the artificial and natural styles; keeping the decorations immediately about the house formal, and so passing on by gradual transitions to the wildest scenes of nature.

The leading features then in such a garden would be an architectural terrace and flight of steps in connection with the house-lower terraces of grass-slopes and flower-beds succeeding these branching off on one side towards the kitchen department, through an old English garden, of which a bowling-green would form a part, and where florists' flowers might be sheltered by the trim hedges on the other towards an undulating lawn bounded by flowering shrubs and the larger herbaceous plants-with one corner for the American garden, beyond which would lie the natural copsewood and forest-ground of the place of course the aspect and situation of the house, and the character of the neighbouring ground and country, would modify these or any general rules which might be laid down for the formation of a garden; but we think some advantage might, in every case, be taken from these hints.

In a place of any pretension, a good clear lawn where children of younger or older growth may romp about, without fear of damaging shrubs or plants, is indispensable.

Single shrubs and flowers, or groups of them, on the verge of this lawn, springing up directly from the turf, and dotted in front of shrubberies that bound it, are preferable to those growing with a distinctly marked border. The common peonies, and

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the Chinese variety-the tree-peony (P. moutan.), are excellent for this purpose; but there is nothing to surpass the old-fashioned hollyhock. This, as has been remarked, is the only landscape flower we possess the only one, that is, whose forms and colours tell in the distance; and so picturesque is it, that perhaps no artist ever attempted to draw a garden without introducing it, whether it were really there or not. "By far the finest effect (says the essay we have already referred to) that combined art and nature ever produced in gardening were those fine masses of many-coloured hollyhocks clustered round a weather-tinted vase; such as Sir Joshua delighted to place in the wings of his pictures. And what more magnificent than a long avenue of these floral giants, the double and the single-not too straightly tied-backed by a dark thick hedge of old-fashioned yew ?" * Such an avenue-without "the dark thick hedge," which would certainly have been an improvement—we remember to have seen, in the fulness of its autumn splendour, in the garden at Granton, near Edinburgh, the marine villa of a deep lawyer--and another may have been inspected by many of our readers at Bromley Hill. Here the hollyhocks "broke the horizon with their obelisks of colour;" and the foreground was a mass of dahlias, American marigolds, mallows, asters, and mignionette. It was the most gorgeous mass of

* We do not often indulge in a prophecy, but we will venture to stake our gardening credit that, within five years' time, the hollyhock will again be restored to favour, become a florist's flower, and carry off horticultural prizes. [This prophecy has been more than fulfilled, 1852.]

colouring we ever beheld; but was only one of the many beautiful effects produced on this spot by the taste of the late Lady Farnborough. For a modern garden, of limited size, this was the most complete we ever visited, the situation allowing greater variety than could well be conceived within so small a compass. A conservatory connected with the house led to a summer-room: this looked on a small Italian garden-the highest point of the grounds, and affording a dim view of the dome of St. Paul's in the distance; and thence you descended, by steep grassy banks and steps of rock and root-work, from garden to garden, each having some peculiar feature of its own, till you came to the most perfect little Ruysdael rivulet, and such crystal springs, in all their natural wildness, that it seemed, when you saw them, you had never known what pure cold native fountains were before. Any common taste would have bedizened these springs with cockle-shells and crockery, and what not; but there they lay among the broad leaves of the water-lily and the burdock, glittering like huge liquid diamonds cast in a mould of nature's own making, and in their simplicity and pureness offering a striking contrast to the trim gardens and the dusky distant city you had just left above.*

* There was no occasion in this place for the exclamation of the Roman satirist on a similar scene which had been marred by art—

Quanto præstantius esset

Numen aquæ, viridi si margine clauderet undas
Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum."

Juv. iii. 19.

And which shows, by the way, that there were some Romans, at least, who could appreciate the beauties of natural scenery.

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Another source of great beauty in these gardens was the evident care bestowed on the growth and position of the flowers. Every plant seemed to be just in its right place, both for its flourishing and its effect. There was a very great abundance and variety of the tenderer kinds that required protection in winter; but we believe they were, for the most part, kept in cold pits, very little forcing being used; and there were not more than six or eight gardeners and labourers at any time employed. We still have before our eyes the splendid masses of the common scarlet geranium, and a smaller bed of the variegated-leafed variety, edged with a border of the ivy-leafed kind; nor ought we to forget the effect of a large low ring of ivy on the lawn, which looked like a gigantic chaplet carelessly thrown there by some Titan hand.

A garden should always lie sloping to the south, and if possible to the south of the house.* In this case the chief entrance to the house should be, in an ordinarily sheltered situation, on the east or north; for, common as the fault is, nothing so entirely spoils a garden as to have it placed in front of the public approach. Views, it should be remembered, are always clearest in the opposite direction to the sun. Thus the north is most uninterruptedly clear through

*To show how difficult it is to lay down any general rule, uncontroverted, here is one from Macintosh's 'Practical Gardener,' one of the best practical works on horticulture we possess. "In all cases, unless in small villas or cottage residences, the flower-garden should be entirely concealed from the windows of the house, and be placed, if circumstances will admit of it, in the shrubbery."

out the day; the west in the morning; the east in the afternoon. Speaking with a view only to gardening effect, trees, which are generally much too near the dwelling for health, and beauty, and everything else, should be kept at a distance from the house, except on the east side. On the south and west they keep off the sun, of which we can never have too much in England; and on the north they render the place damp and gloomy; whereas, on that side they should be kept so far from the windows as to back and shelter a bright bank of shrubs and flowers, planted far enough from the shadow cast by the house to catch the sun upon them during the greater part of the year and day. The prospect towards the north would then be as cheerful as any other.

It is astonishing how people continue to plant spruce and Scotch firs, and larches, and other incongruous forest-trees, so close that they chafe the very house with their branches, when there are at hand such beautiful trees as the Lebanon and Deodara cedars; or, for smaller, or more formal, or spiral shrubs, the red cedar, the cyprus, the arbor-vitæ, the holly, the yew, and-most graceful of all, either as a tree or shrub, or rather uniting the properties of both, and which only requires shelter to make it flourish-the hemlock spruce.

As a low shrubby plant on the lawn, nothing can exceed the glossy, dark, indented leaves and bright yellow spikes of the new evergreen berberries (Berberis aquifolium and B. repens), with their many

* Now changed to Mahonia.