42.The passages of the Greek writers which relate to gardens of taste have been amply illustrated by the learned German antiquarian B�ttinger (Racemazionen zur Gartenkunst der Alten); of which it may be remarked, that the qualities chiefly enlarged on are, shade, coolness, freshness, breezes, fragrance, and repose, � effects of gardening which are felt and relished at an earlier period of human civilisation than picturesque beauty, or other poetical and comparatively artificial associations with external scenery; for though gardening as a merely useful art may claim priority to every other, yet as an art of imagination, it is one of the last which has been brought to perfection. In fact, its existence as such an art depends on the previous existence of pastoral poetry and mental cultivation; for what are the beauties of nature to an uncultivated mind ?
