"God almighty first planted a garden; and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirit of man. And a man shall ever see that when ages grow to civility and elegancy men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection." The Elizabethan Age, with its superlatively cultivated men and women, was certainly one of those ages of civility and elegancy of which Bacon speaks. The houses were stately and the gardens perfection, affording appropriate setting for the brilliant courtiers and accomplished ladies of both Tudor and early Stuart times. We sometimes hear it said that Francis Bacon's garden was his _ideal_ of what a garden should be and that his garden was never realized. This, however, is not the case. Old prints are numerous of gardens of wealthy persons in the reign of Elizabeth and James I. Then, too, we have Sir William Temple's description of Moor Park, and "this garden," says Horace Walpole, "seems to have been made after the plan laid down by Lord Bacon in his Forty-sixth Essay." [Illustration: TYPICAL GARDEN OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME--CRISPIN DE PASSE (1614)] Sir William's account is as follows: "The perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw, either at home or abroad, was that of Moor Park in Hertfordshire, when I knew it about thirty years ago. It was made by the Countess of Bedford, esteemed among the perfectest wits of her time and celebrated by Dr. Donne; and with very great care, excellent contrivance and much cost. "Because I take the garden I have named to have been in all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the figure and disposition, that I have ever seen, I will describe it for a model to those that meet with such a situation and are above the regards of common expense.