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Boor I. GARDENING IN HOLLAND. oF eyer at variance with local circumstances, and sometimes even with utility, it cannct be altogether condemned.

116. Grassy slopes and green terraces and walks are more common in Holland than in: other country of the continent, these verdant slopes and mounds may be said

characteristics of the Dutch style of laying out grounds.

as t*l are." 7; because the climate and soil are favorable for turf; and

to form, with their oblong canals, the

117. Hague, the Versaiiles and Kensington of Holland, and in fact the most magnificent village in Europe contains two royal palaces with their gardens in the ancient style. Evelyn, in 1641, describes them as « full of ornament, close walks, statues, marbles, grottoes, fountains, and artificial musi 2 and of the village he says,“* beautiful lime-trees are set in rows before every man’s house.” Sir J. E. Smith(Tour on the Continent, vol. i.) described them in 1783, the one garden as full of serpentine and the other as full of straight lines. In 1814, these gardens had lost much of their former beauty, partly from age and decay, but principally from neglect. Jacob(Travels in Germany), in the same year, found them formal and crowded with high trees. Neill, in 1817, found in them nothing becoming royalty.

118. At Broeck and Alkmaar the ancient style is still maintained in its purity in the villa gardens. M. Seterveldt’s garden near Utrecht is also acarefully preserved specimen. Here the grand divisions of the garden are made by tall thick hedges of beech, hornbeam, and oak, and the lesser by yew and box There are avenue walks, and berceau walks, with openings in the shape of windows in the sides, verdant houses, rustic seats(fig. 8.), canals, ponds, grottoes, fountains, statues, and other devices;‘‘ and,” adds the horticultural tourist,‘‘we were struck with this circumstance, that every thing in this garden has its most exact counterpart: if there be a pond, or walk, or statues, ora group of evergreens, on one side; the same may, with confidence, be predicted on the other side of the garden; so that the often quoted couplet-of Pope,‘ Grove nods at grove,&c.’ can no where be better exemplified.”(Hort. Tour, 249.)

119. At Brussels, among other curiosities, Evelyn mentions a hedge of jets d’eau, lozenge-fashion, surrounding a parterre; and“ the park within the walls of the city furnished with whatever may render it agreeable, melancholy, and country-like.” It contained“a stately Bis heronry, divers springs of water, artificial cascades, walks, grottoes, statues, and root-houses.”‘This park was considerably enlarged some years ago; the then decayed root-houses, grottoes, and more curious water-works removed, and the whole divided by broad sanded paths, and decorated with good statues, seats, fountains, and cafés for refreshment.

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120. The modern, or English style of gardening, Sir J. E. Smith informs us, was‘quite the fashion’’ in Holland, in 1783; but neither the surface of the ground, the confined limits of territorial property, nor the general attention to frugality and economy, are favorable to this style. Some attempts, on a small scale, may be seen from the canals, but we know of no extensive parks and pleasure-grounds in this manner.

121. An example of a Flemish garden in the English style(fig. 9.) is given by Kraft; it is of small size, but varied by the disposition of the trees, rustic seats, and raised surfaces; and surrounded, as Dutch and Flemish gardens usually are, by a canal. It was laid out by Charpentier, gardener to the senate of France, in the time of Napoleon. Z

122. The villa of M. Bertrand of Bruges is thus noticed in the Caledonian Horticultural Tour:—

It has extensive grounds, and is flat, but well varied by art. other at right angles, the centre of the point of intersection is shaped bling a basket of flowers, and containing showy geraniums in pots, and g kind planted in the earth.:

Some things are in very bad taste. At every resting-place, some kind of conceit is provided for sur- prising the visitant: if he sit down, it is ten to one but the seat is so contrived as to sink under him; if he enter the grotto, or approach the summer-house, water is squirted from concealed or disguised fountains, and he does not find it easy to escape a wetting. The dial is provided with several gnomons, calculated to show the corresponding hour at the chief capital cities of Europe; and also with a lens so placed, that during sunshine, the priming of a small cannon falls under its focus just as the sun reaches the meridian, when of course the cannon is discharged.

The principal ornament of the place consists in a piece of water: end of the bridge is an artificial cave fitted up like a lion’s den, the head of a lion cut in stone peeping from the entrance. Above the cave is a pagoda, which forms a summer-house three stories high. At the top is a cistern which is filled by means ofa forcing-pump, and which supplies the mischievous fountains already mentioned.

Where the straight walks cross each into an oblong parterre, resem- audy flowers of a more hardy

, over which a bridge is thrown; at one

The little lawns near the mansion-house are decorated with many small plants of the double pome- granate, sweet bay, laurustinus, and double myrtle, planted in large ornamented flower-pots and in tubs: These plants are all trained with a stem three or four feet high, and with round bushy heads after the manner of pollard willows in English meadows.‘The appearance produced by a collection of such plants is inconceivably stiff, to an eye accustomed to a more natural mode of training. Eight American aloes (Agave Americana), also in huge Dutch flower-pots, finish the decoration of the lawn, and it must be confessed, harmonize very well with the formal evergreens just described. A very good collection of orange-trees in tubs was disposed along the sides of the walks in the flower-garden: two of the myrtle- leaved variety were excellent specimens. All of these were pollarded in the style of the evergreen plants.

The soil of the place, being a mixture of fine vegetable mould, resembling surface peat-earth, with a considerable proportion of white sand, seems naturally congenial to the growth of American shrubs; and,