Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm; Eve and the serpent very flourishing. The tower of Babel, not yet finished. St. George in box; his arms scarce long enough, but will be in condition to stick the dragon by next April. A green dragon of the same, with a tail of ground-ivy for the present. N. B. These two not to be sold separately.... An old maid of honour in wormwood.... Divers eminent modern poets in bays somewhat blighted to be disposed of, a pennyworth. A quickset hog, shot up into a porcupine by its being forgot a week in rainy weather [and so on]. That the true principles of “gardening finely” were matters of common discussion is indicated by a letter from Pope to Lord Bathurst, September 23, 1719, on the subject of the gardens the prince of Wales was about to construct at Richmond. One critic, said Pope, protested against too much art for according to his notion gardening was little more than “sweeping Nature.” There were some who could not bear evergreens, and called them never-greens; some who were angry at them only when cut into shapes, and gave the modern gardeners the name of evergreen tailors; ... and some who were in a passion against anything in shape, even against clipped hedges, which they called green walls. In the midst of this literary discussion comes the work of another practical gardener, Stephen Switzer, a pupil of London and Wise. His “The Nobleman, Gentleman and Gardener’s Recreation” appeared in 1715 and was published again with additions as “Ichnographia Rustica” in 1718. Switzer’s work shows several indications of new ideals. He is the first of the writers on gardens to hold up Milton’s[542] description of a garden as a model to be followed. He also protested against the cutting-down of fine old trees at the command of so-called “Improvers of Estates.” He said he knew not “whether to think with Pity or Disdain” of a property owner who could thus sanction the wanton destruction of “noble Oaks and other umbrageous Trees.” He likewise urged the abandonment of box-work and “such like trifling ornaments,” and said that “the largest walk in the most magnificent garden one can think of” was to his taste inferior to “a level easy walk of gravel or sand shaded over with Trees and running thro’ a cornfield or Pasture ground.” More revolutionary still was his advice to abolish walls and to embellish the whole estate. London and Wise had insisted upon the boundary wall as necessary to give dignity to the gardens and to unite them architecturally with the house, but Switzer said he would “throw the Garden open to all View, to the unbounded Felicities of distant Prospect, and the expansive Volumes of Nature herself.” This substitution of the sunk fence for the boundary walls is generally counted as “the beginning of the end of Formal Gardening.” Horace