flowers and flower gardens notes

[001] Some of the finest Florists flowers have been reared by the mechanics of Norwich and Manchester and by the Spitalfield's weavers. The pitmen in the counties of Durham and Northumberland reside in long rows of small houses, to each of which is attached a little garden, which they cultivate with such care and success, that they frequently bear away the prize at Floral Exhibitions.

[002] Of Rail-Road travelling the reality is quite different from the idea that descriptions of it had left upon my mind. Unpoetical as this sort of transit may seem to some minds, I confess I find it excite and satisfy the imagination. The wondrous speed--the quick change of scene-- the perfect comfort--the life-like character of the power in motion, the invisible, and mysterious, and mighty steam horse, urged, and guided, and checked by the hand of Science--the cautionary, long, shrill whistle--the beautiful grey vapor, the breath of the unseen animal, floating over the fields by which we pass, sometimes hanging stationary for a moment in the air, and then melting away like a vision--furnish sufficiently congenial amusement for a period-minded observer.

[003] "That which peculiarly distinguishes the gardens of England," says Repton, "is the beauty of English verdure: the grass of the mown lawn, uniting with, the grass of the adjoining pastures, and presenting that permanent verdure which is the natural consequence of our soft and humid clime, but unknown to the cold region of the North or the parching temperature of the South. This it is impossible to enjoy in Portugal where it would be as practicable to cover the general surface with the snow of Lapland as with the verdure of England." It is much the same in France. "There is everywhere in France," says Loudon, "a want of close green turf, of ever-green bushes and of good adhesive gravel." Some French admirers of English gardens do their best to imitate our lawns, and it is said that they sometimes partially succeed with English grass seed, rich manure, and constant irrigation. In Bengal there is a very beautiful species of grass called Doob grass, (Panicum Dactylon,) but it only flourishes on wide and exposed plains with few trees on them, and on the sides of public roads, Shakespeare makes Falstaff say that "the camomile the more it is trodden on the faster it grows" and, this is the case with the Doob grass. The attempt to produce a permanent Doob grass lawn is quite idle unless the ground is extensive and open, and much trodden by men or sheep. A friend of mine tells me that he covered a large lawn of the coarse Ooloo grass (Saccharum cylindricum) with mats, which soon killed it, and on removing the mats, the finest Doob grass sprang up in its place. But the Ooloo grass soon again over-grew the Doob.

[004] I allude here chiefly to the ryots of wealthy Zemindars and to other poor Hindu people in the service of their own countrymen. All the subjects of the British Crown, even in India, are politically free, but individually the poorer Hindus, (especially those who reside at a distance from large towns,) are unconscious of their rights, and even the wealthier classes have rarely indeed that proud and noble feeling of personal independence which characterizes people of all classes and conditions in England. The feeling with which even a Hindu of wealth and rank approaches a man in power is very different indeed from that of the poorest Englishman under similar circumstances. But national education will soon communicate to the natives of India a larger measure of true self-respect. It will not be long, I hope, before the Hindus will understand our favorite maxim of English law, that "Every man's house is his castle,"--a maxim so finely amplified by Lord Chatham: "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail--its roof may shake--the wind may blow through it--the storm may enter--but the king of England cannot enter!--all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement."

[005] Literary Recreations.

[006] I have in some moods preferred the paintings of our own Gainsborough even to those of Claude--and for this single reason, that the former gives a peculiar and more touching interest to his landscapes by the introduction of sweet groups of children. These lovely little figures are moreover so thoroughly English, and have such an out-of- doors air, and seem so much a part of external nature, that an Englishman who is a lover of rural scenery and a patriot, can hardly fail to be enchanted with the style of his celebrated countryman.--Literary Recreations.

[007] Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his 'Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees,' &c. his name would have excited the gratitude of posterity. The voice of the patriot exults in his dedication to Charles II, prefixed to one of the later editions:--'I need not acquaint your Majesty, how many millions of timber-trees, besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted throughout your vast dominions, at the instigation and by the sole direction of this work, because your Majesty has been pleased to own it publicly for my encouragement.' And surely while Britain retains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the 'Sylva' of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks. It was a retired philosopher who aroused the genius of the nation, and who casting a prophetic eye towards the age in which we live, has contributed to secure our sovereignty of the seas. The present navy of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted.--D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature.

[008] Crisped knots are figures curled or twisted, or having waving lines intersecting each other. They are sometimes planted in box. Children, even in these days, indulge their fancy in sowing mustard and cress, &c. in 'curious knots,' or in favorite names and sentences. I have done it myself, "I know not how oft,"--and alas, how long ago! But I still remember with what anxiety I watered and watched the ground, and with what rapture I at last saw the surface gradually rising and breaking on the light green heads of the delicate little new-born plants, all exactly in their proper lines or stations, like a well- drilled Lilliputian battalion.

Shakespeare makes mention of garden knots in his Richard the Second, where he compares an ill governed state to a neglected garden.

    Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
    Keep law, and form, and due proportion,
    Showing, as in a model, our firm estate?
    When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
    Is full of weeds; her finest flowers choked up,
    Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
    Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
    Swarming with caterpillars.

There is an allusion to garden knots in Holinshed's Chronicle. In 1512 the Earl of Northumberland "had but one gardener who attended hourly in the garden for setting of erbis and chipping of knottis and sweeping the said garden clean."

[009] Ovid, in his story of Pyramus and Thisbe, tells us that the black Mulberry was originally white. The two lovers killed themselves under a white Mulberry tree and the blood penetrating to the roots of the tree mixed with the sap and gave its color to the fruit.

[010] Revived Adonis,--for, according to tradition he died every year and revived again. Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son,--that is, of Ulysses, whom he entertained on his return from Troy. Or that, not mystic--not fabulous as the rest, but a real garden which Solomon made for his wife, the daughter of Pharoah, king of Egypt--WARBURTON

"Divested of harmonious Greek and bewitching poetry," observes Horace Walpole, "the garden of Alcinous was a small orchard and vineyard with some beds of herbs and two fountains that watered them, inclosed within a quickset hedge." Lord Kames, says, still more boldly, that it was nothing but a kitchen garden. Certainly, gardening amongst the ancient Greeks, was a very simple business. It is only within the present century that it has been any where elevated into a fine art.

[011] "We are unwilling to diminish or lose the credit of Paradise, or only pass it over with [the Hebrew word for] Eden, though the Greek be of a later name. In this excepted, we know not whether the ancient gardens do equal those of late times, or those at present in Europe. Of the gardens of Hesperides, we know nothing singular, but some golden apples. Of Alcinous his garden, we read nothing beyond figs, apples, olives; if we allow it to be any more than a fiction of Homer, unhappily placed in Corfu, where the sterility of the soil makes men believe there was no such thing at all. The gardens of Adonis were so empty that they afforded proverbial expression, and the principal part thereof was empty spaces, with herbs and flowers in pots. I think we little understand the pensile gardens of Semiramis, which made one of the wonders of it [Babylon], wherein probably the structure exceeded the plants contained in them. The excellency thereof was probably in the trees, and if the descension of the roots be equal to the height of trees, it was not [absurd] of Strebæus to think the pillars were hollow that the roots might shoot into them."--Sir Thomas Browne.--Bohn's Edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Works, vol. 2, page 498.

[012] The house and garden before Pope died were large enough for their owner. He was more than satisfied with them. "As Pope advanced in years," says Roscoe, "his love of gardening, and his attention to the various occupations to which it leads, seem to have increased also. This predilection was not confined to the ornamental part of this delightful pursuit, in which he has given undoubted proofs of his proficiency, but extended to the useful as well as the agreeable, as appears from several passages in his poems; but he has entered more particularly into this subject in a letter to Swift (March 25, 1736); "I wish you had any motive to see this kingdom. I could keep you: for I am rich, that is, have more than I want, I can afford room to yourself and two servants. I have indeed room enough; nothing but myself at home. The kind and hearty housewife is dead! The agreeable and instructive neighbour is gone! Yet my house is enlarged, and the gardens extend and flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have lost. I have more fruit trees and kitchen garden than you have any thought of; and, I have good melons and apples of my own growth. I am as much a better gardener, as I am a worse poet, than when you saw me; but gardening is near akin to philosophy, for Tully says, Agricultura proxima sapientiae. For God's sake, why should not you, (that are a step higher than a philosopher, a divine, yet have too much grace and wit than to be a bishop) even give all you have to the poor of Ireland (for whom you have already done every thing else,) so quit the place, and live and die with me? And let tales anima concordes be our motto and our epitaph."

[013] The leaves of the willow, though green above, are hoar below. Shakespeare's knowledge of the fact is alluded to by Hazlitt as one of the numberless evidences of the poet's minute observation of external nature.

[014] See Mr. Loudon's most interesting and valuable work entitled Arboretum et Fruticetum Britanicum.

[015] All the rules of gardening are reducible to three heads: the contrasts, the management of surprises and the concealment of the bounds. "Pray, what is it you mean by the contrasts?" "The disposition of the lights and shades."--"'Tis the colouring then?"--"Just that."--"Should not variety be one of the rules?"--"Certainly, one of the chief; but that is included mostly in the contrasts." I have expressed them all in two verses[140] (after my manner, in very little compass), which are in imitation of Horace's--Omne tulit punctum. Pope.--Spence's Anecdotes.

[016] In laying out a garden, the chief thing to be considered is the genius of the place. Thus at Tiskins, for example, Lord Bathurst should have raised two or three mounts, because his situation is all plain, and nothing can please without variety. Pope--Spence's Anecdotes.

[017] The seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham, in Buckinghamshire. Pope concludes the first Epistle of his Moral Essays with a compliment to the patriotism of this nobleman.

    And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath
    Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death:
    Such in those moments as in all the past
    "Oh, save my country, Heaven!" shall be your last.

[018] Two hundred acres and two hundred millions of francs were made over to Le Notre by Louis XIV. to complete these geometrical gardens. One author tells us that in 1816 the ordinary cost of putting a certain portion of the waterworks in play was at the rate of 200 £. per hour, and another still later authority states that when the whole were set in motion once a year on some Royal fête, the cost of the half hour during which the main part of the exhibition lasted was not less than 3,000 £. This is surely a most senseless expenditure. It seems, indeed, almost incredible. I take the statements from Loudon's excellent Encyclopaedia of Gardening. The name of one of the original reporters is Neill; the name of the other is not given. The gardens formerly were and perhaps still are full of the vilest specimens of verdant sculpture in every variety of form. Lord Kames gives a ludicrous account of the vomiting stone statues there;--"A lifeless statue of an animal pouring out water may be endured" he observes, "without much disgust: but here the lions and wolves are put in violent action; each has seized its prey, a deer or a lamb, in act to devour; and yet, as by hocus-pocus, the whole is converted into a different scene: the lion, forgetting his prey, pours out water plentifully; and the deer, forgetting its danger, performs the same work: a representation no less absurd than that in the opera, where Alexander the Great, after mounting the wall of a town besieged, turns his back to the enemy, and entertains his army with a song."

[019] Broome though a writer of no great genius (if any), had yet the honor to be associated with Pope in the translation of the Odyssey. He translated the 2nd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 16th, 18th, and 23rd books. Henley (Orator Henley) sneered at Pope, in the following couplet, for receiving so much assistance:

    Pope came clean off with Homer, but they say,
    Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.

Fenton was another of Pope's auxiliaries. He translated the 1st, 4th, 19th and 20th books (of the Odyssey). Pope himself translated the rest.

[020] Stowe

[021] The late Humphrey Repton, one of the best landscape-gardeners that England has produced, and who was for many years employed on alterations and improvements in the house and grounds at Cobham, in Kent, the seat of the Earl of Darnley, seemed to think that Stowe ought not to monopolize applause and admiration, "Whether," he said, "we consider its extent, its magnificence or its comfort, there are few places that can vie with Cobham." Repton died in 1817, and his patron and friend the Earl of Darnley put up at Cobham an inscription to his memory.

The park at Cobham extends over an area of no less than 1,800 acres, diversified with thick groves and finely scattered single trees and gentle slopes and broad smooth lawns. Some of the trees are singularly beautiful and of great age and size. A chestnut tree, named the Four Sisters, is five and twenty feet in girth. The mansion, of which, the central part was built by Inigo Jones, is a very noble one. George the Fourth pronounced the music room the finest room in England. The walls are of polished white marble with pilasters of sienna marble. The picture gallery is enriched with valuable specimens of the genius of Titian and Guido and Salvator Rosa and Sir Joshua Reynolds. There is another famous estate in Kent, Knole, the seat of

    Dorset, the grace of courts, the Muse's pride.

The Earl of Dorset, though but a poetaster himself, knew how to appreciate the higher genius of others. He loved to be surrounded by the finest spirits of his time. There is a pleasant anecdote of the company at his table agreeing to see which amongst them could produce the best impromptu. Dryden was appointed arbitrator. Dorset handed a slip of paper to Dryden, and when all the attempts were collected, Dryden decided without hesitation that Dorset's was the best. It ran thus: "I promise to pay Mr. John Dryden, on demand, the sum of £500. Dorset."

[022] This is generally put into the mouth of Pope, but if we are to believe Spence, who is the only authority for the anecdote, it was addressed to himself.

[023] It has been said that in laying out the grounds at Hagley, Lord Lyttelton received some valuable hints from the author of The Seasons, who was for some time his Lordship's guest. The poet has commemorated the beauties of Hagley Park in a description that is familiar to all lovers of English poetry. I must make room for a few of the concluding lines.

    Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow,
    The bursting prospect spreads immense around:
    And snatched o'er hill, and dale, and wood, and lawn,
    And verdant field, and darkening heath between,
    And villages embosomed soft in trees,
    And spiry towns by surging columns marked,
    Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams;
    Wide stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt
    The hospitable genius lingers still,
    To where the broken landscape, by degrees,
    Ascending, roughens into rigid hills;
    O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds,
    That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.

It certainly does not look as if there had been any want of kindly feeling towards Shenstone on the part of Lyttelton when we find the following inscription in Hagley Park.

      To the memory of
    William Shenstone, Esquire,
      In whose verse
    Were all the natural graces.
      And in whose manners
    Was all the amiable simplicity
      Of pastoral poetry,
    With the sweet tenderness
      Of the elegiac.

There is also at Hagley a complimentary inscription on an urn to Alexander Pope; and, on an octagonal building called Thomson's Seat, there is an inscription to the author of The Seasons. Hagley is kept up with great care and is still in possession of the descendants of the founder. But a late visitor (Mr. George Dodd) expresses a doubt whether the Leasowes, even in its comparative decay, is not a finer bit of landscape, a more delightful place to lose one-self in, than even its larger and better preserved neighbour.

[024] Coleridge is reported to have said--"There is in Crabbe an absolute defect of high imagination; he gives me little pleasure. Yet no doubt he has much power of a certain kind, and it is good to cultivate, even at some pains, a catholic taste in literature." Walter Savage Landor, in his "Imaginary Conversations," makes Porson say--"Crabbe wrote with a two-penny nail and scratched rough truths and rogues' facts on mud walls." Horace Smith represents Crabbe, as "Pope in worsted stockings." That there is merit of some sort or other, and that of no ordinary kind, in Crabbe's poems, is what no one will deny. They relieved the languor of the last days of two great men, of very different characters--Sir Walter Scott and Charles James Fox.

[025] The poet had a cottage and garden in Kew-foot-Lane at or near Richmond. In the alcove in the garden is a small table made of the wood of the walnut tree. There is a drawer to the table which in all probability often received charge of the poet's effusions hot from the brain. On a brass tablet inserted in the top of the table is this inscription--"This table was the property of James Thomson, and always stood in this seat."

[026] Shene or Sheen: the old name of Richmond, signifying in Saxon shining or splendour.

[027] Highgate and Hamstead.

[028] In his last sickness

[029] On looking back at page 36 I find that I have said in the foot note that it is only within the present century that gardening has been elevated into a fine art. I did not mean within the 55 years of this 19th century, but within a hundred years. Even this, however, was an inadvertency. We may go a little further back. Kent and Pope lived to see Landscape-Gardening considered a fine art. Before their time there were many good practical gardeners, but the poetry of the art was not then much regarded except by a very few individuals of more than ordinary refinement.

[030] Catherine the Second grossly disgraced herself as a woman--partly driven into misconduct herself by the behaviour of her husband--but as a sovereign it cannot be denied that she exhibited a penetrating sagacity and great munificence; and perhaps the lovers of literature and science should treat her memory with a little consideration. When Diderot was in distress and advertized his library for sale, the Empress sent him an order on a banker at Paris for the amount demanded, namely fifteen thousand livres, on condition that the library was to be left as a deposit with the owner, and that he was to accept a gratuity of one thousand livres annually for taking charge of the books, until the Empress should require them. This was indeed a delicate and ingenious kindness. Lord Brougham makes D'Alembert and not Diderot the subject of this anecdote. It is a mistake. See the Correspondence of Baron de Gumm and Diderot with the Duke of Saxe-Gotha.

Many of the Russian nobles keep up to this day the taste in gardening introduced by Catherine the Second, and have still many gardens laid out in the English style. They have often had in their employ both English and Scottish gardeners. There is an anecdote of a Scotch gardener in the Crimea in one of the public journals:--

"Our readers"--says the Banffshire Journal--"will recollect that when the Allies made a brief expedition to Yalto, in the south of the Crimea, they were somewhat surprised and gratified by the sight of some splendid gardens around a seat of Prince Woronzow. Little did our countrymen think that these gardens were the work of a Scotchman, and a Moray loon; yet such was the case." The history of the personage in question is a somewhat singular one: "Jamie Sinclair, the garden boy, had a natural genius, and played the violin. Lady Cumming had this boy educated by the family tutor, and sent him to London, where he was well known in 1836-7-8, for his skill in drawing and colouring. Mr. Knight, of the Exotic Nursery, for whom he used to draw orchids and new plants, sent him to the Crimea, to Prince Woronzow, where he practised for thirteen years. He had laid out these beautiful gardens which the allies the other day so much admired; had the care of 10,000 acres of vineyards belonging to the prince; was well known to the Czar, who often consulted him about improvements, and gave him a "medal of merit" and a diploma or passport, by which he was free to pass from one end of the empire to the other, and also through Austria and Prussia, I have seen these instruments. He returned to London in 1851, and was just engaged with a London publisher for a three years' job, when Menschikoff found the Turks too hot for him last April twelve-month; the Russians then made up for blows, and Mr. Sinclair was more dangerous for them in London than Lord Aberdeen. He was the only foreigner who was ever allowed to see all that was done in and out of Sebastopol, and over all the Crimea. The Czar, however, took care that Sinclair could not join the allies; but where he is and what he is about I must not tell, until the war is over--except that he is not in Russia, and that he will never play first fiddle again in Morayshire."

[031] Brown succeeded to the popularity of Kent. He was nicknamed, Capability Brown, because when he had to examine grounds previous to proposed alterations and improvements he talked much of their capabilities. One of the works which are said to do his memory most honor, is the Park of Nuneham, the seat of Lord Harcourt. The grounds extend to 1,200 acres. Horace Walpole said that they contained scenes worthy of the bold pencil of Rubens, and subjects for the tranquil sunshine of Claude de Lorraine. The following inscription is placed over the entrance to the gardens.

                Here universal Pan,
    Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
    Leads on the eternal Spring.

It is said that the gardens at Nuneham were laid out by Mason, the poet.

[032] Mrs. Stowe visited the Jardin Mabille in the Champs Elysées, a sort of French Vauxhall, where small jets of gas were so arranged as to imitate "flowers of the softest tints and the most perfect shape."

[033] Napoleon, it is said, once conceived the plan of roofing with glass the gardens of the Tuileries, so that they might be used as a winter promenade.

[034] Addison in the 477th number of the Spectator in alluding to Kensington Gardens, observes; "I think there are as many kinds of gardening as poetry; our makers of parterres and flower gardens are epigrammatists and sonnetteers in the art; contrivers of bowers and grottos, treillages and cascades, are romance writers. Wise and London are our heroic poets; and if I may single out any passage of their works to commend I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a gravel pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow unto so beautiful an area and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought into."

[035] Lord Bathurst, says London, informed Daines Barrington, that he (Lord Bathurst) was the first who deviated from the straight line in sheets of water by following the lines in a valley in widening a brook at Ryskins, near Colnbrook; and Lord Strafford, thinking that it was done from poverty or economy asked him to own fairly how little more it would have cost him to have made it straight. In these days no possessor of a park or garden has the water on his grounds either straight or square if he can make it resemble the Thames as described by Wordsworth:

    The river wanders at its own sweet will.

Horace Walpole in his lively and pleasant little work on Modern Gardening almost anticipates this thought. In commending Kent's style of landscape-gardening he observes: "The gentle stream was taught to serpentize at its pleasure."

[036] This Palm-house, "the glory of the gardens," occupies an area of 362 ft. in length; the centre is an hundred ft. in width and 66 ft. in height.

It must charm a Native of the East on a visit to our country, to behold such carefully cultured specimens, in a great glass-case in England, of the trees called by Linnaeus "the Princes of the vegetable kingdom," and which grow so wildly and in such abundance in every corner of Hindustan. In this conservatory also are the banana and plantain. The people of England are in these days acquainted, by touch and sight, with almost all the trees that grow in the several quarters of the world. Our artists can now take sketches of foreign plants without crossing the seas. An allusion to the Palm tree recals some criticisms on Shakespeare's botanical knowledge.

"Look here," says Rosalind, "what I found on a palm tree." "A palm tree in the forest of Arden," remarks Steevens, "is as much out of place as a lioness in the subsequent scene." Collier tries to get rid of the difficulty by suggesting that Shakespeare may have written plane tree. "Both the remark and the suggestion," observes Miss Baker, "might have been spared if those gentlemen had been aware that in the counties bordering on the Forest of Arden, the name of an exotic tree is transferred to an indigenous one." The salix caprea, or goat-willow, is popularly known as the "palm" in Northamptonshire, no doubt from having been used for the decoration of churches on Palm Sunday--its graceful yellow blossoms, appearing at a time when few other trees have put forth a leaf, having won for it that distinction. Clare so calls it:--

    "Ye leaning palms, that seem to look
    Pleased o'er your image in the brook."

That Shakespeare included the willow in his forest scenery is certain, from another passage in the same play:--

    "West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom.
    The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream,
    Left on your right hand brings you to the place."

The customs and amusements of Northamptonshire, which are frequently noticed in these volumes, were identical with those of the neighbouring county of Warwick, and, in like manner illustrate very clearly many passages in the great dramatist.--Miss Baker's "Glossary of Northamptonshire Words." (Quoted by the London Athenaeum.)

[037] Mrs. Hemans once took up her abode for some weeks with Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, and was so charmed with the country around, that she was induced to take a cottage called Dove's Nest, which over-looked the lake of Windermere. But tourists and idlers so haunted her retreat and so worried her for autographs and Album contributions, that she was obliged to make her escape. Her little cottage and garden in the village of Wavertree, near Liverpool, seem to have met the fate which has befallen so many of the residences of the poets. "Mrs. Hemans's little flower-garden" (says a late visitor) "was no more--but rank grass and weeds sprang up luxuriously; many of the windows were broken; the entrance gate was off its hinges: the vine in front of the house trailed along the ground, and a board, with 'This house to let' upon it, was nailed on the door. I entered the deserted garden and looked into the little parlour--once so full of taste and elegance; it was gloomy and cheerless. The paper was spotted with damp, and spiders had built their webs in the corner. As I mused on the uncertainty of human life, I exclaimed with the eloquent Burke,--'What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!'"

The beautiful grounds of the late Professor Wilson at Elleray, we are told by Mr. Howitt in his interesting "Homes and Haunts of the British Poets" have also been sadly changed. "Steam," he says, "as little as time, has respected the sanctity of the poet's home, but has drawn its roaring iron steeds opposite to its gate and has menaced to rush through it and lay waste its charmed solitude. In plain words, I saw the stages of a projected railway running in an ominous line across the very lawn and before the windows of Elleray." I believe the whole place has been purchased by a Railway Company.

[038] In Churton's Rail Book of England, published about three years ago, Pope's Villa is thus noticed--"Not only was this temple of the Muses--this abode of genius--the resort of the learned and the wittiest of the land--levelled to the earth, but all that the earth produced to remind posterity of its illustrious owner, and identify the dead with the living strains he has bequeathed to us, was plucked up by the roots and scattered to the wind." On the authority of William Hewitt I have stated on an earlier page that some splendid Spanish chesnut trees and some elms and cedars planted by Pope at Twickenham were still in existence. But Churton is a later authority. Howitt's book was published in 1847.

[039] One would have thought &c. See the garden of Armida, as described by Tasso, C. xvi. 9, &c.

    "In lieto aspetto il bel giardin s'aperse &c."

Here was all that variety, which constitutes the nature of beauty: hill and dale, lawns and crystal rivers, &c.

    "And, that which all faire works doth most aggrace,
    "The art, which all that wrought, appearéd in no place."

Which is literally from Tasso, C, xvi 9.

    "E quel, che'l bello, e'l caro accresce à l'opre,
    "L'arte, che tutto fa, nulla si scopre."

The next stanza is likewise translated from Tasso, C. xvi 10. And, if the reader likes the comparing of the copy with the original, he may see many other beauties borrowed from the Italian poet. The fountain, and the two bathing damsels, are taken from Tasso, C. xv, st. 55, &c. which he calls, Il fonte del riso. UPTON.

[040] Cowper was evidently here thinking rather of Milton than of Homer.

    Flowers of all hue, and without thorns the rose.

Paradise Lost.

Pope translates the passage thus;

    Beds of all various herbs, for ever green,
    In beauteous order terminate the scene.

Homer referred to pot-herbs, not to flowers of all hues. Cowper is generally more faithful than Pope, but he is less so in this instance. In the above description we have Homer's highest conception of a princely garden:--in five acres were included an orchard, a vineyard, and some beds of pot-herbs. Not a single flower is mentioned, by the original author, though his translator has been pleased to steal some from the garden of Eden and place them on "the verge extreme" of the four acres. Homer of course meant to attach to a Royal residence as Royal a garden; but as Bacon says, "men begin to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection." The mansion of Alcinous was of brazen walls with golden columns; and the Greeks and Romans had houses that were models of architecture when their gardens exhibited no traces whatever of the hand of taste.

[041]

    And over him, art stryving to compayre
    With nature, did an arber greene dispied

This whole episode is taken from Tasso, C. 16, where Rinaldo is described in dalliance with Armida. The bower of bliss is her garden

    "Stimi (si misto il culto e col negletto)
    "Sol naturali e gli ornamenti e i siti,
    "Di natura arte par, che per diletto
    "L'imitatrice sua scherzando imiti."

See also Ovid, Met iii. 157

    "Cujus in extremo est antrum nemorale necessu,
    "Arte laboratum nulla, simulaverat artem
    "Ingenio natura fuo nam pumice vivo,
    "Et lenibus tophis nativum duxerat arcum
    "Fons sonat a dextra, tenui perlucidas unda
    "Margine gramineo patulos incinctus hiatus"

UPTON

If this passage may be compared with Tasso's elegant description of Armida's garden, Milton's pleasant grove may vie with both.[141] He is, however, under obligations to the sylvan scene of Spenser before us. Mr. J.C. Walker, to whom the literature of Ireland and of Italy is highly indebted, has mentioned to me his surprise that the writers on modern gardening should have overlooked the beautiful pastoral description in this and the two following stanzas.[142] It is worthy a place, he adds, in the Eden of Milton. Spenser, on this occasion, lost sight of the "trim gardens" of Italy and England, and drew from the treasures of his own rich imagination. TODD.

    And fast beside these trickled softly downe.
    A gentle stream, &c.

Compare the following stanza in the continuation of the Orlando Innamorato, by Nilcolo degli Agostinti, Lib. iv, C. 9.

    "Ivi è un mormorio assai soave, e basso,
    Che ogniun che l'ode lo fa addornientare,
    L'acqua, ch'io dissi gia per entro un sasso
    E parea che dicesse nel sonare.
    Vatti riposa, ormai sei stanco, e lasso,
    E gli augeletti, che s'udian cantare,
    Ne la dolce armonia par che ogn'un dica,
    Deh vien, e dormi ne la piaggia, aprica,"

Spenser's obligations to this poem seem to have escaped the notice of his commentators. J.C. WALKER.

[042] The oak was dedicated to Jupiter, and the poplar to Hercules.

[043] Sicker, surely; Chaucer spells it siker.

[044] Yode, went.

[045] Tabreret, a tabourer.

[046] Tho, then

[047] Attone, at once--with him.

[048] Cato being present on one occasion at the floral games, the people out of respect to him, forbore to call for the usual exposures; when informed of this he withdrew, that the spectators might not be deprived of their usual entertainment.

[049] What is the reason that an easterly wind is every where unwholesome and disagreeable? I am not sufficiently scientific to answer this question. Pope takes care to notice the fitness of the easterly wind for the Cave of Spleen.

    No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,
    The dreaded east is all the wind that blows.

Rape of the Lock.

[050] One sweet scene of early pleasures in my native land I have commemorated in the following sonnet:--

NETLEY ABBEY.

    Romantic ruin! who could gaze on thee
    Untouched by tender thoughts, and glimmering dreams
    Of long-departed years? Lo! nature seems
    Accordant with thy silent majesty!
    The far blue hills--the smooth reposing sea--
    The lonely forest--the meandering streams--
    The farewell summer sun, whose mellowed beams
    Illume thine ivied halls, and tinge each tree,
    Whose green arms round thee cling--the balmy air--
    The stainless vault above, that cloud or storm
    'Tis hard to deem will ever more deform--
    The season's countless graces,--all appear
    To thy calm glory ministrant, and form
    A scene to peace and meditation dear!

D.L.R.

[051] "I was ever more disposed," says Hume, "to see the favourable than the unfavourable side of things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess, than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year."

[052] So called, because the grounds were laid out in a tasteful style, under the direction of Lord Auckland's sister, the Honorable Miss Eden.

[053] Songs of the East by Mrs. W.S. Carshore. D'Rozario & Co, Calcutta 1854.

[054] The lines form a portion of a poem published in Literary Leaves in the year 1840.

[055] Perhaps some formal or fashionable wiseacres may pronounce such simple ceremonies vulgar. And such is the advance of civilization that even the very chimney-sweepers themselves begin to look upon their old May-day merry-makings as beneath the dignity of their profession. "Suppose now" said Mr. Jonas Hanway to a sooty little urchin, "I were to give you a shilling." "Lord Almighty bless your honor, and thank you." "And what if I were to give you a fine tie-wig to wear on May-day?" "Ah! bless your honor, my master wont let me go out on May-day," "Why not?" "Because, he says, it's low life." And yet the merrie makings on May- day which are now deemed ungenteel by chimney-sweepers were once the delight of Princes:--

    Forth goth all the court, both most and least,
    To fetch the flowres fresh, and branch and blome,
    And namely hawthorn brought both page and grome,
    And then rejoicing in their great delite
    Eke ech at others threw the flowres bright,
    The primrose, violet, and the gold
    With fresh garlants party blue and white.

Chaucer.

[056] The May-pole was usually decorated with the flowers of the hawthorn, a plant as emblematical of the spring as the holly is of Christmas. Goldsmith has made its name familiar even to the people of Bengal, for almost every student in the upper classes of the Government Colleges has the following couplet by heart.

    The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
    For talking age and whispering lovers made.

The hawthorn was amongst Burns's floral pets. "I have," says he, "some favorite flowers in spring, among which are, the mountain daisy, the harebell, the fox-glove, the wild-briar rose, the budding birch and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight."

L.E.L. speaks of the hawthorn hedge on which "the sweet May has showered its white luxuriance," and the Rev. George Croly has a patriotic allusion to this English plant, suggested by a landscape in France.

      'Tis a rich scene, and yet the richest charm
      That e'er clothed earth in beauty, lives not here.
      Winds no green fence around the cultured farm
      No blossomed hawthorn shields the cottage dear:
      The land is bright; and yet to thine how drear,
      Unrivalled England! Well the thought may pine
      For those sweet fields where, each a little sphere,
      In shaded, sacred fruitfulness doth shine,
    And the heart higher beats that says; 'This spot is mine.'

[057] On May-day, the Ancient Romans used to go in procession to the grotto of Egeria.

[058] See what is said of palms in a note on page 81.

[059] Phillips's Flora Historica.

[060] The word primrose is supposed to be a compound of prime and rose, and Spenser spells it prime rose

    The pride and prime rose of the rest
    Made by the maker's self to be admired

The Rev. George Croly characterizes Bengal as a mountainous country--

    There's glory on thy mountains, proud Bengal--

and Dr. Johnson in his Journey of a day, (Rambler No. 65) charms the traveller in Hindustan with a sight of the primrose and the oak.

"As he passed along, his ears were delighted with the morning song of the bird of paradise; he was fanned by the last flutters of the sinking breeze, and sprinkled with dew by groves of spices, he sometimes contemplated the towering height of the oak, monarch of the hills; and sometimes caught the gentle fragrance of the primrose, eldest daughter of the spring."

In some book of travels, I forget which, the writer states, that he had seen the primrose in Mysore and in the recesses of the Pyrenees. There is a flower sold by the Bengallee gardeners for the primrose, though it bears but small resemblance to the English flower of that name. On turning to Mr. Piddington's Index to the Plants of India I find under the head of Primula--Primula denticula--Stuartii--rotundifolia--with the names in the Mawar or Nepaulese dialect.

[061] In strewing their graves the Romans affected the rose; the Greeks amaranthus and myrtle: the funeral pyre consisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees perpetually verdant lay silent expressions of their surviving hopes. Sir Thomas Browne.

[062] The allusion to the cowslip in Shakespeare's description of Imogene must not be passed over here.--

                            On her left breast
    A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drop
    I' the bottom of the cowslip.

[063] The Guelder rose--This elegant plant is a native of Britain, and when in flower, has at first sight, the appearance of a little maple tree that has been pelted with snow balls, and we almost fear to see them melt away in the warm sunshine--Glenny.

[064] In a greenhouse

[065] Some flowers have always been made to a certain degree emblematical of sentiment in England as elsewhere, but it was the Turks who substituted flowers for words to such an extent as to entitle themselves to be regarded as the inventors of the floral language.

[066] The floral or vegetable language is not always the language of love or compliment. It is sometimes severe and scornful. A gentleman sent a lady a rose as a declaration of his passion and a slip of paper attached, with the inscription--"If not accepted, I am off to the war." The lady forwarded in return a mango (man, go!)

[067] No part of the creation supposed to be insentient, exhibits to an imaginative observer such an aspect of spiritual life and such an apparent sympathy with other living things as flowers, shrubs and trees. A tree of the genus Mimosa, according to Niebuhr, bends its branches downward as if in hospitable salutation when any one approaches near to it. The Arabs, are on this account so fond of the "courteous tree" that the injuring or cutting of it down is strictly prohibited.

[068] It has been observed that the defense is supplied in the following line--want of sense--a stupidity that "errs in ignorance and not in cunning."

[069] There is apparently so much doubt and confusion is to the identity of the true Hyacinth, and the proper application of its several names that I shall here give a few extracts from other writers on this subject.

Some authors suppose the Red Martagon Lily to be the poetical Hyacinth of the ancients, but this is evidently a mistaken opinion, as the azure blue color alone would decide and Pliny describes the Hyacinth as having a sword grass and the smell of the grape flower, which agrees with the Hyacinth, but not with the Martagon. Again, Homer mentions it with fragrant flowers of the same season of the Hyacinth. The poets also notice the hyacinth under different colours, and every body knows that the hyacinth flowers with sapphire colored purple, crimson, flesh and white bells, but a blue martagon will be sought for in vain. Phillips' Flora Historica.

A doubt hangs over the poetical history of the modern, as well as of the ancient flower, owing to the appellation Harebell being, indiscriminately applied both to Scilla wild Hyacinth, and also to Campanula rotundifolia, Blue Bell. Though the Southern bards have occasionally misapplied the word Harebell it will facilitate our understanding which flower is meant if we bear in mind as a general rule that that name is applied differently in various parts of the island, thus the Harebell of Scottish writers is the Campanula, and the Bluebell, so celebrated in Scottish song, is the wild Hyacinth or Scilla while in England the same names are used conversely, the Campanula being the Bluebell and the wild Hyacinth the Harebell. Eden Warwick.

The Hyacinth of the ancient fabulists appears to have been the corn- flag, (Gladiolus communis of botanists) but the name was applied vaguely and had been early applied to the great larkspur (Delphinium Ajacis) on account of the similar spots on the petals, supposed to represent the Greek exclamation of grief Ai Ai, and to the hyacinth of modern times.

Our wild hyacinth, which contributes so much to the beauty of our woodland scenery during the spring, may be regarded as a transition species between scilla and hyacinthus, the form and drooping habit of its flower connecting it with the latter, while the six pieces that form the two outer circles, being separate to the base, give it the technical character of the former. It is still called Hyacinthus non-scriptus-- but as the true hyacinth equally wants the inscription, the name is singularly inappropriate. The botanical name of the hyacinth is Hyacinthus orientalis which applies equally to all the varieties of colour, size and fulness.--W. Hinks.

[070] Old Gerard calls it Blew Harebel or English Jacint, from the French Jacinthe.

[071] Inhabitants of the Island of Chios

[072] Supposed by some to be Delphinium Ajacis or Larkspur. But no one can discover any letters on the Larkspur.

[073] Some savants say that it was not the sunflower into which the lovelorn lass was transformed, but the Heliotrope with its sweet odour of vanilla. Heliotrope signifies I turn towards the sun. It could not have been the sun flower, according to some authors because that came from Peru and Peru was not known to Ovid. But it is difficult to settle this grave question. As all flowers turn towards the sun, we cannot fix on any one that is particularly entitled to notice on that account.

[074] Zephyrus.

[075] "A remarkably intelligent young botanist of our acquaintance asserts it as his firm conviction that many a young lady who would shrink from being kissed under the mistletoe would not have the same objection to that ceremony if performed under the rose."--Punch.

[076] Mary Howitt mentions that amongst the private cultivators of roses in the neighbourhood of London, the well-known publisher Mr. Henry S. Bohn is particularly distinguished. In his garden at Twickenham one thousand varieties of the rose are brought to great perfection. He gives a sort of floral fete to his friends in the height of the rose season.

[077] The learned dry the flower of the Forget me not and flatten it down in their herbals, and call it, Myosotis Scorpioides--Scorpion shaped mouse's ear! They have been reproached for this by a brother savant, Charles Nodier, who was not a learned man only but a man of wit and sense.--Alphonse Karr.

[078] The Abbé Molina in his History of Chili mentions a species of basil which he calls ocymum salinum: he says it resembles the common basil, except that the stalk is round and jointed; and that though it grows sixty miles from the sea, yet every morning it is covered with saline globules, which are hard and splendid, appearing at a distance like dew; and that each plant furnishes about an ounce of fine salt every day, which the peasants collect and use as common salt, but esteem it superior in flavour.--Notes to Darwin's Loves of the Plants.

[079] The Dutch are a strange people and of the most heterogeneous composition. They have an odd mixture in their nature of the coldest utilitarianism and the most extravagant romance. A curious illustration of this is furnished in their tulipomania, in which there was a struggle between the love of the substantial and the love of the beautiful. One of their authors enumerates the following articles as equivalent in money value to the price of one tulip root--"two lasts of wheat--four lasts of rye--four fat oxen--eight fat swine--twelve fat sheep--two hogsheads of wine--four tons of butter--one thousand pounds of cheese--a complete bed--a suit of clothes--and a silver drinking cup."

[080] Maun, must

[081] Stoure, dust

[082] Weet, wetness, rain

[083] Glinted, peeped

[084] Wa's, walls.

[085] Bield, shelter

[086] Histie, dry

[087] Stibble field, a field covered with stubble--the stalks of corn left by the reaper.

[088] The origin of the Daisy--When Christ was three years old his mother wished to twine him a birthday wreath. But as no flower was growing out of doors on Christmas eve, not in all the promised land, and as no made up flowers were to be bought, Mary resolved to prepare a flower herself. To this end she took a piece of bright yellow silk which had come down to her from David, and ran into the same, thick threads of white silk, thread by thread, and while thus engaged, she pricked her finger with the needle, and the pure blood stained some of the threads with crimson, whereat the little child was much affected. But when the winter was past and the rains were come and gone, and when spring came to strew the earth with flowers, and the fig tree began to put forth her green figs and the vine her buds, and when the voice or the turtle was heard in the land, then came Christ and took the tender plant with its single stem and egg shaped leaves and the flower with its golden centre and rays of white and red, and planted it in the vale of Nazareth. Then, taking up the cup of gold which had been presented to him by the wise men of the East, he filled it at a neighbouring fountain, and watered the flower and breathed upon it. And the plant grew and became the most perfect of plants, and it flowers in every meadow, when the snow disappears, and is itself the snow of spring, delighting the young heart and enticing the old men from the village to the fields. From then until now this flower has continued to bloom and although it may be plucked a hundred times, again it blossoms--Colshorn's Deutsche Mythologie furs Deutsche Volk.

[089] The Gorse is a low bush with prickly leaves growing like a juniper. The contrast of its very brilliant yellow pea shaped blossoms with the dark green of its leaves is very beautiful. It grows in hedges and on commons and is thought rather a plebeian affair. I think it would make quite an addition to our garden shrubbery. Possibly it might make as much sensation with us (Americans) as our mullein does in foreign green-houses,--Mrs. Stowe.

[090] George Town.

[091] The hill trumpeter.

[092] Nutmeg and Clove plantations.

[093] Leigh Hunt, in the dedication of his Stories in Verse to the Duke of Devonshire speaks of his Grace as "the adorner of the country with beautiful gardens, and with the far-fetched botany of other climates; one of whom it may be said without exaggeration and even without a metaphor, that his footsteps may be traced in flowers."

[094] The following account of a newly discovered flower may be interesting to my readers. "It is about the size of a walnut, perfectly white, with fine leaves, resembling very much the wax plant. Upon the blooming of the flower, in the cup formed by the leaves, is the exact image of a dove lying on its back with its wings extended. The peak of the bill and the eyes are plainly to be seen and a small leaf before the flower arrives at maturity forms the outspread tail. The leaf can be raised or shut down with the finger without breaking or apparently injuring it until the flower reaches its bloom, when it drops,"--Panama Star.

[095] Signifying the dew of the sea. The rosemary grows best near the sea-shore, and when the wind is off the land it delights the home- returning voyager with its familiar fragrance.

[096] Perhaps it is not known to all my readers that some flowers not only brighten the earth by day with their lovely faces, but emit light at dusk. In a note to Darwin's Loves of the Plants it is stated that the daughter of Linnaeus first observed the Nasturtium to throw out flashes of light in the morning before sunrise, and also during the evening twilight, but not after total darkness came on. The philosophers considered these flashes to be electric. Mr. Haggren, Professor of Natural History, perceived one evening a faint flash of light repeatedly darted from a marigold. The flash was afterwards often seen by him on the same flower two or three times, in quick succession, but more commonly at intervals of some minutes. The light has been observed also on the orange, the lily, the monks hood, the yellow goats beard and the sun flower. This effect has sometimes been so striking that the flowers have looked as if they were illuminated for a holiday.

Lady Blessington has a fanciful allusion to this flower light. "Some flowers," she says, "absorb the rays of the sun so strongly that in the evening they yield slight phosphoric flashes, may we not compare the minds of poets to those flowers which imbibing light emit it again in a different form and aspect?"

[097] The Shan and other Poems

[098] My Hindu friend is not answerable for the following notes.

[099]

    And infants winged, who mirthful throw
    Shafts rose-tipped from nectareous bow.

Kam Déva, the Cupid of the Hindu Mythology, is thus represented. His bow is of the sugar cane, his string is formed of wild bees, and his arrows are tipped with the rose.--Tales of the Forest.

[100] In 1811 this plant was subjected to a regular set of experiments by Dr. G. Playfair, who, with many of his brethren, bears ample testimony of its efficacy in leprosy, lues, tenia, herpes, dropsy, rheumatism, hectic and intermittent fever. The powdered bark is given in doses of 5-6 grains twice a day.--Dr. Voight's Hortus Suburbanus Calcuttensis.

[101] It is perhaps of the Flax tribe. Mr. Piddington gives it the Sanscrit name of Atasi and the Botanical name Linum usitatissimum.

[102] Roxburgh calls it "intensely fragrant."

[103] Sometimes employed by robbers to deprive their victims of the power of resistance. In a strong dose it is poison.

[104] It is said to be used by the Chinese to blacken their eyebrows and their shoes.

[105] Mirábilis jálapa, or Marvel of Peru, is called by the country people in England the four o'clock flower, from its opening regularly at that time. There is a species of broom in America which is called the American clock, because it exhibits its golden flowers every morning at eleven, is fully open by one and closes again at two.

[106] Marvell died in 1678; Linnaeus died just a hundred years later.

[107] This poem (The Sugar Cane) when read in manuscript at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when after much blank-verse pomp the poet began a paragraph thus.--

    "Now, Muse, let's sing of rats."

And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company who slyly overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally mice and had been altered to rats as more dignified.--Boswell's Life of Johnson.

[108] Hazlitt has a pleasant essay on a garden Sun-dial, from which I take the following passage:--

Horas non numero nisi serenas--is the motto of a sun dial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. "I count only the hours that are serene." What a bland and care-dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial plate as the sky looms, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind--to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self tormenting! For myself, as I rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy waves, my sensations were far from comfortable, but the reading this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in an instant restored me to myself, and still, whenever I think of or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and blissful abstraction.

[109] These are the initial letters of the Latin names of the plants, they will be found at length on the lower column.

[110] Hampton Court was laid out by Cardinal Wolsey. The labyrinth, one of the best which remains in England, occupies only a quarter of an acre, and contains nearly a mile of winding walks. There is an adjacent stand, on which the gardener places himself, to extricate the adventuring stranger by his directions. Switzer condemns this plan for having only four stops and gives a plan for one with twenty.--Loudon.

[111] The lower part of Bengal, not far from Calcutta, is here described

[112] Sir William Jones states that the Brahmins believe that the blue champac flowers only in Paradise, it being yellow every where else.

[113] The wild dog of Bengal

[114] The elephant.

[115] Even Jeremy Bentham, the great Utilitarian Philosopher, who pronounced the composition and perusal of poetry a mere amusement of no higher rank than the game of Pushpin, had still something of the common feeling of the poetry of nature in his soul. He says of himself--"I was passionately fond of flowers from my youth, and the passion has never left me." In praise of botany he would sometimes observe, "We cannot propagate stones:" meaning that the mineralogist cannot circulate his treasures without injuring himself, but the botanist can multiply his specimens at will and add to the pleasures of others without lessening his own.

[116] A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures that the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a picture and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in a description, and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in the possession.--Spectator.

[117] Kent died in 1748 in the 64th year of his age. As a painter he had no great merit, but many men of genius amongst his contemporaries had the highest opinion of his skill as a Landscape-gardener. He sometimes, however, carried his love of the purely natural to a fantastic excess, as when in Kensington-garden he planted dead trees to give an air of wild truth to the landscape.

    In Esher's peaceful grove,
    Where Kent and nature strove for Pelham's love,

this landscape-gardener is said to have exhibited a very remarkable degree of taste and judgment. I cannot resist the temptation to quote here Horace Walpole's eloquent account of Kent: "At that moment appeared Kent, painter and poet enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays. He leaped the fence and saw that all nature was a garden[143]. He felt the delicious contrast of hill and valley changing imperceptibly into each other, tasted the beauty of the gentle swell, or concave swoop, and remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament, and while they called in the distant view between their graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by delusive comparison."--On Modern Gardening.

[118] When the rage for a wild irregularity in the laying out of gardens was carried to its extreme, the garden paths were so ridiculously tortuous or zig-zag, that, as Brown remarked, a man might put one foot upon zig and the other upon zag.

[119] The natives are much too fond of having tanks within a few feet of their windows, so that the vapours from the water go directly into the house. These vapours are often seen hanging or rolling over the surface of the tank like thick wreaths of smoke.

[120] Broken brick is called kunkur, but I believe the real kunkur is real gravel, and if I am not mistaken a pretty good sort of gravel, formed of particles of red granite, is obtainable from the Rajmahal hills.

[121] Pope in his well known paper in the Guardian complains that a citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews but he entertains thoughts of erecting them into giants, like those of Guildhall. "I know an eminent cook," continues the writer, "who beautified his country seat with a coronation dinner in greens, where you see the Champion flourishing on horseback at one end of the table and the Queen in perpetual youth at the other."

When the desire to subject nature to art had been carried to the ludicrous extravagances so well satirized by Pope, men rushed into an opposite extreme. Uvedale Price in his first rage for nature and horror of art, destroyed a venerable old garden that should have been respected for its antiquity, if for nothing else. He lived to repent his rashness and honestly to record that repentance. Coleridge, observed to John Sterling, that "we have gone too far in destroying the old style of gardens and parks." "The great thing in landscape gardening" he continued "is to discover whether the scenery is such that the country seems to belong to man or man to the country."

[122] In England it costs upon the average about 12 shillings or six rupees to have a tree of 30 feet high transplanted.

[123] I believe the largest leaf in the world is that of the Fan Palm or Talipot tree in Ceylon. "The branch of the tree," observes the author of Sylvan Sketches, "is not remarkably large, but it bears a leaf large enough to cover twenty men. It will fold into a fan and is then no bigger than a man's arm."

[124] Southey's Common-Place Book.

[125] The height of a full grown banyan may be from sixty to eighty feet; and many of them, I am fully confident, cover at least two acres.--Oriental Field Sports.

There is a banyan tree about five and twenty miles from Berhampore, remarkable for the height of the lower branches from the ground. A man standing up on the houdah of an elephant may pass under it without touching the foliage.

A tree has been described as growing in China of a size so prodigious that one branch of it only will so completely cover two hundred sheep that they cannot be perceived by those who approach the tree, and another so enormous that eighty persons can scarcely embrace the trunk.--Sylvan Sketches.

[126] This praise is a little extravagant, but the garden is really very tastefully laid out, and ought to furnish a useful model to such of the people of this city as have spacious grounds. The area of the garden is about two hundred and fifty nine acres. This garden was commenced in 1768 by Colonel Kyd. It then passed to the care of Dr. Roxburgh, who remained in charge of it from 1793 to the date of his death 1813.

[127] Alphonse Karr, bitterly ridicules the Botanical Savants with their barbarous nomenclature. He speaks of their mesocarps and quinqueloculars infundibuliform, squammiflora, guttiferas monocotyledous &c. &c. with supreme disgust. Our English poet, Wordsworth, also used to complain that some of our familiar English names of flowers, names so full of delightful associations, were beginning to be exchanged even in common conversation for the coldest and harshest scientific terms.

[128] The Hand of Eve--the handiwork of Eve.

[129] Without thorn the rose: Dr. Bentley calls this a puerile fancy. But it should be remembered, that it was part of the curse denounced upon the Earth for Adam's transgression, that it should bring forth thorns and thistles. Gen. iii. 18. Hence the general opinion has prevailed, that there were no thorns before; which is enough to justify a poet, in saying "the rose was without thorn."--NEWTON.

[130] See page 188. My Hindu friend is not responsible for the selection of the following notes.

[131] Birdlime is prepared from the tenacious milky juice of the Peepul and the Banyan. The leaves of the Banyan are used by the Bramins to eat off, for which purpose they are joined together by inkles. Birds are very fond of the fruit of the Peepul, and often drop the seeds in the cracks of buildings, where they vegetate, occasioning great damage if not removed in time.--Voight.

[132] The ancient Greeks and Romans also married trees together in a similar manner.--R.

[133] The root of this plant, (Euphorbia ligularia,) mixed up with black pepper, is used by the Natives against snake bites.--Roxburgh.

[134] Coccos nucifera, the root is sometimes masticated instead of the Betle-nut. In Brazil, baskets are made of the small fibres. The hard case of the stem is converted into drums, and used in the construction of huts. The lower part is so hard as to take a beautiful polish, when it resembles agate. The reticulated substance at base of the leaf is formed into cradles, and, as some say, into a coarse kind of cloth. The unexpanded terminal bud is a delicate article of food. The leaves furnish thatch for dwellings, and materials for fences, buckets, and baskets; they are used for writing on, and make excellent torches; potash in abundance is yielded by their ashes. The midrib of the leaf serves for oars. The juice of the flower and stems is replete with sugar, and is fermented into excellent wine, or distilled into arrack, or the sugary part is separated as Jagary. The tree is cultivated in many parts of the Indian islands, for the sake not only of the sap and milk it yields, but for the kernel of its fruit, used both as food and for culinary purposes, and as affording a large proportion of oil which is burned in lamps throughout India, and forms also a large article of export to Europe. The fibrous and uneatable rind of the fruit is not only used to polish furniture and to scour the floors of rooms, but is manufactured into a kind of cordage, (Koir) which is nearly equal in strength to hemp, and which Roxburgh designates as the very best of all materials for cables, on account of its great elasticity and strength. The sap of this as well as of other palms is found to be the simplest and easiest remedy that can be employed for removing constipation in persons of delicate habit, especially European females.--Voigt's Suburbanus Calcuttensis.

[135] The root is bitter, nauseous, and used in North America as anthelmintic. A. Richard.

[136] Of one species of tulsi (Babooi-tulsi) the seeds, if steeped in water, swell into a pleasant jelly, which is used by the Natives in cases of catarrh, dysentry, chronic diarrhoea &c. and is very nourishing and demulcent--Voigt.

[137] This list is framed from such as were actually grown by the author between 1837 and the present year, from seed received chiefly through the kindness of Captain Kirke.

[138] The native market gardens sell Madras roses at the rate of thirteen young plants for the rupee. Mrs. Gore tells us that in London the most esteemed kinds of old roses are usually sold by nurserymen at fifty shillings a hundred the first French and other varieties seldom exceed half a guinea a piece.

[139] I may add to Mr. Speede's list of Roses the Banksian Rose. The flowers are yellow, in clusters, and scentless. Mrs. Gore says it was imported into England from the Calcutta Botanical Garden, it is called Wong moue heong. There is another rose also called the Banksian Rose extremely small, very double, white, expanding from March till May, highly scented with violets. The Rosa Brownii was brought from Nepaul by Dr. Wallich. A very sweet rose has been brought into Bengal from England. It is called Rosa Peeliana after the original importer Sir Lawrence Peel. It is a hybrid. I believe it is a tea scented rose and is probably a cross between one of that sort and a common China rose, but this is mere conjecture. The varieties of the tea rose are now cultivated by Indian malees with great success. They sell at the price of from eight annas to a rupee each. A variety of the Bengal yellow rose, is now comparatively common. It fetches from one to three rupees, each root. It is known to the native gardeners by the English name of "Yellow Rose". Amongst the flowers introduced here since Mr. Speede's book appeared, is the beautiful blue heliotrope which the natives call kala heliotrope.

[140]

    He gains all points who pleasingly confounds,
    Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds.

[141] The following is the passage alluded to by Todd

                               A pleasant grove
    With chant of tuneful birds resounding loud,
    Thither he bent his way, determined there
    To rest at noon, and entered soon the shade,
    High roofed, and walks beneath and alleys brown,
    That opened in the midst a woody scene,
    Nature's own work it seemed (nature taught art)
    And to a superstitious eye the haunt
    Of wood gods and wood nymphs.

Paradise Regained, Book II

[142] The following stanzas are almost as direct translations from Tasso as the two last stanzas in the words of Fairfax on page 111:--

      The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay;--
      Ah! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see,
      In springing flowre the image of thy day!
      Ah! see the virgin rose, how sweetly shee
      Doth first peepe forth with bashful modesty;
      That fairer seems the less you see her may!
      Lo! see soone after how more bold and free
      Her baréd bosome she doth broad display;
    Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away!

      So passeth, in the passing of a day,
      Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flowre,
      Ne more doth florish after first decay,
      That erst was sought, to deck both bed and bowre
      Of many a lady and many a paramoure!
      Gather therefore the rose whilest yet is prime
      For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre;
      Gather the rose of love, whilest yet is time
    Whilest loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime[144]

Fairie Queene, Book II. Canto XII.

[143] I suppose in the remark that Kent leapt the fence, Horace Walpole alludes to that artist's practice of throwing down walls and other boundaries and sinking fosses called by the common people Ha! Ha's!/ to express their astonishment when the edge of the fosse brought them to an unexpected stop.

Horace Walpole's History of Modern Gardening is now so little read that authors think they may steal from it with safety. In the Encyclopaedia Britannica the article on Gardening is taken almost verbatim from it, with one or two deceptive allusions such as--"As Mr. Walpole observes"--"Says Mr. Walpole," &c. but there is nothing to mark where Walpole's observations and sayings end, and the Encyclopaedia thus gets the credit of many pages of his eloquence and sagacity. The whole of Walpole's History of Modern Gardening is given piece-meal as an original contribution to Harrrison's Floricultural Cabinet, each portion being signed CLERICUS.

[144] Perhaps Robert Herrick had these stanzas in his mind's ear when he wrote his song of

    Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
    Old time is still a flying;
    And this same flower that smiles to-day
    To-morrow will be dying.


    Then be not coy, but use your time;
    And while ye may, so marry:
    For having lost but once your prime
    You may for ever tarry.

FLOWERS AND FLOWER GARDENS BY DAVID LESTER RICHARDSON and PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS AND USEFUL INFORMATION RESPECTING THE ANGLO-INDIAN FLOWER-GARDEN

FOOTNOTES.