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PART I.

GARDENING CONSIDERED IN RESPECT TO ITS ORIGIN, PRO- GRESS, AND PRESENT STATE AMONG DIFFERENT NATIONS, GOVERNMENTS, AND CLIMATES.

1. The history of gardening may be considered chronologically, or in connection with that of the different nations who have successively flourished in different parts of the world; politically, as influenced by the different forms of government which have pre- vailed; and geographically, as affected by the different climates and natural situations of the globe.‘The first kind of history is useful as showing what has been done; and what is the relative situation of different countries as to gardens and gardening; and the political and geographical history of this art affords interesting matter of instruction as to its past and future progress.

BOOK I.

HISTORY OF GARDENING AMONG ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS,

2. The chronological history of gardening may be divided into three periods; the ages of antiquity, commencing with the earliest accounts and terminating with the foundation of the Roman empire; the ancient ages, including the rise and fall of the Roman empire; and the modern times, continued from thence to the present day.

a Crap I.

Of the Origin and Progress of Gardening in the earliest ages of Antiquity, or from the 10th century before the vulgar era to the foundation of the Roman Empire.

3. All ancient history begins with fable and tradition; no authentic relation can reach farther back than the organisation of the people who followed the last grand revolution sustained by our globe. Every thing which pretends to go farther must be fabulous, and it is only'the primeval arts of war and husbandry which can by any means go so far. The traditions collected by Herodotus, Diodorus, Hesiod, and some other authors, when freed from the mythological and mysterious terms in whick they are enveloped, seem to carry us back to that general deluge, or derangement of the surface strata of our globe, of which all countries, as well as most traditions, bear evidence. As to gardening, these traditions, like all rude histories, touch chiefly on particulars calculated to excite wonder or surprise in ignorant or rude minds, and accordingly the earliest notices of gardens are confined to fabulous creations of fancy, or the alleged productions of princes and warriors. To the first may be referred the gardens of Paradise and the Hesperides; and to the others the gardens of the Jews, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks.

Scr. I, Of the fabulous Gardens of Antiquity.

4. The fabulous gardens of antiquity are connected with the religions of those times. These religions have been arranged by philosophers(De Paw’s Dissert.) in three divisions; Barbarism, Scythism, and Helenism. To the latter belong the Hebrew, Greek, and Mahomedan species. Each of these has its system of creation, its heaven and its hell, and, what chiefly concerns us, each system has its garden. The garden of the Jewish mythology is for the use of man; that of the Grecian polytheism is appropriated to the Gods; and the Mahomedan paradise is the reward held out to the good in a future state.

5. Gan-eden, or the Jewish Paradise, is supposed to have been situated in Persia, though the inhabitants of Ceylon say it was placed in their country, and according to the Rev. Dr. Buchanan(Researches in India,&c.), still point out Adam’s bridge and Abel's tomb. Its description may be considered as exhibiting the ideas of a poet, whose object was to bring together every sort of excellence of which he deemed a garden susceptible; and it is remarkable that in so remote an age(B. C. 1600) his picture should display so much of general nature. Of great extent, watered by a river, and abounding in timber and woodiness, paradise seems to have borne some resemblance to a park and pleasure- grounds in the modern taste; to which indeed its amplified picture by Milton has been thought by Walpole and others to have given rise. When Adam began to transgress in Brg