hat the finest British artists of these
times can do nothing but copy and repeat what was accomplished so many
ages ago by the people of another nation. Pliny, in his description of
his Tuscan villa, speaks of some of his trees having been cut into
letters and the forms of animals, and of others placed in such regular
order that they reminded the spectator of files of soldiers.[121] The
Dutch therefore should not bear all the odium of the topiary style of
gardening which they are said to have introduced into England and other
countries of Europe. They were not the first sinners against natural
taste.

The Hindus are very fond of formally cut hedges and trimmed trees. All
sorts of verdant hedges are in some degree objectionable in a hot moist
country, rife with deadly vermin. I would recommend ornamental iron
railings or neatly cut and well painted wooden pales, as more airy,
light, and cheerful, and less favorable to snakes and centipedes.

This is the finest country in the world for making gardens speedily. In
the rainy season vegetation springs up at once, as at the stroke of an
Enchanter's wand. The Landscape gardeners in England used to grieve that
they could hardly expect to live long enough to see the effect of their
designs. Such artists would have less reason, to grieve on that account
in this country. Indeed even in England, the source of uneasiness
alluded to, is now removed. "The deliberation with which trees grow,"
wrote Horace Walpole, in a letter to a friend, "is extremely
inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous
an age when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am
persuaded that 150 years hence it will be as common to remove oaks 150
years old as it now is to plant tulip roots." The writer was not a bad
prophet. He has not yet been dead much more than half a century and his
expectations are already more than half realized. Shakespeare could not
have anticipated this triumph of art when he made Macbeth ask

Who can impress the forest? Bid the tree
Unfix his earth-bound root?

The gardeners have at last discovered that the largest (though not
perhaps the _oldest_) trees can be removed from one place to another
with comparative facility and safety. Sir H. Stewart moved several
hundred lofty trees without the least injury to any of them. And if
broad and lofty trees can be transplanted in England, how much more
easily and securely might such a process be