It is but a step from this Medieval "Pleasance" to the Shakespeare garden. But before we try to picture what the Tudor gardens were like it will be worth our while to pause for a moment to consider the Renaissance garden of Italy on which the gardens that Shakespeare knew and loved were modeled. No one is better qualified to speak of these than Vernon Lee: "One great charm of Renaissance gardens was the skillful manner in which Nature and Art were blended together. The formal design of the _Giardino segreto_ agreed with the straight lines of the house, and the walls with their clipped hedges led on to the wilder freer growth of woodland and meadow, while the dense shade of the _bosco_ supplied an effective contrast to the sunny spaces of lawn and flower-bed. The ancient practice of cutting box-trees into fantastic shapes, known to the Romans as the topiary art, was largely restored in the Fifteenth Century and became an essential part of Italian gardens. In that strange romance printed at the Aldine Press in 1499, the _Hypernotomachia_ of Francesco Colonna, Polyphilus and his beloved are led through an enchanted garden where banquet-houses, temples and statues stand in the midst of myrtle groves and labyrinths on the banks of a shining stream. The pages of this curious book are adorned with a profusion of wood-cuts by some Venetian engraver, representing pergolas, fountains, sunk parterres, pillared _loggie_, clipped box and ilex-trees of every variety, which give a good idea of the garden artist then in vogue.