A second principle underlying the formal garden was the delight men took in controlling Nature and in seeing evidences of such control. Radiating straight avenues as against vagrant paths; water flowing out of marble temples, down marble steps, and rising again in almost unbelievable shapes, as against a natural winding stream; a tree cut into difficult shapes as against a tree following the normal spread of branch and leaf--all of these show an exceptional satisfaction in the marks of human interference with Nature. Order in a garden, and skilful management of Nature by art, are of course legitimate sources of delight, but when these two principles are pushed to the exclusion of other sources of delight, reaction becomes inevitable. Indications of revolt against the formal garden began early in the eighteenth century. Even so early as 1703 in James’s translation of Le Blond’s[540] treatise on the theory and practice of gardening there was a plea for simplification in the architectural details of a garden, accompanied by a protest against fantastic verdant sculpture. Plain hedges cut square with a regular succession of balls on top, and with niches sunk for statues or seats, was all the elaboration Le Blond could sanction. No new principles were inculcated by Le Blond. His defense of “a plain regularity” was really a protest against the cluttered and confused effect of gardens of the Dutch type. His dictum that “Art should give place to Nature, Art being used only to set off the beauties of Nature” sounds more revolutionary than it was apparently meant to be, for the gardens he describes are purely of the formal type, but his work shows a recognition of some of the whimsical extravagances in the formal gardens of his day, and an effort to apply the recognized rules with good sense and a certain degree of restraint.