20 HISTORY OF GARDENING. Part I.

The Villa Panfili displays the most architectural gardens of any about Rome. Here, as Forsyth ob- serves, laurel porticoes of ilex, green scutcheons, and clipt coronets, are seen vegetating over half an acre; theatres of jets d’eau, geometrical terraces, built rocks, and measured cascades. Lane

A number of other villas might be enumerated; but as far as respects gardens, the description, if faithful, might be tiresome and monotonous. Even Eustace allows, that‘ howsoever Italian gardens may differ in extent and magnificence, their principal features are nearly the same; the same with regard to artificial as well as natural graces. Some ancient remains are to be found in all, and several in most of them. They are all adorned with the same evergreens, and present, upon a greater or less scale, the same Italian and ancient scenery.‘They are in general much neglected, but for that reason the more rural.”(Classical Tour, vol. i. chap. 18.)

85. At Frascati, Belvidere, a villa of Prince Borghese, commands most glorious pros- pects, and is itself a fine object, from the scenic effect of its front and approaches. Be- hind the palace is an aquatic stream, which flows from Mount Algidus, dashes pre- cipitately down a succession of terraces, and is tormented below into a variety of tricks. The whole court seems alive at the turning of a cock. Water attacks you on every side; it is squirted in your face from invisible holes; it darts up in a constellation of Jets d'eau; it returns in misty showers, which present against the sun a beautiful Iris. Water is made to blow the trumpet of a centaur, and the pipe of a cyclops; water plays two organs; makes the birds warble, and the muses tune their reeds; sets Pegasus neighing, and all Parnassus on music,‘ I remark,” says Forsyth,“ this magnificent toy as a speci- men of Italian hydraulics. Its sole object is to surprise strangers, for all the pleasure that its repetitions can impart to the owners is but a faint reflection from the pleasure of others.”

86. At Naples the gardens possess the same general character as those of Rome, though, with the exception of Caserta, they are less magnificent.

The royal gardens at Portici are chiefly walled cultivated enclosures, abounding in oranges, figs, and grapes, with straight alleys and wooded quarters entirely for shade. There is one small department, of a few perches, devoted to the English taste; but it is too small to give any idea of that style. There is also a spot called La Favorita, in which, says Starke(Letters, ii, 125.), the present king has placed swings and wooden horses, or hurly-burlies,(such as are to be seen at our fairs), for his own particular amusement, and that of his nobility. The approach to this garden is through the palace court, great part of which is occupied as a barrack by troops. The filth and stench of this court is incredible; and yet it is overlooked by the windows of the king’s dining-room, who sat down to dinner, on his return from the chace, as we passed through the palace on the 2d of August, 1819. We know no scene to which it could be compared, but that of the court-of some of the large Russian inns in the suburbs of Petersburgh.

The gardens of Prince Leopold at Vilia Franca almost adjoin those of the king. They are less extensive, but kept in much better order by a very intelligent German. The orange-groves and trellises in beth

ardens are particularly fine; and in that of Prince Leopold, there is a tolerable collection of plants.

here is in Naples a royal garden, in the geometric style, combining botany and some specimens of the English manner, which is now enlarging, and has the advantage of an elevated situation and fine marine views.

The Chiaja is a public garden on the quay, used as a promenade. The outline is a parallelogram, the area arranged in three alleys, with intermediate winding walks, fountains, rock-works, basins, statues, parterres with and without turf, and oranges, flowers,&c. in pots. It is surrounded by a parapet sur- mounted by an iron fence, and contains cassinos for gambling, cafés, baths, taverns,&c. The view to the bey, and the breezes thence arising, are delightful. ft is justly reckoned one of the finest walking prome- nades in Italy.

Extensive gardens of pots and boxes are common on the roofs of the palaces, and other houses in Naples. Viewed from the streets they have a singular effect, and from their beauty and fragrance, from the fresh i breezes in these elevated regions, and the comparative absence of that stench with which the lower atmo- sphere of Naples is almost continually charged, they are very agreeable to the possessors.

Fe, hie

87. The royal residence of Caserta is about seventeen miles from Naples. The palace, in which, as Forsyth observes, the late king sought grandeur from every dimension, is situated in an immense plain, and is a quadrangle, the front of which is upwards of seven hundred feet long. It was begun in 1752, roofed in 1757, but is not yet, and probably never will be finished. The park extends from the palace to a range of mountains at two miles distance, some of which it includes. It may be said to consist of four parts; open pasture, almost without trees, near the palace; w oody scenery, or thick groves and copses, partly near to, but chiefly at a considerable distance from, the palace; mountainous scenery devoted to game and the chace, at the extreme distance; and an English garden on one side, skirting the mountains. There are besides, St. Lucio a large village, a silk-manu- factory, a farm,&c.; all of which are described by different tourists; minutely by Vasi, in his Guide to Naples and its Environs,—and plans of the whole are given by L. Van- vitelli, in his Disegni del Reale Palazzo di Caserta.

M8 In Sialy

Daten* ore TOW fie

The cascade and canal of Caserta constitute its most remarkable feature, and that which renders this ImH I park, in our opinion, the mest extraordinary in Europe. The water is begun to be collected above thirty miles’ distance among the mountains, and after being conducted to a valley about five miles from Caserta, is carried over it by an aqueduct consisting of three tiers of arches, nearly two hundred feet high, and two thousand feet long.‘The volume of water is four feet wide by three and a half feet deep, and moves as near as we could estimate, at the rate of one foot in two seconds. Arrived at the back of the mountain Gazzano, a tunnel is cut through it, and the stream bursting from a cave about half way between the base and the summit, forms a cascade of fifty feet directly in front of the palace. The waters are now in a large

' basin, from which, under ground, tunnels and pipes proceed on two sides, for the purposes of supplying the lakes or rivers in the English garden, the fish-ponds, various jets d'eau, and for irrigation to maintain the verdure of the turf. From the centre of this basin proceeds a series of alternate canals and cascades of uniform breadth, and in a direct line down the slope of the hill, and along the plain to within a furlong or little more of the palace. Here it terminates abruptly, the waters being conveyed away under ground for other purposes. The effect of this series of canals and cascades, viewed from the garden-front of the palace or from the middle entrance-arch, through that*‘ long obscure portico or arcade which pierces the whole depth of the quadrangle, and acts like the tube of a telescope to the waters,” is that of one continued sheet