The aberrations of taste which found expression in the periwig style
of Louis XIV., and in the pigtails of the eighteenth century,
affected the feeling for Nature too. The histories of taste in
general, and of feeling for Nature, have this in common, that their
line of progress is not uniformly straightforward, but liable to
zigzags. This is best seen in reviewing the different civilized races
together. Moreover, new ideas, however forcible and original, even
epoch-making, do not win acceptance at once, but rather trickle
slowly through resisting layers; it is long before any new gain in
culture becomes the common property of the educated, and hence
opposite extremes are often found side by side--taste for what is
natural with taste for what is artificial. Garden style is always a
delicate test of feeling for Nature, shewing, as it does, whether we
respect her ways or wish to impose our own. The impulse towards the
modern French gardening came from Italy. Ancient and modern times
both had to do with it. At the Renaissance there was a return to
Pliny's style,[11] which the Cinque cento gardens copied. In this
style laurel and box-hedges were clipt, and marble statues placed
against them, 'to break the uniformity of the dark green with
pleasant silhouettes. One looks almost in vain for flowers and turf;
even trees were exiled to a special wilderness at the edge of the
garden; but the great ornament of the whole was never missing, the
wide view over sunny plains and dome-capt towns, or over the distant
shimmering sea, which had gladdened the eyes of Roman rulers in
classic days.'[12]

The old French garden as Maître Lenotre laid it out in Louis XIV.'s
time at Versailles, St Germain, and St Cloud, was architectural in
design, and directly connected, like Pliny's, with various parts of