Towards the latter part of the last century the Empress of Russia (Catherine the Second) expressed in a French letter to Voltaire her admiration of the style of English Gardening.[029] “I love to distraction,” she writes, “the present English taste in gardening.  Their curved lines, their gentle slopes, their pieces of water in the shape of lakes, their picturesque little islands.  I have a great contempt for straight lines and parallel walks.  I hate those fountains which torture water into forms unknown to nature.  I have banished all the statues to the vestibules and to the galleries.  In a word English taste predominates in my plantomanie."[030]

I omitted when alluding to those Englishmen in past times who anticipated the taste of the present day in respect to laying out grounds, to mention the ever respected name of John Evelyn, and as all other writers before me, I believe, who have treated upon gardening, have been guilty of the same oversight, I eagerly make his memory some slight amends by quoting the following passage from one of his letters to his friend Sir Thomas Browne.

“I might likewise hope to refine upon some particulars, especially concerning the ornaments of gardens, which I shall endeavor so to handle as that they may become useful and practicable, as well as magnificent, and that persons of all conditions and faculties, which delight in gardens, may therein encounter something for their owne advantage.  The modell, which I perceive you have seene, will aboundantly testifie my abhorrency of those painted and formal projections of our cockney gardens and plotts, which appeare like gardens of past-board and marchpane, and smell more of paynt then of flowers and verdure; our drift is a noble, princely, and universal Elysium, capable of all the amoenities that can naturally be introduced into gardens of pleasure, and such as may stand in competition with all the august designes and stories of this nature, either of antient or moderne tymes; yet so as to become useful and significant to the least pretences and faculties.  We will endeavour to shew how the air and genious of gardens operat upon humane spirits towards virtue and sanctitie:  I mean in a remote, preparatory and instrumentall working.  How caves, grotts, mounts, and irregular ornaments of gardens do contribute to contemplative and philosophicall enthusiasme; how elysium, antrum, nemus, paradysus, hortus, lucus, &c., signifie all of them rem sacram it divinam; for these expedients do influence the soule and spirits of men, and prepare them for converse with good angells; besides which, they contribute to the lesse abstracted pleasures, phylosophy naturall; and longevitie:  and I would have not onely the elogies and effigie of the antient and famous garden heroes, but a society of the paradisi cultores persons of antient simplicity, Paradisean and Hortulan saints, to be a society of learned and ingenuous men, such as Dr. Browne, by whome we might hope to redeeme the tyme that has bin lost, in pursuing Vulgar Errours, and still propagating them, as so many bold men do yet presume to do.”