16 HISTORY OF GARDENING. Parr I.

Cuar. III.

Chronological History of Gardening, in continental Europe from the Tume of the Romans to the present Day, or from A. D. 500 to A. D. 1823.

67. The decline of the Roman Empire commenced with the reign of the emperors.

The ages, Hirschfield observes, which followed the fall of the republic, the violence committed by several of the emperors, the invasion of the barbarians, and the ferocity introduced by the troubles of the times, extinguished a taste for a country life, in pro- portion as they destroyed the means of enjoying it. So many injuries falling on the best provinces of the Roman empire, one after another, soon destroyed the country- houses and gardens. Barbarism triumphed over man and the arts, arms again became the reigning occupation, superstition allied itself to warlike inclinations, and spread over Europe a manner of thinking far removed from the noble simplicity of nature. The mixture of so many different nations in Italy did not a little contribute to corrupt the taste; the possessions of the nobles remaining without defence, were soon pillaged and razed, and the earth was only cultivated from necessity. Soon afterwards the first countries were considered those where one convent raised itself beside another, Archi- tecture was only employed in chapels and churches, or on warlike forts and castles. From the establishment of the ecclesiastical government of the Popes in the eighth to the end of the twelfth century, the monks were almost the only class in Europe who occu-- pied themselves in agriculture; many of these, carried away by their zeal, fled from the corruption of the age, and striving to overcome their passions, or indulge their gloomy humor, or, as Herder observes, to substitute one passion for another, retired into solitary deserts, unhealthy valleys, forests, and mountains; there they labored with their own hands, and rendered fertile, lands till then barren from neglect, or in a state of natural rudeness.

68. Thus the arts of culture were preserved by the monks during the dark ages. The sovereigns, in procuring pardon of their sins by bestowing on the monks extensive tracts of country and slaves, recompensed_ their activity as rural improvers. The monks of St. Basil and St. Benedict, Harte informs us, rendered many tracts fertile in Italy, Spain, and the south of France, which had lain neglected ever since the first incursions of the Goths and Saracens. Others were equally active in Britain in ameliorating the soil. Walker(Zssays) informs us that even in the remote island of Iona, an extensive estab- lishment of monks was formed in the sixth century, and that the remains of a corn-mill and mill-dam_ built by them still exist; and indeed it is not too much to affirm, that without the architectural and rural labors of this class of men, many provinces of Europe which at present nourish thousands of inhabitants would have remained deserts or marshes, the resorts only of wild beasts, and the seminaries of disease; and architecture and gardening, as arts of design, instead of being very generally diffused, would haye been lost to the greater part of Europe.

69. At length the dawn of light appeared with the art of printing, Luther, and Hen. V DBE Commerce began to flourish in Italy and Holland, arts of peace began to prevail, and the European part of what was formerly the Roman empire gradually assumed these political divisions which it for the greater part still retains. We shall take a cursory view of the progress of gardening in each of these states, from the dark ages to the present

day.

Secr. I. Of the Revival, Progress, and present State of Gardening in Italy.

70. The blessings of peace and of commerce, the remains of ancient grandeur still existing, and the liberty which some cities had acquired through the generosity and splen- dor of some popes and princes, united with other causes in the r vwal of the arts in Italy rather than in any other country.

Supsecr. 1. Gardening, in respect to Design and Taste.

71. The earliest notice of Italian gardening is in the work of Pierre de Crescent, a senator of Bologna. He composed in the beginning of the fourteenth century a work on agriculture, which he dedicated to Charles II. king of Naples and Sicily. In the eighth book of this work the author treats of gardens of pleasure. These he divides into three classes; those of persons of small fortune: those of persons in easy circum- stances; and those of princes and kings. He teaches the mode of constructing and ornamenting each; and of the royal gardens observes, that they ought to have a menagerie and an aviary; the latter placed among thickets, arbors, and vines. Each of the three classes ought to be decorated with turf, shrubs, and aromatic flowers.

72. Gardening, with the other arts, was revived and patronised by the Medici family in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the most celebrated gardens of these times, as Roscoe informs us, were those of Lorenzo de Medici, and of the wealthy Bernard Ru-

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