Lord Bacon, who loved to be surrounded by plants and trees and flowers, delivers it as his opinion, that the scientific culture of gardens affords a surer mark of the advance of civilisation than any improvement in the science of architecture, since men, he observes, enjoyed the luxury of magnificent palaces before that of picturesque and well-ordered garden-grounds. This, likewise, was the conviction of the ancient Greeks,[1241] in whose literature we everywhere discover vestiges of a passion for that voluptuous solitude which men taste in artificial and secluded plantations, amid flower-beds and arbours and hanging vines and fountains and smooth shady walks. No full description, however, of an Hellenic garden has survived; even the poets have contented themselves with affording us glimpses of their “studious walks and shades.” We must, therefore, endeavour, by the aid of scattered hints, chance expressions, fragments, and a careful study of the natural and invariable productions of the country, to work out for ourselves a picture of what the gardens of Peisistratos, or Cimon, or Pericles, or Epicurus, whom Pliny[1242] denominates the _magister hortorum_, or any other Grecian gentleman, must in the best ages have been. ----- Footnote 1241: But see Dr. Nolan on the Grecian Rose, Trans. Roy. Soc. ii. p. 330, and Poll. i. 229. Footnote 1242: Hist. Nat. xix. 4. Dr. Nolan, p. 330. Nic. Caussin. De Eloquent. xi. p. 727, seq. Cic. De Senect. § 17. Ælian. De Nat. Anim. xiii. 18, has a brief but interesting description of the garden of the Indian kings, with its evergreen groves, fish-ponds, and flights of peacocks, pheasants, and parrots, reckoned sacred by the Brahmins. Cf. Xenoph. Œconom. iv. 13, where he celebrates the fondness of the Persian kings for gardens. -----