an enterprise. But the six Bavarian sees are in the gift of the crown, subject only to a canonical veto of the pope, which however was used with unscrupulous pertinacity by Pius IX. for the exclusion of all nomi. nees unfriendly to the designs of the Jesuit party, such as the late Abbot Haneberg, who was twice vetoed; but after his reluctant submission, under strong pressure, to the Vatican decrees, which he had originally joined with Döllinger in repudiating, Haneberg was -at Döllin. And here a word may be said on the eccentricities of his father, whom he superseded in 1848, and who survived him by four years. Old King Louis still lived at Munich, in the Wittelsbach Palace whence Lola Montez used to call him Herr Wittelsbach though he usually spent part of the year in travelling, and continued to manifest abundant signs of that oddness, never exactly amounting to in sanity, which was reproduced in an exag gerated form in both his grandsons. He was fond of walking about in Munich, conversing with everybody he met, especially with pretty shop-girls-who were of course eager enough to attract his Maj. esty's notice and as he had grown very deaf the conversation could not be carried on sotto voce, even had he so desired. One of his favorite questions to any chance comer was, "Which do you like best, the Ludwigstrasse (which he had built himself) or the Maximilianstrasse" (named from his son)? A courtly interlocutor would of course say the Ludwigstrasse, but those who were scrupulous about veracityand his Majesty always said he wished to know the truth-could hardly help avow. ing their preference for the Maximilian-ger's suggestion named for the bishopstrasse. "Then," was the prompt reply, uttered in no low or faltering tones," you are an ass." On one occasion, during the interval between the parts of a concert at the Odéon, his Majesty, more suo, pounced on a pretty shop-girl with his usual opening query in such cases ric of Spiers by King Louis, and this time Rome was only too glad to honor a distinguished renegade who had, albeit at the eleventh hour, purged his contumacy by what no one who knew him believed to be more than an external acquiescence in her novel claims. |