One gets a condensed idea of the taste of this and the previous century or two by a work published at Oxford by Commenius during the Commonwealth. "Gardening," says he, "is practised for food's sake in a kitchen garden and orchard, or for pleasure's sake in a green grass-plot and an arbor." In his details of the ornamental garden he adds, "the pleacher (topiarius) prepares a green plat of the more choice flowers and rarer plants, and adorns the garden with pleach-work; that is, with pleasant walks and bowers, &c., to conclude with water-works." He also informs us, respecting the parks, that "the huntsman hunteth wild harts, whilst he either allureth them into pitfalls, or killeth them, and what he gets alive he puts into a park."
