IN one of Coleridge's poems-" To the Nightingale "he gives a beautiful description of taking his weeping infant into an orchard at night; when the child saw the moon shining upon the trees, he began to smile:

"I deem it wise To make him Nature's playmate." And wise surely it is. "Nature," was the eloquent saying of Sir Humphry Davy, "never deceives us: her rocks, her mountains, her shadowy trees, and her crystal brooks, always speak the same language. The green forest may be hidden in snow, and the blue streams may be troubled by a thunder-storm, but the snow and the tempest will pass away, and the face of nature will smile with a lovelier

VOL. XXIV. NO. CXLIV.

COWLEY: The Garden.

sweetness after the cloud. All her aspects have their charm,—

"Behold and tremble while thou view'st her state,

Throned on the heights of Skiddaw. Hail her march Amid the purple crags of Borrowdale.'"

This love of nature shews itself in various ways. Nelson was an angler; and Sir Humphry Davy relates an amusing and characteristic anecdote of Archdeacon Paley. The Bishop of Durham asked him, one day, when a book which he was then writing would be completed. "My lord," said Paley, "I shall work steadily at it when the fly-fishing season is over." What a delightful object in a garden was the conscientious martyr of integrity,

TT

Archbishop Sancroft! When Hough visited him, he was working in his garden. There was no shade of regret upon his face for the richer gardens of Lambeth. "Almost all you see," said Sancroft to Hough, "is the work of my own hands, though I am bordering on eighty years of age. My old woman does the weeding, and John mows the turf, and digs for me; but all the nicer work- the sowing, grafting, budding, transplanting, and the like-I trust to no other hand but my own; so long, at least, as my health will allow me to enjoy so pleasing an occupation: and, in good sooth, the fruits here taste more sweet, and the flowers have a richer perfume, than they had at Lambeth." The archbishop's narrative of his garden occupations reads like a paraphrase of the lines of Cowper,

"No works, indeed,

That ask robust, tough sinews, bred to toil,

Servile employ; but such as may amuse, Not tire, demanding rather skill than force.

Proud of his well-spread walls, he views

his trees

That meet (no barren interval between) With pleasure more ev'n than their fruits afford,

Which, save himself who trains them, none can feel.

Hence summer has her riches, autumn hence;

And hence ev'n winter fills his wither'd hand

With blushing fruits."-Task, b. iii.

The last lines bring the venerable Sancroft before our eyes. One great charm and attraction in gardening arises from the facilities of enjoyment which it offers. Cowley told Evelyn, in a very famous line, that the first garden was the workmanship of God. The language of flowers and trees can be learned by all.

"The study of trees," says Mr. Loudon, has advantages over several other out-of-door studies (such as those of herbaceous plants and insects), inasmuch as it may be carried on while we are walking, on horseback, or in an open carriage along the public roads. What a fund of enjoyment, for example, is to be found in walking or riding in the suburbs of London, and noting the trees and shrubs which are planted in front of the suburban houses! It is curious to observe the rare species that are sometimes to be found in these gardens, and

to reflect on the causes which placed them there. Most of the houses in the neighbourhood of London are built se veral at a time, and their gardens planted in like manner, by speculative builders. In order to plant the gardens at the cheapest rate, advantage is taken of nursery sales, of which there have been a great many every autumn during the last twenty years, partly from nursery grounds being wanted to build on, and partly from nurserymen becoming bank. rupts. At these sales the rare and valuable articles are mixed with the com. mon ones, in order that the former may sell the latter; and in this way many choice plants have found their way into suburban gardens. Hence there is, perhaps, no part of the world, with the exception of North America (and we doubt even if America ought to be excepted), where so many sorts of trees and shrubs may be seen on the borders of the public streets and roads as in the neighbourhood of London. The ligneous Flora of the street in which we live exhibits a greater number of rare trees, than all the suburban gardens in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh put together (with the exception of the nurseries and the Botanic Garden) did in 1806. This ought to be a great encouragement to a Londoner, whether he have a town or a suburban residence, to study trees. We scarcely know any other study, unless it be that of street or suburban architecture (which ought to go hand in hand with it), which may be entered on so easily by persons in the decline of life. For our own part, so great is the enjoyment which we derive from this study, that we think we

can

never sufficiently recommend it. Though we have been looking at trees all our life, and have known the names of all the kinds in general cultivation as long as we can remember- having also taken a deep interest in viewing them and sketching them, not only in plantations in Britain, but in the native fo rests and gardens of the Continent, from Stockholm to Naples,-yet since we be gan to study them more minutely, for the purposes of the Arboretum Britannicum, we can truly say that our enjoyment has been doubled."

Before I glance at trees, however, it will not be uninteresting to make a few remarks upon gardens,—to which Loudon's observations on trees apply with almost equal strength.

Happy they," said Gray to Wharton, who had derived much pleasure from a northern tour, "that can create a rose, or erect a honeysuckle." He was persuaded that the secret of temporal and physical happiness

resided in always having something going forward. Paley has taken up the sentiment, and expanded it in his Moral Philosophy. Loudon might very agreeably have enlivened and embellished his observations on the gardens and trees of the metropolis, by the introduction of a familiar passage in the Task. The love of rural objects cannot be extinguished; it seems to be a recollection of Paradise,

"The villas with which London stands begirt,

Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads,

Prove it. A breath of unadult'rate air, The glimpse of a green pasture, how they cheer

The citizen, and brace his languid frame! Ev'n in the stifling bosom of the town, A garden, in which nothing thrives, has charms

That soothe the rich possessor; much consoled

That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint,

Or nightshade, or valerian, grace the wall He cultivates."

A history of English gardening has been drawn up by Mr. Johnson; but it is dry and imperfect, although containing many interesting particulars concerning English and foreign horticulture. The historian sets out from the East. When Jacob wished to propitiate the ruler of Egypt, he sent with Benjamin the best fruits of the land, together with nuts and almonds. A well, a fig-tree, and a vine, seem to have accompanied every dwelling. The Hebrew law protected vineyards. In the time of Solomon, great improvements are perceptible in the embellishment of gardens. Sculptured ornaments were introduced among flowers; and fountains diffused refreshing coolness through the place. Horticulture advanced with civilisation; and we discover the influence of wood-scenery and gardens in their connexion with the popular superstitions. The favourites of Olympus were changed into trees or flowers. Classic poetry derives many of its sweetest decorations from this happy fiction. There Beauty "Brought up her dead love's spirit in a flower."t

* Gen. xliii. 11.

"The two most celebrated wits in the world," says Pope, "have each of them left us a particular picture of a garden; wherein those great masters, being wholly unconfined, and painting at pleasure, may be thought to have given a full idea of what they esteemed most excellent in this way. These consist entirely of the useful parts of horticulture, fruit-trees, herbs, water. The pieces I am speaking of are Virgil's account of the garden of the old Corycian, and Hoiner's of that of Alcinous in the seventh Odyssey, to which I refer the reader. Sir William Temple has remarked that this garden of Ilomer contains all the justest rules and provisions which can go towards composing the best gardens. Its extent was four acres; which, in those times of simplicity, was looked upon as a large one, even for a prince. It was inclosed all round for defence, and adjoined the gates of the palace. Homer particularly mentions "a perpetual succession of fruits." In the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Pope remarks that art can only reduce the beauties of nature to more regularity, and into a shape "which the common eye may better take in ;" and from which, therefore, it derives livelier entertainment. The trees in Homer's garden were the pear, the pomegranate, the citron, the fig, the olive, and the vine.§ In the Roman gardens, roses, lilies, and violets, were particularly esteemed, and were reared in separate parts of the garden. In Virgil we meet with rosaria Pæsti, and bibunt violaria fontem.

It may not be known to every reader, that the quaint embellishments of English gardens in the seventeenth century, although derived from the fashions of France, might have been defended by classical authority. Pliny has given a very ample and pleasing history of his Tuscan villa; and, among other particulars, he tells us that in the front of the portico was a terrace, adorned by figures, and bounded by a hedge of box; while an easy slope-ornamented with the representation of divers animals in box, answering alternately to each other-conducted the visitor to a lawn sprinkled over

+ Bishop King.

with the acanthus. In reading of his apartment shaded by plane-trees, with a fountain in the midst, and the sun rendered dim by foliage, we seem to sit with Sir Philip Sidney in his chamber

"Deaf to noise, and blind to light." At Laurentinum, Pliny had an embowered walk of vines, so soft that it occasioned no inconvenience to the naked feet. But horticulture was still in a very rude infancy. The son of Cicero writes playfully to Tiro,— "I take pleasure in figuring you to myself in the midst of your country employments, bringing your tools of husbandry, dealing out your orders to your bailiff, and carefully treasuring up your fruit-seeds for your dessert." Cicero was an admirer of topiary work; and the words of Pliny are abundantly explicit," Trahitur enim cupressus in picturas opere historiali, venatus classesve, et imagines rerum tenui folio, brevique et virente supervestiens." Some modern writers have ventured to express themselves not unfavourable to a revival of some of these eccentricities in gardening. It is not, they say, more unreasonable that trees should be cut into colonnades, arches, and animals, than that exotic plants should be dwarfed by being grown in pots, or that fruittrees should be flattened by being spread out against walls. This argument is certainly not very logical. The French or Dutch garden was, in truth, only a Latin garden reproduced. The terraces adjoining the house, the sloping lawn, the little flower-garden with a fountain in the centre, the walks trimmed with box, the trees carved into grotesque forms, the shady summer-house,-all were common to the three.

In Scotland, many gardens and orchards are mentioned in writings of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The abbots, in the words of Chalmers, were the first Scottish horticulturists. Perhaps the same criticism might be applied to England. The monasteries, which preserved among us the embers of expiring literature, were also the early nurses of gardening. Orchards and gardens grew up around those sequestered abodes of virtue, fanaticism, and pride. Walker mentions an orchard in the Hebrides, which he

supposes to have existed since the sixth century. We learn, from the examination of the colleges at Cambridge, how the students of her elder day delighted in the "sweet sequestered orchard plot," as Coleridge calls it. Chaucer gives us, in Troilus and Creseide, a picture of a garden in his time,

"This yerde was large, and railed al the aleyes,

And shadowed wel with blossomy bowis grene,

And brenched newe, and sondid all the weyes."

Tusser, in the interval that clapsed between 1520 and 1580, promoted the advance of agriculture, and indirectly, therefore, of gardening also. His curious miscellany of verses had never been admitted into any poetical collection, until Southey embraced it in his own. Yet Tusser's book of husbandry maintained its great popularity so late as 1723, when Lord Molesworth proposed that it should form a text-book in agricultural schools. Of course, it would be a very idle task to look into such a work for the hues of fancy or the delicate outlines of taste; but we cannot refrain from observing the easy and flexible language, into which Tusser weaves his practical instruction. His rhymes are sometimes elegant, and always fluent; nor does he exhaust his strength in mere directions for rural labour, or in arranging the economy of a farm. Domestic manners pass under his notice; and he lets many rays of moral wisdom into the interior of his cottages. It is impossible not to attribute, in a great degree, to the popularity of Tusser, the rapid growth and extension of rural pursuits and pleasures in England. The composition of songs for the people has been thought to furnish the politician with a powerful instrument of subjugation; but the influence of works, like the husbandry of Tusser, would be equally strong, and far more salutary. Without pursuing the subject, I cannot refrain from offering one quotation from the Chaucer of husbandry,—

"A Caution to the Farmer in September. "Horse, oxen, plough, tumbrell, cart, wagon, and wain,

The lighter and stronger, the greater tby gain;