in a
labyrinth; twelve miles of wall encircled the park, and the soldiers of
Cromwell found fine foraging-ground in it, when they entered upon the
premises a few years later. The schoolmaster-king formed also a guild of
gardeners in the city of London, at whose hands certificates of capacity
for garden-work were demanded, and these to be given only after proper
examination of the applicants. Lord Bacon possessed a beautiful garden,
if we may trust his own hints to that effect, and the added praises of
Wotton. Cashiobury, Holland House, and Greenwich gardens were all noted
in this time; and the experiments and successes of the proprietor of
Bednall-Greene garden I have already alluded to. But the
country-gentleman, who lived upon his land and directed the cultivation
of his property, was but a very savage type of the Bedford or
Oxfordshire landholders of our day. It involved a muddy drag over bad
roads, after a heavy Flemish mare, to bring either one's self or one's
crops to market.

Sir Thomas Overbury, who draws such a tender picture of a "Milke-Mayde,"
is severe, and, I dare say, truthful, upon the country-gentleman. "His
conversation," says he, "amongst his tenants is desperate: but amongst
his equals full of doubt. His travel is seldome farther than the next
market towne, and his inquisition is about the price of corne: when he
travelleth, he will goe ten mile out of the way to a cousins house of
his to save charges; and rewards servants by taking them by the hand
when hee departs. Nothing under a _sub-poena_ can draw him to
_London_: and when he is there, he sticks fast upon every object, casts
his eyes away upon gazing, and becomes the prey of every cut-purse. When
he comes home, those wonders serve him for his holy-day talke. If he goe
to court, it is in yellow stockings: and if it be in winter, in a slight
tafety cloake, and pumps and pantofles."

The portrait of the smaller farmer, who, in this time, tilled his own
ground, is even more severely sketched by Bishop Earle. "A plain country
fellow is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lye fallow
and unfilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to
be idle or melancholy.... His hand guides the plough, and the plough his
thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very mound of his
meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and
speaks _gee_, and _ree_, better than English. His mind is not much
distracted wi