London and Wise not only designed and developed gardens but they were influential writers on garden topics. Among their best works were “The Compleat Gard’ner,” 1699, and “The Retir’d Gardener,” 1706. These books, though they contained much new and original material, were in the main translations from French authors and contributed to the predominance of French influence. Evelyn’s writings also did much to establish French canons of taste in England. He had seen and greatly admired the work of Le Nôtre in the gardens of the Tuileries, Fountainebleau, and St. Germain, and in his “Dairy” he recorded fully the impression made upon him by the grandeur, beauty, and especially by the artificial marvels of these parks. The French style was not, however, allowed all the honors. It met with a powerful rival in the Dutch taste that came in with William and Mary in 1688. This taste gradually prevailed over the French so that even London and Wise were affected by the new ideas from Holland and Flanders. Gardens laid out in the same decade were, the one French, the other Dutch in tone, or French and Dutch characteristics were mingled in the same garden. Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire, the gardens of which were remodeled and enlarged by Henry Wise between 1704–11 is cited by Blomfield and Thomas in “The Formal Garden in England” as “a very valuable instance of a garden laid out when the French influence was still dominant,” while the gardens at Levens in Westmoreland, laid out soon after 1690, and remaining almost unaltered to the present day, are referred to by Miss Amherst as “a most perfect example of the Dutch type of garden of this period.”[535] But whether Dutch or French in type, all the great gardens from 1660 to nearly the middle of the eighteenth century come under the general designation of formal gardens. The most striking features of the Dutch style were topiary work, potted plants and shrubs, dwarf trees, and water-works of “quaint forms and surprise arrangements.” The gardens of Le Nôtre were especially marked by long, broad, straight avenues radiating from a goose-foot; much use of architecture in the way of temples, long and massive flights of steps, balustrades, columns, and urns; much statuary; fountains with many high and complicated jets, with magnificent marble basins, and with elaborate carving in representations of men and animals; many hedges both high and low; long and broad terraces; and parterres laid out in intricate plant embroidery.[536] [Illustration: LONG LEATE _By L. Knyff and J. Kip_]