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ORNAMENTAL GARDENING.
probably, began the practice of clipping evergreens into grotesque
and artificial forms so long the disgrace of modern times;
the Italians, the French, and the Germans long followed the
Roman example; and the Dutch, with equal zeal, applied a
similar practice to the singular circumstances of their country.
In England, the study of rural improvement has long em-
ployed the attention of men of science; and it has consequently
passed through several stages of practice in its way to the emi-
nence at which it has arrived, making the English Garden a
model, imitated by every country in Europe. Not more than a
century ago, however, the same formal style prevailed here as
in other countries, and in which the interferences of art were so
prevalent that every material of garden-landscape submitted to
the operations of the geometrician. At that time the site of a
garden was preferred in proportion to its flatness, unless terraces
and flights of steps were proposed as embellishments, and irregu-
larities of surface were only desired as they afforded real
opportunities for introducing them. At this time high walls shut
in the flower garden, and shut out the views-avenues were a-
dopted as important vistas and placed in every direction-square
fields, bordered by trimmed hedges, occupied the intermediate
spaces, and which were relieved by circles, parallelograms
and polygons disposed as ponds and canals and placed in sym-
metrical order all over the domain.  As a feeling for the
liberty of nature began to dawn, the little wood and wilderness
were permitted to become features in the arrangements; but as
yet the former was simply an assemblage of trees compactly
planted in precise order and carefully trimmed; so the wilder-
ness, also a little wood, was regularly disposed into alleys,
converging to one or more centres, decorated with stone ponds
and leaden statues; and were further diversified by serpentine
paths traversing the wood and intersecting the alleys in their
Circuitous progress to the spot whence they commenced-thus
lo