BERBERIS-DEODARA.

61

hybrid varieties. They are becoming daily more popular, not only from their beauty, but as affording perhaps the best underwood covert for game yet discovered. The experiments made in the woods of Sudbury and elsewhere have completely succeeded; the plant being evergreen, very hardy, of easy growth, standing the tree-drip, and affording in its berry an excellent food for pheasants. Our nurserymen are already anticipating the demand, and we have no doubt that a few years' time will see this the main undergrowth of our game-preserves. The notice we took a few years ago (in an Article on the Arboretum Britannicum) of the Deodara pinenow classed among the cedars-has-unless the dealers flatter us-given a great impetus to the cultivation of this valuable tree. Its timber qualities as a British-grown tree have not of course been yet tested; but as an ornamental one-in which cha

*

* Q. R., vol. lxii. p. 359. The Chili pine (Araucaria imbricata) is now treading upon the heels of the Deodara cedar as an ornamental garden-tree; but though announced as "the largest tree in the world," it will ever want the elegance of the latter. Even yet another monster is threatening us under the name of Pawlonia imperialis: it was introduced into France from Japan by Dr. Siebold, and promises to be one of the most imposing plants in our gardens. We saw some young plants this spring in Mr. Rollison's nursery, which were obtained from the Royal Gardener at Versailles. The leaves of a specimen in

the Jardin des Plantes are said to measure from 18 to 24 inches across. While speaking of trees, we would say one word on the acacia, Cobbett's famous locust-tree (Robinia pseudoacacia), now more than necessarily depreciated. We are fully aware of its defects as a timbertree from the brittleness and splitting of its branches, and slowness in making bulk; but once get a bole large enough to cut a post out of it, and ask your carpenter whether it will not last as long as the iron fixed into it. It is more to our present purpose to say that it is by far the best tree to be used for ornamental rustic-work, as its bark is as tough as its timber, and never peels off.

racter only we can refer to it here--it has more than surpassed the highest expectations entertained respecting it. The nurserymen cannot propagate it fast enough by grafts and layers, and the abundance of seed which the East India Company has so liberally distributed.

The olitory, or herb-garden, is a part of our horticulture now comparatively neglected; and yet once the culture and culling of simples was as much a part of female education as the preserving and tying down of "rasps and apricocks." There was not a Lady Bountiful in the kingdom but made her dilltea and diet-drink from herbs of her own planting; and there is a neatness and prettiness about our thyme, and sage, and mint, and marjoram, that might yet, we think, transfer them from the patronage of the blue serge to that of the white muslin apron. Lavender, and rosemary, and rue, the feathery fennel, and the bright-blue borage, are all pretty bushes in their way, and might have their due place assigned them by the hand of beauty and taste. A strip for a little herbary, halfway between the flower and vegetable garden, would form a very appropriate transition stratum, and might be the means, by being more under the eye of the mistress, of recovering to our soups and salads some of the comparatively neglected herbs of tarragon, and French sorrel, and purslane, and chervil, and dill, and clary, and others whose place is now nowhere to be found but in the pages of the old herbalists. This little plot should be laid out, of course, in a simple geometric pattern;

OLITORY-MAZE-BOWLING-GREEN.

63

and, having tried the experiment, we can boldly pronounce on its success. We recommend the idea

to the consideration of our lady-gardeners.

We can recall so much amusement in early years from the maze at Hampton Court, that we could heartily wish to see a few more such planted. Daines Barrington mentions a plan for one in Switzer (Iconographia, 1718) with twenty stops: that at Hampton has but four. A fanciful summerhouse perched at the top of a high mound, with narrow winding paths leading to it, was another favourite ornament of old British gardens. Traces of many such mounds still exist; but the crowning buildings are, alas! no more. We must own our predilection for them, if it were only that the gilded pinnacle seemed to prefigure to the young idea "Fame's proud temple shining from afar" (it is always so drawn in frontispieces); while the hard climbing was a palpable type of the ambition of after years.

The snug smooth bowling-green is another desideratum we would have restored; and gardeners ought to know that the clipped yew hedges which should accompany it are the best possible protection for their flowers; and that there is nothing flowers need so much as shelter, the nursery-grounds, where almost alone these hedges are now retained, will testify. Where they already exist, even in a situation where shelter is not required, and where yet a good view is shut out, we should prefer cutting windows or niches in the solid hedge to removing it

altogether. In conjunction with these, what can be handsomer than the iron tracery-work which came into fashion with the Dutch style, and of which Hampton Court affords so splendid an example? Good screens of this work, which on their first introduction were called clair-voyées, may be seen at Oxford in Trinity and New College Gardens. Some years ago we heard of a proposition to remove the latter: the better taste of the present day will not, we think, renew the scheme. Though neither of these are in the rich flamboyant style which is sometimes seen, there is still character enough about them to assure us that, were they destroyed, nothing so good would be put up in their place. Oxford has already lost too many of its characteristic alleys and parterres. The last sweep was at the Botanic Garden, where, however, the improvements recently introduced by the zeal and liberality of the present Professor must excuse it. If any college-garden is again to be reformed, we hope that the fellows will have courage enough to lay it out in a style which is at once classical and monastic; and set Pliny's example against Walpole's sneer, that “in an age when architecture displayed all its grandeur, all its purity, and all its taste; when arose Vespasian's amphitheatre, the temple of Peace, Trajan's forum, Domitian's baths, and Adrian's villa, the ruins and vestiges of which still excite our astonishment and curiosity a Roman consul, a a Roman consul, a polished emperor's friend, and a man of elegant literature and taste, delighted in what the mob now scarce admire in a

OXFORD GARDENS-THE FORMAL STYLE.

65

college-garden." He little thought how soon sturdy Oxford would follow in the fashion of the day, and blunt the point of his period. Still more astonished would he have been to have had his natural style traced to no less a founder than Nero, and even the names of the Bridgeman and Brown of the day handed down for his edification.*

The same train of thought is followed out in The Poetry of Gardening,' p. 86.

The good taste of the proprietors of Hardwick and Levens still retains these gardens as nearly as possible in their original state; but places like these are yearly becoming more curious from their rarity. We have heard of one noble but eccentric lord, the Elgin of the topiary art, who is buying up all the yew-peacocks in the country to form an avenue in his domain at Elvaston. Meanwhile the lilacs of Nonsuch, and the orange-trees of Beddington, are no more. The fish-pools of Wanstead are dry; the terraces of Moor-park are levelled. Even that "impregnable hedge of holly"—the pride of Evelynthan which "a more glorious and refreshing object' did not exist under heaven-" one hundred and sixty foot in length, seven foot high, and five in

* Tacitus, in the Sixth Book of his Annals,' gives us this information: Ceterum Nero usus est patriæ ruinis, extruxitque domum, in quâ haud perinde gemmæ et aurum miraculo essent, solita pridem et luxu vulgata, quam arva et stagna et in modum solitudinum hinc sylvæ, inde aperta spatia et prospectus; magistris et machinatoribus Severo et Celere, quibus ingenium et audacia erat, etiam quæ natura denegavisset per artem tentare, et viribus principis illudere." We since learn from 'Loudon's Encyclopædia,' sec. 1145, that this passage was suggested by Forsyth to Walpole, who promised to insert it in the second edition of his Essay,' but failed to do so.

F