nom Italy the taste for gardening, and especially sys tematic botany, was first carried to Rolland and the Belgic provinces during the flourishing periods of Dutch com merce in the beginning of the 16th century. 'I his attach ment to the study of plants led to a great degree of horti cultural perfection among the Dutch, and ultimately eha ractk rized their style. We are informed by Deleuze that, in 1560, exotic plants were more cultivated in the Low Countries than any where else. This taste, which had ex isted among them from the time of the crusades, and in by the commercial intercourse of the Flemings trith the West Indies, was particularly prevalent under the Dukes of Burgundy. During the civil wars which after wards desolated these provinces, many of the estates of the wealthy were ravaged and destroyed. Lobel, in his " His toire des Plantes," published in 1576, deplores the misfor tunes of his time, and gives a list of the most considerable country seats and gardens which had been desolated by the enemy.
The parterre and botanic gardens appear to have arriv ed at per fection in these countries, probably from the great uumber of species, then introduced and cultivated, requir ing to be arranged in some regular form. This character istic of the Dutch style is a very natural invention of a plod ding industrious people, with few overgrown nobles, and occupying a dull not country. The Dutch have still the reputation of excelling every other people in the culture of bulbous roots ; and it is only in Holland that a citizen's garden can be found wholly occupied by beds and knots of flowers, without either trees, shrubs, or culinary produc tions.
To the flatness of the country may also be traced, in some degree at least, their attempts to find resources in grassy terraces and slopes, perspectives of hedges, and other topiarian works, which they carried to a greater ex treme than the Italians, of whose architectural decorations these verdant ornaments supplied the place. The climate of the Low Countries is particularly favourable to age ; and turf work and parterres may, therefore, be term ed the characteristics of the ancient Dutch style of laying out grounds. Of country seats on a grand scale, they ne cessarily had few ; but in these, there can be little doubt the Italian and French arrangement would be imitated. There are two royal palaces at the Hague, joined to which are level gardens, bounded by a moat, and passed by draw bridges. The one is entirely in the ancient style, the other partakes of a more free manner. In neither are many or naments, buildings, or statues ; but the utmost attention is paid to neatness and culture.
According to Professor Hirschfield, little was done in the art of laying out grounds in Germany till about the time of Le Notre, when a sort of gallomania seized the German nobles, and various avenues and parks were plant ed in the French style in the different states. Nothing of
great consequence, however, was done previously to the middle of the last century, when the gardens of Schoen brunn were greatly enlarged, and magnificently laid out, under the Emperor Francis I. by Stockhoven, a Dutch artist.
The Augarten at Vienna deserves to be mentioned. It was formed from a design of the celebrated German archi tect Fischer, during the reign of the emperor Joseph. Its form is square ; the boundary enclosure an elevated terrace walk ; and the space within filled with wood, intersected • v right-lined avenues and alleys, some covered and shorn, and others natural and open. Attached is a public ban queting or coffee-room, free to every citizen.
The ancient, royal, and principal private gardens at Dresden exhibit nothing remarkable in the way of art. They were formed chiefly during the electorate of Freder ick Augustus, king of Poland, and are remarkably confin ed, and by no means interesting in detail. The situation and environs of Dresden every One feels to be delightful ; but there is perhaps no city of the same tank on the con tinent equally deficient both in ancient and modern gar dens.
Almost all the gardens of Prussia were formed during the propitious reign of Frederick the Great. The Tiller garten is a sort of ancient park, on a flat sandy soil adjoin ing the gates of Berlin. It is intersected by public roads leading to the city ; and contains private alleys and walks, a large place for military exercises, statues, and obelisks, and several public coffee-rooms and sheds for music and rural fe es.
The royal gardens at Potsdam, laid out during Freder ick the Great's reign, are in a mixed style, very much in Switzer's manner ; uniting straight with serpentine and naturally winding walks, with every appendage and orna ment of the French, Italian, and Dutch taste. Various artists, but chiefly Manger, a German architect, and Salz mann, a gardener, (each of whom has published a volumi nous description of his works there,) were employed in their design and execution ; and an ample history and de scription of the whole, accompanied by plans, elevations, and views, has been published by the late celebrated lite rary bookseller, Nicolai of Berlin. The hill of terraces in front of Sans Souci, in which every terrace wall has a glass roof placed against it for ripening fruit ; the superb picture gallery ; the magnificent architecture of the new and marble palaces; the avenues, open promenades, alleys, statues, fountains, and other artificial decorations in the fore ground ; the architectural riches of Potsdam, the lakes, the river, and extensive fir woods in the middle dis tance ; and a horizon of bleak and barren sands, varied but little with spots of verdure, compose altogether a scene unrivalled in its kind, though less grand or elegant than it is artificial and picturesque.