The Flower Garden - 1852 Author:Thomas James Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DUTCH. 17 writer of a system of gardening on utilitarian principles ; but, having erected divers temples and altars about his grounds, he felt himself bound, ... more »in consistency with his theory, to employ occasionally troops of sacrificers and worshippers, to give his gimcrack pagodas and shrines the air of utility ! In good keeping with this garden was the encomium of the Prince de Ligne. " Allez-y, incredules! Meditez swr lea inscriptions que le gout y a dictees. Me- ditez avec le sage, soupirez avec I'amant, et benissez Watelet." The line of demarcation between the Dutch and French styles is perhaps more imaginary than real. The same exact symmetry everywhere prevails. There is a profusion of ornaments, only on a smaller scale,— " Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees,"— with stagnant and muddy canals and ditches, purposely made for the bridge that is thrown over them ; but they abound also in the pleasanter accompaniments of grassy banks and slopes, green terraces, caves, waterworks, banqueting-houses set on mounds, with a profusion of trellis-work and green paint— " furnished," in the words of Evelyn, " with what- ver may render the place agreeable, melancholy, id country-like," not forgetting " a hedge of jets is :'eau surrounding a parterre." , In the neighbourhood of Antwerp is a lawn with sheep—like the gray wethers of Salisbury Plain—of stone, and shepherd and dog of the same material to match. Generally, however, the scissors and the yew-tree make up the main " furniture " of the garden; and there is something so venerable, and even classical, about cones and pyramids, and peacocks of box and yew, that we should be loth to destroy a single specimen of the topiary art that was not in flagrant disconnection with the scene around it. However, the ...« less