6

mids, or globes, into smooth, even walls, or into fantastic groups of men and animals. The flower-beds were laid out symmetrically in architectural figures. Long, straight, and formal alleys, a perfect uniformity of design, and a constant recurrence of similar forms, were essential to a well-arranged garden. The passion for gardening, however, at this time took some root in England, and the writings of Evelyn did much to extend it. William introduced the fashion of masses of clipped yews forming the avenue or shading the approaches of the house, and of imposing iron gates. Sir William Temple, in his essay On the Garden of Epicurus,' accurately reflected the prevailing taste. But early in the eighteenth century two great gardeners-Bridgeman, who died in 1737, and Kent, who died in 1748-originated a new form of landscape-gardening, which speedily acquired an almost universal popularity. They utterly discarded all vegetable sculpture and all symmetry of design, gave free scope to the wild, luxuriant, and irregular beauties of nature, and made it their aim to reproduce, as far as possible, in a small compass its variety and its freedom. The essay in which Bacon had urged that one part of a garden should be made an imitation of unrestricted nature, the description of Paradise in Milton, and the description of the garden of Armida in Tasso, were cited as foreshadowing the change, and at a later period the poetry of Thomson undoubtedly contributed to sustain it. Addison and Pope laid out their gardens on the new plan, and defended it with their pens,' and the latter is said to have greatly assisted Kent by his advice. Spence and Horace Walpole were enthusiastic disciples. The new system was made the subject of a graceful poem by Mason, and of an ingenious essay by Shenstone, and in 1770 appeared Whately's Observations on Modern Gardening,' which was the first considerable standard work in England upon the subject. The gardens of the Prince of Wales at Carlton House were imitated from that of Pope at Twickenham.3 Kensington Gardens were laid out by Kent on the new plan, as well as the gardens of

See Addison's papers in Spectator, Nos. 414, 477, and Pope's very curious paper in Guardian, No. 173. See, too, Pope's Moral Essays, Ep. 4.

Spence's Anecdotes, xxxi. Wal

pole on Modern Gardens. See, too, his Life of Kent. See also, on the spread of the taste, Angeloni's Letters on the English Nation, ii. 266–274.

Walpole on Modern Gardening.

Claremont and Esher, those of Lord Burlington at Chiswick, and those of Lord Cobham at Stowe.

The example was speedily followed, and often exaggerated,1 in every part of England, and the revolution of taste was accompanied by a great increase in the love of gardening. In the beginning of the century there were probably not more than 1,000 species of exotics in England, but before its close more than 5,000 new kinds were introduced. When Miller published the first edition of his Dictionary of Gardening' in 1724, only twelve species of evergreens were grown in the island, and the number of the plants cultivated in England is said to have more than doubled between 1731 and 1768.2 Very many were introduced from Madeira, and the West Indies, which had been explored by Sir Hans Sloane, and from the American colonies, which had been explored by several independent investigators; and the taste for botany was still more diffused by the long controversies that followed the publication in 1735 of the great discovery of Linnæus about the sexual nature of plants.3 Landscape-gardening is said to have been introduced into Ireland by Dr. Delany, the friend of Swift, and into Scotland by Lord Kames, but both countries remained in this respect far behind England. At Edinburgh a botanical garden appears to have existed as early as 1680.5 In Ireland a florists' club was established by some Huguenot refugees in the reign of George I., but it met with no encouragement and speedily expired. An Englishman named Threlkeld, who was settled in Dublin, published in 1727 A Synopsis of Irish Plants;' and another work entitled Botanologia Universalis Hibernica, or a general Irish Herbal,' was published in 1735 by a writer named Keogh. In England the love for gardens and for botany continually extended, and it forms one of the most remarkable features in the history of national tastes during the first half of the eighteenth century.

See, on these exaggerations, The World, Nos. 6, 15. The taste was carried so far that dead trees were sometimes planted, and every straight walk condemned.

2 Loudon's Encyclopædia of Gardening, pp. 276, 277.

Miller's Retrospect of the Eigh

The poet Gray, in a letter written in 1763, observes that 'our skill in gardening or laying out grounds is the only taste we can call our own, the only proof of original talent in matters of pleasure.' In architecture, it is true, England had produced one or two respectable and one really great name; and the fire of London had given Wren a noble field for the display of his genius, but in other departments of art there was an almost absolute blank. Few questions in history are more perplexing, and perhaps insoluble, than the causes which govern the great manifestations of aesthetic genius. Germany, which up to the time of the Reformation was in this respect peculiarly prolificGermany which is now pre-eminently the land of artistic criticism, and which stands in the first rank of artistic productioncan scarcely be said to have produced a single painter of real genius during the long period that elapsed between the death of Holbein and the dawn of the nineteenth century. France, the richest, the most cultivated, the most luxurious nation on the Continent, in spite of a munificent royal patronage of art, was during the same period but little more successful. Many very considerable artists, no doubt, arose; but yet the nation which appears beyond all others to possess the gift of grace and delicacy of touch, which has created the Gobelins tapestry and the Sèvres china, and has governed through a long succession of generations the taste of Europe, could boast of no painter except Claude Lorraine, who had taken absolutely a foremost place; and its art was far inferior to that which grew up in more than one small Italian province, among the canals of Holland, or in the old cities of Flanders. But of all the great civilised nations, England in this respect ranked the last. Dobson, indeed, who had been brought forward by the patronage of Vandyck, and who died at the early age of thirtysix, showed some real talent for portrait-painting, and Oliver, Hilliard, and Cooper some skill in miniature; but still, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, not a single English painter or sculptor had taken a permanent place in European art, and the number of painters, even of third or fourth rate excellence, was very small. The principal, and, indeed, the most congenial, employment of the British artist appears to have been the production of the gaudy sign-boards which nearly

every shopkeeper was then accustomed to hang out before his door.1

This complete barrenness of British art is in many ways remarkable. No real deficiency of imagination can be attributed to a nation which has produced the noblest poetic literature in Christendom; and something had been done to stimulate artistic taste. Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and above all, Charles I., had warmly patronised art, and the latter was one of the two greatest collectors of his time. He purchased the cartoons of Raphael and the whole collection of the Duke of Mantua, which was then the most valuable in Europe. He drew over to England both Rubens and Vandyck, and his competition with Philip IV. of Spain was so keen that it is said to have tripled the ordinary price of the works of the great artists.2 In the early years of the eighteenth century the English were already famous for their assiduity in haunting the galleries in Italy,3 and for their zeal in collecting pictures; and their aristocracy possessed ample wealth to enable them to gratify their desires. Catholicism is, no doubt, more favourable to art than Protestantism; but if the change of religion had in some degree impaired the appreciation of Italian or Spanish art, the English were at least in intimate connection with Holland, where a noble school existed which was essentially the creation of Protestantism. A few Italian and a long succession of Dutch and Flemish artists visited England. It possessed, indeed, an admirable school of painting, but it was a school which was represented almost exclusively by foreigners, by Holbein, Rubens, Vandyck, Lely, and Kneller. Foreign writers were accustomed to attribute the utter absence of native talent in art to the aspect of physical nature, and especially to the turbid and depressing gloom of a northern sky; but the explanation will hardly appear sufficient to those who remember that Rembrandt, Van der Helst, Potter, Gerard Dow, Cuyp, and many other artists of consummate power, grew up beneath a sky that is scarcely brighter than that of England, and in a country much less eminently endowed with natural beauty.

Spectator, No. 28.

2 Du Bos, Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, tom. ii. p.

152 (1733). Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ch. ix.

Ibid.

I do not pretend to explain fully this deficiency, but several partial solutions may be given. Puritanism was exceedingly inimical to art, and the Parliament in 1645 ordered that the pictures in the royal collection containing representations of the Second Person of the Trinity, or of the Virgin Mary, should be burnt, and that all the other pictures collected by Charles should be sold. Fortunately this very characteristic edict was not fully complied with. Cromwell succeeded in saving the cartoons of Raphael and other less important pictures for England and the world; but a great portion of the art treasures of the King were dispersed. Many of his finest pictures found their way to the Escurial, and a ply which was exceedingly hostile to art was given to a large part of the English people. In order that the artistic capacities of a nation should be largely developed, it is necessary that the great body of the people should come in frequent contact with artistic works, and that there should be institutions securing the means of artistic education. Both of these conditions were wanting in England. In ancient Greece and in modern Florence all classes of the community had the opportunity of becoming familiar with the noblest works of the chisel or of the pencil; their taste was thus gradually educated, and any artistic genius that was latent among them was awakened. But in England by far the greater number of works of art were in private hands, while Sabbatarian prejudices and the division of classes produced by an aristocratic tone of manners, effectually excluded the great mass of the people from the small number of paintings that were in public institutions. Annual exhibitions were as yet unknown.' The country habits of the English nobility turned their tastes chiefly in the direction of field-sports and other outdoor pursuits, and art never occupied the same prominence in their lives as it did in those of the Cardinals of Rome, or of the rich merchants of Florence, Venice, and Amsterdam. The same passion for a country life induced most of those who were real

According to Pye, the first public exhibition of British Works of Art was about 1740, when Hogarth presented a portrait to the Foundling Hospital, and other artists followed his example. In 1759 a meeting of artists resolved

to establish an annual exhibition, and in the following year they, for the first time, carried their intention into effect.-Pye's Patronage of British Art, p. 286.