Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

objects the most simple, natural, and innocent, to increase the general happiness around them, and throw a refining influence over the sentiments and manners of their neighborhoods.

Entertaining these views, we hailed with great satisfaction the publication of Mr. Downing's work, the title of which is prefixed to this article. It appeared just at the right juncture. For years there had been a growing attention to this subject in the country; but for the want of any just standards of judgment, it had resulted, with some pleasing exceptions, only in the production of expensive incongruities and ridiculous extravagances. Mr. Downing's work came just at the right season to direct and form the public mind, and furnish correct models to those who needed them. Already it has had an extensive influence. One sees everywhere throughout the land a great improvement in the construction of private residences, and in the disposition and embellishment of the grounds about them.

Mr. Downing's book is so well known, and so generally appreciated, as to supersede the necessity of any minute examination of its claims. It has been justly pronounced THE BOOK on this subject; and no doubt it will long be referred to as a standard in regard to rural embellishment. The design of this article, therefore, shall not be to introduce to the reader the work itself, so much as the subject on which it treats. Should we succeed in awakening in his mind a desire to learn more in regard to it, we can assure him that he will find nothing in our country, or indeed in any other, better adapted to his wants than Mr. Downing's work. But let him be sure to inquire for the second edition, which possesses numerous and important advantages over the first.

Landscape or ornamental gardening may be considered the youngest daughter of taste; for it is only recently that it has aspired to a place among the fine arts. By the ancients, we do not perceive that any systematic attention was paid to it. It had no professors, there were no treatises on the subject, and there appear to have been, so far as we have been able to discover, no regularly digested rules or method of procedure. That there were gardens, however, in the ancient world, does not admit a doubt. There were, for instance, the hanging or terrace gardens of Babylon, built by Nebuchadnezzar, and celebrated both in profane and sacred history. His wife, Amytis, born in Media, a hilly country, pined among the dull plains of Babylon, and for her gratification these famous gardens were constructed. They covered an area of four hundred feet square, and were carried on terraces, rising tier above tier, to an elevation equal to the city walls. The structure was

vast, and made at immense expense; but was not at all conformable to our modern ideas of a garden. We find mention made also of the gardens of Tissaphernes and Artaxerxes, but the notice is too brief to afford any clear idea of their character. Of gardening, also, among the Greeks we have no satisfactory accounts. History tells of their poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture; but no such descriptions are given of their gardens as would lead us to suppose that they ranked this branch of the arts with the others, or that they formed any adequate conception of its capabilities. The garden of Alcinous, described by Homer, is more creditable to the powers of the poet than to the state of the art. It was little more than an orchard and vineyard, with some rude attempts at embellishment. The whole covered no more than four acres-rather a paltry area for royal pleasure-grounds, to be graced, moreover, by the lays of the prince of song. In a later period of her history we read something of the gardens of Plato and Epicurus; while we know that the Athenians were fond of flowers, and had baskets of them daily exposed for sale in the markets. But for all this, gardening seems to have made no great figure among them, or, at least, was far from holding the position which it does at present.

Rome, in the unsettled and troublous periods of her history, had but little leisure for rural embellishments; and gardening, at least as a science, does not appear to have been understood or appreciated. We read, indeed, of the gardens of the magnificent Lucullus, and no doubt most of the wealthy and luxurious Romans had ornamental grounds about their elegant villas. But it is remarkable that when the bard of Mantua, at the request of his patron, Mæcenas, wrote a poem professedly on rural affairs, in which he discusses various subjects relating to fruits, trees, and vegetables, yet he says nothing of gardening for ornamental purposes. He seems, too, to have felt that his subject, or at least some portions of it, had scarcely dignity enough or sufficiently close affinity with the imagination to furnish a theme for a poet, and that a special effort was necessary to elevate his topic to the demands of his muse. Such is his language,—

"Nec sum animi dubius verbis ea vincere magnum
Quàm sit, et angustis hunc addere rebus honorem.
Sed me Parnassi deserta per ardua dulcis
Raptat amor juvat ire jugis, quâ nulla priorum
Castaliam molli devertitur orbita clivo."

Or, to use the elegant translation of Sotheby,—
"I, conscious of the toil, will strive to raise
The lowly theme, and grace with labor'd lays;

Train'd by sweet love, o'er unfrequented heights
Where no smooth trace to Castaly invites,

I pierce the wild by mortal foot untrod,

And lonely commune with the Aonian god."

To those who are curious in such matters, it would be interesting to know what was the style of gardening that prevailed among the wealthy and luxurious Romans. Fortunately for such, one description, and I believe only one, we have, sufficiently minute to afford us much satisfaction. It is from the elegant pen of the younger Pliny, and is a description of his Tuscan villa. He describes very minutely his house, with its portico, in front of which is a terrace embellished with various figures. He tells us of the walk or ambulatio, inclosed with tonsile or clipped evergreens; and of the gestatio, ornamented in the middle with box, cut into numberless figures, together with a plantation of shrubs prevented by the shears from running too high. Afterward, coming to the garden proper, he proceeds :-"You enter a straight walk which breaks out into a variety of others, divided off by box-hedges. In one place you have a little meadow, in another the box is cut into a thousand different forms; sometimes into letters expressing the name of the master; sometimes that of the artificer; while here and there little obelisks arise intermixed alternately with fruit-trees: when, on a sudden, in the midst of this elegant regularity, you are surprised with an imitation of the negligent beauties of rural nature; in the centre of which lies a spot surrounded with dwarf plane-trees. Beyond these is a walk interspersed with the smooth and twining acanthus, where the trees are also cut into a variety of names and shapes. At the upper end is an alcove of white marble shaded with vines, supported by four small Carystian pillars. From this bench the water, gushing through several little pipes, as if it were pressed out by the weight of the persons who repose themselves upon it, falls into a stone cistern underneath, from whence it is received into a fine polished marble basin, so artfully contrived that it is always full without ever overflowing." Here the elegant owner used to sup with his friends, using this basin for a table, placing the larger dishes round the margin, and allowing the smaller ones to float about on the surface of the water in the shape of little vessels and water fowl. "Corresponding to this is a fountain, which is incessantly emptying and filling; for the water, which it throws up to a great height, falling back again into it, is by means of two openings returned as fast as it is received. Fronting the alcove, (and which reflects as great an ornament to it as it borrows from ít,) stands a summer-house of exquisite marble, whose doors project

and open into a green inclosure; as from its upper and lower windows the eye is presented with a variety of different verdures. Next to this is a little private closet, (which, though it seems distinct, may be laid into the same room,) furnished with a couch; and notwithstanding it has windows on every side, yet it enjoys a very agreeable gloominess, by means of a spreading vine which climbs to the top and entirely overshades it. Here you may lie and fancy yourself in a wood, with this difference only, that you are not exposed to the weather in this place, also, a fountain rises and instantly disappears in different quarters are disposed marble seats, which serve, as well as the summer-house, as so many reliefs after one is wearied with walking. Near each seat is a little fountain; and throughout the whole hippodrome several small rills run murmuring along, wheresoever the hand of art thought proper to conduct them, watering here and there different spots of verdure, and in their progress refreshing the whole."

Such is Pliny's description of the gardens of his Tuscan villa. Who, then, will say that the Romans knew nothing of ornamental pleasure-grounds? Those, therefore, who argue from Virgil's silence on this subject, that ornamental gardening was unknown in his day, should remember that his subject necessarily led him in a different direction. The design of the Georgics was to draw the attention of the public to the cultivation and improvement of the soil, which, during the civil wars, had been so much neglected that there was a scarcity of even the necessaries of life. And his success was marvelous. The charms of elegant verse were lent to cheer the tiller's toil; husbandry was celebrated by the muses, a new interest invested the labors of the field, and the husbandman felt his labor lightened, and his heart cheered by the dignity and elevation given to his employment. And as with alacrity he pursued his cheerful toil, hill and valley bore testimony to the efficacy of the poet's lays, and poured in rich profusion their treasures for the support and comfort of human life.-But we must return to our topic of landscape gardening.

The garden which Pliny has described to us may be regarded as a fair specimen of the art as it existed from his time, through the middle ages, down to the period whence we may date the beginning of the modern style, and when, from a new art, it assumed the character of a science, and took its rank with sculpture, painting, and architecture. It may not, then, be uninteresting to look for a moment at the prevailing characteristics of the art as it then existed. It is now denominated the geometrical style, from the preference which was shown for uniformity and regularity in its plans

and figures. Its walks were generally straight, and, instead of describing curves, usually crossed or intersected each other at right angles. The beds and grass-plots were square, diamond, or heartshaped; sometimes, however, they were laid off in fantastical figures, as in the form of a man, with trunk, head, and limbs, all regularly figuring in earth and grass. The trees were planted in straight rows, set uniformly vis a vis, nodding one at another as stiff and formal as the lords and ladies in waiting on a levee day or a queen's drawing-room, regularly prinked up with buckram, starch, and whalebone. There was a special fondness for evergreens that "bore the shears well," and which could therefore be clipped and trimmed into all sorts of fantastic shapes,-peacocks, monkeys, and men. Of these there was a great profusion in the garden of Pliny, who dwells with especial delight on his tonsile hedges and topiary work, as it was called. Fountains were in great requisition, and in themselves were delightful enough; but then they must always imbody some petty conceit or frivolous device-something as far as possible unlike anything seen in nature. Thus there must be a dolphin, with a boy on its back, who spouts the water from his mouth; or a nymph with a swan upon her shoulder shooting up the water above her head, which returned upon her in a perpetual drizzle. Lions, dragons, and hippogriffs were favorite devices for this purpose, all pouring out incessant streams of water from their mouths. The same artificial taste prevailed in the arrangement and dispositon of shrubbery. The milder and more soothing emotions were not much called out; and surprise, wonder, and noisy merriment were the principal effects produced. In those days it was not uncommon to plant trees and shrubbery so as to form a labyrinth, which exercised one's curiosity, ingenuity, and patience, in threading one's way through its perplexed and multifarious windings.

Such is the character of the old gardens, some of which still remain in the different countries of Europe. Of these the garden of Versailles in Paris is on the most gigantic scale. Two hundred acres of ground and two hundred millions of francs were placed by Louis XIV. in the hands of his artist, Le Nôtre, for the construction of this celebrated garden. Here we have the geometrical style in magnificent proportions. Here, says a writer in the London Quarterly, "was the well-known labyrinth, not such a maze as is really the source of much idle amusement at Hampton Court, but a mere ravel of interminable walks, closely fenced in with high

For June, 1842, p. 110 of the American reprint.

« VorigeDoorgaan »