There he arriving around about doth flie, From bed to bed, from one to other border; And takes survey, with curious busie eye, Of every flowre and herbe there set in order." _Muiopotmos._ Clearly in Spenser's eyes the formalities of an Elizabethan garden (for we must suppose he had such in his thoughts) did not exclude nature or beauty. It was also with such formal gardens in his mind and before his eyes that Lord Bacon wrote his "Essay on Gardens," and commenced it with the well-known sentence (for I must quote him once again for the last time), "God Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed it is the purest of all human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks; and a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegance, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection." And, indeed, in spite of their stiffness and unnaturalness, there must have been a great charm in those gardens, and though it would be antiquarian affectation to attempt or wish to restore them, yet there must have been a stateliness about them which our gardens have not, and they must have had many points of real comfort which it seems a pity to have lost. Those long shady "covert alleys," with their "thick-pleached" sides and roof, must have been very pleasant places to walk in, giving shelter in winter, and in summer deep shade, with the pleasant smell of Sweet Brier and Roses. They must have been the very places for a thoughtful student, who desired quiet and retirement for his thoughts-- "And adde to these retired leisure That in trim gardens takes his pleasure"-- _Il Penseroso._ and they must have been also "pretty retiring places for conference" for friends in council. The whole fashion of the Elizabethan garden has passed away, and will probably never be revived; but before we condemn it as a ridiculous fashion, unworthy of the science of gardening, we may remember that it held its ground in England for nearly two hundred years, and that during that time the gardens of England and the flowers they bore won not the cold admiration, but the warm affection of the greatest names in English history, the affection of such a queen as Elizabeth,[349:1] of such a grave and wise philosopher as Bacon, of such a grand hero as Raleigh, of such poets as Spenser and Shakespeare. FOOTNOTES: [343:1] These beds (as we should now call them) were called "tables" or "plots"-- "Mark out the tables, ichon by hem selve Sixe foote in brede, and xii in length is beste To clense and make on evey side honest." _Palladius on Husbandrie_, i. 116. "Note this generally that all plots are square."--LAWSON'S _New Orchard_, p. 60.