"Herder, in his Kal-ligone, calls gardening the second liberal art, architecture the first. ' A district,' says he, ' of which every part bears what is best for it, in which no waste spot accuses the indolence of the inhabitants, and which is adorned by beautiful gardens, needs no statues on the road; Pomona, Ceres, Pales, Ver-tumnus, Sylvan and Flora meet us with all their gifts. Art and nature are there harmoniously mingled. To distinguish, in nature, harmony from discord; to discern the character of every region with a taste which developes and disposes to the best advantage the beauties of nature - if this is not a fine art, then none exists.' However true it may be, that gardening deserves to be called a fine art, we can hardly agree with Herder, that it is the second in the order of time; for though gardens must have originated soon after man had advanced beyond the mere nomadic life, yet the practice of gardening as a fine art, that is, not merely as a useful occupation, must necessarily have been of a much later date. The hanging gardens of Semiramis are reckoned among the wonders of the world; but that which astonishes is not therefore beautiful.

Scaffoldings, supported by pillars, covered with earth, bearing trees, and artificially watered, are, no doubt, wonderful; but we have no reason to suppose them beautiful. The gardens of the Persians (paradises) are called by Xenophon delightful places, fertile and beautiful; but they seem rather to have been places naturally agreeable, with fruit-trees, flowers, etc., growing spontaneously, than gardens artificially laid out and cultivated. Whether the Greeks, so distinguished in the fine arts, neglected the art of gardening, is a question not yet decided. The gardens of Al-cinous (Odyssey, vii., 112 - 132) were nothing but well laid out fruit orchards and vineyards, with some flowers. The grotto of Calypso (Odyssey, v., 63 - 73) is more romantic, but probably is not intended to be described as a work of art. The common gardens which the Greeks had near their farms, were more or less like the gardens of Alcinous. Attention was paid to the useful and the agreeable, to culinary plants, fruits, flowers, shadowing trees and irrigation.

Shady groves, cool fountains, with some statues, were the only ornaments of the gardens of the philosophers at Athens. The descriptions of gardens in the later Greek novelists do not show any great progress in the art of gardening in their time; and it would be worth while to inquire, whether the same cause, which prevented the cultivation of landscape painting with the ancients, did not also prevent the progress of the art of gardening. The ancients stood in a different relation to nature from the moderns. The true art of gardening is probably-connected with that element of the romantic, which has exercised so great an influence on all arts ever since the revival of arts and letters, and, in some degree, ever since the Christian era. Even the grottoes of the ancients owed their origin merely to the desire for the coolness they afforded. Natural grottoes led to artificial ones, which were constructed in the palaces in Rome, and in which, as Pliny says, nature was counterfeited. But a grotto does not constitute a garden; and that the Romans had no tine gardens, in our sense of the word, is proved by several passages of their authors, and by the accounts we have of their gardens.

In Pliny's description of his Tuscan villa, we find, indeed, all conveniences - protection against the weather, an agreeable mixture of coolness and warmth; but everything beautiful relates merely to buildings, not to the garden, which, with its innumerable figures of box, and in its whole disposition, was as tasteless as possible. Of the gardens of Lucullus, Varro says, that they were not remarkable for flowers and fruits, but for the paintings of the villa. A fertile soil, and a fine prospect from the villas, which were generally beautifully situated, seem to have satisfied the Romans. Whatever the art of gardening had produced among them, was, with every other trace of refinement, swept away by the barbarians who devastated Italy. Charlemagne directed his attention to this art, but his views did not extend beyond mere utility. The Troubadours of the middle ages speak of symmetrical gardens. In Italy, at the time of the revival of learning, attention was again turned towards pleasure gardens, some of which were so famous, that drawings were made of them. They may have been very agreeable places, but we have no reason to suppose them to have exhibited much of the skill of the scientific gardener.

At a later period, a new taste in gardening prevailed in France. Regularity was carried to excess; clipped hedges, alleys laid out in straight lines, flower-beds tortured into fantastic shapes, trees cut into the form of pyramids, haystacks, animals, etc, were now the order of the day. The gardens corresponded with the taste of the time, which displayed itself with the same artificial stiffness in dress, architecture and poetry. Lenotre was the inventor of this style of French gardening, which, however, his successors carried to greater excess. Nothing natural was left, and yet nature was often imitated in artificial rocks, fountains, etc. Only one thing strikes us as truly grand in gardens of this sort - the fountains, which were constructed at great expense.

The Dutch imitated the French. The English were the first who felt the absurdity of this style. Addison attacked it in his famous Essays on Gardening, in the Spectator; and Pope, in his fourth Moral Epistle, lashed its petty, cramped and unnatural character, and displayed a better taste in the garden of his little villa, at Twickenham; crowds followed him, and practice went before theory. (See Horace Walpole's History of Modern Taste in Gardening.) This style, however, was also carried to excess. All appearance of regularity was rejected as hurtful to the beauty of nature, and it was forgotten, that if in a garden we want nothing but nature, we had better leave gardening altogether. This extreme prevailed, particularly after the Oriental and Chinese style (see Chambers' Dissertations on Oriental Gardening) had become known. What in nature is dispersed over thousands of miles, was huddled together on a small spot of a few acres square - urns, tombs; Chinese, Turkish and New Zealand temples; bridges, which could not be passed without risk; damp grottoes; moist walks; noisome pools, which were meant to represent lakes; houses, huts, castles, convents, hermitages, ruins, decaying trees, heaps of stones; - a pattern card of every thing strange, from all nations under heaven, was exhibited in such a garden.

Stables took the shape of palaces, kennels of Gothic temples, etc.; and this was called nature! The folly of this was soon felt, and a chaster style took its place. At this point we have now arrived. The art of gardening, like every other art, is manifold; and one of its first principles, as in architecture, is to calculate well the means and the objects. Immense cathedrals and small apartments, long epics and little songs, all may be equally beautiful and perfect, but can only be made so by a proper regard to the character of each. Thus the climate, the extent of the grounds, the soil, etc, must determine the character of a garden. Aiken justly observes, that nothing deviates more from nature, than the imitation of her grand works in miniature. All deception ceases at the first view, and the would-be magnificent garden appears like a mere baby house. Let the character of the agreeable, the sublime, the awful, the sportive, the rural, the neat, the romantic, the fantastic, predominate in a garden, according to the means which can be commanded. This is not so easy as might appear at first, and it requires as much skill to discover the disposition which should be made of certain grounds, as to carry it into effect; but if such skill were not required, gardening would not be an art.

Another principle, which gardening has in common with all the fine arts, is, that it is by no means its highest aim to imitate reality, because reality will always be better than imitation. A gardener ought to study nature, to learn from her the principles and elements of beauty, as the painter is obliged to do; but he must not stop there. As another general remark, we would observe, that the true style of gardening lies between the two extremes. It is by no means a reproach to a garden that it shows the traces of art, any more than it is to a drama. Both, indeed, should follow nature; but in respect to the fine arts, there is a great difference between a free following of nature and a servile copy of particular realities. Tieck, in his Phantasien, does not entirely reject the French system; at least, he defends the architectural principle as one of the principles of the art of gardening. There are many works of great merit on gardening, of which we only mention Descriptions des nouveaux Jardins de la France, etc., by La Borde (Paris, 1808 to 1814), the most complete for descriptions; Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening, 5th edit., (London, 1827;) Handbuch der schonen Gartenkunst, by Dietrich (Giessen, 1815); Hirschfeld's Theorieder Gartenkunst (Leipsic, 1779), 5 vols., 4to., with many engravings, a work of very great merit, and still of considerable use; Le bon Jardinier, Almanach pour l'Annee 1830, edited by A. Poiteau (Paris), 1022 pages. (See the article Horticulture.)" - Encyclopedia Americana.