Our anecdotical recollections of the taste for gardens must be but few,
or they will carry us beyond our limits. Lord Bacon appears to have done
more towards their encouragement than any other writer, and his essay
on gardens is too well known to admit of quotation. Sir William Temple
has, however, many eloquent passages in his writings, in one of which he
calls _gardening_ the "inclination of kings, the choice of philosophers,
and the common favourite of public and private men; a pleasure of the
greatest, and the care of the meanest; and, indeed, an employment and a
possession, for which no man is too high or too low." Perhaps John
Evelyn did more than either of these philosophers. Temple's garden at
Moor Park was one of the most beautiful of its kind; but at the time
when Evelyn introduced ornamental gardening into England, there were no
examples for imitation. All was devised by his own active mind; and in
the political storms of his time, his garden and plantations became
subjects of popular conversation; while the intervals of his secession
from public life were filled up in writing several practical treatises
on his favourite science. At Wotton, in Surrey, may be seen the large,
enclosed flower-garden, which was to have formed one of the principal
objects in his "Elysium Britannicum;" and this idea has been partly
realized by one of his successors.

Andrew Marvell has, however, anathematized gardens with much severity,
in some lines entitled "The Mower against Gardens;" and commencing
thus:--

Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use,
Did after him the world seduce,
And from the fields the flowers and plants allure,
Where nature was most plain and pure.