GARDENS.  
We must now wind up, in a few words, what we have to say of the country life of the gentry, and these words must be on their gardens. In these, as in all those other sources of enjoyment that surround them, perfection seems to be reached. They live in the midst of scenes which, while they appear nature itself, are the result of art consummated only by ages of labour, research, science, travel, and the most remarkable discoveries. Nothing can be more delicious than the rural paradises which now surround our country houses. Walks, waters, lawns of velvet softness, trees casting broad shadows, or whispering in the stirrings of the breeze; seclusion and yet airiness; flowers from all regions, besides all the luxuries which the kitchen-garden, the orchard, conservatories, hothouses, and sunny walls pour upon our tables, are so blended and diffused[68] around our dwellings, that nothing on earth can be more delectable. It is impossible, without looking back through many ages of English life, to form any idea of the real advantages which we enjoy of this kind,—of the immense stride we have made from the bare and rigid life of our ancestors. How many of the fruits or flowers, or culinary vegetables, which we possess in such excellence and perfection, did this country originally produce? Few, indeed, of our indigenous flowers are retained in our gardens, few of our vegetables besides the cabbage and the carrot; and what were the ancient British fruits besides the crab and the bullace? But we have only to look back to the feudal times to see the wide difference between our gardens and those then existing; for all that could be enjoyed of a garden must be compressed within the narrow boundary of the castle moat. Every thing without was subject to continual ravage and destruction; and though orchards were planted without, and suffered to take their chance, the ladies’ little parterre occupied some sheltered nook of the court, or space between grim towers:
Now was there maide fast by the touris wall,
A garden faire, and in the corneris set
An herbere grew; with wandis long and small,
Railit about, and so with treeis set
Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,
That lyfe was now, walkyng there for bye,
That myght within scarce any wight espye.
The Quair, by James I. of Scotland.
 
And the plot of culinary herbs occupied some sheltered spot within the moat; which when it is recollected how many other requisites of existence and defence were also compressed into the same space—soldiers, arms, and machines of war; sleeping and eating rooms; room for the stabling and fodder of horses, and often of cattle; space for daily exercise, martial or recreative; bowls, tilting or tennis,—when cooped up by their enemies, or made cautious by critical times, small indeed must have been the space or the leisure for gardens. Even in 1540, Leland in his Itinerary, tells us that our nobility still dwelt in castles, and there retained the usual defences of moats, and drawbridges. This was especially the case, the nearer they approached to the Scotch or Welsh borders; though in the vicinity of London villas and palaces[69] had long sprung up. At Wressel Castle, near Howden, in Yorkshire, he says, “The gardens within the mote, and the orchardes without, were exceeding fair. And yn the orchardes were mounts, opere topiario, writhen about with degrees like the turnings in cokil shelles, to come to the top without payn.” The career, indeed, by which our gardens have reached their present condition, has been, as I have said, the career of many ages, revolutions, and stupendous events. It is not only curious, but most interesting to trace all those circumstances which have contributed to raise horticulture to its present eminence,—the great national events, the extension of discovery, of the arts, of general knowledge; the deep ponderings in cells and fields; the achievements of genius, of enterprise; the combinations of science, and the variations of taste which have brought it to what it is. The history of our gardening is, in fact, the history of Europe. The monks, whose religious character gave them an extraordinary security, as they were the first restorers of agriculture, so they were the first extenders and improvers of our gardens. Their long pilgrimages from one holy shrine to another, through France, Germany, and Italy, made them early acquainted with a variety of culinary and medicinal herbs, and with various fruits; and amongst the ruins of abbeys we still find a tribe of plants that they thus naturalized. The crusades gave the next extension to horticultural knowledge; the growing commerce and wealth of Europe fostered it still farther; and the successive magnificent discoveries of the Indies, America, the isles of the Pacific and Australia, with all their new and splendid and invaluable productions, raised the desire for such things to the highest pitch; and made our gardens and greenhouses affluent beyond all imagination. What hosts of new and curious plants do they still send us every season! From every corner of the earth are they daily reaching us: the average value of the plants in Loddige’s gardens is calculated at 200,000l. But what a blank would they now be but for the mighty spirit of commerce, the thirst of discovery, and of traversing distant regions, which animate such numbers of our countrymen, and send them out to extend our geography, geology, and natural history, or to prosecute astronomical and philosophical science under every portion of the heavens? And besides these causes, how much is yet to be[70] accounted for by the tastes of peculiar ages—out of the peculiar studies of the times, and the singular genius of particular men thence arising. The influence of poets and imaginative writers upon the character of our gardens has been extreme. Whether an age were poetical or mathematical, made a mighty difference in the garden-style of the time. C. Matius, the favourite of Augustus C?sar, introduced the fashion at Rome of clipping trees into shapes of animals and other grotesque forms; Pliny admired the invention, and celebrated it under the name of topiary-work; and so strongly did it take hold on the spirits of men, that it descended to all the nations of Europe, and was not exploded by us till the last century. Sir Henry Wotton, the tasteful and poetical courtier of Queen Elizabeth, and ambassador of James to Venice, with notions of the fitness of a garden far beyond his age, yet thought it “a graceful and natural conceit” in Michael Angelo to make a fountain-figure in the shape of “a sturdy washerwoman, washing and winding of linen clothes, in which act she wrings out the water which made the fountain.” And again Addison, followed by Pope and Walpole, overturned this ancient fondness for pleached walks, and tonsured trees, and quaint fountain-figures, whether of Neptunes, Niles, or washerwomen. Then the great change of the social system, from the feudal and military to civil and domestic, produced a correspondent change in the culture of gardens. While the country was rent to pieces by contentions for the crown, there could be little leisure or taste for gardens; but when men became peaceful, and collected their habitations into clusters, they naturally began to embellish both them and their environs.
From the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry VIII. we look over a large space, and find but slight improvement in horticulture, and scanty traces of its literature. A bushel of onions in Richard II.’s reign cost twelve shillings of our present money: Henry VII. records himself, in a MS. preserved in the Remembrance Office, that apples were in his day one and two shillings each, a red one fetching the highest price; and Henry VIII.’s queen, Catherine, when she wanted a salad, sent to Flanders for it. The very first book which was written on the culture of the soil in this country, appears to be Walter de Henly’s—“De Yconomia sive Housbandria,” Then came Nicholas Bollar’s books, “De Arborum[71] Plantatione,” and “De Generatione Arborum et Modo Generandi et Plantandi,” and some other MS. writings. Richard II. rewarded botanical skill in the person of John Bray with a pension. Henry Calcoensis in the fifteenth century composed a Synopsis Herbaria, and translated Palladius de Re Rustica into Gaelic. In the sixteenth century William Horman, Vice-Provost of Eton, wrote Herbarum Synonyma and Indexes to Cato, Varro, Columella, and Palladius; and in the same century Wynkin de Worde printed “Mayster Groshede’s Boke of Husbandry,” which contained instructions for planting and grafting of trees and vines. Arnold’s Chronicle in 1521, had a chapter on the same subject, and how to raise a salad in an hour; and Pynson published the “Boke of Surveying and Improvements.” Then came Dr. Bulleyn, Dodoneus, Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, and Tusser; and that is the history of gardens and their literature till the time of Henry VIII.; but thence to the eighteenth century,—to the days of Bridgman and Kent, what multitudes of grand, quaint, and artificial gardens were spread over the country. Nonsuch, Theobalds, Greenwich, Hampton-Court, Hatfield, Moor-Park, Chatsworth, Beaconsfield, Cashiobury, Ham, and many another, stood in all that stately formality which Henry and Elizabeth admired, and in which our Surreys, Leicesters, Essexes; the splendid nobles of the Tudor dynasty, the gay ladies and gallants of Charles II.’s court, had walked and talked, fluttered in glittering processions, or flirted in green alleys and bowers of topiary-work; and amid figures, in lead or stone, fountains, cascades, copper trees dropping sudden showers on the astonished passers under, stately terraces with gilded balustrades, and curious quincunx, obelisks, and pyramids—fitting objects of the admiration of those who walked in high-heeled shoes, ruffs and fardingales, with fan in hand, or in trunk-hose and laced doublets.
“The palace of Nonsuch,” said Hentzner in 1598, “is encompassed with parks full of deer, delicious gardens, groves ornamented with trellis-work, cabinets of verdure (summer-houses, or seats cut in yew), and walls so embowered with trees, that it seems to be a place pitched upon by pleasure herself to dwell in along with health. In the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids of marble; two fountains that spout water, one round, the other like a pyramid, upon which are perched small[72] birds that stream water out of their bills. In the grove of Diana is a very agreeable fountain, with Act?on turned into a stag, as he was sprinkled by the goddess and the nymphs, with inscriptions. Here is, besides, another pyramid of marble full of concealed pipes, which spurt upon all who come within their reach.” In the gardens of Lord Burleigh, at Th............