not a revolution at all, for while it introduced personal changes, it did not alter the basis of the national system. The most striking political result was the Reform Act of 1832; but, though this was a step towards a more democratic government, it did not alter the established order of the Constitution.

We have just referred to the first Sir Robert Peel. His father was one of those men, partly yeoman, partly domestic manufacturer, from whom the new body of manufacturers, the new chiefs of industry, the mainstay of the upspringing middle class, were recruited. It was from these men largely that the indomitable and calm courage, the patience, and the perseverance which characterised the soldiers of Cromwell originated. They lived habitually a life of toil; their physique, as befitted countrymen, was strong; they were intelligent in mind and energetic in character. They were the very men to carry into practical effect the inventions of ingenious inventors who wanted the qualities necessary for commercial success.

Joshua Fielden was yet another example. He, too, cultivated the paternal acres, and worked at the machinery installed in his house, going sometimes to sell his wares at Halifax ; while Jedediah Strutt was also an industrial pioneer, who was the son of an agriculturist and stocking-maker near Derby.

Examples, however interesting, cannot do more than arouse the active imagination which is required if we would realise the great movement which they illustrate, and the study of the lives of individuals, however inspiring, must give place to the observation of events. Thus if we look at the effect of persons in the aggregate, we find that hitherto there had been no commercial homogeneity. Men of business had been few, and had been isolated, so that they had had little political weight except in the city of London. Now the growth of industrialism in the North and Midlands of England was producing a class which was ready to act and work together in the common interest commercially and politically. Its power is shown, among other ways, by the manner in which Acts of Parliament were passed for the creation of canals. As Monsieur Mantoux acutely observes, the English political régime, which was based on individual liberty, on political combination, gave ample opportunity to commercial co-operation. The spirit of English political freedom moved into another sphere, and the habits of centuries affected new industrial movements: C'est par un mouvement 'tout naturel, et conformement à d'innombrables précédents que 'les grands industriels furent amenés à se concerter en vue de 'certaines démarches pratiques.' The industrial revolution in its results was thus, in a sense, the natural complement of the

political and religious conflicts of previous years, of the capacity, trained by centuries of usage, of industrial action. Nowhere in these peaceful changes in it do we see the least trace of State initiative or of State management. Everywhere it is the individual Englishman who is the sole factor, at some times and in some circumstances strengthened by common action.

Nor could this growth of a class of men springing from the better endowed yeomen fail also to create a new middle class. Men of business and professional men had hitherto been isolated; there had been no corporate social feeling. The number of wellto-do families produced by the new movement, at once intelligent and energetic, gave an intellectual stamp to the new middle class—a self-respect and a reasonable pride.

Thus the industrial revolution, the outlines of which we have sketched, largely by the aid of Monsieur Mantoux's excellent book, was equally a social revolution creating a large and distinct social stratum. Nor should we overlook the effect which it had on literature. As regards literature it produced readers who demanded realism in fiction, and to whom fiction appealed as a special form of amusement. At the very time when this revolution was in progress the novels of Fielding and Fanny Burney, to take only two names, with their lifelike portraits, became the vogue. The work of these writers exactly fulfilled the demands of those readers who belonged to the new class, who were also becoming the patrons of art. In art the English school of portraiture would never have grown so vigorously had it not been for the influence of the revolution which we have described. The spirit of English energy was turned into art, and those who became wealthy by the adoption of new industrial inventions became the financial support of the English school. But all this was not perceived by the people of the time.

Johnson, when he visited Birmingham and walked through Boulton's warehouse, saw nothing more than a shop full of interesting objects. He did not seem in the least to perceive that it was evidence of an industrial birth. And while Horace Walpole was merely chronicling the daily doings of fine gentlemen and ladies in London, this great movement was altering the very society of which he was the observer. The importance of it was nowhere less appreciated than in the West End of London, to which the tittle-tattle of clever diarists and letter-writers has given such undue prominence. That society, no doubt, had its interesting and significant characteristics, but the future of England was being moulded, not in St. James's Street, but among the factories of Lancashire and Warwickshire.

ART. VII.—THE ITALIAN GARDEN.

The Art of Garden Design in Italy. By H. INIGO TRIGGS, A.R.I.B.A., Godwin Bursar, Royal Institute of British Architects. Illustrated by 73 Photographic Plates reproduced in Collotype, 27 Plans, and numerous sketches in the Text taken from original Surveys and Plans specially made by the Author, and 28 Plates from Photographs by Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond. (London: Longmans. 1906.)

THE HE old villa-gardens which are scattered throughout Italy are not the least, though perhaps among the least widely known, of her manifold attractions. Many of them, kept up in more or less perfunctory style, are still the summer homes of the Italian nobility; some, a good deal injured by the exercise of modern Italian taste, are thrown open to the public. Not infrequently they are inhabited by English or Americans, who make efforts, often successful, to preserve and add to their charm; now and then they are almost deserted and falling into decay, and this is not their least fascinating aspect.

Those who have ever wandered in the green dusk of those ilex avenues, rested on the moss-grown seats where the lizards slip along the shafts of sunlight, listened to the plash of fountains in the time-worn basins, or basked among the lemon trees on the broad and sunny terraces, will testify to a charm which defies age and neglect, and recalling those scenes, will welcome the fine work which Mr. H. Inigo Triggs has produced; the most important addition, that has been made to the study of garden craft in Italy, since Percier and Fontaine published their book a hundred years ago. Like those authors, Mr. Triggs, while wishing to awaken or increase our interest in these delightful haunts, in which art and nature are so closely blended, and to convey to others something of the delight in them which he has himself experienced, has also aimed at setting a high ideal of beauty and excellence before the garden designer, and at giving a mass of information in such a way that it shall be of practical utility.

Mr. Triggs devotes an introductory chapter to a very full and interesting survey of garden-making from the earliest times, which he illustrates with extracts from Pliny, Crescenzi, and other well-known authors. This is followed by the description and illustration of some thirty from among the most beautiful villas in Italy. Beginning with the delightful though fantastic erection on Isola Bella and other villas on Como and Maggiore, he goes from the gardens of North Italy

to the gardens of Florentine and Sienese villas, and to those which surround the palaces of Rome and lie upon the Alban Hills and among the spurs of the Sabine Mountains. The list is a fairly complete one, and the villas chosen are typical and for the most part little spoiled.

A book like this depends largely for its value upon its illustrations, and we may say at once that these could not be more excellent. The beautiful series of collotype plates are softer and more distinct than anything of the kind we have seen. The points of view have been chosen with a feeling for composition and the plates have been treated with a softness and an attention to gradation which turns a mechanical process into a fine art. In the terrace-scene in the Villa Balbianelli, on Lake Como, the atmosphere of the misty mountains, the white town upon the opposite shore, gleaming in the lake, the figure of the monk in hoary stonework, poised upon the balustrade and shaded by flickering plane-leaves, make a picture of a delightful tone and breadth.

The photographs by Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond are as practical as they are artistic, the text is interspersed with drawings of details, such as vases, jardinières, fountains and other ornaments, and, most important of all, a complete series of plans is furnished, drawn to scale and forming an entire index to the subject. The text perhaps does not always serve sufficiently to elucidate the illustrations. For example, the magnificent double bocage of ilex, with its roofing and the pathway within it (one of the finest examples of clipped greenery in Italy), which encircles the grounds of Villa Collodi at Pescia, and which is such a striking feature of the design, would here hardly be guessed at, and the villas of Frascati are mixed up in a condensed account which leaves us with no very clear idea of any one of them.

Gardening does not commonly rank among the arts and crafts, yet it possesses just that kind of value, the attraction and value of an expression of life, or human record, which the arts and crafts possess. It shares, too, in their antiquity; gardens are an inalienable part of history. Garths and yards,'

the 'Hortus' of the Greeks, the rose garden of the Persians, the hanging gardens of Babylon, the garden of Solomon, the symmetrical designs of the Egyptians, the willow patterns of the Chinese; moulded by climate, by circumstance, by the temperaments of those who made them, reflecting the taste of the world which lay outside their borders, they remain one of the most intimate productions of the minds and hearts of men. Of the immediate delight in the art, as fresh to-day as when

VOL. CCV. NO. CCCCXIX.

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Theophrastus, four hundred years before Christ, died and left his garden to the common enjoyment of his friends, but entreated to be buried in the ground he had so loved, or when Omar Khayyam prophesied that his tomb should be 'in a spot 'where the north wind may scatter roses,' or Lord Bacon, in a broken-hearted old age, found his best solace in the purest ' of human pleasures,' there is little need to speak; nor need we dwell on the health-giving invigoration of the work in the open air, the calmness and tranquillity of a pursuit which takes the worker away from feverish contests, and obliges him to wait on the deliberate laws of nature, teaching how to supplement and control those laws; or on the gratification of the instinct of creation, the enjoyment of dealing with a living organism, which comes to birth, which grows and repays love, which awakens and satisfies the parental impulse and keeps it ever on the alert; nor remind the true garden lover how well the garden rewards affection, and of what perpetual renewal it is capable : that if frost or drought destroy its promise one year, it is possible to begin again the next, with fresh hope and expectation; that experience does not come too late; ingratitude and caprice are not to be reckoned with; that invention and resource are constantly stimulated, and that it is possible to look forward into the far distant future, when promise will be fulfilled to an extent which can only be guessed at. These are considerations which must occur to anyone. The interest of the subject to which we would more particularly call attention is that which, as we have said, it shares with the other arts and crafts: its interest as a human and historical witness.

What is best of construction and design in the gardens of to-day comes to us from Italy, where garden-making followed the vicissitudes of all the other arts, flourished in classic climes, died away during the Dark Ages, and revived once more, as the centuries drew towards the Renaissance. But whence did Italy derive her magic? An eloquent writer has said that 'except 'the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this world that is 'not Greek in its origin,' and in sympathy with the spirit of this assertion, one is instant to establish so distinguished a parentage for the Italian garden.

We are consequently entirely at issue with Mr. Triggs's opening proposition that the Greek gardens were not intended for pleasure-grounds, and that the Greeks themselves had little feeling for landscape beauty. It is incredible that the Greeks, who were so well acquainted with every device for beautifying life, and who had developed all the arts on such