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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/12286-8.txt b/12286-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..879bb13 --- /dev/null +++ b/12286-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12886 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Flowers and Flower-Gardens, by David Lester Richardson + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Flowers and Flower-Gardens + With an Appendix of Practical Instructions and Useful Information + Respecting the Anglo-Indian Flower-Garden + + +Author: David Lester Richardson + +Release Date: May 7, 2004 [EBook #12286] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS *** + + + + +Produced by Tony Browne and PG Distributed Proofreaders. Produced +from images provided by the Million Book Project. + + + + + + + + + +FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS. + +BY + +DAVID LESTER RICHARDSON, + +PRINCIPAL OF THE HINDU METROPOLITAN COLLEGE, AND AUTHOR OF "LITERARY +LEAVES," "LITERARY RECREATIONS," &C. + +WITH AN APPENDIX OF + +PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS AND USEFUL INFORMATION RESPECTING THE +ANGLO-INDIAN FLOWER-GARDEN. + + + + +CALCUTTA: + + + +MDCCCLV. + + + +PREFACE. + + + In every work regard the writer's end, + Since none can compass more than they intend. + +_Pope_. + + + +This volume is far indeed from being a scientific treatise _On Flowers +and Flower-Gardens_:--it is mere gossip in print upon a pleasant +subject. But I hope it will not be altogether useless. If I succeed in +my object I shall consider that I have gossipped to some purpose. On +several points--such as that of the mythology and language of flowers--I +have said a good deal more than I should have done had I been writing +for a different community. I beg the London critics to bear this in +mind. I wished to make the subject as attractive as possible to some +classes of people here who might not have been disposed to pay any +attention to it whatever if I had not studied their amusement as much as +their instruction. I have tried to sweeten the edge of the cup. + +I did not at first intend the book to exceed fifty pages: but I was +almost insensibly carried on further and further from the proposed limit +by the attractive nature of the materials that pressed upon my notice. +As by far the largest portion, of it has been written hurriedly, amidst +other avocations, and bit by bit; just as the Press demanded an +additional supply of "_copy_," I have but too much reason to apprehend +that it will seem to many of my readers, fragmentary and ill-connected. +Then again, in a city like Calcutta, it is not easy to prepare any thing +satisfactorily that demands much literary or scientific research. There +are very many volumes in all the London Catalogues, but not immediately +obtainable in Calcutta, that I should have been most eager to refer to +for interesting and valuable information, if they had been at hand. The +mere titles of these books have often tantalized me with visions of +riches beyond my reach. I might indeed have sent for some of these from +England, but I had announced this volume, and commenced the printing of +it, before it occurred to me that it would be advisable to extend the +matter beyond the limits I had originally contemplated. I must now send +it forth, "with all its imperfections on its head;" but not without the +hope that in spite of these, it will be found calculated to increase the +taste amongst my brother exiles here for flowers and flower-gardens, and +lead many of my Native friends--(particularly those who have been +educated at the Government Colleges,--who have imbibed some English +thoughts and feelings--and who are so fortunate as to be in possession +of landed property)--to improve their parterres,--and set an example to +their poorer countrymen of that neatness and care and cleanliness and +order which may make even the peasant's cottage and the smallest plot of +ground assume an aspect of comfort, and afford a favorable indication of +the character of the possessor. + +D.L.R. + +_Calcutta, September 21st_ 1855. + + + +ERRATA. + + +A friend tells me that the allusion to the Acanthus on the first page of +this book is obscurely expressed, that it was not the _root_ but the +_leaves_ of the plant that suggested the idea of the Corinthian capital. +The root of the Acanthus produced the leaves which overhanging the sides +of the basket struck the fancy of the Architect. This was, indeed, what +I _meant_ to say, and though I have not very lucidly expressed myself, I +still think that some readers might have understood me rightly even +without the aid of this explanation, which, however, it is as well for +me to give, as I wish to be intelligible to _all_. A writer should +endeavor to make it impossible for any one to misapprehend his meaning, +though there are some writers of high name both in England and America +who seem to delight in puzzling their readers. + +At the bottom of page 200, allusion is made to the dotted lines at some +of the open turns in the engraved labyrinth. By some accident or mistake +the dots have been omitted, but any one can understand where the stop +hedges which the dotted lines indicated might be placed so as to give +the wanderer in the maze, additional trouble to find his way out of it. + + + + +[Illustration of a garden.] + + + + +ON FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS, + + + + For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the + flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is + come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. + +_The Song of Solomon_. + + * * * * * + + These are thy glorious works, Parent of good! + Almighty, Thine this universal frame, + Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then! + +_Milton_. + + * * * * * + + Soft roll your incense, herbs and fruits and flowers, + In mingled clouds to HIM whose sun exalts + Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints. + +_Thomson_. + +A taste for floriculture is spreading amongst Anglo-Indians. It is a +good sign. It would be gratifying to learn that the same refining taste +had reached the Natives also--even the lower classes of them. It is a +cheap enjoyment. A mere palm of ground may be glorified by a few radiant +blossoms. A single clay jar of the rudest form may be so enriched and +beautified with leaves and blossoms as to fascinate the eye of taste. An +old basket, with a broken tile at the top of it, and the root of the +acanthus within, produced an effect which seemed to Calimachus, the +architect, "the work of the Graces." It suggested the idea of the +capital of the Corinthian column, the most elegant architectural +ornament that Art has yet conceived. + +Flowers are the poor man's luxury; a refinement for the uneducated. It +has been prettily said that the melody of birds is the poor man's music, +and that flowers are the poor man's poetry. They are "a discipline of +humanity," and may sometimes ameliorate even a coarse and vulgar nature, +just as the cherub faces of innocent and happy children are sometimes +found to soften and purify the corrupted heart. It would be a delightful +thing to see the swarthy cottagers of India throwing a cheerful grace on +their humble sheds and small plots of ground with those natural +embellishments which no productions of human skill can rival. + +The peasant who is fond of flowers--if he begin with but a dozen little +pots of geraniums and double daisies upon his window sills, or with a +honeysuckle over his humble porch--gradually acquires a habit, not only +of decorating the outside of his dwelling and of cultivating with care +his small plot of ground, but of setting his house in order within, and +making every thing around him agreeable to the eye. A love of +cleanliness and neatness and simple ornament is a moral feeling. The +country laborer, or the industrious mechanic, who has a little garden to +be proud of, the work of his own hand, becomes attached to his place of +residence, and is perhaps not only a better subject on that account, but +a better neighbour--a better man. A taste for flowers is, at all events, +infinitely preferable to a taste for the excitements of the pot-house or +the tavern or the turf or the gaming table, or even the festal board, +especially for people of feeble health--and above all, for the poor--who +should endeavor to satisfy themselves with inexpensive pleasures.[001] + +In all countries, civilized or savage, and on all occasions, whether of +grief or rejoicing, a natural fondness for flowers has been exhibited, +with more or less tenderness or enthusiasm. They beautify religious +rites. They are national emblems: they find a place in the blazonry of +heraldic devices. They are the gifts and the language of friendship and +of love. + +Flowers gleam in original hues from graceful vases in almost every +domicile where Taste presides; and the hand of "nice Art" charms us with +"counterfeit presentments" of their forms and colors, not only on the +living canvas, but even on our domestic China-ware, and our mahogany +furniture, and our wall-papers and hangings and carpets, and on our +richest apparel for holiday occasions and our simplest garments for +daily wear. Even human Beauty, the Queen of all loveliness on earth, +engages Flora as her handmaid at the toilet, in spite of the dictum of +the poet of 'The Seasons,' that "Beauty when unadorned is adorned the +most." + +Flowers are hung in graceful festoons both in churches and in ball-rooms. +They decorate the altar, the bride-bed, the cradle, and the bier. +They grace festivals, and triumphs, and processions; and cast a glory on +gala days; and are amongst the last sad honors we pay to the objects of +our love. + +I remember the death of a sweet little English girl of but a year old, +over whom, in her small coffin, a young and lovely mother sprinkled the +freshest and fairest flowers. The task seemed to soften--perhaps to +sweeten--her maternal grief. I shall never forget the sight. The +bright-hued blossoms seemed to make her oblivious for a moment of the +darkness and corruption to which she was so soon to consign her priceless +treasure. The child's sweet face, even in death, reminded me that the +flowers of the field and garden, however lovely, are all outshone by +human beauty. What floral glory of the wild-wood, or what queen of the +parterre, in all the pride of bloom, laughing in the sun-light or +dancing in the breeze, hath a charm that could vie for a single moment +with the soft and holy lustre of that motionless and faded human lily? I +never more deeply felt the force of Milton's noble phrase "_the human +face divine_" than when gazing on that sleeping child. The fixed placid +smile, the smoothly closed eye with its transparent lid, the air of +profound tranquillity, the simple purity (elevated into an aspect of +bright intelligence, as if the little cherub already experienced the +beatitude of another and a better world,) were perfectly angelic--and +mocked all attempt at description. "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!" + +O flower of an earthly spring! destined to blossom in the eternal +summer of another and more genial region! Loveliest of lovely +children--loveliest to the last! More beautiful in death than aught +still living! Thou seemest now to all who miss and mourn thee but a sweet +name--a fair vision--a precious memory;--but in reality thou art a more +truly living thing than thou wert before or than aught thou hast left +behind. Thou hast come early into a rich inheritance. Thou hast now a +substantial existence, a genuine glory, an everlasting possession, beyond +the sky. Thou hast exchanged the frail flowers that decked thy bier for +amaranthine hues and fragrance, and the brief and uncertain delights of +mortal being for the eternal and perfect felicity of angels! + +I never behold elsewhere any of the specimens of the several varieties +of flowers which the afflicted parent consigned to the hallowed little +coffin without recalling to memory the sainted child taking her last +rest on earth. The mother was a woman of taste and sensibility, of high +mind and gentle heart, with the liveliest sense of the loveliness of all +lovely things; and it is hardly necessary to remind the reader how much +refinement such as hers may sometimes alleviate the severity of sorrow. + +Byron tells us that the stars are + + A beauty and a mystery, and create + In us such love and reverence from afar + That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves _a star_. + +But might we not with equal justice say that every thing excellent and +beautiful and precious has named itself _a flower_? + +If stars teach as well as shine--so do flowers. In "still small accents" +they charm "the nice and delicate ear of thought" and sweetly whisper +that "the hand that made them is divine." + +The stars are the poetry of heaven--the clouds are the poetry of the +middle sky--the flowers are the poetry of the earth. The last is the +loveliest to the eye and the nearest to the heart. It is incomparably +the sweetest external poetry that Nature provides for man. Its +attractions are the most popular; its language is the most intelligible. +It is of all others the best adapted to every variety and degree of +mind. It is the most endearing, the most familiar, the most homefelt, +and congenial. The stars are for the meditation of poets and +philosophers; but flowers are not exclusively for the gifted or the +scientific; they are the property of all. They address themselves to our +common nature. They are equally the delight of the innocent little +prattler and the thoughtful sage. Even the rude unlettered rustic +betrays some feeling for the beautiful in the presence of the lovely +little community of the field and garden. He has no sympathy for the +stars: they are too mystical and remote. But the flowers as they blush +and smile beneath his eye may stir the often deeply hidden lovingness +and gentleness of his nature. They have a social and domestic aspect to +which no one with a human heart can be quite indifferent. Few can doat +upon the distant flowers of the sky as many of us doat upon the flowers +at our feet. The stars are wholly independent of man: not so the sweet +children of Flora. We tend upon and cherish them with a parental pride. +They seem especially meant for man and man for them. They often need his +kindest nursing. We place them with guardian hand in the brightest light +and the most wholesome air. We quench with liquid life their sun-raised +thirst, or shelter them from the wintry blast, or prepare and enrich +their nutritious beds. As they pine or prosper they agitate us with +tender anxieties, or thrill us with exultation and delight. In the +little plot of ground that fronts an English cottage the flowers are +like members of the household. They are of the same family. They are +almost as lovely as the children that play with them--though their happy +human associates may be amongst + + The sweetest things that ever grew + Beside a human door. + +The Greeks called flowers the _Festival of the eye_: and so they are: +but they are something else, and something better. + + A flower is not a flower alone, + A thousand sanctities invest it. + +Flowers not only touch the heart; they also elevate the soul. They bind +us not entirely to earth; though they make earth delightful. They +attract our thoughts downward to the richly embroidered ground only to +raise them up again to heaven. If the stars are the scriptures of the +sky, the flowers are the scriptures of the earth. If the stars are a +more glorious revelation of the Creator's majesty and might, the flowers +are at least as sweet a revelation of his gentler attributes. It has +been observed that + + An undevout astronomer is mad. + +The same thing may be said of an irreverent floriculturist, and with +equal truth--perhaps indeed with greater. For the astronomer, in some +cases, may be hard and cold, from indulging in habits of thought too +exclusively mathematical. But the true lover of flowers has always +something gentle and genial in his nature. He never looks upon his +floral-family without a sweetened smile upon his face and a softened +feeling in his heart; unless his temperament be strangely changed and +his mind disordered. The poets, who, speaking generally, are +constitutionally religious, are always delighted readers of the +flower-illumined pages of the book of nature. One of these disciples of +Flora earnestly exclaims: + + Were I, O God, in churchless lands remaining + Far from all voice of teachers and divines, + My soul would find in flowers of thy ordaining + Priests, sermons, shrines + +The popular little preachers of the field and garden, with their lovely +faces, and angelic language--sending the while such ambrosial incense up +to heaven--insinuate the sweetest truths into the human heart. They lead +us to the delightful conclusion that beauty is in the list of +the _utilities_--that the Divine Artist himself is _a lover of +loveliness_--that he has communicated a taste for it to his creatures +and most lavishly provided for its gratification. + + Not a flower + But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain, + Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires + Their balmy odours, and imparts then hues, + And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes + In grains as countless as the sea side sands + The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth. + +_Cowper_. + +In the eye of Utilitarianism the flowers are but idle shows. God might +indeed have made this world as plain as a Quaker's garment, without +retrenching one actual necessary of physical existence; but He has +chosen otherwise; and no earthly potentate was ever so richly clad as +his mother earth. "Behold the lilies of the field, they spin not, +neither do they toil, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like +one of these!" We are thus instructed that man was not meant to live by +bread alone, and that the gratification of a sense of beauty is equally +innocent and natural and refining. The rose is permitted to spread its +sweet leaves to the air and dedicate its beauty to the sun, in a way +that is quite perplexing to bigots and stoics and political economists. +Yet God has made nothing in vain! The Great Artist of the Universe must +have scattered his living hues and his forms of grace over the surface +of the earth for some especial and worthy purpose. When Voltaire was +congratulated on the rapid growth of his plants, he observed that "_they +had nothing else to do_." Oh, yes--they had something else to do,--they +had to adorn the earth, and to charm the human eye, and through the eye +to soften and cheer the heart and elevate the soul! + +I have often wished that Lecturers on Botany, instead of confining their +instructions to the mere physiology, or anatomy, or classification or +nomenclature of their favorite science, would go more into the poetry +of it, and teach young people to appreciate the moral influences of the +floral tribes--to draw honey for the human heart from the sweet breasts +of flowers--to sip from their radiant chalices a delicious medicine for +the soul. + +Flowers are frequently hallowed by associations far sweeter than their +sweetest perfume. "I am no botanist:" says Southey in a letter to Walter +Savage Landor, "but like you, my earliest and best recollections are +connected with flowers, and they always carry me back to other days. +Perhaps this is because they are the only things which affect our senses +precisely as they did in our childhood. The sweetness of the violet is +always the same; and when you rifle a rose and drink, as it were, its +fragrance, the refreshment is the same to the old man as to the boy. +Sounds recal the past in the same manner, but they do not bring with +them individual scenes like the cowslip field, or the corner of the +garden to which we have transplanted field-flowers." + +George Wither has well said in commendation of his Muse: + + Her divine skill taught me this; + That from every thing I saw + I could some instruction draw, + And raise pleasure to the height + By the meanest object's sight, + By the murmur of a spring + _Or the least bough's rustelling; + By a daisy whose leaves spread + Shut, when Titan goes to bed; + Or a shady bush or tree_, + She could more infuse in me + Than all Nature's beauties can + In some other wiser man. + +We must not interpret the epithet _wiser_ too literally. Perhaps the +poet speaks ironically, or means by some other _wiser man_, one allied +in character and temperament to a modern utilitarian Philosopher. +Wordsworth seems to have had the lines of George Wither in his mind when +he said + + Thanks to the human heart by which we live, + Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, + To me the meanest flower that blows can give + Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. + +Thomas Campbell, with a poet's natural gallantry, has exclaimed, + + Without the smile from partial Beauty won, + Oh! what were man?--a world without a sun! + +Let a similar compliment be presented to the "painted populace that +dwell in fields and lead ambrosial lives." What a desert were this scene +without its flowers--it would be like the sky of night without its +stars! "The disenchanted earth" would "lose her lustre." Stars of the +day! Beautifiers of the world! Ministrants of delight! Inspirers of +kindly emotions and the holiest meditations! Sweet teachers of the +serenest wisdom! So beautiful and bright, and graceful, and fragrant--it +is no marvel that ye are equally the favorites of the rich and the poor, +of the young and the old, of the playful and the pensive! + +Our country, though originally but sparingly endowed with the living +jewelry of nature, is now rich in the choicest flowers of all other +countries. + + Foreigners of many lands, + They form one social shade, as if convened + By magic summons of the Orphean lyre. + +_Cowper_. + +These little "foreigners of many lands" have been so skilfully +acclimatized and multiplied and rendered common, that for a few +shillings an English peasant may have a parterre more magnificent than +any ever gazed upon by the Median Queen in the hanging gardens of +Babylon. There is no reason, indeed, to suppose that even the first +parents of mankind looked on finer flowers in Paradise itself than are +to be found in the cottage gardens that are so thickly distributed over +the hills and plains and vallies of our native land. + + The red rose, is the red rose still, and from the lily's cup + An odor fragrant as at first, like frankincense goes up. + +_Mary Howitt_. + +Our neat little gardens and white cottages give to dear old England that +lovely and cheerful aspect, which is so striking and attractive to her +foreign visitors. These beautiful signs of a happy political security +and individual independence and domestic peace and a love of order and a +homely refinement, are scattered all over the land, from sea to sea. +When Miss Sedgwick, the American authoress, visited England, nothing so +much surprised and delighted her as the gay flower-filled gardens of our +cottagers. Many other travellers, from almost all parts of the world, +have experienced and expressed the same sensations on visiting our +shores, and it would be easy to compile a voluminous collection of their +published tributes of admiration. To a foreign visitor the whole country +seems a garden--in the words of Shakespeare--"a _sea-walled garden_." + +In the year 1843, on a temporary return to England after a long Indian +exile, I travelled by railway for the first time in my life. As I glided +on, as smoothly as in a sledge, over the level iron road, with such +magical rapidity--from the pretty and cheerful town of Southampton to +the greatest city of the civilized world--every thing was new to me, and +I gave way to child-like wonder and child-like exultation.[002] What a +quick succession of lovely landscapes greeted the eye on either side? +What a garden-like air of universal cultivation! What beautiful smooth +slopes! What green, quiet meadows! What rich round trees, brooding over +their silent shadows! What exquisite dark nooks and romantic lanes! What +an aspect of unpretending happiness in the clean cottages, with their +little trim gardens! What tranquil grandeur and rural luxury in the +noble mansions and glorious parks of the British aristocracy! How the +love of nature thrilled my heart with a gentle and delicious agitation, +and how proud I felt of my dear native land! It is, indeed, a fine thing +to be an Englishman. Whether at home or abroad, he is made conscious of +the claims of his country to respect and admiration. As I fed my eyes on +the loveliness of Nature, or turned to the miracles of Art and Science +on every hand, I had always in my mind a secret reference to the effect +which a visit to England must produce upon an intelligent and observant +foreigner. + + Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around + Of hills and dales and woods and lawns and spires, + And glittering towns and gilded streams, 'till all + The stretching landscape into smoke decays! + Happy Brittannia! where the Queen of Arts, + Inspiring vigor, Liberty, abroad + Walks unconfined, even to thy farthest cots, + And scatters plenty with unsparing hand. + +_Thomson_. + +And here let me put in a word in favor of the much-abused English +climate. I cannot echo the unpatriotic discontent of Byron when he +speaks of + + The cold and cloudy clime + Where he was born, but where he would not die. + +Rather let me say with the author of "_The Seasons_," in his address to +England. + + Rich is thy soil and merciful thy clime. + +King Charles the Second when he heard some foreigners condemning our +climate and exulting in their own, observed that in his opinion that was +the best climate in which a man could be out in the open air with +pleasure, or at least without trouble and inconvenience, the most days +of the year and the most hours of the day; and this he held was the case +with the climate of England more than that of any other country in +Europe. To say nothing of the lovely and noble specimens of human nature +to which it seems so congenial, I may safely assert that it is +peculiarly favorable, with, rare exceptions, to the sweet children of +Flora. There is no country in the world in which there are at this day +such innumerable tribes of flowers. There are in England two thousand +varieties of the rose alone, and I venture to express a doubt whether +the richest gardens of Persia or Cashmere could produce finer specimens +of that universal favorite than are to be found in some of the small but +highly cultivated enclosures of respectable English rustics. + +The actual beauty of some of the commonest flowers in our gardens can be +in no degree exaggerated--even in the daydreams of the most inspired +poet. And when the author of Lalla Rookh talks so musically and +pleasantly of the fragrant bowers of Amberabad, the country of Delight, +a Province in Jinnistan or Fairy Land, he is only thinking of the +shrubberies and flower-beds at Sloperton Cottage, and the green hills +and vales of Wiltshire. + +Sir William Temple observes that "besides the temper of our climate +there are two things particular to us, that contribute much to the +beauty and elegance of our gardens--which are, _the gravel of our walks +and the fineness and almost perpetual greenness of our turf_." + +"The face of England is so beautiful," says Horace Walpole, "that I do +not believe that Tempe or Arcadia was half so rural; for both lying in +hot climates must have wanted _the moss of our gardens_." Meyer, a +German, a scientific practical gardener, who was also a writer on +gardening, and had studied his art in the Royal Gardens at Paris, and +afterwards visited England, was a great admirer of English Gardens, but +despaired of introducing our style of gardening into Germany, _chiefly +on account of its inferior turf for lawns_. "Lawns and gravel walks," +says a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, "are the pride of English +Gardens," "The smoothness and verdure of our lawns," continues the same +writer, "is the first thing in our gardens that catches the eye of a +foreigner; the next is the fineness and firmness of our gravel walks." +Mr. Charles Mackintosh makes the same observation. "In no other country +in the world," he says, "do such things exist." Mrs. Stowe, whose _Uncle +Tom_ has done such service to the cause of liberty in America, on her +visit to England seems to have been quite as much enchanted with our +scenery, as was her countrywoman, Miss Sedgwick. I am pleased to find +Mrs. Stowe recognize the superiority of English landscape-gardening and +of our English verdure. She speaks of, "the princely art of +landscape-gardening, for which England is so famous," and of "_vistas of +verdure and wide sweeps of grass, short, thick, and vividly green_ as the +velvet moss sometimes seen growing on rocks in new England." "Grass," she +observes, "is an art and a science in England--it is an institution. The +pains that are taken in sowing, tending, cutting, clipping, rolling and +otherwise nursing and coaxing it, being seconded by the often-falling +tears of the climate, produce results which must be seen to be +appreciated." This is literally true: any sight more inexpressibly +exquisite than that of an English lawn in fine order is what I am quite +unable to conceive.[003] + +I recollect that in one of my visits to England, (in 1827) I attempted +to describe the scenery of India to William Hazlitt--not the living son +but the dead father. Would that he were still in the land of the living +by the side of his friend Leigh Hunt, who has been pensioned by the +Government for his support of that cause for which they were both so +bitterly persecuted by the ruling powers in days gone by. I flattered +myself into the belief that Hazlitt was interested in some of my +descriptions of Oriental scenes. What moved him most was an account of +the dry, dusty, burning, grassless plains of Bundelcund in the hot +season. I told him how once while gasping for breath in a hot verandah +and leaning over the rails I looked down upon the sun-baked ground. + + "A change came o'er the spirit of my dream." + +I suddenly beheld with all the distinctness of reality the rich, cool, +green, unrivalled meads of England. But the vision soon melted away, and +I was again in exile. I wept like a child. It was like a beautiful +mirage of the desert, or one of those waking dreams of home which have +sometimes driven the long-voyaging seaman to distraction and urged him +by an irresistible impulse to plunge headlong into the ocean. + +When I had once more crossed the wide Atlantic--and (not by the +necromancy of imagination but by a longer and more tedious transit) +found myself in an English meadow,--I exclaimed with the poet, + + Thou art free + My country! and 'tis joy enough and pride + For one hour's perfect bliss, _to tread the grass + Of England once again_. + +I felt my childhood for a time renewed, and was by no means disposed to +second the assertion that + + "Nothing can bring back the hour + Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower." + +I have never beheld any thing more lovely than scenery +characteristically English; and Goldsmith, who was something of a +traveller, and had gazed on several beautiful countries, was justified +in speaking with such affectionate admiration of our still more +beautiful England, + + Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride. + +It is impossible to put into any form of words the faintest +representation of that delightful summer feeling which, is excited in +fine weather by the sight of the mossy turf of our country. It is sweet +indeed to go, + + Musing through the _lawny_ vale: + +alluded to by Warton, or over Milton's "level downs," or to climb up +Thomson's + + Stupendous rocks + That from the sun-redoubling valley lift + Cool to the middle air their _lawny_ tops. + +It gives the Anglo-Indian Exile the heart-ache to think of these +ramblings over English scenes. + +ENGLAND. + + Bengala's plains are richly green, + Her azure skies of dazzling sheen, + Her rivers vast, her forests grand. + Her bowers brilliant,--but the land, + Though dear to countless eyes it be, + And fair to mine, hath not for me + The charm ineffable of _home_; + For still I yearn to see the foam + Of wild waves on thy pebbled shore, + Dear Albion! to ascend once more + Thy snow-white cliffs; to hear again + The murmur of thy circling main-- + To stroll down each romantic dale + Beloved in boyhood--to inhale + Fresh life on green and breezy hills-- + To trace the coy retreating rills-- + To see the clouds at summer-tide + Dappling all the landscape wide-- + To mark the varying gloom and glow + As the seasons come and go-- + Again the green meads to behold + Thick strewn with silvery gems and gold, + Where kine, bright-spotted, large, and sleek, + Browse silently, with aspect meek, + Or motionless, in shallow stream + Stand mirror'd, till their twin shapes seem, + Feet linked to feet, forbid to sever, + By some strange magic fixed for ever. + + And oh! once more I fain would see + (Here never seen) a poor man _free_,[004] + And valuing more an humble name, + But stainless, than a guilty fame, + How sacred is the simplest cot, + Where Freedom dwells!--where she is not + How mean the palace! Where's the spot + She loveth more than thy small isle, + Queen of the sea? Where hath her smile + So stirred man's inmost nature? Where + Are courage firm, and virtue fair, + And manly pride, so often found + As in rude huts on English ground, + Where e'en the serf who slaves for hire + May kindle with a freeman's fire? + + How proud a sight to English eyes + Are England's village families! + The patriarch, with his silver hair, + The matron grave, the maiden fair. + The rose-cheeked boy, the sturdy lad, + On Sabbath day all neatly clad:-- + Methinks I see them wend their way + On some refulgent morn of May, + By hedgerows trim, of fragrance rare, + Towards the hallowed House of Prayer! + + I can love _all_ lovely lands, + But England _most_; for she commands. + As if she bore a parent's part, + The dearest movements of my heart; + And here I may not breathe her name. + Without a thrill through all my frame. + + Never shall this heart be cold + To thee, my country! till the mould + (Or _thine_ or _this_) be o'er it spread. + And form its dark and silent bed. + I never think of bliss below + But thy sweet hills their green heads show, + Of love and beauty never dream. + But English faces round me gleam! + +D.L.R. + +I have often observed that children never wear a more charming aspect +than when playing in fields and gardens. In another volume I have +recorded some of my impressions respecting the prominent interest +excited by these little flowers of humanity in an English landscape. + + * * * * * + +THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. + +When I re-visited my dear native country, after an absence of many weary +years, and a long dull voyage, my heart was filled with unutterable +delight and admiration. The land seemed a perfect paradise. It was in +the spring of the year. The blue vault of heaven--the clear +atmosphere--the balmy vernal breeze--the quiet and picturesque cattle, +browsing on luxuriant verdure, or standing knee deep in a crystal +lake--the hills sprinkled with snow-white sheep and sometimes partially +shadowed by a wandering cloud--the meadows glowing with golden butter-cups +and be-dropped with daisies--the trim hedges of crisp and sparkling +holly--the sound of near but unseen rivulets, and the songs of +foliage-hidden birds--the white cottages almost buried amidst trees, like +happy human nests--the ivy-covered church, with its old grey spire +"pointing up to heaven," and its gilded vane gleaming in the light--the +sturdy peasants with their instruments of healthy toil--the white-capped +matrons bleaching their newly-washed garments in the sun, and throwing +them like snow-patches on green slopes, or glossy garden shrubs--the +sun-browned village girls, resting idly on their round elbows at small +open casements, their faces in sweet keeping with the trellised +flowers:--all formed a combination of enchantments that would mock the +happiest imitative efforts of human art. But though the bare enumeration +of the details of this English picture, will, perhaps, awaken many dear +recollections in the reader's mind, I have omitted by far the most +interesting feature of the whole scene--_the rosy children, loitering +about the cottage gates, or tumbling gaily on the warm grass_.[005][006] + +Two scraps of verse of a similar tendency shall follow this prose +description:-- + +AN ENGLISH LANDSCAPE. + + I stood, upon an English hill, + And saw the far meandering rill, + A vein of liquid silver, run + Sparkling in the summer sun; + While adown that green hill's side, + And along the valley wide, + Sheep, like small clouds touched with light, + Or like little breakers bright, + Sprinkled o'er a smiling sea, + Seemed to float at liberty. + + Scattered all around were seen, + White cots on the meadows green. + Open to the sky and breeze, + Or peeping through the sheltering trees, + On a light gate, loosely hung, + Laughing children gaily swung; + Oft their glad shouts, shrill and clear, + Came upon the startled ear. + Blended with the tremulous bleat, + Of truant lambs, or voices sweet, + Of birds, that take us by surprise, + And mock the quickly-searching eyes. + + Nearer sat a fair-haired boy, + Whistling with a thoughtless joy; + A shepherd's crook was in his hand, + Emblem of a mild command; + And upon his rounded cheek + Were hues that ripened apples streak. + Disease, nor pain, nor sorrowing, + Touched that small Arcadian king; + His sinless subjects wandered free-- + Confusion without anarchy. + Happier he upon his throne. + The breezy hill--though all alone-- + Than the grandest monarchs proud + Who mistrust the kneeling crowd. + + On a gently rising ground, + The lovely valley's farthest bound, + Bordered by an ancient wood, + The cots in thicker clusters stood; + And a church, uprose between, + Hallowing the peaceful scene. + Distance o'er its old walls threw + A soft and dim cerulean hue, + While the sun-lit gilded spire + Gleamed as with celestial fire! + + I have crossed the ocean wave, + Haply for a foreign grave; + Haply never more to look + On a British hill or brook; + Haply never more to hear + Sounds unto my childhood dear; + Yet if sometimes on my soul + Bitter thoughts beyond controul + Throw a shade more dark than night, + Soon upon the mental sight + Flashes forth a pleasant ray + Brighter, holier than the day; + And unto that happy mood + All seems beautiful and good. + +D.L.R. + +LINES TO A LADY, + +WHO PRESENTED THE AUTHOR WITH SOME ENGLISH FRUITS AND FLOWERS. + + Green herbs and gushing springs in some hot waste + Though, grateful to the traveller's sight and taste, + Seem far less sweet and fair than fruits and flowers + That breathe, in foreign lands, of English bowers. + + Thy gracious gift, dear lady, well recalls + Sweet scenes of home,--the white cot's trellised walls-- + The trim red garden path--the rustic seat-- + The jasmine-covered arbour, fit retreat + For hearts that love repose. Each spot displays + Some long-remembered charm. In sweet amaze + I feel as one who from a weary dream + Of exile wakes, and sees the morning beam + Illume the glorious clouds of every hue + That float o'er scenes his happy childhood knew. + + How small a spark may kindle fancy's flame + And light up all the past! The very same + Glad sounds and sights that charmed my heart of old + Arrest me now--I hear them and behold. + + Ah! yonder is the happy circle seated + Within, the favorite bower! I am greeted + With joyous shouts; my rosy boys have heard + A father's voice--their little hearts are stirred + With eager hope of some new toy or treat + And on they rush, with never-resting feet! + + * * * * * + + Gone is the sweet illusion--like a scene + Formed by the western vapors, when between + The dusky earth, and day's departing light + The curtain falls of India's sudden night. + +D.L.R. + +The verdant carpet embroidered with little stars of gold and silver--the +short-grown, smooth, and close-woven, but most delicate and elastic +fresh sward--so soothing to the dazzled eye, so welcome to the wearied +limbs--so suggestive of innocent and happy thoughts,--so refreshing to +the freed visitor, long pent up in the smoky city--is surely no where to +be seen in such exquisite perfection as on the broad meadows and +softly-swelling hills of England. And perhaps in no country in the world +could _pic-nic_ holiday-makers or playful children with more perfect +security of life and health stroll about or rest upon Earth's richly +enamelled floor from sunrise to sunset on a summer's day. No Englishman +would dare to stretch himself at full length and address himself to sleep +upon an Oriental meadow unless he were perfectly indifferent to life +itself and could see nothing terrible in the hostility of the deadliest +reptiles. When wading through the long grass and thick jungles of Bengal, +he is made to acknowledge the full force of the true and beautiful +expression--"_In the midst of life we are in death_." The British Indian +exile on his return home is delighted with the "sweet security" of his +native fields. He may then feel with Wordsworth how + + Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head. + And dear _the velvet greensward_ to his tread. + +Or he may exclaim in the words of poor Keats--now slumbering under a +foreign turf-- + + Happy is England! I could be content + To see no other verdure than her own. + +It is a pleasing proof of the fine moral influence of natural scenery +that the most ceremonious strangers can hardly be long seated together +in the open air on the "velvet greensward" without casting off for a +while the cold formalities of artificial life, and becoming as frank and +social as ingenuous school-boys. Nature breathes peace and geniality +into almost every human heart. + +"John Thelwall," says Coleridge, "had something very good about him. We +were sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks when I said to him +'Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in!' 'Nay, Citizen +Samuel,' replied he, 'it is rather a place to make us forget that there +is any necessity for treason!'" + +Leigh Hunt, who always looks on nature with the eye of a true painter +and the imagination of a true poet, has represented with delightful +force and vividness some of those accidents of light and shade that +diversify an English meadow. + +RAIN AND SUNSHINE IN MAY. + +"Can any thing be more lovely, than the meadows between the rains of +May, when the sun smites them on the sudden like a painter, and they +laugh up at him, as if he had lighted a loving cheek! + +I speak of a season when the returning threats of cold and the resisting +warmth of summer time, make robust mirth in the air; when the winds +imitate on a sudden the vehemence of winter; and silver-white clouds are +abrupt in their coming down and shadows on the grass chase one another, +panting, over the fields, like a pursuit of spirits. With undulating +necks they pant forward, like hounds or the leopard. + +See! the cloud is after the light, gliding over the country like the +shadow of a god; and now the meadows are lit up here and there with +sunshine, as if the soul of Titian were standing in heaven, and playing +his fancies on them. Green are the trees in shadow; but the trees in the +sun how twenty-fold green _they_ are--rich and variegated with gold!" + +One of the many exquisite out-of-doors enjoyments for the observers of +nature, is the sight of an English harvest. How cheering it is to behold +the sickles flashing in the sun, as the reapers with well sinewed arm, +and with a sweeping movement, mow down the close-arrayed ranks of the +harvest field! What are "the rapture of the strife" and all the "pomp, +pride and circumstance of glorious war," that bring death to some and +agony and grief to others, compared with the green and golden trophies +of the honest Husbandman whose bloodless blade makes no wife a widow, no +child an orphan,--whose office is not to spread horror and desolation +through shrieking cities, but to multiply and distribute the riches of +nature over a smiling land. + +But let us quit the open fields for a time, and turn again to the +flowery retreats of + + Retired Leisure + That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. + +In all ages, in all countries, in all creeds, a garden is represented as +the scene not only of earthly but of celestial enjoyment. The ancients +had their Elysian Fields and the garden of the Hesperides, the Christian +has his Garden of Eden, the Mahommedan his Paradise of groves and +flowers and crystal fountains and black eyed Houries. + +"God Almighty," says Lord Bacon, "first planted a garden; and indeed it +is the purest of all pleasures: it is the greatest refreshment to the +spirits of man." Bacon, though a utilitarian philosopher, was such a +lover of flowers that he was never satisfied unless he saw them in +almost every room of his house, and when he came to discourse of them in +his Essays, his thoughts involuntarily moved harmonious numbers. How +naturally the following prose sentence in Bacon's Essay on Gardens +almost resolves itself into verse. + +"For the heath which was the first part of our plot, I wish it to be +framed as much as may be to a natural wildness. Trees I would have none +in it, but some thickets made only of sweet briar and honeysuckle, and +some wild vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, strawberries +and primroses; for these are sweet, and prosper in the shade." + + "For the heath which was the third part of our plot-- + I wish it to be framed + As much as may be to a natural wildness. + Trees I'd have none in't, but some thickets made + Only of sweet-briar and honey-suckle, + And some wild vine amongst; and the ground set + With violets, strawberries, and primroses; + For these are sweet and prosper in the shade." + +It has been observed that the love of gardens is the only passion which +increases with age. It is generally the most indulged in the two +extremes of life. In middle age men are often too much involved in the +affairs of the busy world fully to appreciate the tranquil pleasures in +the gift of Flora. Flowers are the toys of the young and a source of the +sweetest and serenest enjoyments for the old. But there is no season of +life for which they are unfitted and of which they cannot increase the +charm. + +"Give me," says the poet Rogers, "a garden well kept, however small, two +or three spreading trees and a mind at ease, and I defy the world." The +poet adds that he would not have his garden, too much extended. He seems +to think it possible to have too much of a good thing. "Three acres of +flowers and a regiment of gardeners," he says, "bring no more pleasure +than a sufficiency." "A hundred thousand roses," he adds, "which we look +at _en masse_, do not identify themselves in the same manner as even a +very small border; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly +attuned, the little cottage-garden may give him more real delight than +belongs to the owner of a thousand acres." In a smaller garden "we +become acquainted, as it were," says the same poet, "and even form +friendships with, individual flowers." It is delightful to observe how +nature thus adjusts the inequalities of fortune and puts the poor man, +in point of innocent happiness, on a level with the rich. The man of the +most moderate means may cultivate many elegant tastes, and may have +flowers in his little garden that the greatest sovereign in the world +might enthusiastically admire. Flowers are never vulgar. A rose from a +peasant's patch of ground is as fresh and elegant and fragrant as if it +had been nurtured in a Royal parterre, and it would not be out of place +in the richest porcelain vase of the most aristocratical drawing-room in +Europe. The poor man's flower is a present for a princess, and of all +gifts it is the one least liable to be rejected even by the haughty. It +might he worn on the fair brow or bosom of Queen Victoria with a nobler +grace than the costliest or most elaborate production of the goldsmith +or the milliner. + +The majority of mankind, in the most active spheres of life, have +moments in which they sigh for rural retirement, and seldom dream of +such a retreat without making a garden the leading charm of it. Sir +Henry Wotton says that Lord Bacon's garden was one of the best that he +had seen either at home or abroad. Evelyn, the author of "Sylva, or a +Discourse of Forest Trees," dwells with fond admiration, and a pleasing +egotism, on the charms of his own beautiful and highly cultivated estate +at Wooton in the county of Surrey. He tells us that the house is large +and ancient and is "sweetly environed with delicious streams and +venerable woods." "I will say nothing," he continues, "of the air, +because the pre-eminence is universally given to Surrey, the soil being +dry and sandy; but I should speak much of the gardens, fountains and +groves that adorn it, were they not generally known to be amongst the +most natural, and (till this later and universal luxury of the whole +nation, since abounding in such expenses) the most magnificent that +England afforded, and which indeed gave one of the first examples to +that elegancy, since so much in vogue and followed, for the managing of +their waters and other elegancies of that nature." Before he came into +the possession of his paternal estate he resided at _Say's Court_, near +Deptford, an estate which he possessed by purchase, and where he had a +superb holly hedge four hundred feet long, nine feet high and five feet +broad. Of this hedge, he was particularly proud, and he exultantly asks, +"Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the +kind?" When the Czar of Muscovy visited England in 1698 to instruct +himself in the art of ship-building, he had the use of Evelyn's house +and garden, at _Say's Court_, and while there did so much damage to the +latter that the owner loudly and bitterly complained. At last the +Government gave Evelyn £150 as an indemnification. Czar Peter's favorite +amusement was to ride in a wheel barrow through what its owner had once +called the "impregnable hedge of holly." Evelyn was passionately fond of +gardening. "The life and felicity of an excellent gardener," he +observes, "is preferable to all other diversions." His faith in the art +of Landscape-gardening was unwavering. It could _remove mountains_. Here +is an extract from his Diary. + + "Gave his brother some directions about his garden" (at Wooton + Surrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, for + which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and + thickets and a moat within ten yards of the house." + +No sooner said than done. His brother dug down the mountain and +"flinging it into a rapid stream (which carried away the sand) filled up +the moat and levelled that noble area where now the garden and fountain +is." + +Though Evelyn dearly loved a garden, his chief delight was not in +flowers but in forest trees, and he was more anxious to improve the +growth of plants indigenous to the soil than to introduce exotics.[007] + +Sir William Temple was so attached to his garden, that he left +directions in his will that his heart should be buried there. It was +enclosed in a silver box and placed under a sun-dial. + +Dr. Thomson Reid, the eminent Scottish metaphysician, used to be found +working in his garden in his eighty-seventh year. + +The name of Chatham is in the long list of eminent men who have enjoyed +a garden. We are told that "he loved the country: took peculiar pleasure +in gardening; and had an extremely happy taste in laying out grounds." +What a delightful thing it must have been for that great statesman, thus +to relieve his mind from the weight of public care in the midst of quiet +bowers planted and trained by his own hand! + +Burton, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, notices the attractions of a +garden as amongst the finest remedies for depression of the mind. I must +give the following extracts from his quaint but interesting pages. + + "To see the pleasant fields, the crystal fountains, + And take the gentle air amongst the mountains. + +"To walk amongst orchards, gardens, bowers, mounts, and arbours, +artificial wildernesses, green thickets, arches, groves, lawns, +rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, (like that +Antiochian Daphne,) brooks, pools, fishponds, between wood and water, in +a fair meadow, by a river side, _ubi variae avium cantationes, florum +colores, pratorum frutices_, &c. to disport in some pleasant plain, or +park, run up a steep hill sometimes, or sit in a shady seat, must needs +be a delectable recreation. _Hortus principis et domus ad delectationem +facta, cum sylvâ, monte et piscinâ, vulgò la montagna_: the prince's +garden at Ferrara, Schottus highly magnifies, with the groves, +mountains, ponds, for a delectable prospect; he was much affected with +it; a Persian paradise, or pleasant park, could not be more delectable +in his sight. St. Bernard, in the description of his monastery, is +almost ravished with the pleasures of it. "A sick man (saith he) sits +upon a green bank, and when the dog-star parcheth the plains, and dries +up rivers, he lies in a shady bower," _Fronde sub arborea ferventia +temperat astra_, "and feeds his eyes with variety of objects, herbs, +trees, to comfort his misery; he receives many delightsome smells, and +fills his ears with that sweet and various harmony of birds; _good God_, +(saith he), _what a company of pleasures hast thou made for man!_" + + * * * * * + +"The country hath his recreations, the city his several gymnics and +exercises, May games, feasts, wakes, and merry meetings to solace +themselves; the very being in the country; that life itself is a +sufficient recreation to some men, to enjoy such pleasures, as those old +patriarchs did. Dioclesian, the emperor, was so much affected with it, +that he gave over his sceptre, and turned gardener. Constantine wrote +twenty books of husbandry. Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him, +bragged of nothing more than of his orchard, _hi sunt ordines mei_. What +shall I say of Cincinnatus, Cato, Tully, and many such? how they have +been pleased with it, to prune, plant, inoculate and graft, to show so +many several kinds of pears, apples, plums, peaches, &c." + +The Romans of all ranks made use of flowers as ornaments and emblems, +but they were not generally so fond of directing or assisting the +gardener, or taking the spade or hoe into their own hands, as are the +British peasantry, gentry and nobility of the present day. They were not +amateur Florists. They prized highly their fruit trees and pastures and +cool grottoes and umbrageous groves; but they expended comparatively +little time, skill or taste upon the flower-garden. Even their love of +nature, though thoroughly genuine as far as it went, did not imply that +minute and exact knowledge of her charms which characterizes some of our +best British poets. They had no Thompson or Cowper. Their country seats +were richer in architectural than floral beauty. Tully's Tuscan Villa, +so fondly and minutely described by the proprietor himself, would appear +to little advantage in the eyes of a true worshipper of Flora, if +compared with Pope's retreat at Twickenham. The ancients had a taste for +the _rural_, not for the _gardenesque_, nor perhaps even for the +_picturesque_. The English have a taste for all three. Hence they have +good landscape-gardeners and first-rate landscape-painters. The old +Romans had neither. But though, some of our Spitalfields weavers have +shown a deeper love, and perhaps even a finer taste, for flowers, than +were exhibited by the citizens of Rome, abundant evidence is furnished +to us by the poets in all ages and in all countries that nature, in some +form or another has ever charmed the eye and the heart of man. The +following version of a famous passage in Virgil, especially the lines in +Italics, may give the English reader some idea of a Roman's dream of + +RURAL HAPPINESS. + + Ah! happy Swains! if they their bliss but knew, + Whom, far from boisterous war, Earth's bosom true + With easy food supplies. If they behold + No lofty dome its gorgeous gates unfold + And pour at morn from all its chambers wide + Of flattering visitants the mighty tide; + Nor gaze on beauteous columns richly wrought, + Or tissued robes, or busts from Corinth brought; + Nor their white wool with Tyrian poison soil, + Nor taint with Cassia's bark their native oil; + _Yet peace is theirs; a life true bliss that yields; + And various wealth; leisure mid ample fields, + Grottoes, and living lakes, and vallies green, + And lowing herds; and 'neath a sylvan screen, + Delicious slumbers. There the lawn and cave + With beasts of chase abound._ The young ne'er crave + A prouder lot; their patient toil is cheered; + Their Gods are worshipped and their sires revered; + And there when Justice passed from earth away + She left the latest traces of her sway. + +D.L.R. + +Lord Bacon was perhaps the first Englishman who endeavored to reform the +old system of English gardening, and to show that it was contrary to +good taste and an insult to nature. "As for making knots or figures," he +says, "with divers colored earths, that may lie under the windows of the +house on that side on which the garden stands, they be but toys: you may +see as good sights many times in tarts." Bacon here alludes, I suppose, +to the old Dutch fashion of dividing flowerbeds into many compartments, +and instead of filling them with flowers, covering one with red brick +dust, another with charcoal, a third with yellow sand, a fourth with +chalk, a fifth with broken China, and others with green glass, or with +spars and ores. But Milton, in his exquisite description of the garden +of Eden, does not allude to the same absurd fashion when he speaks of +"curious knots," + + Which not nice art, + In beds and _curious knots_, but nature boon + Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain. + +By these _curious knots_ the poet seems to allude, not to figures of +"divers colored earth," but to the artificial and complicated +arrangements and divisions of flowers and flower-beds. + +Though Bacon went not quite so freely to nature as our latest +landscape-gardeners have done, he made the _first step_ in the right +direction and deserves therefore the compliment which Mason has paid him +in his poem of _The English Garden_. + + On thy realm + Philosophy his sovereign lustre spread; + Yet did he deign to light with casual glance + The wilds of Taste, Yes, sagest Verulam, + 'Twas thine to banish from the royal groves + Each childish vanity of crisped knot[008] + + And sculptured foliage; to the lawn restore + Its ample space, and bid it feast the sight + With verdure pure, unbroken, unabridged; + For verdure soothes the eye, as roseate sweets + The smell, or music's melting strains the ear. + +Yes--"_verdure soothes the eye_:"--and the mind too. Bacon himself +observes, that "nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass +kept finely shorn." Mason slightly qualifies his commendation of "the +sage" by admitting that he had not quite completed his emancipation from +the bad taste of his day. + + Witness his high arched hedge + In pillored state by carpentry upborn, + With colored mirrors decked and prisoned birds. + But, when our step has paced the proud parterre, + And reached the heath, then Nature glads our eye + Sporting in all her lovely carelessness, + There smiles in varied tufts the velvet rose, + There flaunts the gadding woodbine, swells the ground + In gentle hillocks, and around its sides + Through blossomed shades the secret pathway steals. + +_The English Garden_. + +In one of the notes to _The English Garden_ it is stated that "Bacon was +the prophet, Milton the herald of modern Gardening; and Addison, Pope, +and Kent the champions of true taste." Kent was by profession both a +Painter and a Landscape-Gardener. Addison who had a pretty little +retreat at Bilton, near Rugby, evinces in most of his occasional +allusions to gardens a correct judgment. He complains that even in _his_ +time our British gardeners, instead of humouring nature, loved to +deviate from it as much as possible. The system of verdant sculpture had +not gone out of fashion. Our trees still rose in cones, globes, and +pyramids. The work of the scissors was on every plant and bush. It was +Pope, however, who did most to bring the topiary style into contempt and +to encourage a more natural taste, by his humorous paper in the +_Guardian_ and his poetical Epistle to the Earl of Burlington. Gray, the +poet, observes in one of his letters, that "our skill in gardening, or +rather laying out grounds, is the only taste we can call our own; the +only proof of original talent in matters of pleasure. This is no small +honor to us;" he continues, "since neither France nor Italy, has ever +had the least notion of it." "Whatever may have been reported, whether +truly or falsely" (says a contributor to _The World_) "of the Chinese +gardens, it is certain that we are the first of the Europeans who have +founded this taste; and we have been so fortunate in the genius of those +who have had the direction of some of the finest spots of ground, that +we may now boast a success equal to that profusion of expense which has +been destined to promote the rapid progress of this happy enthusiasm. +Our gardens are already the astonishment of foreigners, and, in +proportion as they accustom themselves to consider and understand them +will become their admiration." The periodical from which this is taken +was published exactly a century ago, and the writer's prophecy has been +long verified. Foreigners send to us for gardeners to help them to lay +out their grounds in the English fashion. And we are told by the writer +of an interesting article on gardens, in the _Quarterly Review_, that +"the lawns at Paris, to say nothing of Naples, are regularly irrigated +to keep up even the semblance of English verdure; and at the gardens of +Versailles, and Caserta, near Naples, the walks have been supplied from +the Kensington gravel-pits." "It is not probably known," adds the same +writer, "that among our exportations every year is a large quantity of +evergreens for the markets of France and Germany, and that there are +some nurserymen almost wholly engaged in this branch of trade." + +Pomfret, a poet of small powers, if a poet at all, has yet contrived to +produce a popular composition in verse--_The Choice_--because he has +touched with great good fortune on some of the sweetest domestic hopes +and enjoyments of his countrymen. + + If Heaven the grateful liberty would give + That I might choose my method how to live; + And all those hours propitious Fate should lend + In blissful ease and satisfaction spend; + Near some fair town I'd have a private seat + Built uniform; not little; nor too great: + Better if on a rising ground it stood, + On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood. + +_The Choice_. + +Pomfret perhaps illustrates the general taste when he places his garden +"_near some fair town_." Our present laureate, though a truly inspired +poet, and a genuine lover of Nature even in her remotest retreats, has +the garden of his preference, "_not quite beyond the busy world_." + + Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite + Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love, + News from the humming city comes to it + In sound of funeral or of marriage bells; + And sitting muffled in dark leaves you hear + The windy clanging of the minster clock; + Although between it and the garden lies + A league of grass. + +Even "sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh" are often pleasing +when mellowed by the space of air through which they pass. + + 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the _sound_. + +Shelley, in one of his sweetest poems, speaking of a scene in the +neighbourhood of Naples, beautifully says:-- + + Like many a voice of one delight, + The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, + _The city's voice itself is soft_, like solitude's. + +No doubt the feeling that we are _near_ the crowd but not _in_ it, may +deepen the sense of our own happy rural seclusion and doubly endear that +pensive leisure in which we can "think down hours to moments," and in + + This our life, exempt from public haunt, + Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, + Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. + +_Shakespeare_. + +Besides, to speak truly, few men, however studious or philosophical, +desire a total isolation from the world. It is pleasant to be able to +take a sort of side glance at humanity, even when we are most in love +with nature, and to feel that we can join our fellow creatures again +when the social feeling returns upon us. Man was not made to live alone. +Cowper, though he clearly loved retirement and a garden, did not desire +to have the pleasure entirely to himself. "Grant me," he says, "a friend +in my retreat." + + To whom to whisper solitude is sweet. + +Cowper lived and died a bachelor. In the case of a married man and a +father, garden delights are doubled by the presence of the family and +friends, if wife and children happen to be what they should be, and the +friends are genuine and genial. + +All true poets delight in gardens. The truest that ever lived spent his +latter days at New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. He had a spacious and +beautiful garden. Charles Knight tells us that "the Avon washed its +banks; and within its enclosures it had its sunny terraces and green +lawns, its pleached alleys and honeysuckle bowers," In this garden +Shakespeare planted with his own hands his celebrated Mulberry tree. It +was a noble specimen of the black Mulberry introduced into England in +1548[009]. In 1605, James I. issued a Royal edict recommending the +cultivation of silkworms and offering packets of mulberry seeds to those +amongst his subjects who were willing to sow them. Shakespeare's tree +was planted in 1609. Mr. Loudon, observes that the black Mulberry has +been known from the earliest records of antiquity and that it is twice +mentioned in the Bible: namely, in the second Book of Samuel and in the +Psalms. When New Place was in the possession of Sir Hough Clopton, who +was proud of its interesting association with the history of our great +poet, not only were Garrick and Macklin most hospitably entertained +under the Mulberry tree, but all strangers on a proper application were +admitted to a sight of it. But when Sir Hough Clopton was succeeded by +the Reverend Francis Gastrell, that gentleman, to save himself the +trouble of showing the tree to visitors, had "the gothic barbarity" to +cut down and root up that interesting--indeed _sacred_ memorial--of the +Pride of the British Isles. The people of Stratford were so enraged at +this sacrilege that they broke Mr. Gastrell's windows. That prosaic +personage at last found the place too hot for him, and took his +departure from a town whose inhabitants "doated on his very absence;" +but before he went he completed the fall sum of his sins against good +taste and good feeling by pulling to the ground the house in which +Shakespeare had lived and died. This was done, it is said, out of sheer +spite to the towns-people, with some of whom Mr. Gastrell had had a +dispute about the rate at which the house was taxed. His change of +residence was no great relief to him, for the whole British public felt +sorely aggrieved, and wherever he went he was peppered with all sorts of +squibs and satires. He "slid into verse," and "hitched in a rhyme." + + Sacred to ridicule his whole life long, + And the sad burden of a merry song. + +Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker, got possession of the fragments of +Shakespeare's Mulberry tree, and worked them into all sorts of elegant +ornaments and toys, and disposed of them at great prices. The +corporation of Stratford presented Garrick with the freedom of the town +in a box made of the wood of this famous tree, and the compliment seems +to have suggested to him his public festival or pageant in honor of the +poet. This Jubilee, which was got up with great zeal, and at great +expense and trouble, was attended by vast throngs of the admirers of +Shakespeare from all parts of the kingdom. It was repeated on the stage +and became so popular as a theatrical exhibition that it was represented +night after night for more than half a season to crowded audiences. + +Upon the subject of gardens, let us hear what has been said by the +self-styled "melancholy Cowley." When in the smoky city pent, amidst the +busy hum of men, he sighed unceasingly for some green retreat. As he paced +the crowded thorough-fares of London, he thought of the velvet turf and +the pure air of the country. His imagination carried him into secluded +groves or to the bank of a murmuring river, or into some trim and quiet +garden. "I never," he says, "had any other desire so strong and so like +to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be +master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate +conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life +only to the culture of them and the study of nature," The late Miss +Mitford, whose writings breathe so freshly of the nature that she loved +so dearly, realized for herself a similar desire. It is said that she +had the cottage of a peasant with the garden of a Duchess. Cowley is not +contented with expressing in plain prose his appreciation of garden +enjoyments. He repeatedly alludes to them in verse. + + Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil's praise) + The old Corycian yeoman passed his days; + Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent; + Th' ambassadors, which the great emperor sent + To offer him a crown, with wonder found + The reverend gardener, hoeing of his ground; + Unwillingly and slow and discontent + From his loved cottage to a throne he went; + And oft he stopped, on his triumphant way: + And oft looked back: and oft was heard to say + Not without sighs, Alas! I there forsake + A happier kingdom than I go to take. + +_Lib. IV. Plantarum_. + +Here is a similar allusion by the same poet to the delights which great +men amongst the ancients have taken in a rural retirement. + + Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walk + In the Salonian garden's noble shade + Which by his own imperial hands was made, + I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk + With the ambassadors, who come in vain + To entice him to a throne again. + + "If I, my friends," said he, "should to you show + All the delights which in these gardens grow, + 'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay, + Than 'tis that you should carry me away: + And trust me not, my friends, if every day + I walk not here with more delight, + + Than ever, after the most happy sight + In triumph to the Capitol I rode, + To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god," + +_The Garden_. + +Cowley does not omit the important moral which a garden furnishes. + + Where does the wisdom and the power divine + In a more bright and sweet reflection shine? + Where do we finer strokes and colors see + Of the Creator's real poetry. + Than when we with attention look + Upon the third day's volume of the book? + If we could open and intend our eye + _We all, like Moses, might espy, + E'en in a bush, the radiant Deity_. + +In Leigh Hunt's charming book entitled _The Town_, I find the following +notice of the partiality of poets for houses with gardens attached to +them:-- + +"It is not surprizing that _garden-houses_ as they were called; should +have formerly abounded in Holborn, in Bunhill Row, and other (at that +time) suburban places. We notice the fact, in order to observe _how fond +the poets were of occupying houses of this description. Milton seems to +have made a point of having one_. The only London residence of Chapman +which is known, was in Old Street Road; doubtless at that time a rural +suburb. Beaumont and Fletcher's house, on the Surrey side of the Thames, +(for they lived as well as wrote together,) most probably had a garden; +and Dryden's house in Gerard Street looked into the garden of the +mansion built by the Earls of Leicester. A tree, or even a flower, put +in a window in the streets of a great city, (and the London citizens, to +their credit, are fond of flowers,) affects the eye something in the +same way as the hand-organs, which bring unexpected music to the ear. +They refresh the common-places of life, shed a harmony through the busy +discord, and appeal to those first sources of emotion, which are +associated with the remembrance of all that is young and innocent." + +Milton must have been a passionate lover of flowers and flower-gardens +or he could never have exhibited the exquisite taste and genial feeling +which characterize all the floral allusions and descriptions with which +so much of his poetry is embellished. He lived for some time in a house +in Westminster over-looking the Park. The same house was tenanted by +Jeremy Bentham for forty years. It would be difficult to meet with any +two individuals of more opposite temperaments than the author of +_Paradise Lost_ and the Utilitarian Philosopher. There is or was a stone +in the wall at the end of the garden inscribed TO THE PRINCE OF POETS. +Two beautiful cotton trees overarched the inscription, "and to show" +says Hazlitt, (who subsequently lived in the same house himself,) "how +little the refinements of taste or fancy entered Bentham's system, he +proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the +garden, where he had breathed an air of truth and heaven for near half a +century, into a paltry Chreistomathic School, and to make Milton's house +(the cradle of _Paradise Lost_) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled +stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and +forwards to it with their cloven hoofs!" + +No poet, ancient or modern, has described a garden on a large scale in +so noble a style as Milton. He has anticipated the finest conceptions of +the latest landscape-gardeners, and infinitely surpassed all the +accounts we have met with of the gardens of the olden time before us. +His Paradise is a + + Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned + Or of revived Adonis or renowned + Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son + Or that, not mystic, where the sapient King + Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse[010] + +The description is too long to quote entire, but I must make room for a +delightful extract. Familiar as it must be to all lovers of poetry, who +will object to read it again and again? Genuine poetry is like a +masterpiece of the painter's art:--we can gaze with admiration for the +hundredth time on a noble picture. The mind and the eye are never +satiated with the truly beautiful. "A thing of beauty is a joy for +ever." + +PARADISE.[011] + + So on he fares, and to the border comes + Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, + Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, + As with a rural mound, the champaign head + Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides + With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, + Access denied: and overhead up grew + Insuperable height of loftiest shade, + Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm, + A sylvan scene; and as, the ranks ascend + Shade above shade, a woody theatre + Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops, + The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung: + Which to our general sire gave prospect large + Into his nether empire neighbouring round; + And higher than that wall a circling row + Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit, + Blossoms and fruits at once, of golden hue, + Appear'd, with gay enamell'd colours mix'd; + On which the sun more glad impress'd his beams, + Than on fair evening cloud, or humid bow. + When God hath shower'd the earth; so lovely seem'd + That landscape: and of pure now purer air + Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires + Vernal delight and joy, able to drive + All sadness but despair: now gentle gales, + Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense + Native perfumes and whisper whence they stole + Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail + Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past + Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow + Sabean odours from the spicy shore + Of Araby the Blest; with such delay + Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league + Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles. + + * * * * * + + Southward through Eden went a river large, + Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill + Pass'd underneath ingulf'd; for God had thrown + That mountain as his garden mould, high raised + Upon the rapid current, which through veins + Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn, + Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill + Water'd the garden; thence united fell + Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, + Which from his darksome passage now appears; + And now, divided into four main streams, + Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm + And country, whereof here needs no account; + But rather to tell how, if art could tell, + How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, + Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, + With mazy error under pendent shades, + Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed + Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art + In beds and curious knots, but nature boon + Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, + Both where the morning sun first warmly smote + The open field, and where the unpierced shade + Imbrown'd the noontide bowers; thus was this place + A happy rural seat of various view; + Groves whose rich, trees wept odorous gums and balm; + Others whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind, + Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, + If true, here only, and of delicious taste: + Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks + Grazing the tender herb, were interposed; + Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap + Of some irriguous valley spread her store, + Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose: + Another side, umbrageous grots and caves + Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine + Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps + Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall + Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake, + That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd + Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams. + The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs, + Breathing the smell of field and grove attune, + The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, + Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, + Led on the eternal Spring. + +Pope in his grounds at Twickenham, and Shenstone in his garden farm of +the Leasowes, taught their countrymen to understand how much taste and +refinement of soul may be connected with the laying out of gardens and +the cultivation of flowers. I am sorry to learn that the famous retreats +of these poets are not now what they were. The lovely nest of the little +Nightingale of Twickenham has fallen into vulgar hands. And when Mr. +Loudon visited (in 1831) the once beautiful grounds of Shenstone, he +"found them in a state of indescribable neglect and ruin." + +Pope said that of all his works that of which he was proudest was his +garden. It was of but five acres, or perhaps less, but to this he is +said to have given a charming variety. He enumerates amongst the friends +who assisted him in the improvement of his grounds, the gallant Earl of +Peterborough "whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines." + + Know, all the distant din that world can keep, + Rolls o'er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep. + There my retreat the best companions grace + Chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place. + There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl + The feast of reason and the flow of soul; + And he whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines + Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines; + Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain + Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain. + +Frederick Prince of Wales took a lively interest in Pope's tasteful +Tusculanum and made him a present of some urns or vases either for his +"laurel circus or to terminate his points." His famous grotto, which he +is so fond of alluding to, was excavated to avoid an inconvenience. His +property lying on both sides of the public highway, he contrived his +highly ornamented passage under the road to preserve privacy and to +connect the two portions of his estate. + +The poet has given us in one of his letters a long and lively +description of his subterranean embellishments. But his verse will live +longer than his prose. He has immortalized this grotto, so radiant with +spars and ores and shells, in the following poetical inscription:-- + + Thou, who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent wave + Shines a broad mirror through the shadowy cave, + Where lingering drops from mineral roofs distil, + And pointed crystals break the sparkling rill, + Unpolished gems no ray on pride bestow, + And latent metals innocently glow, + Approach! Great Nature studiously behold, + And eye the mine without a wish for gold + Approach--but awful! Lo, the Egerian grot, + Where, nobly pensive, ST JOHN sat and thought, + Where British sighs from dying WYNDHAM stole, + And the bright flame was shot thro' MARCHMONT'S soul; + Let such, such only, tread this sacred floor + Who dare to love their country, and be poor. + +Horace Walpole, speaking of the poet's garden, tells us that "the +passing through the gloom from the grotto to the opening day, the +retiring and again assembling shades, the dusky groves, the larger lawn, +and the solemnity at the cypresses that led up to his mother's tomb, +were managed with exquisite judgment." + + Cliveden's proud alcove, + The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love, + +alluded to by Pope in his sketch of the character of Villiers, Duke of +Buckingham, though laid out by Kent, was probably improved by the poet's +suggestions. Walpole seems to think that the beautiful grounds at +Rousham, laid out for General Dormer, were planned on the model of the +garden at Twickenham, at least the opening and retiring "shades of +Venus's Vale." And these grounds at Rousham were pronounced "the most +engaging of all Kent's works." It is said that the design of the garden +at Carlton House, was borrowed from that of Pope. + +Wordsworth was correct in his observation that "Landscape gardening is a +liberal art akin to the arts of poetry and painting." Walpole describes +it as "an art that realizes painting and improves nature." "Mahomet," he +adds, "imagined an Elysium, but Kent created many." + +Pope's mansion was not a very spacious one, but it was large enough for +a private gentleman of inexpensive habits. After the poet's death it was +purchased by Sir William Stanhope who enlarged both the house and +garden.[012] A bust of Pope, in white marble, has been placed over an +arched way with the following inscription from the pen of Lord Nugent: + + The humble roof, the garden's scanty line, + Ill suit the genius of the bard divine; + But fancy now displays a fairer scope + And Stanhope's plans unfold the soul of Pope. + +I have not heard who set up this bust with its impudent inscription. I +hope it was not Stanhope himself. I cannot help thinking that it would +have been a truer compliment to the memory of Pope if the house and +grounds had been kept up exactly as he had left them. Most people, I +suspect, would greatly have preferred the poet's own "unfolding of his +soul" to that "_unfolding_" attempted for him by a Stanhope and +commemorated by a Nugent. Pope exhibited as much taste in laying out his +grounds as in constructing his poems. Sir William, after his attempt to +make the garden more worthy of the original designer, might just as +modestly have undertaken to enlarge and improve the poetry of Pope on +the plea that it did not sufficiently _unfold his soul_. A line of Lord +Nugent's might in that case have been transferred from the marble bust +to the printed volume: + + His fancy now displays a fairer scope. + +Or the enlarger and improver might have taken his motto from +Shakespeare: + + To my _unfolding_ lend a gracious ear. + +This would have been an appropriate motto for the title-page of "_The +Poems of Pope: enlarged and improved: or The Soul of the Poet +Unfolded_." + +But in sober truth, Pope, whether as a gardener or as a poet, required +no enlarger or improver of his works. After Sir William Stanhope had +left Pope's villa it came into the possession of Lord Mendip, who +exhibited a proper respect for the poet's memory; but when in 1807 it +was sold to the Baroness Howe, that lady pulled down the house and built +another. The place subsequently came into the possession of a Mr. Young. +The grounds have now no resemblance to what the taste of Pope had once +made them. Even his mother's monument has been removed! Few things would +have more deeply touched the heart of the poet than the anticipation of +this insult to the memory of so revered a parent. His filial piety was +as remarkable as his poetical genius. No passages in his works do him +more honor both as a man and as a poet than those which are mellowed +into a deeper tenderness of sentiment and a softer and sweeter music by +his domestic affections. There are probably few readers of English +poetry who have not the following lines by heart, + + Me, let the tender office long engage + To rock the cradle of reposing age; + With lenient arts extend a mother's breath; + Make langour smile, and smooth the bed of death; + Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, + And keep at least one parent from the sky. + +In a letter to Swift (dated March 29, 1731) begun by Lord Bolingbroke +and concluded by Pope, the latter speaks thus touchingly of his dear old +parent: + +"My Lord has spoken justly of his lady; why not I of my mother? +Yesterday was her birth-day, now entering on the ninety-first year of +her age; her memory much diminished, but her senses very little hurt, +her sight and hearing good; she sleeps not ill, eats moderately, drinks +water, says her prayers; this is all she does. I have reason to thank +God for continuing so long to me a very good and tender parent, and for +allowing me to exercise for some years those cares which are now as +necessary to her, as hers have been to me." + +Pope lost his mother two years, two months, and a few days after the +date of this letter. Three days after her death he entreated Richardson, +the painter, to take a sketch of her face, as she lay in her coffin: and +for this purpose Pope somewhat delayed her interment. "I thank God," he +says, "her death was as easy as her life was innocent; and as it cost +her not a groan, nor even a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such +an expression of tranquillity, nay almost of pleasure, that it is even +amiable to behold it. It would afford the finest image of a saint +expired, that ever painting drew, and it would be the greatest +obligation which even that obliging art could ever bestow upon a friend +if you would come and sketch it for me." The writer adds, "I shall hope +to see you this evening, as late as you will, or to-morrow morning as +early, _before this winter flower is faded_." + +On the small obelisk in the garden, erected by Pope to the memory of his +mother, he placed the following simple and pathetic inscription. + + AH! EDITHA! + MATRUM OPTIMA! + MULIERUM AMANTISSIMA! + VALE! + +I wonder that any one could have had the heart to remove or to destroy +so interesting a memorial. + +It is said that Pope planted his celebrated weeping willow at Twickenham +with his own hands, and that it was the first of its particular species +introduced into England. Happening to be with Lady Suffolk when she +received a parcel from Spain, he observed that it was bound with green +twigs which looked as if they might vegetate. "Perhaps," said he, "these +may produce something that we have not yet in England." He tried a +cutting, and it succeeded. The tree was removed by some person as +barbarous as the reverend gentleman who cut down Shakespeare's Mulberry +Tree. The Willow was destroyed for the same reason, as the Mulberry +Tree--because the owner was annoyed at persons asking to see it. The +Weeping Willow + + That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,[013] + +has had its interest with people in general much increased by its +association with the history of Napoleon in the Island of St. Helena. +The tree whose boughs seemed to hang so fondly over his remains has now +its scions in all parts of the world. Few travellers visited the tomb +without taking a small cutting of the Napoleon Willow for cultivation in +their own land. Slips of the Willow at Twickenham, like those of the +Willow at St. Helena, have also found their way into many countries. In +1789 the Empress of Russia had some of them planted in her garden at St. +Petersburgh. + +Mr. Loudon tells us that there is an old _oak_ in Binfield Wood, Windsor +Forest, which is called _Pope's Oak_, and which bears the inscription +"HERE POPE SANG:"[014] but according to general tradition it was a +_beech_ tree, under which Pope wrote his "Windsor Forest." It is said +that as that tree was decayed, Lady Gower had the inscription alluded to +carved upon another tree near it. Perhaps the substituted tree was an +oak. + +I may here mention that in the Vale of Avoca there is a tree celebrated +as that under which Thomas Moore wrote the verses entitled "The meeting +of the Waters." + +The allusion to _Pope's Oak_ reminds me that Chaucer is said to have +planted three oak trees in Donnington Park near Newbury. Not one of them +is now, I believe, in existence. There is an oak tree in Windsor Forest +above 1000 years old. In the hollow of this tree twenty people might be +accommodated with standing room. It is called _King's Oak_: it was +William the Conqueror's favorite tree. _Herne's Oak_ in Windsor Park, is +said by some to be still standing, but it is described as a mere +anatomy. + + ----An old oak whose boughs are mossed with age, + And high top bald with dry antiquity. + +_As You Like it_. + +"It stretches out its bare and sapless branches," says Mr. Jesse, "like +the skeleton arms of some enormous giant, and is almost fearful in its +decay." _Herne's Oak_, as every one knows, is immortalised by +Shakespeare, who has spread its fame over many lands. + + There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter, + Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, + Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, + Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns, + And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle; + And makes milch cows yield blood, and shakes a chain + In a most hideous and dreadful manner. + You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know, + The superstitious, idle-headed eld + Received, and did deliver to our age, + This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth. + +_Merry Wives of Windsor_. + +"Herne, the hunter" is said to have hung himself upon one of the +branches of this tree, and even, + + ----Yet there want not many that do fear, + In deep of night to walk by this Herne's Oak. + +_Merry Wives of Windsor_. + +It was not long ago visited by the King of Prussia to whom Shakespeare +had rendered it an object of great interest. + +It is unpleasant to add that there is considerable doubt and dispute as +to its identity. Charles Knight and a Quarterly Reviewer both maintain +that _Herne's Oak_ was cut down with a number of other old trees in +obedience to an order from George the Third when he was not in his right +mind, and that his Majesty deeply regretted the order he had given when +he found that the most interesting tree in his Park had been destroyed. +Mr. Jesse, in his _Gleanings in Natural History_, says that after some +pains to ascertain the truth, he is convinced that this story is not +correct, and that the famous old tree is still standing. He adds that +George the Fourth often alluded to the story and said that though one of +the trees cut down was supposed to have been _Herne's Oak_, it was not +so in reality. George the Third, it is said, once called the attention +of Mr. Ingalt, the manager of Windsor Home Park to a particular tree, +and said "I brought you here to point out this tree to you. I commit it +to your especial charge; and take care that no damage is ever done to +it. I had rather that every tree in the park should be cut down than +that this tree should be hurt. _This is Hernes Oak_." + +Sir Philip Sidney's Oak at Penshurst mentioned by Ben Jonson-- + + That taller tree, of which the nut was set + At his great birth, where all the Muses met-- + +is still in existence. It is thirty feet in circumference. Waller also +alludes to + + Yonder tree which stands the sacred mark + Of noble Sidney's birth. + +Yardley Oak, immortalized by Cowper, is now in a state of decay. + + Time made thee what thou wert--king of the woods! + And time hath made thee what thou art--a cave + For owls to roost in. + +_Cowper_. + +The tree is said to be at least fifteen hundred years old. It cannot +hold its present place much longer; but for many centuries to come it +will + + Live in description and look green in song. + +It stands on the grounds of the Marquis of Northampton; and to prevent +people from cutting off and carrying away pieces of it as relics, the +following notice has been painted on a board and nailed to the +tree:--"_Out of respect to the memory of the poet Cowper, the Marquis of +Northampton is particularly desirous of preserving this Oak_." + +Lord Byron, in early life, planted an oak in the garden at Newstead and +indulged the fancy, that as that flourished so should he. The oak has +survived the poet, but it will not outlive the memory of its planter or +even the boyish verses which he addressed to it. + +Pope observes, that "a tree is a nobler object than a prince in his +coronation robes." Yet probably the poet had never seen any tree larger +than a British oak. What would he have thought of the Baobab tree in +Abyssinia, which measures from 80 to 120 feet in girth, and sometimes +reaches the age of five thousand years. We have no such sylvan patriarch +in Europe. The oldest British tree I have heard of, is a yew tree of +Fortingall in Scotland, of which the age is said to be two thousand five +hundred years. If trees had long memories and could converse with man, +what interesting chapters these survivors of centuries might add to the +history of the world! + +Pope was not always happy in his Twickenham Paradise. His rural delights +were interrupted for a time by an unrequited passion for the beautiful +and highly-gifted but eccentric Lady Mary Wortley Montague. + + Ah! friend, 'tis true--this truth you lovers know; + In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow; + In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes + Of hanging mountains and of sloping greens; + Joy lives not here, to happier seats it flies, + And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes. + + What are the gay parterre, the chequered shade, + The morning bower, the evening colonnade, + But soft recesses of uneasy minds, + To sigh unheard in to the passing winds? + + So the struck deer, in some sequestered part, + Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart; + He, stretched unseen, in coverts hid from day, + Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away. + +These are exquisite lines, and have given delight to innumerable +readers, but they gave no delight to Lady Mary. In writing to her +sister, the Countess of Mar, then at Paris, she says in allusion to +these "most musical, most melancholy" verses--"_I stifled them here; and +I beg they may die the same death at Paris_." It is not, however, quite +so easy a thing as Lady Mary seemed to think, to "stifle" such poetry as +Pope's. + +Pope's notions respecting the laying out of gardens are well expressed +in the following extract from the fourth Epistle of his Moral +Essays.[015] This fourth Epistle was addressed, as most readers will +remember, to the accomplished Lord Burlington, who, as Walpole says, +"had every quality of a genius and an artist, except envy. Though his +own designs were more chaste and classic than Kent's, he entertained him +in his house till his death, and was more studious to extend his +friend's fame than his own." + + Something there is more needful than expense, + And something previous e'en to taste--'tis sense; + Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, + And though no science fairly worth the seven; + A light, which in yourself you must perceive; + Jones and Le Nôtre have it not to give. + To build, or plant, whatever you intend, + To rear the column or the arch to bend; + To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot; + In all let Nature never be forgot. + But treat the goddess like a modest fair, + Nor over dress nor leave her wholly bare; + Let not each beauty every where be spied, + Where half the skill is decently to hide. + He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds, + Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds. + _Consult the genius of the place in all_;[016] + That tells the waters or to rise or fall; + Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale, + Or scoops in circling theatres the vale; + Calls in the country, catches opening glades, + Joins willing woods and varies shades from shades; + Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines; + Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs. + Still follow sense, of every art the soul; + Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole, + Spontaneous beauties all around advance, + Start e'en from difficulty, strike from chance; + Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow + A work to wonder at--perhaps a STOWE.[017] + Without it proud Versailles![018] Thy glory falls; + And Nero's terraces desert their walls. + The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make, + Lo! Cobham comes and floats them with a lake; + Or cut wide views through mountains to the plain, + You'll wish your hill or sheltered seat again. + +Pope is in most instances singularly happy in his compliments, but the +allusion to STOWE--as "_a work to wonder at_"--has rather an equivocal +appearance, and so also has the mention of Lord Cobham, the proprietor +of the place. In the first draught of the poem, the name of Bridgeman +was inserted where Cobham's now stands, but as Bridgeman mistook the +compliment for a sneer, the poet thought the landscape-gardener had +proved himself undeserving of the intended honor, and presented the +second-hand compliment to the peer. The grounds at Stowe, more praised +by poets than any other private estate in England, extend to 400 acres. +There are many other fine estates in our country of far greater extent, +but of less celebrity. Some of them are much too extensive, perhaps, for +true enjoyment. The Earl of Leicester, when he had completed his seat at +Holkham, observed, that "It was a melancholy thing to stand alone in +one's country. I look round; not a house is to be seen but mine. I am +the Giant of Giant-castle and have ate up all my neighbours." The Earl +must have felt that the political economy of Goldsmith in his _Deserted +Village_ was not wholly the work of imagination. + + Sweet smiling village! Loveliest of the lawn, + Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn; + Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen + And desolation saddens all the green,-- + _One only master grasps thy whole domain_. + + * * * * * + + Where then, ah! where shall poverty reside, + To scape the pressure of contiguous pride? + +"Hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton," as Lamb calls him, describes Stowe as a +Paradise. + +ON LORD COBHAM'S GARDEN. + + It puzzles much the sage's brains + Where Eden stood of yore, + Some place it in Arabia's plains, + Some say it is no more. + + But Cobham can these tales confute, + As all the curious know; + For he hath proved beyond dispute, + That Paradise is STOWE. + +Thomson also calls the place a paradise: + + Ye Powers + That o'er the garden and the rural seat + Preside, which shining through the cheerful land + In countless numbers blest Britannia sees; + O, lead me to the wide-extended walks, + _The fair majestic paradise of Stowe!_ + Not Persian Cyrus on Ionia's shore + E'er saw such sylvan scenes; such various art + By genius fired, such ardent genius tamed + By cool judicious art, that in the strife + All-beauteous Nature fears to be out-done. + +The poet somewhat mars the effect of this compliment to the charms of +Stowe, by making it a matter of regret that the owner + + His verdant files + Of ordered trees should here inglorious range, + Instead of squadrons flaming o'er the field, + And long embattled hosts. + +This representation of rural pursuits as inglorious, a sentiment so out +of keeping with his subject, is soon after followed rather +inconsistently, by a sort of paraphrase of Virgil's celebrated picture +of rural felicity, and some of Thomson's own thoughts on the advantages +of a retreat from active life. + + Oh, knew he but his happiness, of men + The happiest he! Who far from public rage + Deep in the vale, with a choice few retired + Drinks the pure pleasures of the rural life, &c. + +Then again:-- + + Let others brave the flood in quest of gain + And beat for joyless months, the gloomy wave. + _Let such as deem it glory to destroy, + Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek; + Unpierced, exulting in the widow's wail, + The virgin's shriek and infant's trembling cry._ + + * * * * * + + While he, from all the stormy passions free + That restless men involve, hears and _but_ hears, + At distance safe, the human tempest roar, + Wrapt close in conscious peace. The fall of kings, + The rage of nations, and the crush of states, + Move not the man, who from the world escaped, + In still retreats and flowery solitudes, + To nature's voice attends, from month to month, + And day to day, through the revolving year; + Admiring sees her in her every shape; + Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart; + Takes what she liberal gives, nor asks for more. + He, when young Spring, protudes the bursting gems + Marks the first bud, and sucks the healthful gale + Into his freshened soul; her genial hour + He full enjoys, and not a beauty blows + And not an opening blossom breathes in vain. + +Thomson in his description of Lord Townshend's seat of Rainham--another +English estate once much celebrated and still much admired--exclaims: + + Such are thy beauties, Rainham, such the haunts + Of angels, in primeval guiltless days + When man, imparadised, conversed with God. + +And Broome after quoting the whole description in his dedication of his +own poems to Lord Townshend, observes, in the old fashioned fulsome +strain, "This, my lord, is but a faint picture of the place of your +retirement which no one ever enjoyed more elegantly."[019] "A faint +picture!" What more would the dedicator have wished Thomson to say? +Broome, if not contented with his patron's seat being described as an +earthly Paradise, must have desired it to be compared with Heaven +itself, and thus have left his Lordship no hope of the enjoyment of a +better place than he already possessed. + +Samuel Boyse, who when without a shirt to his back sat up in his bed to +write verses, with his arms through two holes in his blanket, and when +he went into the streets wore paper collars to conceal the sad +deficiency of linen, has a poem of considerable length entitled _The +Triumphs of Nature_. It is wholly devoted to a description of this +magnificent garden,[020] in which, amongst other architectural +ornaments, was a temple dedicated to British worthies, where the busts +of Pope and Congreve held conspicuous places. I may as well give a +specimen of the lines of poor Boyse. Here is his description of that +part of Lord Cobham's grounds in which is erected to the Goddess of +Love, a Temple containing a statue of the Venus de Medicis. + + Next to the fair ascent our steps we traced, + Where shines afar the bold rotunda placed; + The artful dome Ionic columns bear + Light as the fabric swells in ambient air. + Beneath enshrined the Tuscan Venus stands + And beauty's queen the beauteous scene commands: + The fond beholder sees with glad surprize, + Streams glisten, lawns appear, and forests rise-- + Here through thick shades alternate buildings break, + There through the borders steals the silver lake, + A soft variety delights the soul, + And harmony resulting crowns the whole. + +Congreve in his Letter in verse addressed to Lord Cobham asks him to + + Tell how his pleasing Stowe employs his time. + +It would seem that the proprietor of Stowe took particular interest in +the disposition of the water on his grounds. Congreve enquires + + Or dost thou give the winds afar to blow + Each vexing thought, and heart-devouring woe, + And fix thy mind alone on rural scenes, + _To turn the level lawns to liquid plains_? + To raise the creeping rills from humble beds + And force the latent spring to lift their heads, + On watery columns, capitals to rear, + That mix their flowing curls with upper air? + + * * * * * + + Or slowly walk along the mazy wood + To meditate on all that's wise and good. + +The line:-- + + To turn the level lawn to liquid plains-- + +Will remind the reader of Pope's + + Lo! Cobham comes and floats them with a lake-- + +And it might be thought that Congreve had taken the hint from the bard +of Twickenham if Congreve's poem had not preceded that of Pope. The one +was published in 1729, the other in 1731. + +Cowper is in the list of poets who have alluded to "Cobham's groves" and +Pope's commemoration of them. + + And _Cobham's groves_ and Windsor's green retreats + When Pope describes them have a thousand sweets. + +"Magnificence and splendour," says Mr. Whately, the author of +_Observations on Modern Gardening_, "are the characteristics of Stowe. +It is like one of those places celebrated in antiquity which were +devoted to the purposes of religion, and filled with sacred groves, +hallowed fountains, and temples dedicated to several deities; the resort +of distant nations and the object of veneration to half the heathen +world: the pomp is, at Stowe, blended with beauty; and the place is +equally distinguished by its amenity and grandeur." Horace Walpole +speaks of its "visionary enchantment." "I have been strolling about in +Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, from garden to garden," says Pope in +one of his letters, "but still returning to Lord Cobham's with fresh +satisfaction."[021] + +The grounds at Stowe, until the year 1714, were laid out in the old +formal style. Bridgeman then commenced the improvements and Kent +subsequently completed them. + +Stowe is now, I believe, in the possession of the Marquis of Chandos, +son of the Duke of Buckingham. It is melancholy to state that the +library, the statues, the furniture, and even some of the timber on the +estate, were sold in 1848 to satisfy the creditors of the Duke. + +Pope was never tired of improving his own grounds. "I pity you, Sir," +said a friend to him, "because you have now completed every thing +belonging to your gardens."[022] "Why," replied Pope, "I really shall be +at a loss for the diversion I used to take in carrying out and finishing +things: I have now nothing left me to do but to add a little ornament or +two along the line of the Thames." I dare say Pope was by no means so +near the end of his improvements as he and his friend imagined. One +little change in a garden is sure to suggest or be followed by another. +Garden-improvements are "never ending, still beginning." The late Dr. +Arnold, the famous schoolmaster, writing to a friend, says--"The garden +is a constant source of amusement to us both (self and wife); there are +always some little alterations to be made, some few spots where an +additional shrub or two would be ornamental, something coming into +blossom; so that I can always delight to go round and see how things are +going on." A garden is indeed a scene of continual change. Nature, even +without the aid of the gardener, has "infinite variety," and supplies "a +perpetual feast of nectared sweets where no crude surfeit reigns." + +Spence reports Pope to have said: "I have sometimes had an idea of +planting an old gothic cathedral in trees. Good large poplars, with +their white stems, cleared of boughs to a proper height would serve very +well for the columns, and might form the different aisles or +peristilliums, by their different distances and heights. These would +look very well near, and the dome rising all in a proper tuft in the +middle would look well at a distance." This sort of verdant architecture +would perhaps have a pleasing effect, but it is rather too much in the +artificial style, to be quite consistent with Pope's own idea of +landscape-gardening. And there are other trees that would form a nobler +natural cathedral than the formal poplar. Cowper did not think of the +poplar, when he described a green temple-roof. + + How airy and how light the graceful arch, + Yet awful as the consecrated roof + Re-echoing pious anthems. + +Almost the only traces of Pope's garden that now remain are the splendid +Spanish chesnut-trees and some elms and cedars planted by the poet +himself. A space once laid out in winding walks and beautiful +shrubberies is now a potatoe field! The present proprietor, Mr. Young, +is a wholesale tea-dealer. Even the bones of the poet, it is said, have +been disturbed. The skull of Pope, according to William Howitt, is now +in the private collection of a phrenologist! The manner in which it was +obtained, he says, is this:--On some occasion of alteration in the +church at Twickenham, or burial of some one in the same spot, the coffin +of Pope was disinterred, and opened to see the state of the remains. By +a bribe of £50 to the Sexton, possession of the skull was obtained for +one night; another skull was then returned instead of the poet's. + +It has been stated that the French term _Ferme Ornée_ was first used in +England by Shenstone. It exactly expressed the character of his grounds. +Mr. Repton said that he never strolled over the scenery of the Leasowes +without lamenting the constant disappointment to which Shenstone exposed +himself by a vain attempt to unite the incompatible objects of ornament +and profit. "Thus," continued Mr. Repton, "the poet lived under the +continual mortification of disappointed hope, and with a mind +exquisitely sensible, he felt equally the sneer of the great man at the +magnificence of his attempt and the ridicule of the farmer at the +misapplication of his paternal acres." The "sneer of the great man." is +perhaps an allusion to what Dr. Johnson says of Lord Lyttelton:--that he +"looked with disdain" on "the petty State" of his neighbour. "For a +while," says Dr. Johnson, "the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell +their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself +admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, +they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress, by +conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, +and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; +injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain." Mr. Graves, the +zealous friend of Shenstone, indignantly denies that any of the +Lyttelton family had evinced so ungenerous a feeling towards the +proprietor of the Leasowes who though his "empire" was less "spacious +and opulent" had probably a larger share of true taste than even the +proprietor of Hagley, the Lyttelton domain--though Hagley has been much, +and I doubt not, deservedly, admired.[023] + +Dr. Johnson states that Shenstone's expenses were beyond his means,-- +that he spent his estate in adorning it--that at last the clamours of +creditors "overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and that +his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns and +fairies." But this is gross exaggeration. Shenstone was occasionally, +indeed, in slight pecuniary difficulties, but he could always have +protected himself from the intrusion of the myrmidons of the law by +raising money on his estate; for it appears that after the payment of +all his debts, he left legacies to his friends and annuities to his +servants. + +Johnson himself is the most scornful of the critics upon Shenstone's +rural pursuits. "The pleasure of Shenstone," says the Doctor, "was all +in his eye: he valued what he valued merely for its looks. Nothing +raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his +water." Dr. Johnson would have seen no use in the loveliest piece of +running water in the world if it had contained nothing that he could +masticate! Mrs. Piozzi says of him, "The truth is, he hated to hear +about prospects and views, and laying out grounds and taste in +gardening." "That was the best garden," he said, "which produced most +roots and fruits; and that water was most to be prized which contained +most fish." On this principle of the valuelessness of those pleasures +which enter the mind through the eye, Dr. Johnson should have blamed the +lovers of painting for dwelling with such fond admiration on the canvas +of his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds. In point of fact, Dr. Johnson had no +more sympathy with the genius of the painter or the musician than with +that of the Landscape gardener, for he had neither an eye nor an ear for +Art. He wondered how any man could be such a fool as to be moved to +tears by music, and observed, that, "one could not fill one's belly with +hearing soft murmurs or looking at rough cascades." No; the loveliness +of nature does not satisfy the thirst and hunger of the body, but it +_does_ satisfy the thirst and hunger of the soul. No one can find +wheaten bread or wine or venison or beef or plum-pudding or turtle-soup +in mere sounds and sights, however exquisite--neither can any one find +such substantial diet within the boards of a book--no not even on the +pages of Shakespeare, or even those of the Bible itself,--but men can +find in sweet music and lovely scenery and good books something +infinitely more precious than all the wine, venison, beef, or +plum-pudding, or turtle-soup that could be swallowed during a long life by +the most craving and capacious alderman of London! Man is of a dual +nature: he is not all body. He has other and far higher wants and +enjoyments than the purely physical--and these nobler appetites are +gratified by the charms of nature and the creations of inspired genius. + +Dr. Johnson's gastronomic allusions to nature recal the old story of a +poet pointing out to a utilitarian friend some white lambs frolicking in +a meadow. "Aye," said, the other, "only think of a quarter of one of +them with asparagus and mint sauce!" The story is by some supposed to +have had a Scottish origin, and a prosaic North Briton is made to say +that the pretty little lambs, sporting amidst the daisies and +buttercups, would "_mak braw pies_." + +A profound feeling for the beautiful is generally held to be an +essential quality in the poet. It is a curious fact, however, that there +are some who aspire to the rank of poet, and have their claims allowed, +who yet cannot be said to be poetical in their nature--for how can that +nature be, strictly speaking, _poetical_ which denies the sentiment of +Keats, that + + A thing of beauty is a joy for ever? + +Both Scott and Byron very earnestly admired Dr. Johnson's "_London_" and +"_The Vanity of Human Wishes_." Yet the sentiments just quoted from the +author of those productions are far more characteristic of a utilitarian +philosopher than of one who has been endowed by nature with + + The vision and the faculty divine, + +and made capable, like some mysterious enchanter, of + + Clothing the palpable and the familiar + With golden exhalations of the dawn. + +Crabbe, also a prime favorite with the authors of the _Lay of the Last +Minstrel_, and _Childe Harold_, is recorded by his biographer--his own +son--to have exhibited "a remarkable indifference to all the proper +objects of taste;" to have had "no real love for painting, or music, or +architecture or for what a painter's eye considers as the beauties of +landscape." "In botany, grasses, the most _useful_ but the least +ornamental, were his favorites." "He never seemed to be captivated with +the mere beauty of natural objects or even to catch any taste for the +arrangement of his specimens. Within, the house was a kind of scientific +confusion; in the garden the usual showy foreigners gave place to the +most scarce flowers, especially to the rarer weeds, of Britain; and were +scattered here and there only for preservation. In fact he neither loved +order for its own sake nor had any very high opinion of that passion in +others."[024] Lord Byron described Crabbe to be + + Though nature's sternest painter, yet _the best_. + +What! was he a better painter of nature than Shakespeare? The truth is +that Byron was a wretched critic, though a powerful poet. His praises +and his censures were alike unmeasured. + + His generous ardor no cold medium knew. + +He seemed to recognize no great general principles of criticism, but to +found all his judgments on mere prejudice and passion. He thought Cowper +"no poet," pronounced Spenser "a dull fellow," and placed Pope above +Shakespeare. Byron's line on Crabbe is inscribed on the poet's tombstone +at Trowbridge. Perhaps some foreign visitor on reading the inscription +may be surprized at his own ignorance when he learns that it is not the +author of _Macbeth_ and _Othello_ that he is to regard as the best +painter of nature that England has produced, but the author of the +_Parish Register_ and the _Tales of the Hall_. Absurd and indiscriminate +laudations of this kind confound all intellectual distinctions and make +criticism ridiculous. Crabbe is unquestionably a vigorous and truthful +writer, but he is not the _best_ we have, in any sense of the word. + +Though Dr. Johnson speaks so contemptuously of Shenstone's rural +pursuits, he could not help acknowledging that when the poet began "to +point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks and +to wind his waters," he did all this with such judgment and fancy as +"made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the +skilful; a place to be visited by travellers, and copied by designers." + +Mason, in his _English Garden_, a poem once greatly admired, but now +rarely read, and never perhaps with much delight, does justice to the +taste of the Poet of the Leasowes. + + Nor, Shenstone, thou + Shalt pass without thy meed, thou son of peace! + Who knew'st, perchance, to harmonize thy shades + Still softer than thy song; yet was that song + Nor rude nor inharmonious when attuned + To pastoral plaint, or tale of slighted love. + +English pleasure-gardens have been much imitated by the French. Viscomte +Girardin, at his estate of Ermenonville, dedicated an inscription in +amusing French-English to the proprietor of the Leasowes-- + + THIS PLAIN STONE + TO WILLIAM SHENSTONE; + IN HIS WRITINGS HE DISPLAYED + A MIND NATURAL; + AT LEASOWES HE LAID + ARCADIAN GREENS RURAL. + +The Viscomte, though his English composition was so quaint and +imperfect, was an elegant writer in his own language, and showed great +taste and skill in laying out his grounds. He had visited England, and +carefully studied our modern style of gardening. He had personally +consulted Shenstone, Mason, Whateley and other English authors on +subjects of rural taste. He published an eloquent description of his own +estate. His famous friend Rousseau wrote the preface to it. The book was +translated into English. Rousseau spent his last days at Ermenonville +and was buried there in what is called _The Isle of Poplars_. The garden +is now in a neglected state, but the tomb of Rousseau remains uninjured, +and is frequently visited by the admirers of his genius. + +"Dr. Warton," says Bowles, "mentions Milton and Pope as the poets to +whom English Landscape is indebted, but _he forgot poor Shenstone_." A +later writer, however, whose sympathy for genius communicates such a +charm to all his anecdotes and comments in illustration of the literary +character, has devoted a chapter of his _Curiosities of Literature_ to a +notice of the rural tastes of the proprietor of the Leasowes. I must +give a brief extract from it. + +"When we consider that Shenstone, in developing his fine pastoral ideas +in the Leasowes, educated the nation into that taste for +landscape-gardening, which has become the model of all Europe, this itself +constitutes a claim on the gratitude of posterity. Thus the private +pleasures of a man of genius may become at length those of a whole +people. The creator of this new taste appears to have received far less +notice than he merited. The name of Shenstone does not appear in the +Essay on Gardening, by Lord Orford; even the supercilious Gray only +bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his +friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by +nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after describing some of the +offices of the landscape designer, adds, that 'he will not inquire +whether they demand any great powers of mind.' Johnson, however, conveys +to us his own feelings, when he immediately expresses them under the +character of 'a sullen and surly speculator.' The anxious life of +Shenstone would indeed have been remunerated, could he have read the +enchanting eulogium of Whateley on the Leasowes; which, said he, 'is a +perfect picture of his mind--simple, elegant and amiable; and will +always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verse, or whether +in the scenes which he formed, he only realised the pastoral images +which abound in his songs.' Yes! Shenstone had been delighted could he +have heard that Montesquieu, on his return home, adorned his 'Chateau +Gothique, mais orné de bois charmans, don't j'ai pris l'idée en +Angleterre;' and Shenstone, even with his modest and timid nature, had +been proud to have witnessed a noble foreigner, amidst memorials +dedicated to Theocritus and Virgil, to Thomson and Gesner, raising in +his grounds an inscription, in bad English, but in pure taste, to +Shenstone himself; for having displayed in his writings 'a mind +natural,' and in his Leasowes 'laid Arcadian greens rural;' and recently +Pindemonte has traced the taste of English gardening to Shenstone. A man +of genius sometimes receives from foreigners, who are placed out of the +prejudices of his compatriots, the tribute of posterity!" + +"The Leasowes," says William Howitt, "now belongs to the Atwood family; +and a Miss Atwood resides there occasionally. But the whole place bears +the impress of desertion and neglect. The house has a dull look; the +same heavy spirit broods over the lawns and glades: And it is only when +you survey it from a distance, as when approaching Hales-Owen from +Hagley, that the whole presents an aspect of unusual beauty." + +Shenstone was at least as proud of his estate of the Leasowes as was +Pope of his Twickenham Villa--perhaps more so. By mere men of the world, +this pride in a garden may be regarded as a weakness, but if it be a +weakness it is at least an innocent and inoffensive one, and it has been +associated with the noblest intellectual endowments. Pitt and Fox and +Burke and Warren Hastings were not weak men, and yet were they all +extremely proud of their gardens. Every one, indeed, who takes an active +interest in the culture and embellishment of his garden, finds his pride +in it and his love for it increase daily. He is delighted to see it +flourish and improve beneath his care. Even the humble mechanic, in his +fondness for a garden, often indicates a feeling for the beautiful, and +a genial nature. If a rich man were openly to boast of his plate or his +equipages, or a literary man of his essays or his sonnets, as lovers of +flowers boast of their geraniums or dahlias or rhododendrons, they would +disgust the most indulgent hearer. But no one is shocked at the +exultation of a gardener, amateur or professional, when in the fulness +of his heart he descants upon the unrivalled beauty of his favorite +flowers: + + 'Plants of his hand, and children of his care.' + +"I have made myself two gardens," says Petrarch, "and I do not imagine +that they are to be equalled in all the world. I should feel myself +inclined to be angry with fortune if there were any so beautiful out of +Italy." "I wish," says poor Kirke White writing to a friend, "I wish you +to have a taste of these (rural) pleasures with me, and if ever I should +live to be blessed with a quiet parsonage, and _another great object of +my ambition--a garden_, I have no doubt but we shall be for some short +intervals at least two quite contented bodies." The poet Young, in the +latter part of his life, after years of vain hopes and worldly +struggles, gave himself up almost entirely to the sweet seclusion of a +garden; and that peace and repose which cannot be found in courts and +political cabinets, he found at last + + In sunny garden bowers + Where vernal winds each tree's low tones awaken, + And buds and bells with changes mark the hours. + +He discovered that it was more profitable to solicit nature than to +flatter the great. + + For Nature never did betray + The heart that loved her. + +People of a poetical temperament--all true lovers of nature--can afford, +far better than more essentially worldly beings, to exclaim with +Thomson. + + I care not Fortune what you me deny, + You cannot bar me of free Nature's grace, + You cannot shut the windows of the sky + Through which Aurora shows her brightening face: + You cannot bar my constant feet to trace + The woods and lawns and living streams at eve: + Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, + And I their toys to the _great children_ leave:-- + Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave. + +The pride in a garden laid out under one's own directions and partly +cultivated by one's own hand has been alluded to as in some degree +unworthy of the dignity of manhood, not only by mere men of the world, +or silly coxcombs, but by people who should have known better. Even Sir +William Temple, though so enthusiastic about his fruit-trees, tells us +that he will not enter upon any account of _flowers_, having only +pleased himself with seeing or smelling them, and not troubled himself +with the care of them, which he observes "_is more the ladies part than +the men's_." Sir William makes some amends for this almost contemptuous +allusion to flowers in particular by his ardent appreciation of the use +of gardens and gardening in general. He thus speaks of their attractions +and advantages: "The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of the +smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the +exercise of working or walking, but above all, the exemption from cares +and solicitude, seem equally to favor and improve both contemplation and +health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet +and ease of the body and mind." Again: "As gardening has been the +inclination of kings and the choice of philosophers, so it has been the +common favorite of public and private men, a pleasure of the greatest +and the care of the meanest; and indeed _an employment and a possession +for which no man is too high or too low_." This is just and liberal; +though I can hardly help still feeling a little sore at Sir William's +having implied in the passage previously quoted, that the care of +flowers is but a feminine occupation. As an elegant amusement, it is +surely equally well fitted for all lovers of the beautiful, without +reference to their sex. + +It is not women and children only who delight in flower-gardens. Lord +Bacon and William Pitt and the Earl of Chatham and Fox and Burke and +Warren Hastings--all lovers of flowers--were assuredly not men of +frivolous minds or of feminine habits. They were always eager to exhibit +to visitors the beauty of their parterres. In his declining years the +stately John Kemble left the stage for his garden. That sturdy English +yeoman, William Cobbett, was almost as proud of his beds of flowers as +of the pages of his _Political Register_. He thus speaks of gardening: + +"Gardening is a source of much greater profit than is generally +imagined; but, merely as an amusement or recreation it is a thing of +very great value. It is not only compatible with but favorable to the +study of any art or science; it is conducive to health by means of the +irresistible temptation which it offers to early rising; to the stirring +abroad upon one's legs, for a man may really ride till he cannot walk, +sit till he cannot stand, and lie abed till he cannot get up. It tends +to turn the minds of youth from amusements and attachments of a +frivolous and vicious nature, it is a taste which is indulged at home; +it tends to make home pleasant, and to endear to us the spot on which it +is our lot to live,--and as to the _expenses_ attending it, what are all +these expenses compared with those of the short, the unsatisfactory, the +injurious enjoyment of the card-table, and the rest of those amusements +which are sought from the town." _Cobbett's English Gardener_. + +"Other fine arts," observes Lord Kames, "may be perverted to excite +irregular and even vicious emotions: but gardening, which inspires the +purest and most refined pleasures, cannot fail to promote every good +affection. The gaiety and harmony of mind it produceth, inclining the +spectator to communicate his satisfaction to others, and to make them +happy as he is himself, tend naturally to establish in him a habit of +humanity and benevolence." + +Every thoughtful mind knows how much the face of nature has to do with +human happiness. In the open air and in the midst of summer-flowers, we +often feel the truth of the observation that "a fair day is a kind of +sensual pleasure, and of all others the most innocent." But it is also +something more, and better. It kindles a spiritual delight. At such a +time and in such a scene every observer capable of a religious emotion +is ready to exclaim-- + + Oh! there is joy and happiness in every thing I see, + Which bids my soul rise up and bless the God that blesses me + +_Anon._ + +The amiable and pious Doctor Carey of Serampore, in whose grounds sprang +up that dear little English daisy so beautifully addressed by his +poetical proxy, James Montgomery of Sheffield, in the stanzas +commencing:-- + + Thrice welcome, little English flower! + My mother country's white and red-- + +was so much attached to his Indian garden, that it was always in his +heart in the intervals of more important cares. It is said that he +remembered it even upon his death-bed, and that it was amongst his last +injunctions to his friends that they should see to its being kept up +with care. He was particularly anxious that the hedges or railings +should always be in such good order as to protect his favorite shrubs +and flowers from the intrusion of Bengalee cattle. + +A garden is a more interesting possession than a gallery of pictures or +a cabinet of curiosities. Its glories are never stationary or stale. It +has infinite variety. It is not the same to-day as it was yesterday. It +is always changing the character of its charms and always increasing +them in number. It delights all the senses. Its pleasures are not of an +unsocial character; for every visitor, high or low, learned or +illiterate, may be fascinated with the fragrance and beauty of a garden. +But shells and minerals and other curiosities are for the man of science +and the connoisseur. And a single inspection of them is generally +sufficient: they never change their aspect. The Picture-Gallery may +charm an instructed eye but the multitude have little relish for human +Art, because they rarely understand it:--while the skill of the Great +Limner of Nature is visible in every flower of the garden even to the +humblest swain. + +It is pleasant to read how the wits and beauties of the time of Queen +Anne used to meet together in delightful garden-retreats, 'like the +companies in Boccaccio's Decameron or in one of Watteau's pictures.' +Ritchings Lodge, for instance, the seat of Lord Bathurst, was visited by +most of the celebrities of England, and frequently exhibited bright +groups of the polite and accomplished of both sexes; of men +distinguished for their heroism or their genius, and of women eminent +for their easy and elegant conversation, or for gaiety and grace of +manner, or perfect loveliness of face and form--all in harmonious union +with the charms of nature. The gardens at Ritchings were enriched with +Inscriptions from the pens of Congreve and Pope and Gay and Addison and +Prior. When the estate passed into the possession of the Earl of +Hertford, his literary lady devoted it to the Muses. "She invited every +summer," says Dr. Johnson, "some poet into the country to hear her +verses and assist her studies." Thomson, who praises her so lavishly in +his "Spring," offended her ladyship by allowing her too clearly to +perceive that he was resolved not to place himself in the dilemma of +which Pope speaks so feelingly with reference to other poetasters. + + Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I, + Who can't be silent, and who will not lie. + I sit with sad civility, I read + With honest anguish and an aching head. + +But though "the bard more fat than bard beseems" was restive under her +ladyship's "poetical operations," and too plainly exhibited a desire to +escape the infliction, preferring the Earl's claret to the lady's +rhymes, she should have been a little more generously forgiving towards +one who had already made her immortal. It is stated, that she never +repeated her invitation to the Poet of the Seasons, who though so +impatient of the sound of her tongue when it "rolled" her own +"raptures," seems to have been charmed with her _at a distance_--while +meditating upon her excellencies in the seclusion of his own study. The +compliment to the Countess is rather awkwardly wedged in between +descriptions of "gentle Spring" with her "shadowing roses" and "surly +Winter" with his "ruffian blasts." It should have commenced the poem. + + O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts + With unaffected grace, or walk the plain, + With innocence and meditation joined + In soft assemblage, listen to my song, + Which thy own season paints; when nature all + Is blooming and benevolent like thee. + +Thomson had no objection to strike off a brief compliment in verse, but +he was too indolent to keep up _in propriâ personâ_ an incessant fire of +compliments, like the _bon bons_ at a Carnival. It was easier to write +her praises than listen to her verses. Shenstone seems to have been more +pliable. He was personally obsequious, lent her recitations an attentive +ear, and was ever ready with the expected commendation. It is not likely +that her ladyship found much, difficulty in collecting around her a +crowd of critics more docile than Thomson and quite as complaisant as +Shenstone. Let but a _Countess_ + + Once own the happy lines, + How the wit brightens, how the style refines! + +Though Thomson's first want on his arrival in London from the North was +a pair of shoes, and he lived for a time in great indigence, he was +comfortable enough at last. Lord Lyttleton introduced him to the Prince +of Wales (who professed himself the patron of literature) and when his +Highness questioned him about the state of his affairs, Thomson assured +him that they "were in a more poetical posture than formerly." The +prince bestowed upon the poet a pension of a hundred pounds a year, and +when his friend Lord Lyttleton was in power his Lordship obtained for +him the office of Surveyor General of the Leeward Islands. He sent a +deputy there who was more trustworthy than Thomas Moore's at Bermuda. +Thomson's deputy after deducting his own salary remitted his principal +three hundred pounds per annum, so that the bard 'more fat than bard +beseems' was not in a condition to grow thinner, and could afford to +make his cottage a Castle of Indolence. Leigh Hunt has versified an +anecdote illustrative of Thomson's luxurious idleness. He who could +describe "_Indolence_" so well, and so often appeared in the part +himself, + + Slippered, and with hands, + Each in a waistcoat pocket, (so that all + Might yet repose that could) was seen one morn + Eating a wondering peach from off the tree. + +A little summer-house at Richmond which Thomson made his study is still +preserved, and even some articles of furniture, just as he left +them.[025] Over the entrance is erected a tablet on which is the +following inscription: + + HERE + THOMSON SANG + THE SEASONS + AND THEIR CHANGE. + +Thomson was buried in Richmond Church. Collins's lines to his memory, +beginning + + In yonder grave a Druid lies, + +are familiar to all readers of English poetry. + +Richmond Hill has always been the delight not of poets only but of +painters. Sir Joshua Reynolds built a house there, and one of the only +three landscapes which seem to have survived him, is a view from the +window of his drawing-room. Gainsborough was also a resident in +Richmond. Richmond gardens laid out or rather altered by Brown, are now +united with those of Kew. + +Savage resided for some time at Richmond. It was the favorite haunt of +Collins, one of the most poetical of poets, who, as Dr. Johnson says, +"delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the +magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian +gardens." Wordsworth composed a poem upon the Thames near Richmond in +remembrance of Collins. Here is a stanza of it. + + Glide gently, thus for ever glide, + O Thames, that other bards may see + As lovely visions by thy side + As now fair river! come to me; + O glide, fair stream for ever so, + Thy quiet soul on all bestowing, + Till all our minds for ever flow + As thy deep waters now are flowing. + +Thomson's description of the scenery of Richmond Hill perhaps hardly +does it justice, but the lines are too interesting to be omitted. + + Say, shall we wind + Along the streams? or walk the smiling mead? + Or court the forest-glades? or wander wild + Among the waving harvests? or ascend, + While radiant Summer opens all its pride, + Thy hill, delightful Shene[026]? Here let us sweep + The boundless landscape now the raptur'd eye, + Exulting swift, to huge Augusta send, + Now to the sister hills[027] that skirt her plain, + To lofty Harrow now, and now to where + Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow + In lovely contrast to this glorious view + Calmly magnificent, then will we turn + To where the silver Thames first rural grows + There let the feasted eye unwearied stray, + Luxurious, there, rove through the pendent woods + That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat, + And stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks, + Beneath whose shades, in spotless peace retir'd, + With her the pleasing partner of his heart, + The worthy Queensbury yet laments his Gay, + And polish'd Cornbury woos the willing Muse + Slow let us trace the matchless vale of Thames + Fair winding up to where the Muses haunt + In Twit nam's bowers, and for their Pope implore + The healing god[028], to loyal Hampton's pile, + To Clermont's terrass'd height, and Esher's groves; + Where in the sweetest solitude, embrac'd + By the soft windings of the silent Mole, + From courts and senates Pelham finds repose + Enchanting vale! beyond whate'er the Muse + Has of Achaia or Hesperia sung! + O vale of bliss! O softly swelling hills! + On which the _Power of Cultivation_ lies, + And joys to see the wonders of his toil. + +The Revd. Thomas Maurice wrote a poem entitled _Richmond Hill_, but it +contains nothing deserving of quotation after the above passage from +Thomson. In the _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ the labors of +Maurice are compared to those of Sisyphus + + So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond, heaves + Dull Maurice, all his granite weight of leaves. + +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." + +The English style of landscape-gardening being founded on natural +principles must be recognized by true taste in all countries. Even in +Rome, when art was most allowed to predominate over nature, there were +occasional instances of that correct feeling for rural beauty which the +English during the last century and a half have exhibited more +conspicuously than other nations. Atticus preferred Tully's villa at +Arpinum to all his other villas; because at Arpinum, Nature predominated +over art. Our Kents and Browns[031] never expressed a greater contempt, +than was expressed by Atticus, for all formal and artificial decorations +of natural scenery. + +The spot where Cicero's villa stood, was, in the time of Middleton, +possessed by a convent of monks and was called the Villa of St. Dominic. +It was built, observes Mr. Dunlop, in the year 1030, from the fragments +of the Arpine Villa! + + Art, glory, Freedom, fail--but Nature still is fair. + +"Nothing," says Mr. Kelsall, "can be imagined finer than the surrounding +landscape. The deep azure of the sky, unvaried by a single cloud--Sora +on a rock at the foot of the precipitous Appennines--both banks of the +Garigliano covered with vineyards--the _fragor aquarum_, alluded to by +Atticus in his work _De Legibus_--the coolness, the rapidity and +ultramarine hue of the Fibrenus--the noise of its cataracts--the rich +turquoise color of the Liris--the minor Appennines round Arpino, crowned +with umbrageous oaks to the very summits--present scenery hardly +elsewhere to be equalled, certainly not to be surpassed, even in Italy." + +This description of an Italian landscape can hardly fail to charm the +imagination of the coldest reader; but after all, I cannot help +confessing to so inveterate a partiality for dear old England as to be +delighted with the compliment which Gray, the poet, pays to English +scenery when he prefers it to the scenery of Italy. "Mr. Walpole," +writes the poet from Italy, "says, our _memory_ sees more than our eyes +in this country. This is extremely true, since for _realities_ WINDSOR +or RICHMOND HILL is infinitely preferable to ALBANO or FRESCATI." + +Sir Walter Scott, with all his patriotic love for his own romantic land, +could not withhold his tribute to the loveliness of Richmond Hill,--its +"_unrivalled landscape_" its "_sea of verdure_." + + "They" (The Duke of Argyle and Jeanie Deans) "paused for a + moment on the brow of a hill, to gaze on the unrivalled + landscape it presented. A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and + intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves was + tenanted by numberless flocks and herds which seemed to wander + unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The + Thames, here turreted with villas, and there garlanded with + forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch + of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but + accessaries, and bore on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs + whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the + whole." _The Heart of Mid-Lothian_. + +It must of course be admitted that there are grander, more sublime, more +varied and extensive prospects in other countries, but it would be +difficult to persuade me that the richness of English verdure could be +surpassed or even equalled, or that any part of the world can exhibit +landscapes more truly _lovely_ and _loveable_, than those of England, or +more calculated to leave a deep and enduring impression upon the heart. +Mr. Kelsall speaks of an Italian sky "_uncovered by a single cloud_," +but every painter and poet knows how much variety and beauty of effect +are bestowed upon hill and plain and grove and river by passing clouds; +and even our over-hanging vapours remind us of the veil upon the cheek +of beauty; and ever as the sun uplifts the darkness the glory of the +landscape seems renewed and freshened. It would cheer the saddest heart +and send the blood dancing through the veins, to behold after a dull +misty dawn, the sun break out over Richmond Hill, and with one broad +light make the whole landscape smile; but I have been still more +interested in the prospect when on a cloudy day the whole "sea of +verdure" has been swayed to and fro into fresher life by the fitful +breeze, while the lights and shadows amidst the foliage and on the lawns +have been almost momentarily varied by the varying sky. These changes +fascinate the eye, keep the soul awake, and save the scenery from the +comparatively monotonous character of landscapes in less varying climes. +And for my own part, I cordially echo the sentiment of Wordsworth, who +when conversing with Mrs. Hemans about the scenery of the Lakes in the +North of England, observed: "I would not give up the mists that +_spiritualize_ our mountains for all the blue skies of Italy." + +Though Mrs. Stowe, the American authoress already quoted as one of the +admirers of England, duly appreciates the natural grandeur of her own +land, she was struck with admiration and delight at the aspect of our +English landscapes. Our trees, she observes, "are of an order of +nobility and they wear their crowns right kingly." "Leaving out of +account," she adds, "our _mammoth arboria_, the English Parks have trees +as fine and effective as ours, and when I say their trees are of an +order of nobility, I mean that they (the English) pay a reverence to +them such as their magnificence deserves." + +Walter Savage Landor, one of the most accomplished and most highly +endowed both by nature and by fortune of our living men of letters, has +done, or rather has tried to do, almost as much for his country in the +way of enriching its collection of noble trees as Evelyn himself. He +laid out £70,000 on the improvement of an estate in Monmouthshire, where +he planted and fenced half a million of trees, and had a million more +ready to plant, when the conduct of some of his tenants, who spitefully +uprooted them and destroyed the whole plantation, so disgusted him with +the place, that he razed to the ground the house which had cost him +£8,000, and left the country. He then purchased a beautiful estate in +Italy, which is still in possession of his family. He himself has long +since returned to his native land. Landor loves Italy, but he loves +England better. In one of his _Imaginary Conversations_ he tells an +Italian nobleman: + +"The English are more zealous of introducing new fruits, shrubs and +plants, than other nations; you Italians are less so than any civilized +one. Better fruit is eaten in Scotland than in the most fertile and +cultivated parts of your peninsula. _As for flowers, there is a greater +variety in the worst of our fields than in the best of your gardens._ As +for shrubs, I have rarely seen a lilac, a laburnum, a mezereon, in any +of them, and yet they flourish before almost every cottage in our +poorest villages." + +"We wonder in England, when we hear it related by travellers, that +peaches in Italy are left under the trees for swine; but, when we +ourselves come into the country, our wonder is rather that the swine do +not leave them for animals less nice." + +Landor acknowledges that he has eaten better pears and cherries in Italy +than in England, but that all the other kinds of fruitage in Italy +appeared to him unfit for dessert. + +The most celebrated of the private estates of the present day in England +is Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire. The mansion, called +the Palace of the Peak, is considered one of the most splendid +residences in the land. The grounds are truly beautiful and most +carefully attended to. The elaborate waterworks are perhaps not in the +severest taste. Some of them are but costly puerilities. There is a +water-work in the form of a tree that sends a shower from every branch +on the unwary visitor, and there are snakes that spit forth jets upon +him as he retires. This is silly trifling: but ill adapted to interest +those who have passed their teens; and not at all an agreeable sort of +hospitality in a climate like that of England. It is in the style of the +water-works at Versailles, where wooden soldiers shoot from their +muskets vollies of water at the spectators.[032] + +It was an old English custom on certain occasions to sprinkle water over +the company at a grand entertainment. Bacon, in his Essay on Masques, +seems to object to getting drenched, when he observes that "some sweet +odours suddenly coming forth, _without any drops falling_, are in such +a company as there is steam and heat, things of great pleasure and +refreshment." It was a custom also of the ancient Greeks and Romans to +sprinkle their guests with fragrant waters. The Gascons had once the +same taste: "At times," says Montaigne, "from the bottom of the stage, +they caused sweet-scented waters to spout upwards and dart their thread +to such a prodigious height, as to sprinkle and perfume the vast +multitudes of spectators." The Native gentry of India always slightly +sprinkle their visitors with rose-water. It is flung from a small silver +utensil tapering off into a sort of upright spout with a pierced top in +the fashion of that part of a watering pot which English gardeners call +the _rose_. + +The finest of the water-works at Chatsworth is one called the _Emperor +Fountain_ which throws up a jet 267 feet high. This height exceeds that +of any fountain in Europe. There is a vast Conservatory on the estate, +built of glass by Sir Joseph Paxton, who designed and constructed the +Crystal Palace. His experience in the building of conservatories no +doubt suggested to him the idea of the splendid glass edifice in Hyde +Park. The conservatory at Chatsworth required 70,000 square feet of +glass. Four miles of iron tubing are used in heating the building. There +is a broad carriage way running right through the centre of the +conservatory.[033] This conservatory is peculiarly rich in exotic plants +of all kinds, collected at an enormous cost. This most princely estate, +contrasted with the little cottages and cottage-gardens in the +neighbourhood, suggested to Wordsworth the following sonnet. + +CHATSWORTH. + + Chatsworth! thy stately mansion, and the pride + Of thy domain, strange contrast do present + To house and home in many a craggy tent + Of the wild Peak, where new born waters glide + Through fields whose thrifty occupants abide + As in a dear and chosen banishment + With every semblance of entire content; + So kind is simple Nature, fairly tried! + Yet he whose heart in childhood gave his troth + To pastoral dales, then set with modest farms, + May learn, if judgment strengthen with his growth, + That not for Fancy only, pomp hath charms; + And, strenuous to protect from lawless harms + The extremes of favored life, may honour both. + +The two noblest of modern public gardens in England are those at +Kensington and Kew. Kensington Gardens were begun by King William the +III, but were originally only twenty-six acres in extent. Queen Anne +added thirty acres more. The grounds were laid out by the well-known +garden-designers, London and Wise.[034] Queen Caroline, who formed the +Serpentine River by connecting several detached pieces of water into +one, and set the example of a picturesque deviation from the straight +line,[035] added from Hyde Park no less than three hundred acres which +were laid out by Bridgeman. This was a great boon to the Londoners. +Horace Walpole says that Queen Caroline at first proposed to shut up St. +James's Park and convert it into a private garden for herself, but when +she asked Sir Robert Walpole what it would cost, he answered--"Only +three Crowns." This changed her intentions. + +The reader of Pope will remember an allusion to the famous Ring in Hyde +Park. The fair Belinda was sometimes attended there by her guardian +Sylphs: + + The light militia of the lower sky. + +They guarded her from 'the white-gloved beaux,' + + These though unseen are ever on the wing, + Hang o'er the box, _and hover o'er the Ring_. + +It was here that the gallantries of the "Merry Monarch" were but too +often exhibited to his people. "After dinner," says the right garrulous +Pepys in his journal, "to Hyde Parke; at the Parke was the King, and in +another Coach, Lady Castlemaine, they greeting one another at every +turn." + +The Gardens at Kew "Imperial Kew," as Darwin styles it, are the richest +in the world. They consist of one hundred and seventy acres. They were +once private gardens, and were long in the possession of Royalty, until +the accession of Queen Victoria, who opened the gardens to the public +and placed them under the control of the Commissioners of Her Majesty's +Woods and Forests, "with a view of rendering them available to the +general good." + + She hath left you all her walks, + Her private arbors and new planted orchards + On this side Tiber. She hath left them you + And to your heirs for ever; common pleasures + To walk abroad and recreate yourselves. + +They contain a large Palm-house built in 1848.[036] The extent of glass +for covering the building is said to be 360,000 square feet. My +Mahomedan readers in Hindostan, (I hope they will be numerous,) will +perhaps be pleased to hear that there is an ornamental mosque in these +gardens. On each of the doors of this mosque is an Arabic inscription in +golden characters, taken from the Koran. The Arabic has been thus +translated:-- + + LET THERE BE NO FORCE IN RELIGION. + THERE IS NO OTHER GOD EXCEPT THE DEITY. + MAKE NOT ANY LIKENESS UNTO GOD. + +The first sentence of the translation is rather ambiguously worded. The +sentiment has even an impious air: an apparent meaning very different +from that which was intended. Of course the original text _means_, +though the English translator has not expressed that meaning--"Let there +be no force _used_ in religion." + +When William Cobbett was a boy of eleven years of age he worked in the +garden of the Bishop of Winchester at Farnham. Having heard much of Kew +gardens he resolved to change his locality and his master. He started +off for Kew, a distance of about thirty miles, with only thirteen pence +in his pocket. The head gardener at Kew at once engaged his services. A +few days after, George the Fourth, then Prince of Wales, saw the boy +sweeping the lawns, and laughed heartily at his blue smock frock and +long red knotted garters. But the poor gardener's boy became a public +writer, whose productions were not exactly calculated to excite the +merriment of princes. + +Most poets have a painter's eye for the disposition of forms and +colours. Kent's practice as a painter no doubt helped to make him what +he was as a landscape-gardener. When an architect was consulted about +laying out the grounds at Blenheim he replied, "you must send for a +landscape-painter:" he might have added--"_or a poet_." + +Our late Laureate, William Wordsworth, exhibited great taste in his +small garden at Rydal Mount. He said of himself--very truly though not +very modestly perhaps,--but modesty was never Wordsworth's +weakness--that nature seemed to have fitted him for three callings--that +of the poet, the critic on works of art, and the landscape-gardener. +The poet's nest--(Mrs. Hemans calls it 'a lovely cottage-like +building'[037])--is almost hidden in a rich profusion of roses and ivy +and jessamine and virginia-creeper. Wordsworth, though he passionately +admired the shapes and hues of flowers, knew nothing of their fragrance. +In this respect knowledge at one entrance was quite shut out. He had +possessed at no time of his life the sense of smell. To make up for this +deficiency, he is said (by De Quincey) to have had "a peculiar depth of +organic sensibility of form and color." + +Mr. Justice Coleridge tells us that Wordsworth dealt with +shrubs, flower-beds and lawns with the readiness of a practised +landscape-gardener, and that it was curious to observe how he had imparted +a portion of his taste to his servant, James Dixon. In fact, honest James +regarded himself as a sort of Arbiter Elegantiarum. The master and his +servant often discussed together a question of taste. Wordsworth +communicated to Mr. Justice Coleridge how "he and James" were once "in a +puzzle" about certain discolored spots upon the lawn. "Cover them with +soap-lees," said the master. "That will make the green there darker than +the rest," said the gardener. "Then we must cover the whole." "That will +not do," objects the gardener, "with reference to the little lawn to +which you pass from this." "Cover that," said the poet. "You will then," +replied the gardener, "have an unpleasant contrast with the foliage +surrounding it." + +Pope too had communicated to his gardener at Twickenham something of his +own taste. The man, long after his master's death, in reference to the +training of the branches of plants, used to talk of their being made to +hang "_something poetical_". + +It would have grieved Shakespeare and Pope and Shenstone had they +anticipated the neglect or destruction of their beloved retreats. +Wordsworth said, "I often ask myself what will become of Rydal Mount +after our day. Will the old walls and steps remain in front of the house +and about the grounds, or will they be swept away with all the beautiful +mosses and ferns and wild geraniums and other flowers which their rude +construction suffered and encouraged to grow among them. This little +wild flower, _Poor Robin_, is here constantly courting my attention and +exciting what may be called a domestic interest in the varying aspect of +its stalks and leaves and flowers." I hope no Englishman meditating to +reside on the grounds now sacred to the memory of a national poet will +ever forget these words of the poet or treat his cottage and garden at +Rydal Mount as some of Pope's countrymen have treated the house and +grounds at Twickenham.[038] It would be sad indeed to hear, after this, +that any one had refused to spare the _Poor Robins_ and _wild geraniums_ +of Rydal Mount. Miss Jewsbury has a poem descriptive of "the Poet's +Home." I must give the first stanza:-- + +WORDSWORTH'S COTTAGE. + + Low and white, yet scarcely seen + Are its walls of mantling green; + Not a window lets in light + But through flowers clustering bright, + Not a glance may wander there + But it falls on something fair; + Garden choice and fairy mound + Only that no elves are found; + Winding walk and sheltered nook + For student grave and graver book, + Or a bird-like bower perchance + Fit for maiden and romance. + +Another lady-poet has poured forth in verse her admiration of + +THE RESIDENCE OF WORDSWORTH. + + Not for the glory on their heads + Those stately hill-tops wear, + Although the summer sunset sheds + Its constant crimson there: + Not for the gleaming lights that break + The purple of the twilight lake, + Half dusky and half fair, + Does that sweet valley seem to be + A sacred place on earth to me. + + The influence of a moral spell + Is found around the scene, + Giving new shadows to the dell, + New verdure to the green. + With every mountain-top is wrought + The presence of associate thought, + A music that has been; + Calling that loveliness to life, + With which the inward world is rife. + + His home--our English poet's home-- + Amid these hills is made; + Here, with the morning, hath he come, + There, with the night delayed. + On all things is his memory cast, + For every place wherein he past, + Is with his mind arrayed, + That, wandering in a summer hour, + Asked wisdom of the leaf and flower. + +L.E.L. + +The cottage and garden of the poet are not only picturesque and +delightful in themselves, but from their position in the midst of some +of the finest scenery of England. One of the writers in the book +entitled '_The Land we Live in_' observes that the bard of the mountains +and the lakes could not have found a more fitting habitation had the +whole land been before him, where to choose his place of rest. "Snugly +sheltered by the mountains, embowered among trees, and having in itself +prospects of surpassing beauty, it also lies in the midst of the very +noblest objects in the district, and in one of the happiest social +positions. The grounds are delightful in every respect; but one +view--that from the terrace of moss-like grass--is, to our thinking, the +most exquisitely graceful in all this land of beauty. It embraces the +whole valley of Windermere, with hills on either side softened into +perfect loveliness." + +Eustace, the Italian tourist, seems inclined to deprive the English of +the honor of being the first cultivators of the natural style in +gardening, and thinks that it was borrowed not from Milton but from +Tasso. I suppose that most genuine poets, in all ages and in all +countries, when they give full play to the imagination, have glimpses of +the truly natural in the arts. The reader will probably be glad to renew +his acquaintance with Tasso's description of the garden of Armida. I +shall give the good old version of Edward Fairfax from the edition of +1687. Fairfax was a true poet and wrote musically at a time when +sweetness of versification was not so much aimed at as in a later day. +Waller confessed that he owed the smoothness of his verse to the example +of Fairfax, who, as Warton observes, "well vowelled his lines." + +THE GARDEN OF ARMIDA. + + When they had passed all those troubled ways, + The Garden sweet spread forth her green to shew; + The moving crystal from the fountains plays; + Fair trees, high plants, strange herbs and flowerets new, + Sunshiny hills, vales hid from Phoebus' rays, + Groves, arbours, mossie caves at once they view, + And that which beauty most, most wonder brought, + No where appear'd the Art which all this wrought. + + So with the rude the polished mingled was, + That natural seem'd all and every part, + Nature would craft in counterfeiting pass, + And imitate her imitator Art: + Mild was the air, the skies were clear as glass, + The trees no whirlwind felt, nor tempest's smart, + But ere the fruit drop off, the blossom comes, + This springs, that falls, that ripeneth and this blooms. + + The leaves upon the self-same bough did hide, + Beside the young, the old and ripened fig, + Here fruit was green, there ripe with vermeil side; + The apples new and old grew on one twig, + The fruitful vine her arms spread high and wide, + That bended underneath their clusters big; + The grapes were tender here, hard, young and sour, + There purple ripe, and nectar sweet forth pour. + + The joyous birds, hid under green-wood shade, + Sung merry notes on every branch and bow, + The wind that in the leaves and waters plaid + With murmer sweet, now sung and whistled now; + Ceaséd the birds, the wind loud answer made: + And while they sung, it rumbled soft and low; + Thus were it hap or cunning, chance or art, + The wind in this strange musick bore his part. + + With party-coloured plumes and purple bill, + A wondrous bird among the rest there flew, + That in plain speech sung love-lays loud and shrill, + Her leden was like humane language true; + So much she talkt, and with such wit and skill, + That strange it seeméd how much good she knew; + Her feathered fellows all stood hush to hear, + Dumb was the wind, the waters silent were. + + The gently budding rose (quoth she) behold, + That first scant peeping forth with virgin beams, + Half ope, half shut, her beauties doth upfold + In their dear leaves, and less seen, fairer seems, + And after spreads them forth more broad and bold, + Then languisheth and dies in last extreams, + Nor seems the same, that deckéd bed and bower + Of many a lady late, and paramour. + + So, in the passing of a day, doth pass + The bud and blossom of the life of man, + Nor ere doth flourish more, but like the grass + Cut down, becometh wither'd, pale and wan: + O gather then the rose while time thou hast, + Short is the day, done when it scant began; + Gather the rose of love, while yet thou may'st + Loving be lov'd; embracing, be embrac'd. + + He ceas'd, and as approving all he spoke, + The quire of birds their heav'nly tunes renew, + The turtles sigh'd, and sighs with kisses broke, + The fowls to shades unseen, by pairs withdrew; + It seem'd the laurel chaste, and stubborn oak, + And all the gentle trees on earth that grew, + It seem'd the land, the sea, and heav'n above, + All breath'd out fancy sweet, and sigh'd out love. + +_Godfrey of Bulloigne_ + +I must place near the garden of Armida, Ariosto's garden of Alcina. +"Ariosto," says Leigh Hunt, "cared for none of the pleasures of the +great, except building, and was content in Cowley's fashion, with "a +small house in a large garden." He loved gardening better than he +understood it, was always shifting his plants, and destroying the seeds, +out of impatience to see them germinate. He was rejoicing once on the +coming up of some "capers" which he had been visiting every day, to see +how they got on, when it turned out that his capers were elder trees!" + +THE GARDEN OF ALCINA. + + 'A more delightful place, wherever hurled, + Through the whole air, Rogero had not found; + And had he ranged the universal world, + Would not have seen a lovelier in his round, + Than that, where, wheeling wide, the courser furled + His spreading wings, and lighted on the ground + Mid cultivated plain, delicious hill, + Moist meadow, shady bank, and crystal rill; + + 'Small thickets, with the scented laurel gay, + Cedar, and orange, full of fruit and flower, + Myrtle and palm, with interwoven spray, + Pleached in mixed modes, all lovely, form a bower; + And, breaking with their shade the scorching ray, + Make a cool shelter from the noon-tide hour. + And nightingales among those branches wing + Their flight, and safely amorous descants sing. + + 'Amid red roses and white lilies _there_, + Which the soft breezes freshen as they fly, + Secure the cony haunts, and timid hare, + And stag, with branching forehead broad and high. + These, fearless of the hunter's dart or snare, + Feed at their ease, or ruminating lie; + While, swarming in those wilds, from tuft or steep, + Dun deer or nimble goat disporting leap.' + +_Rose's Orlando Furioso_. + +Spenser's description of the garden of Adonis is too long to give +entire, but I shall quote a few stanzas. The old story on which Spenser +founds his description is told with many variations of circumstance and +meaning; but we need not quit the pages of the Faerie Queene to lose +ourselves amidst obscure mythologies. We have too much of these indeed +even in Spenser's own version of the fable. + +THE GARDEN OF ADONIS. + + Great enimy to it, and all the rest + That in the Gardin of Adonis springs, + Is wicked Time; who with his scythe addrest + Does mow the flowring herbes and goodly things, + And all their glory to the ground downe flings, + Where they do wither and are fowly mard + He flyes about, and with his flaggy wings + Beates downe both leaves and buds without regard, + Ne ever pitty may relent his malice hard. + + * * * * * + + But were it not that Time their troubler is, + All that in this delightful gardin growes + Should happy bee, and have immortall blis: + For here all plenty and all pleasure flowes; + And sweete Love gentle fitts emongst them throwes, + Without fell rancor or fond gealosy. + Franckly each paramour his leman knowes, + Each bird his mate; ne any does envy + Their goodly meriment and gay felicity. + + There is continual spring, and harvest there + Continuall, both meeting at one tyme: + For both the boughes doe laughing blossoms beare. + And with fresh colours decke the wanton pryme, + And eke attonce the heavy trees they clyme, + Which seeme to labour under their fruites lode: + The whiles the ioyous birdes make their pastyme + Emongst the shady leaves, their sweet abode, + And their trew loves without suspition tell abrode. + + Right in the middest of that Paradise + There stood a stately mount, on whose round top + A gloomy grove of mirtle trees did rise, + Whose shady boughes sharp steele did never lop, + Nor wicked beastes their tender buds did crop, + But like a girlond compasséd the hight, + And from their fruitfull sydes sweet gum did drop, + That all the ground, with pretious deaw bedight, + Threw forth most dainty odours and most sweet delight. + + And in the thickest covert of that shade + There was a pleasaunt arber, not by art + But of the trees owne inclination made, + Which knitting their rancke braunches part to part, + With wanton yvie-twine entrayld athwart, + And eglantine and caprifole emong, + Fashioned above within their inmost part, + That neither Phoebus beams could through them throng, + Nor Aeolus sharp blast could worke them any wrong. + + And all about grew every sort of flowre, + To which sad lovers were transformde of yore, + Fresh Hyacinthus, Phoebus paramoure + And dearest love; + Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watry shore; + Sad Amaranthus, made a flowre but late, + Sad Amaranthus, in whose purple gore + Me seemes I see Amintas wretched fate, + To whom sweet poet's verse hath given endlesse date. + +_Fairie Queene, Book III. Canto VI_. + +I must here give a few stanzas from Spenser's description of the _Bower +of Bliss_ + + In which whatever in this worldly state + Is sweet and pleasing unto living sense, + Or that may dayntiest fantasy aggrate + Was pouréd forth with pleantiful dispence. + +The English poet in his Fairie Queene has borrowed a great deal from +Tasso and Ariosto, but generally speaking, his borrowings, like those of +most true poets, are improvements upon the original. + +THE BOWER OF BLISS. + + There the most daintie paradise on ground + Itself doth offer to his sober eye, + In which all pleasures plenteously abownd, + And none does others happinesse envye; + The painted flowres; the trees upshooting hye; + The dales for shade; the hilles for breathing-space; + The trembling groves; the christall running by; + And that which all faire workes doth most aggrace, + The art, which all that wrought, appearéd in no place. + + One would have thought, (so cunningly the rude[039] + And scornéd partes were mingled with the fine,) + That Nature had for wantonesse ensude + Art, and that Art at Nature did repine; + So striving each th' other to undermine, + Each did the others worke more beautify; + So diff'ring both in willes agreed in fine; + So all agreed, through sweete diversity, + This Gardin to adorn with all variety. + + And in the midst of all a fountaine stood, + Of richest substance that on earth might bee, + So pure and shiny that the silver flood + Through every channel running one might see; + Most goodly it with curious ymageree + Was over-wrought, and shapes of naked boyes, + Of which some seemed with lively iollitee + To fly about, playing their wanton toyes, + Whylest others did themselves embay in liquid ioyes. + + * * * * * + + Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, + Of all that mote delight a daintie eare, + Such as attonce might not on living ground, + Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: + Right hard it was for wight which did it heare, + To read what manner musicke that mote bee; + For all that pleasing is to living eare + Was there consorted in one harmonee; + Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters all agree: + + The ioyous birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade, + Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet; + Th' angelicall soft trembling voyces made + To th' instruments divine respondence meet; + The silver-sounding instruments did meet + With the base murmure of the waters fall; + The waters fall with difference discreet, + Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; + The gentle warbling wind low answeréd to all. + +_The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto XII._ + +Every school-boy has heard of the gardens of the Hesperides. The story +is told in many different ways. According to some accounts, the +Hesperides, the daughters of Hesperus, were appointed to keep charge of +the tree of golden apples which Jupiter presented to Juno on their +wedding day. A hundred-headed dragon that never slept, (the offspring of +Typhon,) couched at the foot of the tree. It was one of the twelve +labors of Hercules to obtain possession of some of these apples. He slew +the dragon and gathered three golden apples. The gardens, according to +some authorities, were situated near Mount Atlas. + +Shakespeare seems to have taken _Hesperides_ to be the name of the +garden instead of that of its fair keepers. Even the learned Milton in +his _Paradise Regained_, (Book II) talks of _the ladies of the +Hesperides_, and appears to make the word Hesperides synonymous with +"Hesperian gardens." Bishop Newton, in a foot-note to the passage in +"Paradise Regained," asks, "What are the Hesperides famous for, but the +gardens and orchards which _they had_ bearing golden fruit in the +western Isles of Africa." Perhaps after all there may be some good +authority in favor of extending the names of the nymphs to the garden +itself. Malone, while condemning Shakespeare's use of the words as +inaccurate, acknowledges that other poets have used it in the same way, +and quotes as an instance, the following lines from Robert Greene:-- + + Shew thee the tree, leaved with refined gold, + Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat, + That watched _the garden_ called the _Hesperides_. + +_Robert Greene_. + + For valour is not love a Hercules, + Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? + +_Love's Labour Lost_. + + Before thee stands this fair Hesperides, + With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched + For death-like dragons here affright thee hard. + +_Pericles, Prince of Tyre_. + +Milton, after the fourth line of his Comus, had originally inserted, in +his manuscript draft of the poem, the following description of the +garden of the Hesperides. + +THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES + + Amid the Hesperian gardens, on whose banks + Bedewed with nectar and celestial songs + Eternal roses grow, and hyacinth, + And fruits of golden rind, on whose fair tree + The scaly harnessed dragon ever keeps + His uninchanted eye, around the verge + And sacred limits of this blissful Isle + The jealous ocean that old river winds + His far extended aims, till with steep fall + Half his waste flood the wide Atlantic fills; + And half the slow unfathomed Stygian pool + But soft, I was not sent to court your wonder + With distant worlds and strange removéd climes + Yet thence I come and oft from thence behold + The smoke and stir of this dim narrow spot + +Milton subsequently drew his pen through these lines, for what reason is +not known. Bishop Newton observes, that this passage, saved from +intended destruction, may serve as a specimen of the truth of the +observation that + + Poets lose half the praise they should have got + Could it be known what they discreetly blot. + +_Waller_. + +As I have quoted in an earlier page some unfavorable allusions to +Homer's description of a Grecian garden, it will be but fair to follow +up Milton's picture of Paradise, and Tasso's garden of Armida, and +Ariosto's Garden of Alcina, and Spenser's Garden of Adonis and his Bower +of Bliss, with Homer's description of the Garden of Alcinous. Minerva +tells Ulysses that the Royal mansion to which the garden of Alcinous is +attached is of such conspicuous grandeur and so generally known, that +any child might lead him to it; + + For Phoeacia's sons + Possess not houses equalling in aught + The mansion of Alcinous, the king. + +I shall give Cowper's version, because it may be less familiar to the +reader than Pope's, which is in every one's hand. + +THE GARDEN OF ALCINOUS + + Without the court, and to the gates adjoined + A spacious garden lay, fenced all around, + Secure, four acres measuring complete, + There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree, + Pomgranate, pear, the apple blushing bright, + The honeyed fig, and unctuous olive smooth. + Those fruits, nor winter's cold nor summer's heat + Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang + Perennial, while unceasing zephyr breathes + Gently on all, enlarging these, and those + Maturing genial; in an endless course. + Pears after pears to full dimensions swell, + Figs follow figs, grapes clustering grow again + Where clusters grew, and (every apple stripped) + The boughs soon tempt the gatherer as before. + There too, well rooted, and of fruit profuse, + His vineyard grows; part, wide extended, basks + In the sun's beams; the arid level glows; + In part they gather, and in part they tread + The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes + Here put their blossoms forth, there gather fast + Their blackness. On the garden's verge extreme + Flowers of all hues[040] smile all the year, arranged + With neatest art judicious, and amid + The lovely scene two fountains welling forth, + One visits, into every part diffused, + The garden-ground, the other soft beneath + The threshold steals into the palace court + Whence every citizen his vase supplies. + +_Homer's Odyssey, Book VII_. + +The mode of watering the garden-ground, and the use made of the water by +the public-- + + Whence every citizen his vase supplies-- + +can hardly fail to remind Indian and Anglo-Indian readers of a Hindu +gentleman's garden in Bengal. + +Pope first published in the _Guardian_ his own version of the account of +the garden of Alcinous and subsequently gave it a place in his entire +translation of Homer. In introducing the readers of the _Guardian_ to +the garden of Alcinous he observes that "the two most celebrated wits of +the world have each left us a particular picture of a garden; wherein +those great masters, being wholly unconfined and pointing at pleasure, +may be thought to have given a full idea of what seemed most excellent +in that way. These (one may observe) consist entirely of the useful part +of horticulture, fruit trees, herbs, waters, &c. The pieces I am +speaking of are Virgil's account of the garden of the old Corycian, and +Homer's of that of Alcinous. The first of these is already known to the +English reader, by the excellent versions of Mr. Dryden and Mr. +Addison." + +I do not think our present landscape-gardeners, or parterre-gardeners or +even our fruit or kitchen-gardeners can be much enchanted with Virgil's +ideal of a garden, but here it is, as "done into English," by John +Dryden, who describes the Roman Poet as "a profound naturalist," and "_a +curious Florist_." + +THE GARDEN OF THE OLD CORYCIAN. + + I chanc'd an old Corycian swain to know, + Lord of few acres, and those barren too, + Unfit for sheep or vines, and more unfit to sow: + Yet, lab'ring well his little spot of ground, + Some scatt'ring pot-herbs here and there he found, + Which, cultivated with his daily care + And bruis'd with vervain, were his frugal fare. + With wholesome poppy-flow'rs, to mend his homely board: + For, late returning home, he supp'd at ease, + And wisely deem'd the wealth of monarchs less: + The little of his own, because his own, did please. + To quit his care, he gather'd, first of all, + In spring the roses, apples in the fall: + And, when cold winter split the rocks in twain, + And ice the running rivers did restrain, + He stripp'd the bear's foot of its leafy growth, + And, calling western winds, accus'd the spring of sloth + He therefore first among the swains was found + To reap the product of his labour'd ground, + And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crown'd + His limes were first in flow'rs, his lofty pines, + With friendly shade, secur'd his tender vines. + For ev'ry bloom his trees in spring afford, + An autumn apple was by tale restor'd + He knew to rank his elms in even rows, + For fruit the grafted pear tree to dispose, + And tame to plums the sourness of the sloes + With spreading planes he made a cool retreat, + To shade good fellows from the summer's heat + +_Virgil's Georgics, Book IV_. + +An excellent Scottish poet--Allan Ramsay--a true and unaffected +describer of rural life and scenery--seems to have had as great a +dislike to topiary gardens, and quite as earnest a love of nature, as +any of the best Italian poets. The author of the "Gentle Shepherd" tells +us in the following lines what sort of garden most pleased his fancy. + +ALLAN RAMSAY'S GARDEN. + + I love the garden wild and wide, + Where oaks have plum-trees by their side, + Where woodbines and the twisting vine + Clip round the pear tree and the pine + Where mixed jonquils and gowans grow + And roses midst rank clover grow + Upon a bank of a clear strand, + In wrimplings made by Nature's hand + Though docks and brambles here and there + May sometimes cheat the gardener's care, + _Yet this to me is Paradise_, + _Compared with prim cut plots and nice_, + _Where Nature has to Act resigned,_ + _Till all looks mean, stiff and confined_. + +I cannot say that I should wish to see forest trees and docks and +brambles in garden borders. Honest Allan here runs a little into the +extreme, as men are apt enough to do, when they try to get as far as +possible from the side advocated by an opposite party. + +I shall now exhibit two paintings of bowers. I begin with one from +Spenser. + +A BOWER + + And over him Art stryving to compayre + With Nature did an arber greene dispied[041] + Framéd of wanton yvie, flouring, fayre, + Through which the fragrant eglantine did spred + His prickling armes, entrayld with roses red, + Which daintie odours round about them threw + And all within with flowers was garnishéd + That, when myld Zephyrus emongst them blew, + Did breathe out bounteous smels, and painted colors shew + + And fast beside these trickled softly downe + A gentle streame, whose murmuring wave did play + Emongst the pumy stones, and made a sowne, + To lull him soft asleepe that by it lay + The wearie traveiler wandring that way, + Therein did often quench his thirsty head + And then by it his wearie limbes display, + (Whiles creeping slomber made him to forget + His former payne,) and wypt away his toilsom sweat. + + And on the other syde a pleasaunt grove + Was shott up high, full of the stately tree + That dedicated is t'Olympick Iove, + And to his son Alcides,[042] whenas hee + In Nemus gaynéd goodly victoree + Theirin the merry birds of every sorte + Chaunted alowd their cheerful harmonee, + And made emongst themselves a sweete consórt + That quickned the dull spright with musicall comfórt. + +_Fairie Queene, Book 2 Cant. 5 Stanzas 29, 30 and 31._ + +Here is a sweet picture of a "shady lodge" from the hand of Milton. + +EVE'S NUPTIAL BOWER. + + Thus talking, hand in hand alone they pass'd + On to their blissful bower. It was a place + Chosen by the sov'reign Planter, when he framed + All things to man's delightful use, the roof + Of thickest covert was inwoven shade, + Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew + Of firm and fragrant leaf, on either side + Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub, + Fenced up the verdant wall, each beauteous flower + Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine, + Rear'd high their flourish'd heads between, and wrought + Mosaic, under foot the violet, + Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay + Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone + Of costliest emblem other creature here, + Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none, + Such was their awe of man. In shadier bower + More sacred and sequester'd, though but feign'd, + Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph + Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess, + With flowers, garlands, and sweet smelling herbs, + Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed, + And heavenly quires the hymenean sung + +I have already quoted from Leigh Hunt's "Stories from the Italian poets" +an amusing anecdote illustrative of Ariosto's ignorance of botany. But +even in these days when all sorts of sciences are forced upon all sorts +of students, we often meet with persons of considerable sagacity and +much information of a different kind who are marvellously ignorant of +the vegetable world. + +In the just published Memoirs of the late James Montgomery, of +Sheffield, it is recorded that the poet and his brother Robert, a +tradesman at Woolwich, (not Robert Montgomery, the author of 'Satan,' +&c.) were one day walking together, when the trader seeing a field of +flax in full flower, asked the poet what sort of corn it was. "Such corn +as your shirt is made of," was the reply. "But Robert," observes a +writer in the _Athenaeum_, "need not be ashamed of his simplicity. +Rousseau, naturalist as he was, could hardly tell one berry from +another, and three of our greatest wits disputing in the field whether +the crop growing there was rye, barley, or oats, were set right by a +clown, who truly pronounced it wheat." + +Men of genius who have concentrated all their powers on some one +favorite profession or pursuit are often thus triumphed over by the +vulgar, whose eyes are more observant of the familiar objects and +details of daily life and of the scenes around them. Wordsworth and +Coleridge, on one occasion, after a long drive, and in the absence of a +groom, endeavored to relieve the tired horse of its harness. After +torturing the poor animal's neck and endangering its eyes by their +clumsy and vain attempts to slip off the collar, they at last gave up +the matter in despair. They felt convinced that the horse's head must +have swollen since the collar was put on. At last a servant-girl beheld +their perplexity. "La, masters," she exclaimed, "you dont set about it +the right way." She then seized hold of the collar, turned it broad end +up, and slipped it off in a second. The mystery that had puzzled two of +the finest intellects of their time was a very simple matter indeed to a +country wench who had perhaps never heard that England possessed a +Shakespeare. + +James Montgomery was a great lover of flowers, and few of our English +poets have written about the family of Flora, the sweet wife of Zephyr, +in a more genial spirit. He used to regret that the old Floral games and +processions on May-day and other holidays had gone out of fashion. +Southey tells us that in George the First's reign a grand Florist's +Feast was held at Bethnall Green, and that a carnation named after his +Majesty was _King of the Year_. The Stewards were dressed with laurel +leaves and flowers. They carried gilded staves. Ninety cultivators +followed in procession to the sound of music, each bearing his own +flowers before him. All elegant customs of this nature have fallen into +desuetude in England, though many of them are still kept up in other +parts of Europe. + +Chaucer who dearly loved all images associated with the open air and the +dewy fields and bright mornings and radiant flowers makes the gentle +Emily, + + That fairer was to seene + Than is the lily upon his stalkie greene, + +rise early and do honor to the birth of May-day. All things now seem to +breathe of hope and joy. + + Though long hath been + The trance of Nature on the naked bier + Where ruthless Winter mocked her slumbers drear + And rent with icy hand her robes of green, + That trance is brightly broken! Glossy trees, + Resplendent meads and variegated flowers + Flash in the sun and flutter in the breeze + And now with dreaming eye the poet sees + Fair shapes of pleasure haunt romantic bowers, + And laughing streamlets chase the flying hours. + +D.L.R. + +The great describer of our Lost Paradise did not disdain to sing a + +SONG ON MAY-MORNING. + + Now the bright Morning star, Day's harbinger, + Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her + The flowery May, who from her green lap throws + The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose + Hail bounteous-May, that dost inspire + Mirth and youth and warm desire; + Woods and groves are of thy dressing, + Hill and dale do boast thy blessing. + Thus we salute thee with our early song, + And welcome thee and wish thee long. + +Nor did the Poet of the World, William Shakespeare, hesitate to + + Do observance to a morn of May. + +He makes one of his characters (in _King Henry VIII_.) complain that it +is as impossible to keep certain persons quiet on an ordinary day, as it +is to make them sleep on May-day--once the time of universal merriment-- +when every one was wont "_to put himself into triumph_." + + 'Tis as much impossible, + Unless we sweep 'em from the doors with cannons + To scatter 'em, _as 'tis to make 'em sleep + On May-day Morning_. + +Spenser duly celebrates, in his "Shepheard's Calender," + + Thilke mery moneth of May + When love-lads masken in fresh aray, + +when "all is yclad with pleasaunce, the ground with grasse, the woods +with greene leaves, and the bushes with bloosming buds." + + Sicker[043] this morowe, no longer agoe, + I saw a shole of shepeardes outgoe + With singing and shouting and iolly chere: + Before them yode[044] a lustre tabrere,[045] + That to the many a hornepype playd + Whereto they dauncen eche one with his mayd. + To see those folks make such iovysaunce, + Made my heart after the pype to daunce. + Tho[046] to the greene wood they speeden hem all + To fetchen home May with their musicall; + And home they bringen in a royall throne + Crowned as king; and his queene attone[047] + Was LADY FLORA. + +_Spenser_. + +This is the season when the birds seem almost intoxicated with delight +at the departure of the dismal and cold and cloudy days of winter and +the return of the warm sun. The music of these little May musicians +seems as fresh as the fragrance of the flowers. The Skylark is the +prince of British Singing-birds--the leader of their cheerful band. + +LINES TO A SKYLARK. + + Wanderer through the wilds of air! + Freely as an angel fair + Thou dost leave the solid earth, + Man is bound to from his birth + Scarce a cubit from the grass + Springs the foot of lightest lass-- + _Thou_ upon a cloud can'st leap, + And o'er broadest rivers sweep, + Climb up heaven's steepest height, + Fluttering, twinkling, in the light, + Soaring, singing, till, sweet bird, + Thou art neither seen nor heard, + Lost in azure fields afar + Like a distance hidden star, + That alone for angels bright + Breathes its music, sheds its light + + Warbler of the morning's mirth! + When the gray mists rise from earth, + And the round dews on each spray + Glitter in the golden ray, + And thy wild notes, sweet though high, + Fill the wide cerulean, sky, + Is there human heart or brain + Can resist thy merry strain? + + But not always soaring high, + Making man up turn his eye + Just to learn what shape of love, + Raineth music from above,-- + All the sunny cloudlets fair + Floating on the azure air, + All the glories of the sky + Thou leavest unreluctantly, + Silently with happy breast + To drop into thy lowly nest. + + Though the frame of man must be + Bound to earth, the soul is free, + But that freedom oft doth bring + Discontent and sorrowing. + Oh! that from each waking vision, + Gorgeous vista, gleam Elysian, + From ambition's dizzy height, + And from hope's illusive light, + Man, like thee, glad lark, could brook + Upon a low green spot to look, + And with home affections blest + Sink into as calm a nest! D.L.R. + +I brought from England to India two English skylarks. I thought they +would help to remind me of English meadows and keep alive many agreeable +home-associations. In crossing the desert they were carefully lashed on +the top of one of the vans, and in spite of the dreadful jolting and the +heat of the sun they sang the whole way until night-fall. It was +pleasant to hear English larks from rich clover fields singing so +joyously in the sandy waste. In crossing some fields between Cairo and +the Pyramids I was surprized and delighted with the songs of Egyptian +skylarks. Their notes were much the same as those of the English lark. +The lark of Bengal is about the size of a sparrow and has a poor weak +note. At this moment a lark from Caubul (larger than an English lark) is +doing his best to cheer me with his music. This noble bird, though so +far from his native fields, and shut up in his narrow prison, pours +forth his rapturous melody in an almost unbroken stream from dawn to +sunset. He allows no change of season to abate his minstrelsy, to any +observable degree, and seems equally happy and musical all the year +round. I have had him nearly two years, and though of course he must +moult his feathers yearly, I have not observed the change of plumage, +nor have I noticed that he has sung less at one period of the year than +another. One of my two English larks was stolen the very day I landed in +India, and the other soon died. The loss of an English lark is not to be +replaced in Calcutta, though almost every week, canaries, linnets, +gold-finches and bull-finches are sold at public auctions here. + +But I must return to my main subject.--The ancients used to keep the +great Feast of the goddess Flora on the 28th of April. It lasted till +the 3rd of May. The Floral Games of antiquity were unhappily debased by +indecent exhibitions; but they were not entirely devoid of better +characteristics.[048] Ovid describing the goddess Flora says that "while +she was speaking she breathed forth vernal roses from her mouth." The +same poet has represented her in her garden with the Florae gathering +flowers and the Graces making garlands of them. The British borrowed the +idea of this festival from the Romans. Some of our Kings and Queens used +'_to go a Maying_,' and to have feasts of wine and venison in the open +meadows or under the good green-wood. Prior says: + + Let one great day + To celebrate sports and floral play + Be set aside. + +But few people, in England, in these times, distinguish May-day from the +initial day of any other month of the twelve. I am old enough to +remember _Jack-in-the-Green_. Nor have I forgotten the cheerful +clatter--the brush-and-shovel music--of our little British +negroes--"innocent blacknesses," as Lamb calls them--the +chimney-sweepers,--a class now almost _swept away_ themselves by +_machinery_. One May-morning in the streets of London these +tinsel-decorated merry-makers with their sooty cheeks and black lips +lined with red, and staring eyes whose white seemed whiter still by +contrast with the darkness of their cases, and their ivory teeth kept +sound and brilliant with the professional powder, besieged George Selwyn +and his arm-in-arm companion, Lord Pembroke, for May-day boxes. Selwyn +making them a low bow, said, very solemnly "I have often heard of _the +sovereignty of the people_, and I suppose you are some of the young +princes in court mourning." + +My Native readers in Bengal can form no conception of the delight with +which the British people at home still hail the spring of the year, or +the deep interest which they take in all "the Seasons and their change"; +though they have dropped some of the oldest and most romantic of the +ceremonies once connected with them. If there were an annual fall of the +leaf in the groves of India, instead of an eternal summer, the natives +would discover how much the charms of the vegetable world are enhanced +by these vicissitudes, and how even winter itself can be made +delightful. My brother exiles will remember as long as life is in them, +how exquisite, in dear old England, is the enjoyment of a brisk morning +walk in the clear frosty air, and how cheering and cosy is the social +evening fire! Though a cold day in Calcutta is not exactly like a cold +day in London, it sometimes revives the remembrance of it. An Indian +winter, if winter it may be called, is indeed far less agreeable than a +winter in England, but it is not wholly without its pleasures. It is, at +all events, a grateful change--a welcome relief and refreshment after a +sultry summer or a _muggy_ rainy season. + +An Englishman, however, must always prefer the keener but more wholesome +frigidity of his own clime. There, the external gloom and bleakness of a +severe winter day enhance our in-door comforts, and we do not miss sunny +skies when greeted with sunny looks. If we then see no blooming flowers, +we see blooming faces. But as we have few domestic enjoyments in this +country--no social snugness,--no sweet seclusion--and as our houses are +as open as bird-cages,--and as we almost live in public and in the open +air--we have little comfort when compelled, with an enfeebled frame and +a morbidly sensitive cuticle, to remain at home on what an Anglo-Indian +Invalid calls a cold day, with an easterly wind whistling through every +room.[049] In our dear native country each season has its peculiar moral +or physical attractions. It is not easy to say which is the most +agreeable--its summer or its winter. Perhaps I must decide in favor of +the first. The memory of many a smiling summer day still flashes upon my +soul. If the whole of human life were like a fine English day in June, +we should cease to wish for "another and a better world." It is often +from dawn to sunset one revel of delight. How pleasantly, from the first +break of day, have I lain wide awake and traced the approach of the +breakfast hour by the increasing notes of birds and the advancing +sun-light on my curtains! A summer feeling, at such a time, would make my +heart dance within me, as I thought of the long, cheerful day to be +enjoyed, and planned some rural walk, or rustic entertainment. The ills +that flesh is heir to, if they occurred for a moment, appeared like idle +visions. They were inconceivable as real things. As I heard the lark +singing in "a glorious privacy of light," and saw the boughs of the +green and gold laburnum waving at my window, and had my fancy filled +with images of natural beauty, I felt a glow of fresh life in my veins, +and my soul was inebriated with joy. It is difficult, amidst such +exhilarating influences, to entertain those melancholy ideas which +sometimes crowd upon, us, and appear so natural, at a less happy hour. +Even actual misfortune comes in a questionable shape, when our physical +constitution is in perfect health, and the flowers are in full bloom, +and the skies are blue, and the streams are glittering in the sun. So +powerfully does the light of external nature sometimes act upon the +moral system, that a sweet sensation steals gradually over the heart, +even when we think we have reason to be sorrowful, and while we almost +accuse ourselves of a want of feeling. The fretful hypochondriac would +do well to bear this fact in mind, and not take it for granted that all +are cold and selfish who fail to sympathize with his fantastic cares. He +should remember that men are sometimes so buoyed up by the sense of +corporeal power, and a communion with nature in her cheerful moods, that +things connected with their own personal interests, and which at other +times might irritate and wound their feelings, pass by them like the +idle wind which they regard not. He himself must have had his intervals +of comparative happiness, in which the causes of his present grief would +have appeared trivial and absurd. He should not, then, expect persons +whose blood is warm in their veins, and whose eyes are open to the +blessed sun in heaven, to think more of the apparent causes of his +sorrow than he would himself, were his mind and body in a healthful +state. + +With what a light heart and eager appetite did I enter the little +breakfast parlour of which the glass-doors opened upon a bright green +lawn, variegated with small beds of flowers! The table was spread with +dewy and delicious fruits from our own garden, and gathered by fair and +friendly hands. Beautiful and luscious as were these garden dainties, +they were of small account in comparison with the fresh cheeks and +cherry lips that so frankly accepted the wonted early greeting. Alas! +how that circle of early friends is now divided, and what a change has +since come over the spirit of our dreams! Yet still I cherish boyish +feelings, and the past is sometimes present. As I give an imaginary kiss +to an "old familiar face," and catch myself almost unconsciously, yet +literally, returning imaginary smiles, my heart is as fresh and fervid +as of yore. + +A lapse of fifteen years, and a distance of fifteen thousand miles, and +the glare of a tropical sky and the presence of foreign faces, need not +make an Indian Exile quite forgetful of home-delights. Parted friends +may still share the light of love as severed clouds are equally kindled +by the same sun. No number of miles or days can change or separate +faithful spirits or annihilate early associations. That strange +magician, Fancy, who supplies so many corporeal deficiencies and +overcomes so many physical obstructions, and mocks at space and time, +enables us to pass in the twinkling of an eye over the dreary waste of +waters that separates the exile from the scenes and companions of his +youth. He treads again his native shore. He sits by the hospitable +hearth and listens to the ringing laugh of children. He exchanges +cordial greetings with the "old familiar faces." There is a resurrection +of the dead, and a return of vanished years. He abandons himself to the +sweet illusion, and again + + Lives over each scene, and is what he beholds. + +I must not be too egotistically garrulous in print, or I would now +attempt to describe the various ways in which I have spent a summer's +day in England. I would dilate upon my noon-day loiterings amidst wild +ruins, and thick forests, and on the shaded banks of rivers--the pic-nic +parties--the gipsy prophecies--the twilight homeward walk--the social +tea-drinking, and, the last scene of all, the "rosy dreams and slumbers +light," induced by wholesome exercise and placid thoughts.[050] But +perhaps these few simple allusions are sufficient to awaken a train of +kindred associations in the reader's mind, and he will thank me for +those words and images that are like the keys of memory, and "open all +her cells with easy force." + +If a summer's day be thus rife with pleasure, scarcely less so is a day +in winter, though with some little drawbacks, that give, by contrast, a +zest to its enjoyments. It is difficult to leave the warm morning bed +and brave the external air. The fireless grate and frosted windows may +well make the stoutest shudder. But when we have once screwed our +courage to the sticking place, and with a single jerk of the clothes, +and a brisk jump from the bed, have commenced the operations of the +toilet, the battle is nearly over. The teeth chatter for a while, and +the limbs shiver, and we do not feel particularly comfortable while +breaking the ice in our jugs, and performing our cold ablutions amidst +the sharp, glass-like fragments, and wiping our faces with a frozen +towel. But these petty evils are quickly vanquished, and as we rush out +of the house, and tread briskly and firmly on the hard ringing earth, +and breathe our visible breath in the clear air, our strength and +self-importance miraculously increase, and the whole frame begins to glow. +The warmth and vigour thus acquired are inexpressibly delightful. As we +re-enter the house, we are proud of our intrepidity and vigour, and pity +the effeminacy of our less enterprising friends, who, though huddled +together round the fire, like flies upon a sunny wall, still complain of +cold, and instead of the bloom of health and animation, exhibit pale and +pinched and discolored features, and hands cold, rigid, and of a deadly +hue. Those who rise with spirit on a winter morning, and stir and thrill +themselves with early exercise, are indifferent to the cold for the rest +of the day, and feel a confidence in their corporeal energies, and a +lightness of heart that are experienced at no other season. + +But even the timid and luxurious are not without their pleasures. As the +shades of evening draw in, the parlour twilight--the closed +curtains--and the cheerful fire--make home a little paradise to all. + + Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, + Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, + And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn + Throws up a steamy column, and the cups + That cheer but not inebriate wait on each, + So let us welcome peaceful evening in + +_Cowper_. + +The warm and cold seasons of India have no charms like those of England, +but yet people who are guiltless of what Milton so finely calls "a +sullenness against nature," and who are willing, in a spirit of true +philosophy and piety, to extract good from every thing, may save +themselves from wretchedness even in this land of exile. While I am +writing this paragraph, a bird in my room, (not the Caubul songster that +I have already alluded to, but a fine little English linnet,) who is as +much a foreigner here as I am, is pouring out his soul in a flood of +song. His notes ring with joy. He pines not for his native meadows--he +cares not for his wiry bars--he envies not the little denizens of air +that sometimes flutter past my window, nor imagines, for a moment, that +they come to mock him with their freedom. He is contented with his +present enjoyments, because they are utterly undisturbed by idle +comparisons with those experienced in the past or anticipated in the +future. He has no thankless repinings and no vain desires. Is intellect +or reason then so fatal, though sublime a gift that we cannot possess it +without the poisonous alloy of care? Must grief and ingratitude +inevitably find entrance into the heart, in proportion to the loftiness +and number of our mental endowments? Are we to seek for happiness in +ignorance? To these questions the reply is obvious. Every good quality +may be abused, and the greatest, most; and he who perversely employs his +powers of thought and imagination to a wrong purpose deserves the misery +that he gains. Were we honestly to deduct from the ills of life all +those of our own creation, how trifling, in the majority of cases, the +amount that would remain! We seem to invite and encourage sorrow, while +happiness is, as it were, forced upon us against our will. It is +wonderful how some men pertinaciously cling to care, and argue +themselves into a dissatisfaction with their lot. Thus it is really a +matter of little moment whether fortune smile or frown, for it is in +vain to look for superior felicity amongst those who have more +"appliances and means to boot," than their fellow-men. Wealth, rank, and +reputation, do not secure their possessors from the misery of +discontent. + +As happiness then depends upon the right direction and employment of our +faculties, and not on worldly goods or mere localities, our countrymen +might be cheerful enough, even in this foreign land, if they would only +accustom themselves to a proper train of thinking, and be ready on every +occasion to look on the brighter side of all things.[051] In reverting +to home-scenes we should regard them for their intrinsic charms, and not +turn them into a source of disquiet by mournfully comparing them with +those around us. India, let Englishmen murmur as they will, has some +attractions, enjoyments and advantages. No Englishman is here in danger +of dying of starvation as some of our poets have done in the +inhospitable streets of London. The comparatively princely and generous +style in which we live in this country, the frank and familiar tone of +our little society, and the general mildness of the climate, (excepting +a few months of a too sultry summer) can hardly be denied by the most +determined malcontent. The weather is indeed too often a great deal +warmer than we like it; but if "the excessive heat" did not form a +convenient subject for complaint and conversation, it is perhaps +doubtful if it would so often be thought of or alluded to. But admit the +objection. What climate is without its peculiar evils? In the cold +season a walk in India either in the morning or the evening is often +extremely pleasant in pleasant company, and I am glad to see many +sensible people paying the climate the compliment of treating it like +that of England. It is now fashionable to use our limbs in the ordinary +way, and the "Garden of Eden"[052] has become a favorite promenade, +particularly on the evenings when a band from the Fort fills the air +with a cheerful harmony and throws a fresher life upon the scene. It is +not to be denied that besides the mere exercise, pedestrians at home +have great advantages over those who are too indolent or aristocratic to +leave their equipages, because they can cut across green and quiet +fields, enter rural by-ways, and enjoy a thousand little patches of +lovely scenery that are secrets to the high-road traveller. But still +the Calcutta pedestrian has also his gratifications. He can enjoy no +exclusive prospects, but he beholds upon an Indian river a forest of +British masts--the noble shipping of the Queen of the Sea--and has a +fine panoramic view of this City of Palaces erected by his countrymen on +a foreign shore;--and if he is fond of children, he must be delighted +with the numberless pretty and happy little faces--the fair forms of +Saxon men and women in miniature--that crowd about him on the green +sward;--he must be charmed with their innocent prattle, their quick and +graceful movements, and their winning ways, that awaken a tone of tender +sentiment in his heart, and rekindle many sweet associations. + +SONNETS, + +WRITTEN IN EXILE. + + I. + + Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never;-- + And while the soul's internal cell is bright, + The cloudless eye lets in the bloom and light + Of earth and heaven to charm and cheer us ever. + Though youth hath vanished, like a winding river + Lost in the shadowy woods; and the dear sight + Of native hill and nest-like cottage white, + 'Mid breeze-stirred boughs whose crisp leaves gleam and quiver, + And murmur sea-like sounds, perchance no more + My homeward step shall hasten cheerily; + Yet still I feel as I have felt of yore, + And love this radiant world. Yon clear blue sky-- + These gorgeous groves--this flower-enamelled floor-- + Have deep enchantments for my heart and eye. + + II. + + Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never, + Though to the sullen gaze of grief the sight + Of sun illumined skies may _seem_ less bright, + Or gathering clouds less grand, yet she, as ever, + Is lovely or majestic. Though fate sever + The long linked bands of love, and all delight + Be lost, as in a sudden starless night, + The radiance may return, if He, the giver + Of peace on earth, vouchsafe the storm to still + This breast once shaken with the strife of care + Is touched with silent joy. The cot--the hill, + Beyond the broad blue wave--and faces fair, + Are pictured in my dreams, yet scenes that fill + My waking eye can save me from despair. + + III. + + Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never,-- + Strange features throng around me, and the shore + Is not my own dear land. Yet why deplore + This change of doom? All mortal ties must sever. + The pang is past,--and now with blest endeavour + I check the ready tear, the rising sigh + The common earth is here--the common sky-- + The common FATHER. And how high soever + O'er other tribes proud England's hosts may seem, + God's children, fair or sable, equal find + A FATHER'S love. Then learn, O man, to deem + All difference idle save of heart or mind + Thy duty, love--each cause of strife, a dream-- + Thy home, the world--thy family, mankind. + +D.L.R. + +For the sake of my home readers I must now say a word or two on the +effect produced upon the mind of a stranger on his approach to Calcutta +from the Sandheads. + +As we run up the Bay of Bengal and approach the dangerous Sandheads, the +beautiful deep blue of the ocean suddenly disappears. It turns into a +pale green. The sea, even in calm weather, rolls over soundings in long +swells. The hue of the water is varied by different depths, and in +passing over the edge of soundings, it is curious to observe how +distinctly the form of the sands may be traced by the different shades +of green in the water above and beyond them. In the lower part of the +bay, the crisp foam of the dark sea at night is instinct with phosphoric +lustre. The ship seems to make her way through galaxies of little ocean +stars. We lose sight of this poetical phenomenon as we approach the +mouth of the Hooghly. But the passengers, towards the termination of +their voyage, become less observant of the changeful aspect of the sea. +Though amused occasionally by flights of sea-gulls, immense shoals of +porpoises, apparently tumbling or rolling head over tail against the +wind, and the small sprat-like fishes that sometimes play and glitter on +the surface, the stranger grows impatient to catch a glimpse of an +Indian jungle; and even the swampy tiger-haunted Saugor Island is +greeted with that degree of interest which novelty usually inspires. + +At first the land is but little above the level of the water. It rises +gradually as we pass up further from the sea. As we come still nearer to +Calcutta, the soil on shore seems to improve in richness and the trees +to increase in size. The little clusters of nest-like villages snugly +sheltered in foliage--the groups of dark figures in white garments--the +cattle wandering over the open plain--the emerald-colored fields of +rice--the rich groves of mangoe trees--the vast and magnificent banyans, +with straight roots dropping from their highest branches, (hundreds of +these branch-dropped roots being fixed into the earth and forming "a +pillared shade"),--the tall, slim palms of different characters and with +crowns of different forms, feathery or fan-like,--the many-stemmed and +long, sharp-leaved bamboos, whose thin pliant branches swing gracefully +under the weight of the lightest bird,--the beautifully rounded and +bright green peepuls, with their burnished leaves glittering in the +sunshine, and trembling at the zephyr's softest touch with a pleasant +rustling sound, suggestive of images of coolness and repose,--form a +striking and singularly interesting scene (or rather succession of +scenes) after the monotony of a long voyage during which nothing has +been visible but sea and sky. + +But it is not until he arrives at a bend of the river called _Garden +Reach_, where the City of Palaces first opens on the view, that the +stranger has a full sense of the value of our possessions in the East. +The princely mansions on our right;--(residences of English gentry), +with their rich gardens and smooth slopes verdant to the water's +edge,--the large and rich Botanic Garden and the Gothic edifice of Bishop's +College on our left--and in front, as we advance a little further, the +countless masts of vessels of all sizes and characters, and from almost +every clime,--Fort William, with its grassy ramparts and white +barracks,--the Government House, a magnificent edifice in spite of many +imperfections,--the substantial looking Town Hall--the Supreme Court +House--the broad and ever verdant plain (or _madaun_) in front--and the +noble lines of buildings along the Esplanade and Chowringhee Road,--the +new Cathedral almost at the extremity of the plain, and half-hidden +amidst the trees,--the suburban groves and buildings of Kidderpore +beyond, their outlines softened by the haze of distance, like scenes +contemplated through colored glass--the high-sterned budgerows and small +trim bauleahs along the edge of the river,--the neatly-painted +palanquins and other vehicles of all sorts and sizes,--the variously-hued +and variously-clad people of all conditions; the fair European, the +black and nearly naked Cooly, the clean-robed and lighter-skinned native +Baboo, the Oriental nobleman with his jewelled turban and kincob vest, +and costly necklace and twisted cummerbund, on a horse fantastically +caparisoned, and followed in barbaric state by a train of attendants +with long, golden-handled punkahs, peacock feather chowries, and golden +chattahs and silver sticks,--present altogether a scene that is +calculated to at once delight and bewilder the traveller, to whom all +the strange objects before him have something of the enchantment and +confusion of an Arabian Night's dream. When he recovers from his +surprise, the first emotion in the breast of an Englishman is a feeling +of national pride. He exults in the recognition of so many glorious +indications of the power of a small and remote nation that has founded a +splendid empire in so strange and vast a land. + +When the first impression begins to fade, and he takes a closer view of +the great metropolis of India--and observes what miserable straw huts +are intermingled with magnificent palaces--how much Oriental filth and +squalor and idleness and superstition and poverty and ignorance are +associated with savage splendour, and are brought into immediate and +most incongruous contact with Saxon energy and enterprize and taste and +skill and love of order, and the amazing intelligence of the West in +this nineteenth century--and when familiarity breeds something like +contempt for many things that originally excited a vague and pleasing +wonder--the English traveller in the East is apt to dwell too +exclusively on the worst side of the picture, and to become insensible +to the real interest, and blind to the actual beauty of much of the +scene around him. Extravagant astonishment and admiration, under the +influence of novelty, a strong re-action, and a subsequent feeling of +unreasonable disappointment, seem, in some degree, natural to all men; +but in no other part of the world, and under no other circumstances, is +this peculiarity of our condition more conspicuously displayed than in +the case of Englishmen in India. John Bull, who is always a grumbler +even on his own shores, is sure to become a still more inveterate +grumbler in other countries, and perhaps the climate of Bengal, +producing lassitude and low spirits, and a yearning for their native +land, of which they are so justly proud, contribute to make our +countrymen in the East even more than usually unsusceptible of +pleasurable emotions until at last they turn away in positive disgust +from the scenes and objects which remind them that they are in a state +of exile. + +"There is nothing," says Hamlet, "either good or bad, but thinking makes +it so." At every change of the mind's colored optics the scene before it +changes also. I have sometimes contemplated the vast metropolis of +England--or rather _of the world_--multitudinous and mighty LONDON--with +the pride and hope and exultation, not of a patriot only, but of a +cosmopolite--a man. Its grand national structures that seem built for +eternity--its noble institutions, charitable, and learned, and +scientific, and artistical--the genius and science and bravery and moral +excellence within its countless walls--have overwhelmed me with a sense +of its glory and majesty and power. But in a less admiring mood, I have +quite reversed the picture. Perhaps the following sonnet may seem to +indicate that the writer while composing it, must have worn his colored +spectacles. + +LONDON, IN THE MORNING. + + The morning wakes, and through the misty air + In sickly radiance struggles--like the dream + Of sorrow-shrouded hope. O'er Thames' dull stream, + Whose sluggish waves a wealthy burden bear + From every port and clime, the pallid glare + Of early sun-light spreads. The long streets seem + Unpeopled still, but soon each path shall teem + With hurried feet, and visages of care. + And eager throngs shall meet where dusky marts + Resound like ocean-caverns, with the din + Of toil and strife and agony and sin. + Trade's busy Babel! Ah! how many hearts + By lust of gold to thy dim temples brought + In happier hours have scorned the prize they sought? + +D.L.R. + +I now give a pair of sonnets upon the City of Palaces as viewed through +somewhat clearer glasses. + +VIEW OF CALCUTTA. + + Here Passion's restless eye and spirit rude + May greet no kindred images of power + To fear or wonder ministrant. No tower, + Time-struck and tenantless, here seems to brood, + In the dread majesty of solitude, + O'er human pride departed--no rocks lower + O'er ravenous billows--no vast hollow wood + Rings with the lion's thunder--no dark bower + The crouching tiger haunts--no gloomy cave + Glitters with savage eyes! But all the scene + Is calm and cheerful. At the mild command + Of Britain's sons, the skilful and the brave, + Fair palace-structures decorate the land, + And proud ships float on Hooghly's breast serene! + +D.L.R. + +SONNET, ON RETURNING TO CALCUTTA AFTER A VOYAGE TO THE STRAITS OF +MALACCA. + + Umbrageous woods, green dells, and mountains high, + And bright cascades, and wide cerulean seas, + Slumbering, or snow-wreathed by the freshening breeze, + And isles like motionless clouds upon the sky + In silent summer noons, late charmed mine eye, + Until my soul was stirred like wind-touched trees, + And passionate love and speechless ecstasies + Up-raised the thoughts in spiritual depths that lie. + Fair scenes, ye haunt me still! Yet I behold + This sultry city on the level shore + Not all unmoved; for here our fathers bold + Won proud historic names in days of yore, + And here are generous hearts that ne'er grow cold, + And many a friendly hand and open door. + +D.L.R. + +There are several extremely elegant customs connected with some of the +Indian Festivals, at which flowers are used in great profusion. The +surface of the "sacred river" is often thickly strewn with them. In Mrs. +Carshore's pleasing volume of _Songs of the East_[053] there is a long +poem (too long to quote entire) in which the _Beara Festival_ is +described. I must give the introductory passage. + +"THE BEARA FESTIVAL. + + "Upon the Ganges' overflowing banks, + Where palm trees lined the shore in graceful ranks, + I stood one night amidst a merry throng + Of British youths and maidens, to behold + A witching Indian scene of light and song, + Crowds of veiled native loveliness untold, + Each streaming path poured duskily along. + The air was filled with the sweet breath of flowers, + And music that awoke the silent hours, + It was the BEARA FESTIVAL and feast + When proud and lowly, loftiest and least, + Matron and Moslem maiden pay their vows, + With impetratory and votive gift, + And to the Moslem Jonas bent their brows. + _Each brought her floating lamp of flowers_, and swift + A thousand lights along the current drift, + Till the vast bosom of the swollen stream, + Glittering and gliding onward like a dream, + Seems a wide mirror of the starry sphere + Or more as if the stars had dropt from air, + And in an earthly heaven were shining here, + And far above were, but reflected there + Still group on group, advancing to the brink, + As group on group retired link by link; + For one pale lamp that floated out of view + Five brighter ones they quickly placed anew; + At length the slackening multitudes grew less, + And the lamps floated scattered and apart. + As stars grow few when morning's footsteps press + When a slight girl, shy as the timid halt, + Not far from where we stood, her offering brought. + Singing a low sweet strain, with lips untaught. + Her song proclaimed, that 'twas not many hours + Since she had left her childhood's innocent home; + And now with Beara lamp, and wreathed flowers, + To propitiate heaven, for wedded bliss had come" + +To these lines Mrs. Carshore (who has been in this country, I believe, +from her birth, and who ought to know something of Indian customs) +appends the following notes. + +"_It was the Beara festival_." Much has been said about the Beara or +floating lamp, but I have never yet seen a correct description. Moore +mentions that Lalla Rookh saw a solitary Hindoo girl bring her lamp to +the river. D.L.R. says the same, whereas the Beara festival is a Moslem +feast that takes place once a year in the monsoons, when thousands of +females offer their vows to the patron of rivers. + +"_Moslem Jonas_" Khauj Khoddir is the Jonas of the Mussulman; he, like +the prophet of Nineveh, was for three days inside a fish, and for that +reason is called the patron of rivers." + +I suppose Mrs. Carshore alludes, in the first of these notes, to the +following passage in the prose part of Lalla Rookh:-- + +"As they passed along a sequestered river after sunset, they saw a young +Hindoo girl upon the bank whose employment seemed to them so strange +that they stopped their palanquins to observe her. She had lighted a +small lamp, filled with oil of cocoa, and placing it in an earthern +dish, adorned with a wreath of flowers, had committed it with a +trembling hand to the stream: and was now anxiously watching its +progress down the current, heedless of the gay cavalcade which had drawn +up beside her. Lalla Rookh was all curiosity;--when one of her +attendants, who had lived upon the banks of the Ganges, (where this +ceremony is so frequent that often, in the dusk of evening, the river is +seen glittering all over with lights, like the Oton-Jala or Sea of +Stars,) informed the Princess that it was the usual way, in which the +friends of those who had gone on dangerous voyages offered up vows for +their safe return. If the lamp sunk immediately, the omen was +disastrous; but if it went shining down the stream, and continued to +burn till entirely out of sight, the return of the beloved object was +considered as certain. + +Lalla Rookh, as they moved on, more than once looked back, to observe +how the young Hindoo's lamp proceeded: and while she saw with pleasure +that it was unextinguished, she could not help fearing that all the hopes +of this life were no better than that feeble light upon the river." + +Moore prepared himself for the writing of Lalla Rookh by "long and +laborious reading." He himself narrates that Sir James Mackintosh was +asked by Colonel Wilks, the Historian of British India, whether it was +true that the poet had never been in the East. Sir James replied, +"_Never_." "Well, that shows me," said Colonel Wilks, "that reading over +D'Herbelot is as good as riding on the back of a camel." Sir John +Malcolm, Sir William Ouseley and other high authorities have testified +to the accuracy of Moore's descriptions of Eastern scenes and customs. + +The following lines were composed on the banks of the Hooghly at +Cossipore, (many long years ago) just after beholding the river one +evening almost covered with floating lamps.[054] + +A HINDU FESTIVAL. + + Seated on a bank of green, + Gazing on an Indian scene, + I have dreams the mind to cheer, + And a feast for eye and ear. + At my feet a river flows, + And its broad face richly glows + With the glory of the sun, + Whose proud race is nearly run + + Ne'er before did sea or stream + Kindle thus beneath his beam, + Ne'er did miser's eye behold + Such a glittering mass of gold + 'Gainst the gorgeous radiance float + Darkly, many a sloop and boat, + While in each the figures seem + Like the shadows of a dream + Swiftly, passively, they glide + As sliders on a frozen tide. + + Sinks the sun--the sudden night + Falls, yet still the scene is bright + Now the fire-fly's living spark + Glances through the foliage dark, + And along the dusky stream + Myriad lamps with ruddy gleam + On the small waves float and quiver, + As if upon the favored river, + And to mark the sacred hour, + Stars had fallen in a shower. + + For many a mile is either shore + Illumined with a countless store + Of lustres ranged in glittering rows, + Each a golden column throws + To light the dim depths of the tide, + And the moon in all her pride + Though beauteously her regions glow, + Views a scene as fair below + +D.L.R. + +Mrs. Carshore alludes, I suppose to the above lines, or the following +sonnet, or both perhaps, when she speaks of my erroneous Orientalism-- + +SCENE ON THE GANGES. + + The shades of evening veil the lofty spires + Of proud Benares' fanes! A thickening haze + Hangs o'er the stream. The weary boatmen raise + Along the dusky shore their crimson fires + That tinge the circling groups. Now hope inspires + Yon Hindu maid, whose heart true passion sways, + To launch on Gungas flood the glimmering rays + Of Love's frail lamp,--but, lo the light expires! + Alas! what sudden sorrow fills her breast! + No charm of life remains. Her tears deplore + A lover lost and never, never more + Shall hope's sweet vision yield her spirit rest! + The cold wave quenched the flame--an omen dread + That telleth of the faithless--_or the dead_! + +D.L.R. + +Horace Hayman Wilson, a high authority on all Oriental customs, clearly +alludes in the following lines to the launching of floating lamps by +_Hindu_ females. + + Grave in the tide the Brahmin stands, + And folds his cord or twists his hands, + And tells his beads, and all unheard + Mutters a solemn mystic word + With reverence the Sudra dips, + And fervently the current sips, + That to his humbler hope conveys + A future life of happier days. + But chief do India's simple daughters + Assemble in these hallowed waters, + With vase of classic model laden + Like Grecian girl or Tuscan maiden, + Collecting thus their urns to fill + From gushing fount or trickling rill, + And still with pious fervour they + To Gunga veneration pay + And with pretenceless rite prefer, + The wishes of their hearts to her + The maid or matron, as she throws + _Champae_ or lotus, _Bel_ or rose, + Or sends the quivering light afloat + In shallow cup or paper boat, + Prays for a parent's peace and wealth + Prays for a child's success and health, + For a fond husband breathes a prayer, + For progeny their loves to share, + For what of good on earth is given + To lowly life, or hoped in heaven, + +H.H.W. + +On seeing Miss Carshore's criticism I referred the subject to an +intelligent Hindu friend from whom I received the following answer:-- + + My dear Sir, + + The _Beara_, strictly speaking, is a Mahomedan festival. Some of + the lower orders of the Hindus of the NW Provinces, who have + borrowed many of their customs from the Mahomedans, celebrate + the _Beara_. But it is not observed by the Hindus of Bengal, who + have a festival of their own, similar to the _Beara_. It takes + place on the evening of the _Saraswati Poojah_, when a small + piece of the bark of the Plantain Tree is fitted out with all + the necessary accompaniments of a boat, and is launched in a + private tank with a lamp. The custom is confined to the women + who follow it in their own house or in the same neighbourhood. + It is called the _Sooa Dooa Breta_. + + Yours truly, + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Carshore it would seem is partly right and partly wrong. She is +right in calling the _Beara_ a _Moslem_ Festival. It is so; but we have +the testimony of Horace Hayman Wilson to the fact that _Hindu maids and +matrons also launch their lamps upon the river_. My Hindu friend +acknowledges that his countrymen in the North West Provinces have +borrowed many of their customs from the Mahomedans, and though he is not +aware of it, it may yet be the case, that some of the Hindus of +_Bengal_, as elsewhere, have done the same, and that they set lamps +afloat upon the stream to discover by their continued burning or sudden +extinction the fate of some absent friend or lover. I find very few +Natives who are able to give me any exact and positive information +concerning their own national customs. In their explanations of such +matters they differ in the most extraordinary manner amongst themselves. +Two most respectable and intelligent Native gentlemen who were proposing +to lay out their grounds under my directions, told me that I must +not cut down a single cocoa-nut tree, as it would be dreadful +sacrilege--equal to cutting the throats of seven brahmins! Another equally +respectable and intelligent Native friend, when I mentioned the fact, +threw himself back in his chair to give vent to a hearty laugh. When he +had recovered himself a little from this risible convulsion he observed +that his father and his grandfather had cut down cocoa-nut trees in +considerable numbers without the slightest remorse or fear. And yet +again, I afterwards heard that one of the richest Hindu families in +Calcutta, rather than suffer so sacred an object to be injured, piously +submit to a very serious inconvenience occasioned by a cocoa-nut tree +standing in the centre of the carriage road that leads to the portico of +their large town palace. I am told that there are other sacred trees +which must not be removed by the hands of Hindus of inferior caste, +though in this case there is a way of getting over the difficulty, for +it is allowable or even meritorious to make presents of these trees to +Brahmins, who cut them down for their own fire-wood. But the cocoa-nut +tree is said to be too sacred even for the axe of a Brahmin. + +I have been running away again from my subject;--I was discoursing upon +May-day in England. The season there is still a lovely and a merry one, +though the most picturesque and romantic of its ancient observances, now +live but in the memory of the "oldest inhabitants," or on the page of +history.[055] + + See where, amidst the sun and showers, + The Lady of the vernal hours, + Sweet May, comes forth again with all her flowers. + +_Barry Cornwall_. + +The _May-pole_ on these days is rarely seen to rise up in English towns +with its proper floral decorations[056]. In remote rural districts a +solitary May-pole is still, however, occasionally discovered. "A +May-pole," says Washington Irving, "gave a glow to my feelings and spread +a charm over the country for the rest of the day: and as I traversed a +part of the fair plains of Cheshire, and the beautiful borders of Wales +and looked from among swelling hills down a long green valley, through +which the Deva wound its wizard stream, my imagination turned all into a +perfect Arcadia. One can readily imagine what a gay scene old London +must have been when the doors were decked with hawthorn; and Robin Hood, +Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, Morris dancers, and all the other fantastic +dancers and revellers were performing their antics about the May-pole in +every part of the city. I value every custom which tends to infuse +poetical feeling into the common people, and to sweeten and soften the +rudeness of rustic manners without destroying their simplicity." + +Another American writer--a poet--has expressed his due appreciation of +the pleasures of the season. He thus addresses the merrie month of +MAY.[057] + +MAY. + + Would that thou couldst laugh for aye, + Merry, ever merry May! + Made of sun gleams, shade and showers + Bursting buds, and breathing flowers, + Dripping locked, and rosy vested, + Violet slippered, rainbow crested; + Girdled with the eglantine, + Festooned with the dewy vine + Merry, ever Merry May, + Would that thou could laugh for aye! + +_W.D. Gallagher._ + +I must give a dainty bit of description from the poet of the poets--our +own romantic Spenser. + + Then comes fair May, the fayrest mayde on ground, + Decked with all dainties of the season's pryde, + And throwing flowres out of her lap around. + Upon two brethren's shoulders she did ride, + The twins of Leda, which, on eyther side, + Supported her like to their Sovereign queene + Lord! how all creatures laught when her they spide, + And leapt and danced as they had ravisht beene! + And Cupid's self about her fluttred all in greene. + +Here are a few lines from Herrick. + + Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appeare + Re-clothed in freshe and verdant diaper; + Thawed are the snowes, and now the lusty spring + Gives to each mead a neat enameling, + The palmes[058] put forth their gemmes, and every tree + Now swaggers in her leavy gallantry. + +The Queen of May--Lady Flora--was the British representative of the +Heathen Goddess Flora. May still returns and ever will return at her +proper season, with all her bright leaves and fragrant blossoms, but men +cease to make the same use of them as of yore. England is waxing +utilitarian and prosaic. + +The poets, let others neglect her as they will, must ever do fitting +observance, in songs as lovely and fresh as the flowers of the hawthorn, + + To the lady of the vernal hours. + +Poor Keats, who was passionately fond of flowers, and everything +beautiful or romantic or picturesque, complains, with a true poet's +earnestness, that in _his_ day in England there were + + No crowds of nymphs, soft-voiced and young and gay + In woven baskets, bringing ears of corn, + Roses and pinks and violets, to adorn + The shrine of Flora in her early May. + +The Floral Games--_Jeux Floraux_--of Toulouse--first celebrated at the +commencement of the fourteenth century, are still kept up annually with +great pomp and spirit. Clemence Isaure, a French lady, bequeathed to the +Academy of Toulouse a large sum of money for the annual celebration of +these games. A sort of College Council is formed, which not only confers +degrees on those poets who do most honor to the Goddess Flora, but +sometimes grants them more substantial favors. In 1324 the poets were +encouraged to compete for a golden violet and a silver eglantine and +pansy. A century later the prizes offered were an amaranthus of gold of +the value of 400 livres, for the best ode, a violet of silver, valued at +250 livres, for an essay in prose, a silver pansy, worth 200 livres, for +an eclogue, elegy or idyl, and a silver lily of the value of sixty +livres, for the best sonnet or hymn in honor of the Virgin Mary,--for +religion is mixed up with merriment, and heathen with Christian rites. +He who gained a prize three times was honored with the title of Doctor +_en gaye science_, the name given to the poetry of the Provençal +troubadours. A mass, a sermon, and alms-giving, commence the ceremonies. +The French poet, Ronsard who had gained a prize in the floral games, so +delighted Mary Queen of Scots with his verses on the Rose that she +presented him with a silver rose worth £500, with this inscription--"_A +Ronsard, l'Apollon de la source des Muses_." + +At Ghent floral festivals are held twice a year when amateur and +professional florists assemble together and contribute each his share of +flowers to the grand general exhibition which is under the direct +patronage of the public authorities. Honorary medals are awarded to the +possessors of the finest flowers. + +The chief floral festival of the Chinese is on their new year's day, +when their rivers are covered with boats laden with flowers, and gay +flags streaming from every mast. Their homes and temples are richly hung +with festoons of flowers. Boughs of the peach and plum trees in blossom, +enkíanthus quinque-flòra, camelias, cockscombs, magnolias, jonquils are +then exposed for sale in all the streets of Canton. Even the Chinese +ladies, who are visible at no other season, are seen on this occasion in +flower-boats on the river or in the public gardens on the shore. + +The Italians, it is said, still have artificers called _Festaroli_, +whose business it is to prepare festoons and garlands. The ancient +Romans were very tasteful in their nosegays and chaplets. Pliny tells us +that the Sicyonians were especially celebrated for the graceful art +exhibited in the arrangement of the varied colors of their garlands, and +he gives us the story of Glycera who, to please her lover Pausias, the +painter of Sicyon, used to send him the most exquisite chaplets of her +own braiding, which he regularly copied on his canvas. He became very +eminent as a flower-painter. The last work of his pencil, and his +master-piece, was a picture of his mistress in the act of arranging a +chaplet. The picture was called the _Garland Twiner_. It is related that +Antony for some time mistrusting Cleopatra made her taste in the first +instance every thing presented to him at her banquets. One day "the +Serpent of old Nile" after dipping her own coronet of flowers into her +goblet drank up the wine and then directed him to follow her example. He +was off his guard. He dipped his chaplet in his cup. The leaves had been +touched with poison. He was just raising the cup to his lips when she +seized his arm, and said "Cease your jealous doubts, for know, that if +I had desired your death or wished to live without you, I could easily +have destroyed you." The Queen then ordered a prisoner to be brought +into their presence, who being made to drink from the cup, instantly +expired.[059] + +Some of the nosegays made up by "flower-girls" in London and its +neighbourhood are sold at such extravagant prices that none but the very +wealthy are in the habit of purchasing them, though sometimes a poor +lover is tempted to present his mistress on a ball-night with a bouquet +that he can purchase only at the cost of a good many more leaves of +bread or substantial meals than he can well spare. He has to make every +day a banian-day for perhaps half a month that his mistress may wear a +nosegay for a few hours. However, a lover is often like a cameleon and +can almost live on air--_for a time_--"promise-crammed." 'You cannot +feed capons so.' + +At Covent Garden Market, (in London) and the first-rate Flower-shops, a +single wreath or nosegay is often made up for the head or hand at a +price that would support a poor labourer and his family for a month. The +colors of the wreaths are artfully arranged, so as to suit different +complexions, and so also as to exhibit the most rare and costly flowers +to the greatest possible advantage. + +All true poets + + --The sages + Who have left streaks of light athwart their pages-- + +have contemplated flowers--with a passionate love, an ardent admiration; +none more so than the sweet-souled Shakespeare. They are regarded by the +imaginative as the fairies of the vegetable world--the physical +personifications of etherial beauty. In _The Winter's Tale_ our great +dramatic bard has some delightful floral allusions that cannot be too +often quoted. + + Here's flowers for you, + Hot lavender, mint, savory, majoram, + The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun, + And with him rises weeping these are flowers + Of middle summer, and I think they are given + To men of middle age. + + * * * * * + + O, Proserpina, + For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lett'st fall + From Dis's waggon! Daffodils, + That come before the swallow dares, and take + The winds of March with beauty, violets dim, + But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, + Or Cytherea's breath, pale primroses, + That die unmarried ere they can behold + Great Phoebus in his strength,--a malady + Most incident to maids, bold oxlips and + The crown imperial, lilies of all kinds, + The flower de luce being one + +Shakespeare here, as elsewhere, speaks of "_pale_ primroses." The poets +almost always allude to the primrose as a _pale_ and interesting +invalid. Milton tells us of + + The yellow cowslip and the _pale_ primrose[060] + +The poet in the manuscript of his _Lycidas_ had at first made the +primrose "_die unwedded_," which was a pretty close copy of Shakespeare. +Milton afterwards struck out the word "_unwedded_," and substituted the +word "_forsaken_." The reason why the primrose was said to "die +unmarried," is, according to Warton, because it grows in the shade +uncherished or unseen by the sun, who was supposed to be in love with +certain sorts of flowers. Ben Jonson, however, describes the primrose as +_a wedded lady_--"the Spring's own _Spouse_"--though she is certainly +more commonly regarded as the daughter of Spring not the wife. J +Fletcher gives her the true parentage:-- + + Primrose, first born child of Ver + +There are some kinds of primroses, that are not _pale_. There is a +species in Scotland, which is of a deep purple. And even in England (in +some of the northern counties) there is a primrose, the bird's-eye +primrose, (Primula farinosa,) of which the blossom is lilac colored and +the leaves musk-scented. + +In Sweden they call the Primrose _The key of May_. + +The primrose is always a great favorite with imaginative and sensitive +observers, but there are too many people who look upon the beautiful +with a utilitarian eye, or like Wordsworth's Peter Bell regard it with +perfect indifference. + + A primrose by the river's brim + A yellow primrose was to him. + And it was nothing more. + +I have already given one anecdote of a utilitarian; but I may as well +give two more anecdotes of a similar character. Mrs. Wordsworth was in a +grove, listening to the cooing of the stock-doves, and associating their +music with the remembrance of her husband's verses to a stock-dove, when +a farmer's wife passing by exclaimed, "Oh, I do like stock-doves!" The +woman won the heart of the poet's wife at once; but she did not long +retain it. "Some people," continued the speaker, "like 'em in a pie; for +my part I think there's nothing like 'em stewed in inions." This was a +rustic utilitarian. Here is an instance of a very different sort of +utilitarianism--the utilitarianism of men who lead a gay town life. Sir +W.H. listened, patiently for some time to a poetical-minded friend who +was rapturously expatiating upon the delicious perfume of a bed of +violets; "Oh yes," said Sir W. at last, "its all very well, but for my +part I very much prefer the smell of a flambeau at the theatre." But +intellects far more capacious than that of Sir W.H. have exhibited the +same indifference to the beautiful in nature. Locke and Jeremy Bentham +and even Sir Isaac Newton despised all poetry. And yet God never meant +man to be insensible to the beautiful or the poetical. "Poetry, like +truth," says Ebenezer Elliot, "is a common flower: God has sown it over +the earth, like the daisies sprinkled with tears or glowing in the sun, +even as he places the crocus and the March frosts together and +beautifully mingles life and death." If the finer and more spiritual +faculties of men were as well cultivated or exercised as are their +colder and coarser faculties there would be fewer utilitarians. But the +highest part of our nature is too much neglected in all our systems of +education. Of the beauty and fragrance of flowers all earthly creatures +except man are apparently meant to be unconscious. The cattle tread down +or masticate the fairest flowers without a single "compunctious visiting +of nature." This excites no surprize. It is no more than natural. But it +is truly painful and humiliating to see any human being as insensible as +the beasts of the field to that poetry of the world which God seems to +have addressed exclusively to the heart and soul of man. + +In South Wales the custom of strewing all kinds of flowers over the +graves of departed friends, is preserved to the present day. +Shakespeare, it appears, knew something of the customs of that part of +his native country and puts the following _flowery_ speech into the +mouth of the young Prince, Arviragus, who was educated there. + + With fairest flowers, + While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, + I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack + The flower that's like thy face, pale Primrose, nor + The azured Harebell, like thy veins; no, nor + The leaf of Eglantine; whom not to slander, + Out-sweetened not thy breath. + +_Cymbeline_. + +Here are two more flower-passages from Shakespeare. + + Here's a few flowers; but about midnight more; + The herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night + Are strewings fitt'st for graves.--Upon their faces:-- + You were as flowers; now withered; even so + These herblets shall, which we upon you strow. + +_Cymbeline_. + + Sweets to the sweet. Farewell! + I hoped thou shoulds't have been my Hamlet's wife; + I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, + And not t' have strewed thy grave. + +_Hamlet_. + +Flowers are peculiarly suitable ornaments for the grave, for as Evelyn +truly says, "they are just emblems of the life of man, which has been +compared in Holy Scripture to those fading creatures, whose roots being +buried in dishonor rise again in glory."[061] + +This thought is natural and just. It is indeed a most impressive sight, +a most instructive pleasure, to behold some "bright consummate flower" +rise up like a radiant exhalation or a beautiful vision--like good from +evil--with such stainless purity and such dainty loveliness, from the +hot-bed of corruption. + +Milton turns his acquaintance with flowers to divine account in his +Lycidas. + + Return; Sicilian Muse, + And call the vales, and bid them hither cast + Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. + Ye vallies low, where the mild whispers use + Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, + On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks; + Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, + That on the green turf suck the honied showers. + And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. + Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. + The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, + The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, + The glowing violet, + The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine, + With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,[062] + And every flower that sad embroidery wears; + Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, + And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, + To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies, + For, so to interpose a little ease, + Let our frail thoughts dally with faint surmise + +Here is a nosegay of spring-flowers from the hand of Thomson:-- + + Fair handed Spring unbosoms every grace, + Throws out the snow drop and the crocus first, + the daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue, + And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes, + The yellow wall flower, stained with iron brown, + And lavish stock that scents the garden round, + From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed, + Anemonies, auriculas, enriched + With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves + And full ranunculus of glowing red + Then comes the tulip race, where Beauty plays + Her idle freaks from family diffused + To family, as flies the father dust, + The varied colors run, and while they break + On the charmed eye, the exulting Florist marks + With secret pride, the wonders of his hand + Nor gradual bloom is wanting, from the bird, + First born of spring, to Summer's musky tribes + Nor hyacinth, of purest virgin white, + Low bent, and, blushing inward, nor jonquils, + Of potent fragrance, nor Narcissus fair, + As o'er the fabled fountain hanging still, + Nor broad carnations, nor gay spotted pinks; + Nor, showered from every bush, the damask rose. + Infinite varieties, delicacies, smells, + With hues on hues expression cannot paint, + The breath of Nature and her endless bloom. + +Here are two bouquets of flowers from the garden of Cowper + + Laburnum, rich + In streaming gold, syringa, ivory pure, + The scentless and the scented rose, this red, + And of an humbler growth, the other[063] tall, + And throwing up into the darkest gloom + Of neighboring cypress, or more sable yew, + Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf + That the wind severs from the broken wave, + The lilac, various in array, now white, + Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set + With purple spikes pyramidal, as if + Studious of ornament yet unresolved + Which hue she most approved, she chose them all, + Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan, + But well compensating her sickly looks + With never cloying odours, early and late, + Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm + Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods, + That scarce a loaf appears, mezereon too, + Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset + With blushing wreaths, investing every spray, + Althaea with the purple eye, the broom + Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy'd, + Her blossoms, and luxuriant above all + The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, + The deep dark green of whose unvarnish'd leaf + Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more, + The bright profusion of her scatter'd stars + + * * * * * + + Th' amomum there[064] with intermingling flowers + And cherries hangs her twigs. Geranium boasts + Her crimson honors, and the spangled beau + Ficoides, glitters bright the winter long + All plants, of every leaf, that can endure + The winter's frown, if screened from his shrewd bite, + Live their and prosper. Those Ausonia claims, + Levantine regions those, the Azores send + Their jessamine, her jessamine remote + Caffraia, foreigners from many lands, + They form one social shade as if convened + By magic summons of the Orphean lyre + +Here is a bunch of flowers laid before the public eye by Mr. Proctor-- + + There the rose unveils + Her breast of beauty, and each delicate bud + O' the season comes in turn to bloom and perish, + But first of all the violet, with an eye + Blue as the midnight heavens, the frail snowdrop, + Born of the breath of winter, and on his brow + Fixed like a full and solitary star + The languid hyacinth, and wild primrose + And daisy trodden down like modesty + The fox glove, in whose drooping bells the bee + Makes her sweet music, the Narcissus (named + From him who died for love) the tangled woodbine, + Lilacs, and flowering vines, and scented thorns, + And some from whom the voluptuous winds of June + Catch their perfumings + +_Barry Cornwall_ + +I take a second supply of flowers from the same hand + + Here, this rose + (This one half blown) shall be my Maia's portion, + For that like it her blush is beautiful + And this deep violet, almost as blue + As Pallas' eye, or thine, Lycemnia, + I'll give to thee for like thyself it wears + Its sweetness, never obtruding. For this lily + Where can it hang but it Cyane's breast? + And yet twill wither on so white a bed, + If flowers have sense of envy.--It shall be + Amongst thy raven tresses, Cytheris, + Like one star on the bosom of the night + The cowslip and the yellow primrose,--they + Are gone, my sad Leontia, to their graves, + And April hath wept o'er them, and the voice + Of March hath sung, even before their deaths + The dirge of those young children of the year + But here is hearts ease for your woes. And now, + The honey suckle flower I give to thee, + And love it for my sake, my own Cyane + It hangs upon the stem it loves, as thou + Hast clung to me, through every joy and sorrow, + It flourishes with its guardian growth, as thou dost, + And if the woodman's axe should droop the tree, + The woodbine too must perish. + +_Barry Cornwall_ + +Let me add to the above heap of floral beauty a basket of flowers from +Leigh Hunt. + + Then the flowers on all their beds-- + How the sparklers glance their heads, + Daisies with their pinky lashes + And the marigolds broad flashes, + Hyacinth with sapphire bell + Curling backward, and the swell + Of the rose, full lipped and warm, + Bound about whose riper form + Her slender virgin train are seen + In their close fit caps of green, + Lilacs then, and daffodillies, + And the nice leaved lesser lilies + Shading, like detected light, + Their little green-tipt lamps of white; + Blissful poppy, odorous pea, + With its wing up lightsomely; + Balsam with his shaft of amber, + Mignionette for lady's chamber, + And genteel geranium, + With a leaf for all that come; + And the tulip tricked out finest, + And the pink of smell divinest; + And as proud as all of them + Bound in one, the garden's gem + Hearts-ease, like a gallant bold + In his cloth of purple and gold. + +Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who introduced inoculation into England--a +practically useful boon to us,--had also the honor to be amongst the +first to bring from the East to the West an elegant amusement--the +Language of Flowers.[065] + + Then he took up his garland, and did show + What every flower, as country people hold, + Did signify; and how all, ordered thus, + Expressed his grief: and, to my thoughts, did read + The prettiest lecture of his country art + That could be wished. + +_Beaumont's and Fletcher's "Philaster."_ + + * * * * * + + There from richer banks + Culling out flowers, which in a learned order + Do become characters, whence they disclose + Their mutual meanings, garlands then and nosegays + Being framed into epistles. + +_Cartwright's "Love's Covenant."_ + + * * * * * + + An exquisite invention this, + Worthy of Love's most honied kiss, + This art of writing _billet-doux_ + In buds and odours and bright hues, + In saying all one feels and thinks + In clever daffodils and pinks, + Uttering (as well as silence may,) + The sweetest words the sweetest way. + +_Leigh Hunt_. + + * * * * * + + Yet, no--not words, for they + But half can tell love's feeling; + Sweet flowers alone can say + What passion fears revealing.[066] + A once bright rose's withered leaf-- + A towering lily broken-- + Oh, these may paint a grief + No words could e'er have spoken. + +_Moore_. + + * * * * * + + By all those token flowers that tell + What words can ne'er express so well. + +_Byron_. + + * * * * * + + A mystic language, perfect in each part. + Made up of bright hued thoughts and perfumed speeches. + +_Adams_. + +If we are to believe Shakespeare it is not human beings only who use a +floral language:-- + + Fairies use flowers for their charactery. + +Sir Walter Scott tells us that:-- + + The myrtle bough bids lovers live-- + +A sprig of hawthorn has the same meaning as a sprig of myrtle: it gives +hope to the lover--the sweet heliotrope tells the depth of his +passion,--if he would charge his mistress with levity he presents the +larkspur,--and a leaf of nettle speaks her cruelty. Poor Ophelia (in +_Hamlet_) gives rosemary for remembrance, and pansies (_pensees_) for +thoughts. The laurel indicates victory in war or success with the Muses, + + "The meed of mighty conquerors and poets sage." + +The ivy wreathes the brows of criticism. The fresh vine-leaf cools the +hot forehead of the bacchanal. Bergamot and jessamine imply the +fragrance of friendship. + +The Olive is the emblem of peace--the Laurel, of glory--the Rue, of +grace or purification (Ophelia's _Herb of Grace O'Sundays_)--the +Primrose, of the spring of human life--the Bud of the White Rose, of +Girl-hood,--the full blossom of the Red Rose, of consummate beauty--the +Daisy, of innocence,--the Butter-cup, of gold--the Houstania, of +content--the Heliotrope, of devotion in love--the Cross of Jerusalem, of +devotion in religion--the Forget-me-not, of fidelity--the Myrrh, of +gladness--the Yew, of sorrow--the Michaelmas Daisy, of cheerfulness in +age--the Chinese Chrysanthemum, of cheerfulness in adversity--the Yellow +Carnation, of disdain--the Sweet Violet, of modesty--the white +Chrysanthemum, of truth--the Sweet Sultan, of felicity--the Sensitive +Plant, of maiden shyness--the Yellow Day Lily, of coquetry--the +Snapdragon, of presumption--the Broom, of humility--the Amaryllis, of +pride--the Grass, of submission--the Fuschia, of taste--the Verbena, of +sensibility--the Nasturtium, of splendour--the Heath, of solitude--the +Blue Periwinkle, of early friendship--the Honey-suckle, of the bond of +love--the Trumpet Flower, of fame--the Amaranth, of immortality--the +Adonis, of sorrowful remembrance,--and the Poppy, of oblivion. + +The Witch-hazel indicates a spell,--the Cape Jasmine says _I'm too +happy_--the Laurestine, _I die if I am neglected_--the American Cowslip, +_You are a divinity_--the Volkamenica Japonica, _May you be happy_--the +Rose-colored Chrysanthemum, _I love_,--and the Venus' Car, _Fly with +me_. + +For the following illustrations of the language of flowers I am indebted +to a useful and well conducted little periodical published in London and +entitled the _Family Friend_;--the work is a great favorite with the +fair sex. + +"Of the floral grammar, the first rule to be observed is, that the +pronoun _I_ or _me_ is expressed by inclining the symbol flower to the +_left_, and the pronoun _thou_ or _thee_ by inclining it to the _right_. +When, however, it is not a real flower offered, but a representation +upon paper, these positions must be reversed, so that the symbol leans +to the heart of the person whom it is to signify. + +The second rule is, that the opposite of a particular sentiment +expressed by a flower presented upright is denoted when the symbol is +reversed; thus a rose-bud sent upright, with its thorns and leaves, +means, "_I fear, but I hope_." If the bud is returned upside down, it +means, "_You must neither hope nor fear_." Should the thorns, however, +be stripped off, the signification is, "_There is everything to hope_;" +but if stript of its leaves, "_There is everything to fear_." By this it +will be seen that the expression of almost all flowers may be varied by +a change in their positions, or an alteration of their state or +condition. For example, the marigold flower placed in the hand signifies +"_trouble of spirits_;" on the heart, "_trouble or love_;" on the bosom, +"_weariness_." The pansy held upright denotes "_heart's ease_;" +reversed, it speaks the contrary. When presented upright, it says, +"_Think of me_;" and when pendent, "_Forget me_." So, too, the +amaryllis, which is the emblem of pride, may be made to express, "_My +pride is humbled_," or, "_Your pride is checked_," by holding it +downwards, and to the right or left, as the sense requires. Then, again, +the wallflower, which is the emblem of fidelity in misfortune, if +presented with the stalk upward, would intimate that the person to whom +it was turned was unfaithful in the time of trouble. + +The third rule has relation to the manner in which certain words may be +represented; as, for instance, the articles, by tendrils with single, +double, and treble branches, as under-- + +[Illustration of _The_, _An_ & _A_.] + +The numbers are represented by leaflets running from one to eleven, as +thus-- + +[Illustration of '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', & '6'.] + +From eleven to twenty, berries are added to the ten leaves thus-- + +[Illustration of '12' & '15'.] + +From twenty to one hundred, compound leaves are added to the other ten +for the decimals, and berries stand for the odd numbers so-- + +[Illustration of '20', '34' & '56'.] + +A hundred is represented by ten tens; and this may be increased by a +third leaflet and a branch of berries up to 999. + +[Illustration of '100'.] + +A thousand may be symbolized by a frond of fern, having ten or more +leaves, and to this a common leaflet may be added to increase the number +of thousands. In this way any given number may be represented in +foliage, such as the date of a year in which a birthday, or other event, +occurs, to which it is desirable to make allusion, in an emblematic +wreath or floral picture. Thus, if I presented my love with a mute yet +eloquent expression of good wishes on her eighteenth birthday, I should +probably do it in this wise:--Within an evergreen wreath (_lasting as my +affection_), consisting of ten leaflets and eight berries (_the age of +the beloved_), I would place a red rose bud (_pure and lovely_), or a +white lily (_pure and modest_), its spotless petals half concealing a +ripe strawberry (_perfect excellence_); and to this I might add a +blossom of the rose-scented geranium (_expressive of my preference_), a +peach blossom to say "_I am your captive_" fern for sincerity, and +perhaps bachelor's buttons for _hope in love_"--_Family Friend_. + +There are many anecdotes and legends and classical fables to illustrate +the history of shrubs and flowers, and as they add something to the +peculiar interest with which we regard individual plants, they ought not +to be quite passed over by the writers upon Floriculture. + +THE FLOS ADONIS. + +The Flos Adonis, a blood-red flower of the Anemone tribe, is one of the +many plants which, according to ancient story sprang from the tears of +Venus and the blood of her coy favorite. + + Rose cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase + Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn + +_Shakespeare_. + +Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, the mother of Love, the Queen of Laughter, +the Mistress of the Graces and the Pleasures, could make no impression +on the heart of the beautiful son of Myrrha, (who was changed into a +myrrh tree,) though the passion-stricken charmer looked and spake with +the lip and eye of the fairest of the immortals. Shakespeare, in his +poem of _Venus and Adonis_, has done justice to her burning eloquence, +and the lustre of her unequalled loveliness. She had most earnestly, and +with all a true lover's care entreated Adonis to avoid the dangers of +the chase, but he slighted all her warnings just as he had slighted her +affections. He was killed by a wild boar. Shakespeare makes Venus thus +lament over the beautiful dead body as it lay on the blood-stained +grass. + + Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost! + What face remains alive that's worth the viewing? + Whose tongue is music now? What can'st thou boast + Of things long since, or any thing ensuing? + The flowers are sweet, their colors fresh and trim, + But true sweet beauty lived and died with him. + +In her ecstacy of grief she prophecies that henceforth all sorts of +sorrows shall be attendants upon love,--and alas! she was too correct an +oracle. + + The course of true love never does run smooth. + +Here is Shakespeare's version of the metamorphosis of Adonis into a +flower. + + By this the boy that by her side lay killed + Was melted into vapour from her sight, + And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled, + A purple flower sprang up, checquered with white, + Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood + Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood. + + She bows her head, the new sprung flower to smell, + Comparing it to her Adonis' breath, + And says, within her bosom it shall dwell + Since he himself is reft from her by death; + She crops the stalk, and in the branch appears + Green dropping sap which she compares to tears. + +The reader may like to contrast this account of the change from human +into floral beauty with the version of the same story in Ovid as +translated by Eusden. + + Then on the blood sweet nectar she bestows, + The scented blood in little bubbles rose; + Little as rainy drops, which fluttering fly, + Borne by the winds, along a lowering sky, + Short time ensued, till where the blood was shed, + A flower began to rear its purple head + + Such, as on Punic apples is revealed + Or in the filmy rind but half concealed, + Still here the fate of lonely forms we see, + _So sudden fades the sweet Anemone_. + The feeble stems to stormy blasts a prey + Their sickly beauties droop, and pine away + The winds forbid the flowers to flourish long + Which owe to winds their names in Grecian song. + +The concluding couplet alludes to the Grecian name of the flower +([Greek: anemos], _anemos_, the wind.) + +It is said of the Anemone that it never opens its lips until Zephyr +kisses them. Sir William Jones alludes to its short-lived beauty. + + Youth, like a thin anemone, displays + His silken leaf, and in a morn decays. + +Horace Smith speaks of + + The coy anemone that ne'er discloses + Her lips until they're blown on by the wind + +Plants open out their leaves to breathe the air just as eagerly as they +throw down their roots to suck up the moisture of the earth. Dr. Linley, +indeed says, "they feed more by their leaves than their roots." I lately +met with a curious illustration of the fact that plants draw a larger +proportion of their nourishment from light and air than is commonly +supposed. I had a beautiful convolvulus growing upon a trellis work in +an upper verandah with a south-western aspect. The root of the plant was +in pots. The convolvulus growing too luxuriantly and encroaching too +much upon the space devoted to a creeper of another kind, I separated +its upper branches from the root and left them to die. The leaves began +to fade the second day and most of them were quite dead the third or +fourth day, but two or three of the smallest retained a sickly life for +some days more. The buds or rather chalices outlived the leaves. The +chalices continued to expand every morning, for--I am afraid to say how +long a time--it might seem perfectly incredible. The convolvulus is a +plant of a rather delicate character and I was perfectly astonished at +its tenacity of life in this case. I should mention that this happened +in the rainy season and that the upper part of the creeper was partially +protected from the sun. + +The Anemone seems to have been a great favorite with Mrs. Hemans. She +thus addresses it. + + Flower! The laurel still may shed + Brightness round the victor's head, + And the rose in beauty's hair + Still its festal glory wear; + And the willow-leaves droop o'er + Brows which love sustains no more + But by living rays refined, + Thou the trembler of the wind, + Thou, the spiritual flower + Sentient of each breeze and shower,[067] + Thou, rejoicing in the skies + And transpierced with all their dyes; + Breathing-vase with light o'erflowing, + Gem-like to thy centre flowing, + Thou the Poet's type shall be + Flower of soul, Anemone! + +The common anemone was known to the ancients but the finest kind was +introduced into France from the East Indies, by Monsieur Bachelier, an +eminent Florist. He seems to have been a person of a truly selfish +disposition, for he refused to share the possession of his floral +treasure with any of his countrymen. For ten years the new anemone from +the East was to be seen no where in Europe but in Monsieur Bachelier's +parterre. At last a counsellor of the French Parliament disgusted with +the florist's selfishness, artfully contrived when visiting the garden +to drop his robe upon the flower in such a manner as to sweep off some +of the seeds. The servant, who was in his master's secret, caught up the +robe and carried it away. The trick succeeded; and the counsellor shared +the spoils with all his friends through whose agency the plant was +multiplied in all parts of Europe. + +THE OLIVE. + +The OLIVE is generally regarded as an emblem of peace, and should have +none but pleasant associations connected with it, but Ovid alludes to a +wild species of this tree into which a rude and licentious fellow was +converted as a punishment for "banishing the fair," with indecent words +and gestures. The poet tells us of a secluded grotto surrounded by +trembling reeds once frequented by the wood-nymphs of the sylvan race:-- + + Till Appulus with a dishonest air + And gross behaviour, banished thence the fair. + The bold buffoon, whene'er they tread the green, + Their motion mimics, but with jest obscene; + Loose language oft he utters; but ere long + A bark in filmy net-work binds his tongue; + Thus changed, a base wild olive he remains; + The shrub the coarseness of the clown retains. + +_Garth's Ovid_. + +The mural of this is excellent. The sentiment reminds me of the Earl of +Roscommon's well-known couplet in his _Essay on Translated Verse_, a +poem now rarely read. + + Immodest words admit of no defense,[068] + For want of decency is want of sense, + +THE HYACINTH. + +The HYACINTH has always been a great favorite with the poets, ancient +and modern. Homer mentions the Hyacinth as forming a portion of the +materials of the couch of Jove and Juno. + + Thick new-born Violets a soft carpet spread, + And clustering Lotos swelled the rising bed, + And sudden _Hyacinths_[069] the turf bestrow, + And flaming Crocus made the mountains glow + +_Iliad, Book 14_ + +Milton gives a similar couch to Adam and Eve. + + Flowers were the couch + Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel + And _Hyacinth_, earth's freshest, softest lap + +With the exception of the lotus (so common in Hindustan,) all these +flowers, thus celebrated by the greatest of Grecian poets, and +represented as fit luxuries for the gods, are at the command of the +poorest peasant in England. The common Hyacinth is known to the +unlearned as the Harebell, so called from the bell shape of its flowers +and from its growing so abundantly in thickets frequented by hares. +Shakespeare, as we have seen, calls it the _Blue_-bell. + +The curling flowers of the Hyacinth, have suggested to our poets the +idea of clusters of curling tresses of hair. + + His fair large front and eye sublime declared + Absolute rule, and hyacinthine locks + Round from his parted forelock manly hung, + Clustering + +_Milton_ + + The youths whose locks divinely spreading + Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue + +_Collins_ + +Sir William Jones describes-- + + The fragrant hyacinths of Azza's hair, + That wanton with the laughing summer air. + +A similar allusion may also be found in prose. + +"It was the exquisitely fair queen Helen, whose jacinth[070] hair, +curled by nature, intercurled by art, like a brook through golden sands, +had a rope of fair pearl, which, now hidden by the hair, did, as it were +play at fast and loose each with the other, mutually giving and +receiving richness."--_Sir Philip Sidney_ + +"The ringlets so elegantly disposed round the fair countenances of these +fair Chiotes [071] are such as Milton describes by 'hyacinthine locks' +crisped and curled like the blossoms of that flower" + +_Dallaway_ + +The old fable about Hyacinthus is soon told. Apollo loved the youth and +not only instructed him in literature and the arts, but shared in his +pastimes. The divine teacher was one day playing with his pupil at +quoits. Some say that Zephyr (Ovid says it was Boreas) jealous of the +god's influence over young Hyacinthus, wafted the ponderous iron ring +from its right course and caused it to pitch upon the poor boy's head. +He fell to the ground a bleeding corpse. Apollo bade the scarlet +hyacinth spring from the blood and impressed upon its leaves the words +_Ai Ai_, (_alas! alas!_) the Greek funeral lamentation. Milton alludes +to the flower in _Lycidas_, + + Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. + +Drummond had before spoken of + + That sweet flower that bears + In sanguine spots the tenor of our woes + +Hurdis speaks of: + + The melancholy Hyacinth, that weeps + All night, and never lifts an eye all day. + +Ovid, after giving the old fable of Hyacinthus, tells us that "the time +shall come when a most valiant hero shall add his name to this flower." +"He alludes," says Mr. Riley, "to Ajax, from whose blood when he slew +himself, a similar flower[072] was said to have arisen with the letters +_Ai Ai_ on its leaves, expressive either of grief or denoting the first +two letters of his name [Greek: Aias]." + + As poets feigned from Ajax's streaming blood + Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower. + +_Young_. + +Keats has the following allusion to the old story of Hyacinthus, + + Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent + On either side; pitying the sad death + Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath + Of Zephyr slew him,--Zephyr penitent, + Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament + Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. + +_Endymion_. + +Our English Hyacinth, it is said, is not entitled to its legendary +honors. The words _Non Scriptus_ were applied to this plant by +Dodonaeus, because it had not the _Ai Ai_ upon its petals. Professor +Martyn says that the flower called _Lilium Martagon_ or the _Scarlet +Turk's Cap_ is the plant alluded to by the ancients. + +Alphonse Karr, the eloquent French writer, whose "_Tour Round my +Garden_" I recommend to the perusal of all who can sympathize with +reflections and emotions suggested by natural objects, has the following +interesting anecdote illustrative of the force of a floral +association:-- + +"I had in a solitary corner of my garden _three hyacinths_ which my +father had planted and which death did not allow him to see bloom. Every +year the period of their flowering was for me a solemnity, a funeral and +religious festival, it was a melancholy remembrance which revived and +reblossomed every year and exhaled certain thoughts with its perfume. +The roots are dead now and nothing lives of this dear association but in +my own heart. But what a dear yet sad privilege man possesses above all +created beings, while thus enabled by memory and thought to follow those +whom he loved to the tomb and there shut up the living with the dead. +What a melancholy privilege, and yet is there one amongst us who would +lose it? Who is he who would willingly forget all" + +Wordsworth, suddenly stopping before a little bunch of harebells, which +along with some parsley fern, grew out of a wall, he exclaimed, 'How +perfectly beautiful that is! + + Would that the little flowers that grow could live + Conscious of half the pleasure that they give + +The Hyacinth has been cultivated with great care and success in Holland, +where from two to three hundred pounds have been given for a single +bulb. A florist at Haarlem enumerates 800 kinds of double-flowered +Hyacinths, besides about 400 varieties of the single kind. It is said +that there are altogether upwards of 2000 varieties of the Hyacinth. + +The English are particularly fond of the Hyacinth. It is a domestic +flower--a sort of parlour pet. When in "close city pent" they transfer +the bulbs to glass vases (Hyacinth glasses) filled with water, and place +them in their windows in the winter. + +An annual solemnity, called Hyacinthia, was held in Laconia in honor of +Hyacinthus and Apollo. It lasted three days. So eagerly was this +festival honored, that the soldiers of Laconia even when they had taken +the field against an enemy would return home to celebrate it. + +THE NARCISSUS + + Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watery shore + +_Spenser_ + +With respect to the NARCISSUS, whose name in the floral vocabulary is +the synonyme of _egotism_, there is a story that must be familiar enough +to most of my readers. Narcissus was a beautiful youth. Teresias, the +Soothsayer, foretold that he should enjoy felicity until he beheld his +own face but that the first sight of that would be fatal to him. Every +kind of mirror was kept carefully out of his way. Echo was enamoured of +him, but he slighted her love, and she pined and withered away until she +had nothing left her but her voice, and even that could only repeat the +last syllables of other people's sentences. He at last saw his own image +reflected in a fountain, and taking it for that of another, he fell +passionately in love with it. He attempted to embrace it. On seeing the +fruitlessness of all his efforts, he killed himself in despair. When the +nymphs raised a funeral pile to burn his body, they found nothing but a +flower. That flower (into which he had been changed) still bears his +name. + +Here is a little passage about the fable, from the _Two Noble Kinsmen_ +of Beaumont and Fletcher. + + _Emilia_--This garden hath a world of pleasure in it, + What flower is this? + + _Servant_--'Tis called Narcissus, Madam. + + _Em._--That was a fair boy certain, but a fool + To love himself, were there not maids, + Or are they all hard hearted? + + _Ser_--That could not be to one so fair. + +Ben Jonson touches the true moral of the fable very forcibly. + + 'Tis now the known disease + That beauty hath, to hear too deep a sense + Of her own self conceived excellence + Oh! had'st thou known the worth of Heaven's rich gift, + Thou would'st have turned it to a truer use, + And not (with starved and covetous ignorance) + Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem + The glance whereof to others had been more + Than to thy famished mind the wide world's store. + +Gay's version of the fable is as follows: + + Here young Narcissus o'er the fountain stood + And viewed his image in the crystal flood + The crystal flood reflects his lovely charms + And the pleased image strives to meet his arms. + No nymph his inexperienced breast subdued, + Echo in vain the flying boy pursued + Himself alone, the foolish youth admires + And with fond look the smiling shade desires, + O'er the smooth lake with fruitless tears he grieves, + His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves, + Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows, + And in a short lived flower his beauty glows + +Addison has given a full translation of the story of Narcissus from +Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book the third. + +The common daffodil of our English fields is of the genus Narcissus. +"Pray," said some one to Pope, "what is this _Asphodel_ of Homer?" "Why, +I believe," said Pope "if one was to say the truth, 'twas nothing else +but that poor yellow flower that grows about our orchards, and, if so, +the verse might be thus translated in English + + --The stern Achilles + Stalked through a mead of daffodillies" + +THE LAUREL + +Daphne was a beautiful nymph beloved by that very amorous gentleman, +Apollo. The love was not reciprocal. She endeavored to escape his +godship's importunities by flight. Apollo overtook her. She at that +instant solicited aid from heaven, and was at once turned into a laurel. +Apollo gathered a wreath from the tree and placing it on his own +immortal brows, decreed that from that hour the laurel should be sacred +to his divinity. + +THE SUN-FLOWER + + Who can unpitying see the flowery race + Shed by the morn then newflushed bloom resign, + Before the parching beam? So fade the fair, + When fever revels in their azure veins + But one, _the lofty follower of the sun_, + Sad when he sits shuts up her yellow leaves, + Drooping all night, and when he warm return, + Points her enamoured bosom to his ray + +_Thomson_. + +THE SUN-FLOWER (_Helianthus_) was once the fair nymph Clytia. +Broken-hearted at the falsehood of her lover, Apollo, (who has so many +similar sins to answer for) she pined away and died. When it was too late +Apollo's heart relented, and in honor of true affection he changed poor +Clytia into a _Sun-flower_.[073] It is sometimes called _Tourne-sol_--a +word that signifies turning to the sun. Thomas Moore helps to keep the +old story in remembrance by the concluding couplet of one of his +sweetest ballads. + + Oh! the heart that has truly loved never forgets, + But as truly loves on to its close + As the sun flower turns on her god when he sets + The same look that she turned when he rose + +But Moore has here poetized a vulgar error. Most plants naturally turn +towards the light, but the sun-flower (in spite of its name) is perhaps +less apt to turn itself towards Apollo than the majority of other +flowers for it has a stiff stem and a number of heavy heads. At all +events it does not change its attitude in the course of the day. The +flower-disk that faces the morning sun has it back to it in the evening. + +Gerard calls the sun-flower "The Flower of the Sun or the Marigold of +Peru". Speaking of it in the year 1596 he tells us that he had some in +his own garden in Holborn that had grown to the height of fourteen feet. + +THE WALL-FLOWER + + The weed is green, when grey the wall, + And blossoms rise where turrets fall + +Herrick gives us a pretty version of the story of the WALL-FLOWER, +(_cheiranthus cheiri_)("the yellow wall-flower stained with iron brown") + + Why this flower is now called so + List sweet maids and you shall know + Understand this firstling was + Once a brisk and bonny lass + Kept as close as Danae was + Who a sprightly springal loved, + And to have it fully proved, + Up she got upon a wall + Tempting down to slide withal, + But the silken twist untied, + So she fell, and bruised and died + Love in pity of the deed + And her loving, luckless speed, + Turned her to the plant we call + Now, 'The Flower of the Wall' + +The wall-flower is the emblem of fidelity in misfortune, because it +attaches itself to fallen towers and gives a grace to ruin. David Moir +(the Delta of _Blackwood's Magazine_) has a poem on this flower. I must +give one stanza of it. + + In the season of the tulip cup + When blossoms clothe the trees, + How sweet to throw the lattice up + And scent thee on the breeze; + The butterfly is then abroad, + The bee is on the wing, + And on the hawthorn by the road + The linnets sit and sing. + +Lord Bacon observes that wall-flowers are very delightful when set under +the parlour window or a lower chamber window. They are delightful, I +think, any where. + +THE JESSAMINE. + + The Jessamine, with which the Queen of flowers, + To charm her god[074] adorns his favorite bowers, + Which brides, by the plain hand of neatness dressed-- + Unenvied rivals!--wear upon their breast; + Sweet as the incense of the morn, and chaste + As the pure zone which circles Dian's waist. + +_Churchill._ + +The elegant and fragrant JESSAMINE, or Jasmine, (_Jasmimum Officinale_) +with its "bright profusion of scattered stars," is said to have passed +from East to West. It was originally a native of Hindustan, but it is +now to be found in every clime, and is a favorite in all. There are +many varieties of it in Europe. In Italy it is woven into bridal wreaths +and is used on all festive occasions. There is a proverbial saying +there, that she who is worthy of being decorated with jessamine is rich +enough for any husband. Its first introduction into that sunny land is +thus told. A certain Duke of Tuscany, the first possessor of a plant of +this tribe, wished to preserve it as an unique, and forbade his gardener +to give away a single sprig of it. But the gardener was a more faithful +lover than servant and was more willing to please a young mistress than +an old master. He presented the young girl with a branch of jessamine on +her birth-day. She planted it in the ground; it took root, and grew and +blossomed. She multiplied the plant by cuttings, and by the sale of +these realized a little fortune, which her lover received as her +marriage dowry. + +In England the bride wears a coronet of intermingled orange blossom and +jessamine. Orange flowers indicate chastity, and the jessamine, elegance +and grace. + +THE ROSE. + + For here the rose expands + Her paradise of leaves. + +_Southey._ + +The ROSE, (_Rosa_) the Queen of Flowers, was given by Cupid to +Harpocrates, the God of Silence, as a bribe, to prevent him from +betraying the amours of Venus. A rose suspended from the ceiling +intimates that all is strictly confidential that passes under it. Hence +the phrase--_under the Rose_[075]. + +The rose was raised by Flora from the remains of a favorite nymph. Venus +and the Graces assisted in the transformation of the nymph into a +flower. Bacchus supplied streams of nectar to its root, and Vertumnus +showered his choicest perfumes on its head. + +The loves of the Nightingale and the Rose have been celebrated by the +Muses of many lands. An Eastern poet says "You may place a hundred +handfuls of fragrant herbs and flowers before the Nightingale; yet he +wishes not, in his constant heart, for more than the sweet breath of his +beloved Rose." + +The Turks say that the rose owes its origin to a drop of perspiration +that fell from the person of their prophet Mahommed. + +The classical legend runs that the rose was at first of a pure white, +but a rose-thorn piercing the foot of Venus when she was hastening to +protect Adonis from the rage of Mars, her blood dyed the flower. Spenser +alludes to this legend: + + White as the native rose, before the change + Which Venus' blood did on her leaves impress. + +_Spenser_. + +Milton says that in Paradise were, + + Flowers of all hue, and _without thorns the rose_. + +According to Zoroaster there was no thorn on the rose until Ahriman (the +Evil One) entered the world. + +Here is Dr. Hooker's account of the origin of the red rose. + + To sinless Eve's admiring sight + The rose expanded snowy white, + When in the ecstacy of bliss + She gave the modest flower a kiss, + And instantaneous, lo! it drew + From her red lip its blushing hue; + While from her breath it sweetness found, + And spread new fragrance all around. + +This reminds me of a passage in Mrs. Barrett Browning's _Drama of Exile_ +in which she makes Eve say-- + + --For was I not + At that last sunset seen in Paradise, + When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs + Of sudden angel-faces, face by face, + All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God + Held them suspended,--was I not, that hour + The lady of the world, princess of life, + Mistress of feast and favour? _Could I touch + A Rose with my white hand, but it became + Redder at once?_ + +Another poet. (Mr. C. Cooke) tells us that a species of red rose with +all her blushing honors full upon her, taking pity on a very pale +maiden, changed complexions with the invalid and became herself as white +as snow. + +Byron expressed a wish that all woman-kind had but one _rosy_ mouth, +that he might kiss all woman-kind at once. This, as some one has rightly +observed, is better than Caligula's wish that all mankind had but one +head that he might cut it off at a single blow. + +Leigh Hunt has a pleasant line about the rose: + + And what a red mouth hath the rose, the woman of the flowers! + +In the Malay language the same word signifies _flowers_ and _women_. + +Human beauty and the rose are ever suggesting images of each other to +the imagination of the poets. Shakespeare has a beautiful description of +the two little princes sleeping together in the Tower of London. + + Their lips were four red roses on a stalk + That in their summer beauty kissed each other. + +William Browne (our Devonshire Pastoral Poet) has a _rosy_ description +of a kiss:-- + + To her Amyntas + Came and saluted; never man before + More blest, nor like this kiss hath been another + But when two dangling cherries kist each other; + Nor ever beauties, like, met at such closes, + But in the kisses of two damask roses. + +Here is something in the same spirit from Crashaw. + + So have I seen + Two silken sister-flowers consult and lay + Their bashful cheeks together; newly they + Peeped from their buds, showed like the garden's eyes + Scarce waked, like was the crimson of their joys, + Like were the tears they wept, so like that one + Seemed but the other's kind reflection. + +Loudon says that there is a rose called the _York and Lancaster_ which +when, it comes true has one half of the flower red and the other half +white. It was named in commemoration of the two houses at the marriage +of Henry VII. of Lancaster with Elizabeth of York. + +Anacreon devotes one of his longest and best odes to the laudation of +the Rose. Such innumerable translations have been made of it that it is +now too well known for quotation in this place. Thomas Moore in his +version of the ode gives in a foot-note the following translation of a +fragment of the Lesbian poetess. + + If Jove would give the leafy bowers + A queen for all their world of flowers + The Rose would be the choice of Jove, + And blush the queen of every grove + Sweetest child of weeping morning, + Gem the vest of earth adorning, + Eye of gardens, light of lawns, + Nursling of soft summer dawns + June's own earliest sigh it breathes, + Beauty's brow with lustre wreathes, + And to young Zephyr's warm caresses + Spreads abroad its verdant tresses, + Till blushing with the wanton's play + Its cheeks wear e'en a redder ray. + +From the idea of excellence attached to this Queen of Flowers arose, as +Thomas Moore observes, the pretty proverbial expression used by +Aristophanes--_you have spoken roses_, a phrase adds the English poet, +somewhat similar to the _dire des fleurettes_ of the French. + +The Festival of the Rose is still kept up in many villages of France and +Switzerland. On a certain day of every year the young unmarried women +assemble and undergo a solemn trial before competent judges, the most +virtuous and industrious girl obtains a crown of roses. In the valley of +Engandine, in Switzerland, a man accused of a crime but proved to be not +guilty, is publicly presented by a young maiden with a white rose called +the Rose of Innocence. + +Of the truly elegant Moss Rose I need say nothing myself; it has been so +amply honored by far happier pens than mine. Here is a very ingenious +and graceful story of its origin. The lines are from the German. + +THE MOSS ROSE + + The Angel of the Flowers one day, + Beneath a rose tree sleeping lay, + The spirit to whom charge is given + To bathe young buds in dews of heaven, + Awaking from his light repose + The Angel whispered to the Rose + "O fondest object of my care + Still fairest found where all is fair, + For the sweet shade thou givest to me + Ask what thou wilt 'tis granted thee" + "Then" said the Rose, "with deepened glow + On me another grace bestow." + The spirit paused in silent thought + What grace was there the flower had not? + 'Twas but a moment--o'er the rose + A veil of moss the Angel throws, + And robed in Nature's simple weed, + Could there a flower that rose exceed? + +Madame de Genlis tells us that during her first visit to England she saw +a moss-rose for the first time in her life, and that when she took it +back to Paris it gave great delight to her fellow-citizens, who said it +was the first that had ever been seen in that city. Madame de Latour +says that Madame de Genlis was mistaken, for the moss-rose came +originally from Provence and had been known to the French for ages. + +The French are said to have cultivated the Rose with extraordinary care +and success. It was the favorite flower of the Empress Josephine, who +caused her own name to be traced in the parterres at Malmaison with a +plantation of the rarest roses. In the royal rosary at Versailles there +are standards eighteen feet high grafted with twenty different varieties +of the rose. + +With the Romans it was no metaphor but an allusion to a literal fact +when they talked of sleeping upon beds of roses. Cicero in his third +oration against Verres, when charging the proconsul with luxurious +habits, stated that he had made the tour of Sicily seated upon roses. +And Seneca says, of course jestingly, that a Sybarite of the name of +Smyrndiride was unable to sleep if one of the rose-petals on his bed +happened to be curled! At a feast which Cleopatra gave to Marc Antony +the floor of the hall was covered with fresh roses to the depth of +eighteen inches. At a fête given by Nero at Baiae the sum of four +millions of sesterces or about 20,000_l_. was incurred for roses. The +Natives of India are fond of the rose, and are lavish in their +expenditure at great festivals, but I suppose that no millionaire +amongst them ever spent such an amount of money as this upon flowers +alone.[076] + +I shall close the poetical quotations on the Rose with one of +Shakespeare's sonnets. + + O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, + By that sweet ornament which truth doth give. + The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem + For that sweet odour which doth in it live. + The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye + As the perfumed tincture of the roses, + Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly, + When summer's breath their masked buds discloses; + But for their virtue only is their show, + They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade; + Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so; + Of then sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: + And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, + When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth. + +There are many hundred acres of rose trees at Ghazeepore which are +cultivated for distillation, and making "attar." There are large fields +of roses in England also, for the manufacture of rose-water. + +There is a story about the origin of attar of Roses. The Princess +Nourmahal caused a large tank, on which she used to be rowed about with +the great Mogul, to be filled with rose-water. The heat of the sun +separating the water from the essential oil of the rose, the latter was +observed to be floating on the surface. The discovery was immediately +turned to good account. At Ghazeepoor, the _essence_, _atta_ or _uttar_ +or _otto_, or whatever it should be called, is obtained with great +simplicity and ease. After the rose water is prepared it is put into +large open vessels which are left out at night. Early in the morning the +oil that floats upon the surface is skimmed off, or sucked up with fine +dry cotton wool, put into bottles, and carefully sealed. Bishop Heber +says that to produce one rupee's weight of atta 200,000 well grown roses +are required, and that a rupee's weight sells from 80 to 100 rupees. The +atta sold in Calcutta is commonly adulterated with the oil of sandal +wood. + +LINNAEA BOREALIS + +The LINNAEA BOREALIS, or two horned Linnaea, though a simple Lapland +flower, is interesting to all botanists from its association with the +name of the Swedish Sage. It has pretty little bells and is very +fragrant. It is a wild, unobtrusive plant and is very averse to the +trim lawn and the gay flower-border. This little woodland beauty pines +away under too much notice. She prefers neglect, and would rather waste +her sweetness on the desert air, than be introduced into the fashionable +lists of Florist's flowers. She shrinks from exposure to the sun. A +gentleman after walking with Linnaeus on the shores of the lake near +Charlottendal on a lovely evening, writes thus "I gathered a small +flower and asked if it was the _Linnaea borealis_. 'Nay,' said the +philosopher, 'she lives not here, but in the middle of our largest +woods. She clings with her little arms to the moss, and seems to resist +very gently if you force her from it. She has a complexion like a +milkmaid, and ah! she is very, very sweet and agreeable!" + +THE FORGET-ME-NOT + +The dear little FORGET-ME-NOT, (_myosotis palustris_)[077] with its eye +of blue, is said to have derived its touching appellation from a +sentimental German story. Two lovers were walking on the bank of a rapid +stream. The lady beheld the flower growing on a little island, and +expressed a passionate desire to possess it. He gallantly plunged into +the stream and obtained the flower, but exhausted by the force of the +tide, he had only sufficient strength left as he neared the shore to +fling the flower at the fair one's feet, and exclaim "_Forget-me-not!_" +(_Vergiss-mein-nicht_.) He was then carried away by the stream, out of +her sight for ever. + +THE PERIWINKLE. + +The PERIWINKLE (_vinca_ or _pervinca_) has had its due share of poetical +distinction. In France the common people call it the Witch's violet. It +seems to have suggested to Wordsworth an idea of the consciousness of +flowers. + + Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, + The Periwinkle trailed its wreaths, + _And 'tis my faith that every flower + Enjoys the air it breathes._ + +Mr. J.L. Merritt, has some complimentary lines on this flower. + + The Periwinkle with its fan-like leaves + All nicely levelled, is a lovely flower + Whose dark wreath, myrtle like, young Flora weaves; + There's none more rare + Nor aught more meet to deck a fairy's bower + Or grace her hair. + +The little blue Periwinkle is rendered especially interesting to the +admirers of the genius of Rousseau by an anecdote that records his +emotion on meeting it in one of his botanical excursions. He had seen it +thirty years before in company with Madame de Warens. On meeting its +sweet face again, after so long and eventful an interim, he fell upon +his knees, crying out--_Ah! voila de la pervanche!_ "It struck him," +says Hazlitt, "as the same little identical flower that he remembered so +well; and thirty years of sorrow and bitter regret were effaced from his +memory." + +The Periwinkle was once supposed to be a cure for many diseases. Lord +Bacon says that in his time people afflicted with cramp wore bands of +green periwinkle tied about their limbs. It had also its supposed moral +influences. According to Culpepper the leaves of the flower if eaten by +man and wife together would revive between them a lost affection. + +THE BASIL. + + Sweet marjoram, with her like, _sweet basil_, rare for smell. + +_Drayton._ + +The BASIL is a plant rendered poetical by the genius which has handled +it. Boccaccio and Keats have made the name of the _sweet basil_ sound +pleasantly in the ears of many people who know nothing of botany. A +species of this plant (known in Europe under the botanical name of +_Ocymum villosum_, and in India as the _Toolsee_) is held sacred by the +Hindus. Toolsee was a disciple of Vishnu. Desiring to be his wife she +excited the jealousy of Lukshmee by whom she was transformed into the +herb named after her.[078] + +THE TULIP. + + Tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked. + +_Southey_. + +The TULIP (_tulipa_) is the glory of the garden, as far as color without +fragrance can confer such distinction. Some suppose it to be 'The Lily +of the Field' alluded to in the Sermon on the Mount. It grows wild in +Syria. + +The name of the tulip is said to be of Turkish origin. It was called +Tulipa from its resemblance to the tulipan or turban. + + What crouds the rich Divan to-day + With turbaned heads, of every hue + Bowing before that veiled and awful face + Like Tulip-beds of different shapes and dyes, + Bending beneath the invisible west wind's sighs? + +_Moore_. + +The reader has probably heard of the Tulipomania once carried to so +great an excess in Holland. + + With all his phlegm, it broke a Dutchman's heart, + At a vast price, with one loved root to part. + +_Crabbe_. + +About the middle of the 17th century the city of Haarlem realized in +three years ten millions sterling by the sale of tulips. A single tulip +(the _Semper Augustus_) was sold for one thousand pounds. Twelve acres +of land were given for a single root and engagements to the amount of +£5,000 were made for a first-class tulip when the mania was at its +height. A gentleman, who possessed a tulip of great value, hearing that +some one was in possession of a second root of the same kind, eagerly +secured it at a most extravagant price. The moment he got possession of +it, he crushed it under his foot. "Now," he exclaimed, "my tulip is +unique!" + +A Dutch Merchant gave a sailor a herring for his breakfast. Jack seeing +on the Merchant's counter what he supposed to be a heap of onions, took +up a handful of them and ate them with his fish. The supposed onions +were tulip bulbs of such value that they would have paid the cost of a +thousand Royal feasts.[079] + +The tulip mania never leached so extravagant a height in England as in +Holland, but our country did not quite escape the contagion, and even so +late as the year 1836 at the sale of Mr. Clarke's tulips at Croydon, +seventy two pounds were given for a single bulb of the _Fanny Kemble_; +and a Florist in Chelsea in the same year, priced a bulb in his +catalogue at 200 guineas. + +The Tulip is not endeared to us by many poetical associations. We have +read, however, one pretty and romantic tale about it. A poor old woman +who lived amongst the wild hills of Dartmoor, in Devonshire, possessed a +beautiful bed of Tulips, the pride of her small garden. One fine +moonlight night her attention was arrested by the sweet music which +seemed to issue from a thousand Liliputian choristers. She found that +the sounds proceeded from her many colored bells of Tulips. After +watching the flowers intently she perceived that they were not swayed to +and fro by the wind, but by innumerable little beings that were climbing +on the stems and leaves. They were pixies. Each held in its arms an +elfin baby tinier than itself. She saw the babies laid in the bells of +the plant, which were thus used as cradles, and the music was formed of +many lullabies. When the babies were asleep the pixies or fairies left +them, and gamboled on the neighbouring sward on which the old lady +discovered the day after, several new green rings,--a certain evidence +that her fancy had not deceived her! At earliest dawn the fairies had +returned to the tulips and taken away their little ones. The good old +woman never permitted her tulip bed to be disturbed. She regarded it as +holy ground. But when she died, some Utilitarian gardener turned it into +a parsley bed! The parsley never flourished. The ground was now cursed. +In gratitude to the memory of the benevolent dame who had watched and +protected the floral nursery, every month, on the night before the full +moon, the fairies scattered flowers on her grave, and raised a sweet +musical dirge--heard only by poetic ears--or by maids and children who + + Hold each strange tale devoutly true. + +For as the poet says: + + What though no credit doubting wits may give, + The fair and innocent shall still believe. + +Men of genius are often as trustful as maids and children. Collins, +himself a lover of the wonderful, thus speaks of Tasso:-- + + Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind + Believed the magic wonders that he sung. + +All nature indeed is full of mystery to the imaginative. + + And visions as poetic eyes avow + Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough. + +The Hindoos believe that the Peepul tree of which the foliage trembles +like that of the aspen, has a spirit in every leaf. + +"Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, Madam?" said Blake, the artist. +"Never Sir." "_I_ have," continued that eccentric genius, "One night I +was walking alone in my garden. There was great stillness amongst the +branches and flowers and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard +a low and pleasant sound, and knew not whence it came: at last I +perceived _the broad leaf of a flower move_, and underneath I saw a +procession of creatures the size and color of green and gray +grasshoppers, _bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf_, which they +buried with song, and then disappeared." + +THE PINK. + +The PINK (_dianthus_) is a very elegant flower. I have but a short story +about it. The young Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis the Fifteenth, +was brought up in the midst of flatterers as fulsome as those rebuked by +Canute. The youthful prince was fond of cultivating pinks, and one of +his courtiers, by substituting a floral changeling, persuaded him that +one of those pinks planted by the royal hand had sprung up into bloom in +a single night! One night, being unable to sleep, he wished to rise, but +was told that it was midnight; he replied "_Well then, I desire it to be +morning_." + +The pink is one of the commonest of the flowers in English gardens. It +is a great favorite all over Europe. The botanists have enumerated about +400 varieties of it. + +THE PANSY OR HEARTS-EASE. + +The PANSY (_víola trîcolor_) commonly called _Hearts-ease_, or +_Love-in-idleness_, or _Herb-Trinity_ (_Flos Trinitarium_), or +_Three-faces-under-a-hood_, or _Kit-run-about_, is one of the richest +and loveliest of flowers. + +The late Mrs. Siddons, the great actress, was so fond of this flower +that she thought she could never have enough of it. Besides round beds +of it she used it as an edging to all the flower borders in her garden. +She liked to plant a favorite flower in large masses of beauty. But such +beauty must soon fatigue the eye with its sameness. A round bed of one +sort of flowers only is like a nosegay composed of one sort of flowers +or of flowers of the same hue. She was also particularly fond of +evergreens because they gave her garden a pleasant aspect even in the +winter. + +"Do you hear him?"--(John Bunyan makes the guide enquire of Christiana +while a shepherd boy is singing beside his sheep)--"I will dare to say +this boy leads a merrier life, and wears more of the herb called +_hearts-ease_ in his bosom, than he that is clothed in silk and purple." + +Shakespeare has connected this flower with a compliment to the maiden +Queen of England. + + That very time I saw (but thou couldst not) + Flying between the cold moon and the earth, + Cupid all armed, a certain aim he took + At a fair Vestal, throned by the west; + And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow + As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. + But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft + Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon-- + And the imperial votaress passed on + In maiden meditation fancy free, + Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell. + It fell upon _a little western flowers, + Before milk white, now purple with love's wound-- + And maidens call it_ LOVE IN IDLENESS + Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once, + The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, + Will make or man or woman madly dote + Upon the next live creature that it sees. + Fetch me this herb and be thou here again, + Ere the leviathan can swim a league. + +_Midsummer Night's Dream._ + +The hearts-ease has been cultivated with great care and success by some +of the most zealous flower-fanciers amongst our countrymen in India. But +it is a delicate plant in this clime, and requires most assiduous +attention, and a close study of its habits. It always withers here under +ordinary hands. + +THE MIGNONETTE. + +The MIGNONETTE, (_reseda odorato_,) the Frenchman's _little darling_, +was not introduced into England until the middle of the 17th century. +The Mignonette or Sweet Reseda was once supposed capable of assuaging +pain, and of ridding men of many of the ills that flesh is heir to. It +was applied with an incantation. This flower has found a place in the +armorial bearings of an illustrious family of Saxony. I must tell the +story: The Count of Walsthim loved the fair and sprightly Amelia de +Nordbourg. She was a spoilt child and a coquette. She had an humble +companion whose christian name was Charlotte. One evening at a party, +all the ladies were called upon to choose a flower each, and the +gentlemen were to make verses on the selections. Amelia fixed upon the +flaunting rose, Charlotte the modest mignonette. In the course of the +evening Amelia coquetted so desperately with a dashing Colonel that the +Count could not suppress his vexation. On this he wrote a verse for the +Rose: + + Elle ne vit qu'un jour, et ne plait qu'un moment. + (She lives but for a day and pleases but for a moment) + +He then presented the following line on the Mignonette to the gentle +Charlotte: + + "Ses qualities surpassent ses charmes." + +The Count transferred his affections to Charlotte, and when he married +her, added a branch of the Sweet Reseda to the ancient arms of his +family, with the motto of + + Your qualities surpass your charms. + +VERVAIN. + + The vervain-- + That hind'reth witches of their will. + +_Drayton_ + +VERVAIN (_verbena_) was called by the Greeks _the sacred herb_. It was +used to brush their altars. It was supposed to keep off evil spirits. It +was also used in the religious ceremonies of the Druids and is still +held sacred by the Persian Magi. The latter lay branches of it on the +altar of the sun. + +The ancients had their _Verbenalia_ when the temples were strewed with +vervain, and no incantation or lustration was deemed perfect without the +aid of this plant. It was supposed to cure the bite of a serpent or a +mad dog. + +THE DAISY. + +The DAISY or day's eye (_bellis perennis_) has been the darling of the +British poets from Chaucer to Shelley. It is not, however, the darling +of poets only, but of princes and peasants. And it is not man's favorite +only, but, as Wordsworth says, Nature's favorite also. Yet it is "the +simplest flower that blows." Its seed is broadcast on the land. It is +the most familiar of flowers. It sprinkles every field and lane in the +country with its little mimic stars. Wordsworth pays it a beautiful +compliment in saying that + + Oft alone in nooks remote + _We meet it like a pleasant thought + When such is wanted._ + +But though this poet dearly loved the daisy, in some moods of mind he +seems to have loved the little celandine (common pilewort) even better. +He has addressed two poems to this humble little flower. One begins with +the following stanza. + + Pansies, Lilies, Kingcups, Daisies, + Let them live upon their praises; + Long as there's a sun that sets + Primroses will have their glory; + Long as there are Violets, + They will have a place in story: + There's a flower that shall be mine, + 'Tis the little Celandine. + +No flower is too lowly for the affections of Wordsworth. Hazlitt says, +"the daisy looks up to Wordsworth with sparkling eye as an old +acquaintance; a withered thorn is weighed down with a heap of +recollections; and even the lichens on the rocks have a life and being +in his thoughts." + +The Lesser Celandine, is an inodorous plant, but as Wordsworth possessed +not the sense of smell, to him a deficiency of fragrance in a flower +formed no objection to it. Miss Martineau alludes to a newspaper report +that on one occasion the poet suddenly found himself capable of enjoying +the fragrance of a flower, and gave way to an emotion of tumultuous +rapture. But I have seen this contradicted. Miss Martineau herself has +generally no sense of smell, but we have her own testimony to the fact +that a brief enjoyment of the faculty once actually occurred to her. In +her case there was a simultaneous awakening of two dormant +faculties--the sense of smell and the sense of taste. Once and once only, +she enjoyed the scent of a bottle of Eau de Cologne and the taste of meat. +The two senses died away again almost in their birth. + +Shelley calls Daisies "those pearled Arcturi of the earth"--"the +constellated flower that never sets." + +The Father of English poets does high honor to this star of the meadow +in the "Prologue to the Legend of Goode Women." + +He tells us that in the merry month of May he was wont to quit even his +beloved books to look upon the fresh morning daisy. + + Of all the floures in the mede + Then love I most these floures white and red, + Such that men callen Daisies in our town, + To them I have so great affectión. + As I sayd erst, when comen is the Maie, + That in my bedde there dawneth me no daie + That I nam up and walking in the mede + To see this floure agenst the Sunne sprede, + When it up riseth early by the morrow + That blisfull sight softeneth all my sorrow. + +_Chaucer_. + +The poet then goes on with his hearty laudation of this lilliputian +luminary of the fields, and hesitates not to describe it as "of all +floures the floure." The famous Scottish Peasant loved it just as truly, +and did it equal honor. Who that has once read, can ever forget his +harmonious and pathetic address to a mountain daisy on turning it up +with the plough? I must give the poem a place here, though it must be +familiar to every reader. But we can read it again and again, just as we +can look day after day with undiminished interest upon the flower that +it commemorates. + +Mrs. Stowe (the American writer) observes that "the daisy with its wide +plaited ruff and yellow centre is not our (that is, an American's) +flower. The English flower is the + + Wee, modest, crimson tippéd flower + +which Burns celebrated. It is what we (in America) raise in green-houses +and call the Mountain Daisy. Its effect, growing profusely about fields +and grass-plats, is very beautiful." + +TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. + +ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN APRIL, 1786 + + Wee, modest, crimson tippéd flow'r, + Thou's met me in an evil hour, + For I maun[080] crush amang the stoure[081] + Thy slender stem, + To spare thee now is past my pow'r, + Thou bonnie gem. + + Alas! its no thy neobor sweet, + The bonnie lark, companion meet, + Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet[082] + Wi' speckled breast, + When upward springing, blythe, to greet + The purpling east + + Cauld blew the bitter biting north + Upon thy early, humble, birth, + Yet cheerfully thou glinted[083] forth + Amid the storm, + Scarce reared above the patient earth + Thy tender form + + The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, + High sheltering woods and wa's[084] maun shield, + But thou beneath the random bield[085] + O' clod or stane, + Adorns the histie[086] stibble field[087] + Unseen, alane. + + There, in thy scanty mantle clad, + Thy snawye bosom sun ward spread, + Thou lifts thy unassuming head + In humble guise, + But now the share up tears thy bed, + And low thou lies! + + Such is the fate of artless Maid, + Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade! + By love's simplicity betrayed, + And guileless trust, + Till she, like thee, all soiled is laid + Low i' the dust. + + Such is the fate of simple Bard, + On Life's rough ocean luckless starred! + Unskilful he to note the card + Of prudent lore, + Till billows rage, and gales blow hard + And whelm him o'er! + + Such fate to suffering worth is given + Who long with wants and woes has striven + By human pride or cunning driven + To misery's brink, + Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven, + He, ruined, sink! + + Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, + That fate is thine--no distant date; + Stern Ruin's plough-share drives elate, + Full on thy bloom; + Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight + Shall be thy doom. + +_Burns._ + +The following verses though they make no pretension to the strength and +pathos of the poem by the great Scottish Peasant, have a grace and +simplicity of their own, for which they have long been deservedly +popular. + +A FIELD FLOWER. + +ON FINDING ONE IN FULL BLOOM, ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1803. + + There is a flower, a little flower, + With silver crest and golden eye, + That welcomes every changing hour, + And weathers every sky. + + The prouder beauties of the field + In gay but quick succession shine, + Race after race their honours yield, + They flourish and decline. + + But this small flower, to Nature dear, + While moons and stars their courses run, + Wreathes the whole circle of the year, + Companion of the sun. + + It smiles upon the lap of May, + To sultry August spreads its charms, + Lights pale October on his way, + And twines December's arms. + + The purple heath and golden broom, + On moory mountains catch the gale, + O'er lawns the lily sheds perfume, + The violet in the vale. + + But this bold floweret climbs the hill, + Hides in the forest, haunts the glen, + Plays on the margin of the rill, + Peeps round the fox's den. + + Within the garden's cultured round + It shares the sweet carnation's bed; + And blooms on consecrated ground + In honour of the dead. + + The lambkin crops its crimson gem, + The wild-bee murmurs on its breast, + The blue-fly bends its pensile stem, + Light o'er the sky-lark's nest. + + 'Tis FLORA'S page,--in every place, + In every season fresh and fair; + It opens with perennial grace. + And blossoms everywhere. + + On waste and woodland, rock and plain, + Its humble buds unheeded rise; + The rose has but a summer-reign; + The DAISY never dies. + +_James Montgomery_. + +Montgomery has another very pleasing poetical address to the daisy. The +poem was suggested by the first plant of the kind which had appeared in +India. The flower sprang up unexpectedly out of some English earth, sent +with other seeds in it, to this country. The amiable Dr. Carey of +Serampore was the lucky recipient of the living treasure, and the poem +is supposed to be addressed by him to the dear little flower of his +home, thus born under a foreign sky. Dr. Carey was a great lover of +flowers, and it was one of his last directions on his death-bed, as I +have already said, that his garden should be always protected from the +intrusion of Goths and Vandals in the form of Bengallee goats and cows. +I must give one stanza of Montgomery's second poetical tribute to the +small flower with "the silver crest and golden eye." + + Thrice-welcome, little English flower! + To this resplendent hemisphere + Where Flora's giant offsprings tower + In gorgeous liveries all the year; + Thou, only thou, art little here + Like worth unfriended and unknown, + Yet to my British heart more dear + Than all the torrid zone. + +It is difficult to exaggerate the feeling with which an exile welcomes a +home-flower. A year or two ago Dr. Ward informed the Royal Institution +of London, that a single primrose had been taken to Australia in a +glass-case and that when it arrived there in full bloom, the sensation +it excited was so great that even those who were in the hot pursuit of +gold, paused in their eager career to gaze for a moment upon the flower +of their native fields, and such immense crowds at last pressed around +it that it actually became necessary to protect it by a guard. + +My last poetical tribute to the Daisy shall be three stanzas from +Wordsworth, from two different addresses to the same flower. + + With little here to do or see + Of things that in the great world be, + Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee, + For thou art worthy, + Thou unassuming Common-place + Of Nature, with that homely face, + And yet with something of a grace, + Which Love makes for thee! + + * * * * * + + If stately passions in me burn, + And one chance look to Thee should turn, + I drink out of an humbler urn + A lowlier pleasure; + The homely sympathy that heeds + The common life, our nature breeds; + A wisdom fitted to the needs + Of hearts at leisure. + + When, smitten by the morning ray, + I see thee rise, alert and gay, + Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play + With kindred gladness; + And when, at dusk, by dews opprest + Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest + Hath often eased my pensive breast + Of careful sadness. + +It is peculiarly interesting to observe how the profoundest depths of +thought and feeling are sometimes stirred in the heart of genius by the +smallest of the works of Nature. Even more ordinarily gifted men are +similarly affected to the utmost extent of their intellect and +sensibility. We grow tired of the works of man. In the realms of art we +ever crave something unseen before. We demand new fashions, and when the +old are once laid aside, we wonder that they should ever have excited +even a moment's admiration. But Nature, though she is always the same, +never satiates us. The simple little Daisy which Burns has so sweetly +commemorated is the same flower that was "of all flowres the flowre," in +the estimation of the Patriarch of English poets, and which so delighted +Wordsworth in his childhood, in his middle life, and in his old age. He +gazed on it, at intervals, with unchanging affection for upwards of +fourscore years. + +The Daisy--the miniature sun with its tiny rays--is especially the +favorite of our earliest years. In our remembrances of the happy meadows +in which we played in childhood, the daisy's silver lustre is ever +connected with the deeper radiance of its gay companion, the butter-cup, +which when held against the dimple on the cheek or chin of beauty turns +it into a little golden dell. The thoughtful and sensitive frequenter of +rural scenes discovers beauty every where; though it is not always the +sort of beauty that would satisfy the taste of men who recognize no +gaiety or loveliness beyond the walls of cities. To the poet's eye even +the freckles on a milk-maid's brow are not without a grace, associated +as they are with health, and the open sunshine. + +Chaucer tells us that the French call the Daisy _La belle Marguerite_. +There is a little anecdote connected with the appellation. Marguerite of +Scotland, the Queen of Louis the Eleventh, presented Marguerite Clotilde +de Surville, a poetess, with a bouquet of daisies, with this +inscription; "Marguerite d'Ecosse à Marguerite (_the pearl_) d'Helicon." + +The country maidens in England practise a kind of sortilége with this +flower. They pluck off leaf by leaf, saying alternately "_He loves me_" +and "_He loves me not_." The omen or oracle is decided by the fall of +either sentence on the last leaf. + +It is extremely difficult to rear the daisy in India. It is accustomed +to all weathers in England, but the long continued sultriness of this +clime makes it as delicate as a languid English lady in a tropical +exile, and however carefully and skilfully nursed, it generally pines +for its native air and dies.[088] + +THE PRICKLY GORSE. + + --Yon swelling downs where the sweet air stirs + The harebells, and where prickly furze + Buds lavish gold. + +_Keat's Endymion_. + + Fair maidens, I'll sing you a song, + I'll tell of the bonny wild flower, + Whose blossoms so yellow, and branches so long, + O'er moor and o'er rough rocky mountains are flung + Far away from trim garden and bower + +_L.A. Tuamley_. + +The PRICKLY GORSE or Goss or Furze, (_ulex_)[089] I cannot omit to +notice, because it was the plant which of all others most struck +Dillenius when he first trod on English ground. He threw himself on his +knees and thanked Heaven that he had lived to see the golden undulation +of acres of wind-waved gorse. Linnaeus lamented that he could scarcely +keep it alive in Sweden even in a greenhouse. + +I have the most delightful associations connected with this plant, and +never think of it without a summer feeling and a crowd of delightful +images and remembrances of rural quietude and blue skies and balmy +breezes. Cowper hardly does it justice: + + The common, over-grown with fern, and rough + With prickly gorse, that shapeless and deformed + And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom + And decks itself with ornaments of gold, + Yields no unpleasing ramble. + +The plant is indeed irregularly shaped, but it is not _deformed_, and if +it is dangerous to the touch, so also is the rose, unless it be of that +species which Milton places in Paradise--"_and without thorns the +rose_." + +Hurdis is more complimentary and more just to the richest ornament of +the swelling hill and the level moor. + + And what more noble than the vernal furze + With golden caskets hung? + +I have seen whole _cotees_ or _coteaux_ (sides of hills) in the sweet +little island of Jersey thickly mantled with the golden radiance of this +beautiful wildflower. The whole Vallée des Vaux (_the valley of +vallies_) is sometimes alive with its lustre. + +VALLEE DES VAUX. + +AIR--THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. + + If I dream of the past, at fair Fancy's command, + Up-floats from the blue sea thy small sunny land! + O'er thy green hills, sweet Jersey, the fresh breezes blow, + And silent and warm is the Vallée des Vaux! + + There alone have I loitered 'mid blossoms of gold, + And forgot that the great world was crowded and cold, + Nor believed that a land of enchantment could show + A vale more divine than the Vallée des Vaux. + + A few scattered cots, like white clouds in the sky, + Or like still sails at sea when the light breezes die, + And a mill with its wheel in the brook's silver glow, + Form thy beautiful hamlet, sweet Vallée des Vaux! + + As the brook prattled by like an infant at play, + And each wave as it passed stole a moment away, + I thought how serenely a long life would flow, + By the sweet little brook in the Vallée des Vaux. + +D.L.R. + +Jersey is not the only one of the Channel Islands that is enriched with +"blossoms of gold." In the sister island of Guernsey the prickly gorse +is much used for hedges, and Sir George Head remarks that the premises +of a Guernsey farmer are thus as impregnably fortified and secured as if +his grounds were surrounded by a stone wall. In the Isle of Man the +furze grows so high that it is sometimes more like a fir tree than the +ordinary plant. + +There is an old proverb:--"When gorse is out of blossom, kissing is out +of fashion"--that is _never_. The gorse blooms all the year. + +FERN. + + I'll seek the shaggy fern-clad hill + And watch, 'mid murmurs muttering stern, + The seed departing from the fern + Ere wakeful demons can convey + The wonder-working charm away. + +_Leyden_. + +"The green and graceful Fern" (_filices_) with its exquisite tracery +must not be overlooked. It recalls many noble home-scenes to British +eyes. Pliny says that "of ferns there are two kinds, and they bear +neither flowers nor seed." And this erroneous notion of the fern bearing +no seed was common amongst the English even so late as the time of +Addison who ridicules "a Doctor that had arrived at the knowledge of the +green and red dragon, _and had discovered the female fern-seed_." The +seed is very minute and might easily escape a careless eye. In the +present day every one knows that the seed of the fern lies on the under +side of the leaves, and a single leaf will often bear some millions of +seeds. Even those amongst the vulgar who believed the plant bore seed, +had an idea that the seeds were visible only at certain mysterious +seasons and to favored individuals who by carrying a quantity of it on +their person, were able, like those who wore the helmet of Pluto or the +ring of Gyges, to walk unseen amidst a crowd. The seed was supposed to +be best seen at a certain hour of the night on which St. John the +Baptist was born. + + We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible, + +_Shakespeare's Henry IV. Part I_. + +In Beaumont's and Fletcher's _Fair Maid of the Inn_, is the following +allusion to the fern. + + --Had you Gyges' ring, + _Or the herb that gives invisibility_. + +Ben Jonson makes a similar allusion to it: + + I had + No medicine, sir, to go invisible, + _No fern-seed in my pocket_. + +Pope puts a branch of spleen-wort, a species of fern, (_Asplenium +trichomanes_) into the hand of a gnome as a protection from evil +influences in the Cave of Spleen. + + Safe passed the gnome through this fantastic band + A branch of healing spleen-wort in his hand. + +The fern forms a splendid ornament for shadowy nooks and grottoes, or +fragments of ruins, or heaps of stones, or the odd corners of a large +garden or pleasure-ground. + +I have had many delightful associations with this plant both at home and +abroad. When I visited the beautiful Island of Penang, Sir William +Norris, then the Recorder of the Island, and who was a most +indefatigable collector of ferns, obligingly presented me with a +specimen of every variety that he had discovered in the hills and +vallies of that small paradise; and I suppose that in no part of the +world could a finer collection of specimens of the fern be made for a +botanist's _herbarium_. Fern leaves will look almost as well ten years +after they are gathered as on the day on which they are transferred from +the dewy hillside to the dry pages of a book. + +Jersey and Penang are the two loveliest islands on a small scale that I +have yet seen: the latter is the most romantic of the two and has nobler +trees and a richer soil and a brighter sky--but they are both charming +retreats for the lovers of peace and nature. As I have devoted some +verses to Jersey I must have some also on + +THE ISLAND OF PENANG. + + I. + + I stand upon the mountain's brow-- + I drink the cool fresh, mountain breeze-- + I see thy little town below,[090] + Thy villas, hedge-rows, fields and trees, + And hail thee with exultant glow, + GEM OF THE ORIENTAL SEAS! + + II. + + A cloud had settled on my heart-- + My frame had borne perpetual pain-- + I yearned and panted to depart + From dread Bengala's sultry plain-- + Fate smiled,--Disease withholds his dart-- + I breathe the breath of life again! + + III. + + With lightened heart, elastic tread, + Almost with youth's rekindled flame, + I roam where loveliest scenes outspread + Raise thoughts and visions none could name, + Save those on whom the Muses shed + A spell, a dower of deathless fame. + + IV. + + I _feel_, but oh! could ne'er _pourtray_, + Sweet Isle! thy charms of land and wave, + The bowers that own no winter day, + The brooks where timid wild birds lave, + The forest hills where insects gay[091] + Mimic the music of the brave! + + V. + + I see from this proud airy height + A lovely Lilliput below! + Ships, roads, groves, gardens, mansions white, + And trees in trimly ordered row,[092] + Present almost a toy like sight, + A miniature scene, a fairy show! + + VI. + + But lo! beyond the ocean stream, + That like a sheet of silver lies, + As glorious as a poet's dream + The grand Malayan mountains rise, + And while their sides in sunlight beam + Their dim heads mingle with the skies. + + VI. + + Men laugh at bards who live _in clouds_-- + The clouds _beneath_ me gather now, + Or gliding slow in solemn crowds, + Or singly, touched with sunny glow, + Like mystic shapes in snowy shrouds, + Or lucid veils on Beauty's brow. + + VIII. + + While all around the wandering eye + Beholds enchantments rich and rare, + Of wood, and water, earth, and sky + A panoramic vision fair, + The dyal breathes his liquid sigh, + And magic floats upon the air! + + IX. + + Oh! lovely and romantic Isle! + How cold the heart thou couldst not please! + Thy very dwellings seem to smile + Like quiet nests mid summer trees! + I leave thy shores--but weep the while-- + GEM OF THE ORIENTAL SEAS! + +D.L.R. + +HENNA. + +The henna or al hinna (_Lawsonia inermis_) is found in great abundance +in Egypt, India, Persia and Arabia. In Bengal it goes by the name of +_Mindee_. It is much used here for garden hedges. Hindu females rub it +on the palms of their hands, the tips of their fingers and the soles of +their feet to give them a red dye. The same red dye has been observed +upon the nails of Egyptian mummies. In Egypt sprigs of henna are hawked +about the streets for sale with the cry of "_O, odours of Paradise; O, +flowers of the henna!_" Thomas Moore alludes to one of the uses of the +henna:-- + + Thus some bring leaves of henna to imbue + The fingers' ends of a bright roseate hue, + So bright, that in the mirror's depth they seem + Like tips of coral branches in the stream. + +MOSS. + +MOSSES (_musci_) are sometimes confounded with Lichens. True mosses are +green, and lichens are gray. All the mosses are of exquisitely delicate +structure. They are found in every part of the world where the +atmosphere is moist. They have a wonderful tenacity of life and can +often be restored to their original freshness after they have been dried +for years. It was the sight of a small moss in the interior of Africa +that suggested to Mungo Park such consolatory reflections as saved him +from despair. He had been stripped of all he had by banditti. + +"In this forlorn and almost helpless condition," he says, "when the +robbers had left me, I sat for some time looking around me with +amazement and terror. Whichever way I turned, nothing appeared but +danger and difficulty. I found myself in the midst of a vast wilderness, +in the depth of the rainy season--naked and alone,--surrounded by +savages. I was five hundred miles from any European settlement. All +these circumstances crowded at once upon my recollection; and I confess +that my spirits began to fail me. I considered my fate as certain, and +that I had no alternative, but to lie down and perish. The influence of +religion, however aided and supported me. I reflected that no human +prudence or foresight could possibly have averted my present sufferings. +I was indeed a stranger in a strange land, yet I was still under the eye +of that Providence who has condescended to call himself the stranger's +friend. At this moment, painful as my reflections were, the +extraordinary beauty of a small Moss irresistibly caught my eye; and +though the whole plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, +I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its roots, leaves, +and fruit, without admiration. Can that Being (thought I) who planted, +watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world, a +thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon the +situation and sufferings of creatures formed after his own image? Surely +not.--Reflections like these would not allow me to despair. I started +up; and disregarding both, hunger and fatigue, traveled forward, assured +that relief was at hand; and I was not disappointed." + +VICTORIA REGIA. + +On this Queen of Aquatic Plants the language of admiration has been +exhausted. It was discovered in the first year of the present century by +the botanist Haenke who was sent by the Spanish Government to +investigate the vegetable productions of Peru. When in a canoe on the +Rio Mamore, one of the great tributaries of the river Amazon, he came +suddenly upon the noblest and largest flower that he had ever seen. He +fell on his knees in a transport of admiration. It was the plant now +known as the Victoria Regia, or American Water-lily. + +It was not till February 1849, that Dr. Hugh Rodie and Mr. Lachie of +Demerara forwarded seeds of the plant to Sir W.T. Hooker in vials of +pure water. They were sown in earth, in pots immersed in water, and +enclosed in a glass case. They vegetated rapidly. The plants first came +to perfection at Chatsworth the seat of the Duke of Devonshire,[093] and +subsequently at the Royal gardens at Kew. + +Early in November of the same year, (1849,) the leaves of the plant at +Chatsworth were 4 feet 8 inches in diameter. A child weighing forty two +pounds was placed upon one of the leaves which bore the weight well. The +largest leaf of the plant by the middle of the next month was five feet +in diameter with a turned up edge of from two to four inches. It then +bore up a person of 11 stone weight. The flat leaf of the Victoria Regia +as it floats on the surface of the water, resembles in point of form the +brass high edged platter in which Hindus eat their rice. + +The flowers in the middle of May 1850 measured one foot one inch in +diameter. The rapidity of the growth of this plant is one of its most +remarkable characteristics, its leaves often expanding eight inches in +diameter daily, and Mr. John Fisk Allen, who has published in America an +admirably illustrated work upon the subject, tells us that instances +under his own observation have occurred of the leaves increasing at the +rate of half an inch hourly. + +Not only is there an extraordinary variety in the colours of the several +specimens of this flower, but a singularly rapid succession of changes +of hue in the same individual flower as it progresses from bud to +blossom. + +This vegetable wonder was introduced into North America in 1851. It +grows to a larger size there than in England. Some of the leaves of the +plant cultivated in North America measure seventy-two inches in +diameter. + +This plant has been proved to be perennial. It grows best in from 4 to 6 +feet of water. Each plant generally sends but four or five leaves to the +surface. + +In addition to the other attractions of this noble Water Lily, is the +exquisite character of its perfume, which strongly resembles that of a +fresh pineapple just cut open. + +The Victoria Regia in the Calcutta Botanic Garden has from some cause or +other not flourished so well as it was expected to do. The largest leaf +is not more than four feet and three quarters in diameter. But there can +be little doubt that when the habits of the plant are better understood +it will be brought to great perfection in this country. I strongly +recommend my native friends to decorate their tanks with this the most +glorious of aquatic plants. + +THE FLY-ORCHIS--THE BEE-ORCHIS. + +Of these strange freaks of nature many strange stories are told. I +cannot repeat them all. I shall content myself with quoting the +following passage from D'Israeli's _Curiosities of Literature_:-- + +"There is preserved in the British Museum, a black stone, on which +nature has sketched a resemblance of the portrait of Chaucer. Stones of +this kind, possessing a sufficient degree of resemblance, are rare; but +art appears not to have been used. Even in plants, we find this sort of +resemblance. There is a species of the orchis found in the mountainous +parts of Lincolnshire, Kent, &c. Nature has formed a bee, apparently +feeding on the breast of the flower, with so much exactness, that it is +impossible at a very small distance to distinguish the imposition. Hence +the plant derives its name, and is called, the _Bee-flower_. Langhorne +elegantly notices its appearance. + + See on that floweret's velvet breast, + How close the busy vagrant lies? + His thin-wrought plume, his downy breast, + Th' ambrosial gold that swells his thighs. + Perhaps his fragrant load may bind + His limbs;--we'll set the captive free-- + I sought the living bee to find, + And found the picture of a bee,' + +The late Mr. James of Exeter wrote to me on this subject: 'This orchis +is common near our sea-coasts; but instead of being exactly like a BEE, +_it is not like it at all_. It has a general resemblance to a _fly_, and +by the help of imagination, may be supposed to be a fly pitched upon the +flower. The mandrake very frequently has a forked root, which may be +fancied to resemble thighs and legs. I have seen it helped out with +nails on the toes.' + +An ingenious botanist, a stranger to me, after reading this article, was +so kind as to send me specimens of the _fly_ orchis, _ophrys muscifera_, +and of the _bee_ orchis, _ophrys apifera_. Their resemblance to these +insects when in full flower is the most perfect conceivable; they are +distinct plants. The poetical eye of Langhorne was equally correct and +fanciful; and that too of Jackson, who differed so positively. Many +controversies have been carried on, from a want of a little more +knowledge; like that of the BEE _orchis_ and the FLY _orchis_; both +parties prove to be right."[094] + +THE FUCHSIA. + +The Fuchsia is decidedly the most _graceful_ flower in the world. It +unfortunately wants fragrance or it would be the _beau ideal_ of a +favorite of Flora. There is a story about its first introduction into +England which is worth reprinting here: + +'Old Mr. Lee, a nurseryman and gardener, near London, well known fifty +or sixty years ago, was one day showing his variegated treasures to a +friend, who suddenly turned to him, and declared, 'Well, you have not in +your collection a prettier flower than I saw this morning at +Wapping!'--'No! and pray what was this phoenix like?' 'Why, the plant +was elegant, and the flowers hung in rows like tassels from the pendant +branches; their colour the richest crimson; in the centre a fold of deep +purple,' and so forth. Particular directions being demanded and given, +Mr. Lee posted off to Wapping, where he at once perceived that the plant +was new in this part of the world. He saw and admired. Entering the +house, he said, 'My good woman, that is a nice plant. I should like to +buy it.'--'I could not sell it for any money, for it was brought me from +the West Indies by my husband, who has now left again, and I must keep +it for his sake.'--'But I must have it!'--'No sir!'--'Here,' emptying +his pockets; 'here are gold, silver, copper.' (His stock was something +more than eight guineas.)--'Well a-day! but this is a power of money, +sure and sure.'--''Tis yours, and the plant is mine; and, my good dame, +you shall have one of the first young ones I rear, to keep for your +husband's sake,'--'Alack, alack!'--'You shall.' A coach was called, in +which was safely deposited our florist and his seemingly dear purchase. +His first work was to pull off and utterly destroy every vestige of +blossom and bud. The plant was divided into cuttings, which were forced +in bark beds and hotbeds; were redivided and subdivided. Every effort +was used to multiply it. By the commencement of the next flowering +season, Mr. Lee was the delighted possessor of 300 Fuchsia plants, all +giving promise of blossom. The two which opened first were removed into +his show-house. A lady came:--'Why, Mr. Lee, my dear Mr. Lee, where did +you get this charming flower?'--'Hem! 'tis a new thing, my lady; pretty, +is it not?'--'Pretty! 'tis lovely. Its price?'--'A guinea: thank your +ladyship;' and one of the plants stood proudly in her ladyship's +boudoir. 'My dear Charlotte, where did you get?' &c.--'Oh! 'tis a new +thing; I saw it at old Lee's; pretty, is it not?'--'Pretty! 'tis +beautiful! Its price!'--'A guinea; there was another left.' The +visitor's horses smoked off to the suburb; a third flowering plant stood +on the spot whence the first had been taken. The second guinea was paid, +and the second chosen Fuchsia adorned the drawing-room of her second +ladyship The scene was repeated, as new-comers saw and were attracted by +the beauty of the plant. New chariots flew to the gates of old Lee's +nursery-ground. Two Fuchsias, young, graceful and bursting into healthy +flower, were constantly seen on the same spot in his repository. He +neglected not to gladden the faithful sailor's wife by the promised +gift; but, ere the flower season closed, 300 golden guineas clinked in +his purse, the produce of the single shrub of the widow of Wapping; the +reward of the taste, decision, skill, and perseverance of old Mr. Lee.' + +Whether this story about the fuchsia, be only partly fact and partly +fiction I shall not pretend to determine; but the best authorities +acknowledge that Mr. Lee, one of the founders of the Hammersmith +Nursery, was the first to make the plant generally known in England and +that he for some time got a guinea for each of the cuttings. The fuchsia +is a native of Mexico and Chili. I believe that most of the plants of +this genus introduced into India have flourished for a brief period and +then sickened and died. + +The poets of England have not yet sung the Fuschia's praise. Here are +three stanzas written for a gentleman who had been presented, by the +lady of his love with a superb plant of this kind. + +A FUCHSIA. + + I. + +A deed of grace--a graceful gift--and graceful too the giver! +Like ear-rings on thine own fair head, these long buds hang and quiver: +Each tremulous taper branch is thrilled--flutter the wing-like leaves-- +For thus to part from thee, sweet maid, the floral spirit grieves! + + II. + +Rude gods in brass or gold enchant an untaught devotee-- +Fair marble shapes, rich paintings old, are Art's idolatry; +But nought e'er charmed a human breast like this small tremulous flower, +Minute and delicate work divine of world-creative power! + + III. + +This flower's the Queen of all earth's flowers, and loveliest things appear +Linked by some secret sympathy, in this mysterious sphere; +The giver and the gift seem one, and thou thyself art nigh +When this glory of the garden greets thy lover's raptured eye. + +D.L.R. + +"Do you know the proper name of this flower?" writes Jeremy Bentham to a +lady-friend, "and the signification of its name? Fuchsia from Fuchs, a +German botanist." + +ROSEMARY. + + There's rosemary--that's for remembrance: + Pray you, love, remember. + +_Hamlet_ + + There's rosemarie; the Arabians Justifie + (Physitions of exceeding perfect skill) + It comforteth the brain and memory. + +_Chester_. + +Bacon speaks of heaths of ROSEMARY (_Rosmarinus_[095]) that "will smell +a great way in the sea; perhaps twenty miles." This reminds us of +Milton's Paradise. + + So lovely seemed + That landscape, and of pure, now purer air, + Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires + Vernal delight and joy, able to drive + All sadness but despair. Now gentle gales + Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense + Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole + Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail + Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past + Mozambic, off at sea north east winds blow + Sabean odours from the spicy shore + Of Araby the blest, with such delay + Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league + Cheered with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles. + +Rosemary used to be carried at funerals, and worn as wedding favors. + + _Lewis_ Pray take a piece of Rosemary + _Miramont_ I'll wear it, + But for the lady's sake, and none of your's! + +_Beaumont and Fletcher's "Elder Brother."_ + +Rosemary, says Malone, being supposed to strengthen the memory, was the +emblem of fidelity in lovers. So in _A Handfull of Pleasant Delites, +containing Sundrie New Sonets, 16mo_. 1854: + + Rosemary is for remembrance + Between us daie and night, + Wishing that I might alwaies have + You present in my sight. + +The poem in which these lines are found, is entitled, '_A Nosegay +alwaies sweet for Lovers to send for Tokens of Love_.' + +Roger Hochet in his sermon entitled _A Marriage Present_ (1607) thus +speaks of the Rosemary;--"It overtoppeth all the flowers in the garden, +boasting man's rule. It helpeth the brain, strengtheneth the memorie, +and is very medicinable for the head. Another propertie of the rosemary +is, it affects the heart. Let this rosemarinus, this flower of men, +ensigne of your wisdom, love, and loyaltie, be carried not only in your +hands, but in your hearts and heads." + +"Hungary water" is made up chiefly from the oil distilled from this +shrub. + + * * * * * + +I should talk on a little longer about other shrubs, herbs, and flowers, +(particularly of flowers) such as the "pink-eyed Pimpernel" (the poor +man's weather glass) and the fragrant Violet, ('the modest grace of the +vernal year,') the scarlet crested Geranium with its crimpled leaves, +and the yellow and purple Amaranth, powdered with gold, + + A flower which once + In Paradise, fast by the tree of life + Began to bloom, + +and the crisp and well-varnished Holly with "its rutilant berries," and +the white Lily, (the vestal Lady of the Vale,--"the flower of virgin +light") and the luscious Honeysuckle, and the chaste Snowdrop, + + Venturous harbinger of spring + And pensive monitor of fleeting years, + +and the sweet Heliotrope and the gay and elegant Nasturtium, and a great +many other "bonnie gems" upon the breast of our dear mother earth,--but +this gossipping book has already extended to so unconscionable a size +that I must quicken my progress towards a conclusion[096]. + +I am indebted to the kindness of Babu Kasiprasad Ghosh, the first Hindu +gentlemen who ever published a volume of poems in the English +language[097] for the following interesting list of Indian flowers used +in Hindu ceremonies. Many copies of the poems of Kasiprasad Ghosh, were +sent to the English public critics, several of whom spoke of the +author's talents with commendation. The late Miss Emma Roberts wrote a +brief biography of him for one of the London annuals, so that there must +be many of my readers at home who will not on this occasion hear of his +name for the first time. + +A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF INDIAN FLOWERS, COMMONLY USED IN HINDU +CEREMONIES.[098] + +A'KUNDA (_Calotropis Gigantea_).--A pretty purple coloured, and slightly +scented flower, having a sweet and agreeable smell. It is called _Arca_ +in Sanscrit, and has two varieties, both of which are held to be sacred +to Shiva. It forms one of the five darts with which the Indian God of +Love is supposed to pierce the hearts of young mortals.[099] Sir William +Jones refers to it in his Hymn to Kama Deva. It possesses medicinal +properties.[100] + +A'PARA'JITA (_Clitoria ternatea_).--A conically shaped flower, the upper +part of which is tinged with blue and the lower part is white. Some are +wholly white. It is held to be sacred to Durgá. + +ASOCA. (_Jonesia Asoca_).--A small yellow flower, which blooms in large +clusters in the month of April and gives a most beautiful appearance to +the tree. It is eaten by young females as a medicine. It smells like the +Saffron. + +A'TASHI.--A small yellowish or brown coloured flower without any smell. +It is supposed to be sacred to Shiva, and is very often alluded to by +the Indian poets. It resembles the flower of the flax or Linum +usitatissimum.[101] + +BAKA.--A kidney shaped flower, having several varieties, all of which +are held to be sacred to Vishnu, and are in consequence used in his +worship. It is supposed to possess medicinal virtues and is used by the +native doctors. + +BAKU'LA (_Mimusops Etengi_).--A very small, yellowish, and fragrant +flower. It is used in making garlands and other female ornaments. +Krishna is said to have fascinated the milkmaids of Brindabun by playing +on his celebrated flute under a _Baku'la_ tree on the banks of the +Jumna, which is, therefore, invariably alluded to in all the Sanscrit +and vernacular poems relating to his amours with those young women. + +BA'KASHA (_Justicia Adhatoda_).--A white flower, having a slight smell. +It is used in certain native medicines. + +BELA (_Jasminum Zambac_).--A fragrant small white flower, in common use +among native females, who make garlands of it to wear in their braids of +hair. A kind of _uttar_ is extracted from this flower, which is much +esteemed by natives. It is supposed to form one of the darts of Kama +Deva or the God of Love. European Botanists seem to have confounded this +flower with the Monika, which they also call the Jasminum Zambac. + +BHU'MI CHAMPAKA.--An oblong variegated flower, which shoots out from the +ground at the approach of spring. It has a slight smell, and is +considered to possess medicinal properties. The great peculiarity of +this flower is that it blooms when there is not apparently the slightest +trace of the existence of the shrub above ground. When the flower dies +away, the leaves make their appearance. + +CHAMPA' (_Michelia Champaka_).--A tulip shaped yellow flower possessing +a very strong smell.[102] It forms one of the darts of Kama Deva, the +Indian Cupid. It is particularly sacred to Krishna. + +CHUNDRA MALLIKA' (_Chrysanthemum Indiana_).--A pretty round yellow +flower which blooms in winter. The plant is used in making hedges in +gardens and presents a beautiful appearance in the cold weather when the +blossoms appear. + +DHASTU'RA (_Datura Fastuosa_).--A large tulip shaped white flower, +sacred to Mahadeva, the third Godhead of the Hindu Trinity. The seeds of +this flower have narcotic properties.[103] + +DRONA.--A white flower with a very slight smell. + +DOPATI (_Impatiens Balsamina_).--A small flower having a slight smell. +There are several varieties of this flower. Some are red and some white, +while others are both white and red. + +GA'NDA' (_Tagetes erecta_).--A handsome yellow flower, which sometimes +grows very large. It is commonly used in making garlands, with which the +natives decorate their idols, and the Europeans in India their churches +and gates on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. + +GANDHA RA'J (_Gardenia Florida_).--A strongly scented white flower, +which blooms at night. + +GOLANCHA (_Menispermum Glabrum_).--A white flower. The plant is already +well known to Europeans as a febrifuge. + +JAVA' (_Hibiscus Rosa Sinensis_).--A large blood coloured flower held to +be especially sacred to Kali. There are two species of it, viz. the +ordinary Javá commonly seen in our gardens and parterres, and the +_Pancha Mukhi_, which, as its name imports, has five compartments and is +the largest of the two.[104] + +JAYANTI (_Aeschynomene Sesban_).--A small yellowish flower, held to be +sacred to Shiva. + +JHA'NTI.--A small white flower possessing medicinal properties. The +leaves of the plants are used in curing certain ulcers. + +JA'NTI (_Jasminum Grandiflorum_).--Also a small white flower having a +sweet smell. The _uttar_ called _Chumeli_ is extracted from it. + +JUYIN (_Jasminum Auriculatum_).--The Indian Jasmine. It is a very small +white flower remarkable for its sweetness. It is also used in making a +species of _uttar_ which is highly prized by the natives, as also in +forming a great variety of imitation female ornaments. + +KADAMBA (_Nauclea Cadamba_).--A ball shaped yellow flower held to be +particularly sacred to Krishna, many of whose gambols with the milkmaids +of Brindabun are said to have been performed under the Kadamba tree, +which is in consequence very frequently alluded to in the vernacular +poems relating to his loves with those celebrated beauties. + +KINSUKA (_Butea Frondosa_).--A handsome but scentless white flower. + +KANAKA CHAMPA (_Pterospermum Acerifolium_).--A yellowish flower which +hangs down in form of a tassel. It has a strong smell, which is +perceived at a great distance when it is on the tree, but the moment it +is plucked off, it begins to lose its fragrance. + +KANCHANA (_Bauhinia Variegata_).--There are several varieties of this +flower. Some are white, some are purple, while others are red. It gives +a handsome appearance to the tree when the latter is in full blossom. + +KUNDA (_Jasminum pulescens_).--A very pretty white flower. Indian poets +frequently compare a set of handsome teeth, to this flower. It is held +to be especially sacred to Vishnu. + +KARABIRA (_Nerium Odosum_).--There are two species of this flower, viz. +the white and red, both of which are sacred to Shiva. + +KAMINI (_Murraya Exotica_).--A pretty small white flower having a strong +smell. It blooms at night and is very delicate to the touch. The +_kamini_ tree is frequently used as a garden hedge. + +KRISHNA CHURA (_Poinciana Pulcherrima_).--A pretty small flower, which, +as its name imports resembles the head ornament of Krishna. When the +Krishna Chura tree is in full blossom, it has a very handsome +appearance. + +KRISHNA KELI (_Mirabilis Jalapa_.)[105]--A small tulip shaped yellow +flower. The bulb of the plant has medicinal properties and is used by +the natives as a poultice. + +KUMADA (_Nymphaea Esculenta_)--A white flower, resembling the lotus, but +blooming at night, whence the Indian poets suppose that it is in love +with Chandra or the Moon, as the lotus is imagined by them to be in love +with the Sun. + +LAVANGA LATA' (_Limonia Scandens_.)--A very small red flower growing +upon a creeper, which has been celebrated by Jaya Deva in his famous +work called the _Gita Govinda_. This creeper is used in native gardens +for bowers. + +MALLIKA' (_Jasminum Zambac_.)--A white flower resembling the _Bela_. It +has a very sweet smell and is used by native females to make ornaments. +It is frequently alluded to by Indian poets. + +MUCHAKUNDA (_Pterospermum Suberifolia_).--A strongly scented flower, +which grows in clusters and is of a brown colour. + +MA'LATI (_Echites Caryophyllata_.)--The flower of a creeper which is +commonly used in native gardens. It has a slight smell and is of a white +colour. + +MA'DHAVI (_Gaertnera Racemosa_.)--The flower of another creeper which is +also to be seen in native gardens. It is likewise of a white colour. + +NA'GESWARA (_Mesua Ferrua_.)--A white flower with yellow filaments, +which are said to possess medicinal properties and are used by the +native physicians. It has a very sweet smell and is supposed by Indian +poets to form one of the darts of Kama Deva. See Sir William Jones's +Hymn to that deity. + +PADMA (_Nelumbium Speciosum_.)--The Indian lotus, which is held to be +sacred to Vishnu, Brama, Mahadava, Durga, Lakshami and Saraswati as well +as all the higher orders of Indian deities. It is a very elegant flower +and is highly esteemed by the natives, in consequence of which the +Indian poets frequently allude to it in their writings. + +PA'RIJATA (_Buchanania Latifolia_.)--A handsome white flower, with a +slight smell. In native poetry, it furnishes a simile for pretty eyes, +and is held to be sacred to Vishnu. + +PAREGATA (_Erythrina Fulgens_.)--A flower which is supposed to bloom in +the garden of Indra in heaven, and forms the subject of an interesting +episode in the _Puranas_, in which the two wives of Krisna, (Rukmini and +Satyabhama) are said to have quarrelled for the exclusive possession of +this flower, which their husband had stolen from the celestial garden +referred to. It is supposed to be identical with the flower of the +_Palta madar_. + +RAJANI GANDHA (_Polianthus Tuberosa_.)--A white tulip-shaped flower +which blooms at night, from which circumstance it is called "the Rajani +Gandha, (or night-fragrance giver)." It is the Indian tuberose. + +RANGANA.--A small and very pretty red flower which is used by native +females in ornamenting their betels. + +SEONTI. _Rosa Glandulefera_. A white flower resembling the rose in size +and appearance. It has a sweet smell. + +SEPHA'LIKA (_Nyctanthes Arbor-tristis_.)--A very pretty and delicate +flower which blooms at night, and drops down shortly after. It has a +sweet smell and is held to be sacred to Shiva. The juice of the leaves +of the Sephalika tree are used in curing both remittant and intermittent +fevers. + +SURYJA MUKHI (_Helianthus Annuus_).--A large and very handsome yellow +flower, which is said to turn itself to the Sun, as he goes from East to +West, whence it has derived its name. + +SURYJA MANI (_Hibiscus Phoeniceus_).--A small red flower. + +GOLAKA CHAMPA.--A large beautiful white tulip-shaped flower having a +sweet smell. It is externally white but internally orange-colored. + +TAGUR (_Tabernoemontana Coronaria_).--A white flower having a slight +smell. + +TARU LATA.--A beautiful creeper with small red flowers. It is used in +native gardens for making hedges. + +K.G. + + * * * * * + +Pliny in his Natural History alludes to the marks of time exhibited in +the regular opening and closing of flowers. Linnaeus enumerates +forty-six flowers that might be used for the construction of a floral +time-piece. This great Swedish botanist invented a Floral horologe, "whose +wheels were the sun and earth and whose index-figures were flowers." +Perhaps his invention, however, was not wholly original. Andrew Marvell +in his "_Thoughts in a Garden_" mentions a sort of floral dial:-- + + How well the skilful gardener drew + Of flowers and herbs this dial new! + Where, from above, the milder sun + Does through a fragrant zodiac run: + And, as it works, th'industrious bee + Computes its time as well as we: + How could such sweet and wholesome hours + Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers? + +_Marvell_[106] + +Milton's notation of time--"_at shut of evening flowers_," has a +beautiful simplicity, and though Shakespeare does not seem to have +marked his time on a floral clock, yet, like all true poets, he has made +very free use of other appearances of nature to indicate the +commencement and the close of day. + + The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch-- + Than we will ship him hence. + +_Hamlet_. + + Fare thee well at once! + The glow-worm shows the matin to be near + And gins to pale his uneffectual fire. + +_Hamlet_. + + But look! The morn, in russet mantle clad, + Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill:-- + Break we our watch up. + +_Hamlet_. + + _Light thickens_, and the crow + Makes wing to the rooky wood. + +_Macbeth_. + +Such picturesque notations of time as these, are in the works of +Shakespeare, as thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in +Valombrosa. In one of his Sonnets he thus counts the years of human life +by the succession of the seasons. + + To me, fair friend, you never can be old, + For as you were when first your eye I eyed, + Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold + Have from the forests shook three summers' pride; + Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned + In process of the seasons have I seen; + Three April's perfumes in three hot Junes burned + Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green. + +Grainger, a prosaic verse-writer who once commenced a paragraph of a +poem with "Now, Muse, let's sing of rats!" called upon the slave drivers +in the West Indies to time their imposition of cruel tasks by the +opening and closing of flowers. + + Till morning dawn and Lucifer withdraw + His beamy chariot, let not the loud bell + Call forth thy negroes from their rushy couch: + And ere the sun with mid-day fervor glow, + When every broom-bush opes her yellow flower, + Let thy black laborers from their toil desist: + Nor till the broom her every petal lock, + Let the loud bell recal them to the hoe, + But when the jalap her bright tint displays, + When the solanum fills her cup with dew, + And crickets, snakes and lizards gin their coil, + Let them find shelter in their cane-thatched huts. + +_Sugar Cane_.[107] + +I shall here give (_from Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening_) the form +of a flower dial. It may be interesting to many of my readers:-- + + 'Twas a lovely thought to mark the hours + As they floated in light away + By the opening and the folding flowers + That laugh to the summer day.[108] + +_Mr. Hemans_. + +A FLOWER DIAL. + +TIME OF OPENING. + [109] h. m. +YELLOW GOAT'S BEARD T.P. 3 5 +LATE FLOWERING DANDELION Leon.S. 4 0 +BRISTLY HELMINTHIA H.B. 4 5 +ALPINE BORKHAUSIA B.A. 4 5 +WILD SUCCORY C.I. 4 5 +NAKED STALKED POPPY P.N. 5 0 +COPPER COLOURED DAY LILY H.F. 5 0 +SMOOTH SOW THISTLE S.L. 5 0 +ALPINE AGATHYRSUS Ag.A. 5 0 +SMALL BIND WEED Con.A. 5 6 +COMMON NIPPLE WORT L.C. 5 6 +COMMON DANDELION L.T. 5 6 +SPORTED ACHYROPHORUS A.M. 6 7 +WHITE WATER LILY N.A. 7 0 +GARDEN LETTUCE Lec.S. 7 0 +AFRICAN MARIGOLD T.E. 7 0 +COMMON PIMPERNEL A.A. 7 8 +MOUSE-EAR HAWKWEED H.P. 8 0 +PROLIFEROUS PINK D.P. 8 0 +FIELD MARIGOLD Cal.A. 9 0 +PURPLE SANDWORT A.P. 9 10 +SMALL PURSLANE P.O. 9 10 +CREEPING MALLOW M.C. 9 10 +CHICKWEED S.M. 9 10 + +TIME OF CLOSING. + h. m. +HELMINTHIA ECHIOIDES B.H. 12 0 +AGATHYRSUS ALPINUS A.B. 12 0 +BORKHAUSIA ALPINA A.B. 12 0 +LEONTODON SEROTINUS L.D. 12 0 +MALVA CAROLINIANA C.M. 12 1 +DAINTHUS PROLIFER P.P. 1 0 +HIERACIUM PILOSELLA M.H. 0 2 +ANAGALLIS ARVENSIS S.P. 2 3 +ARENARIA PURPUREA P.S. 2 4 +CALENDULA ARVENSIS F.M. 3 0 +TACETES ERECTA A.M. 3 3 +CONVOLVULUS ARVENSIS S.B. 4 0 +ACHYROPHORUS MACULATUS S.A. 4 5 +NYMPHAEA ALBA W.W.B. 5 0 +PAPAVER NUDICAULE N.P. 7 0 +HEMEROCALLIS FULVA C.D.L. 7 0 +CICHORIUM INTYBUS W.S. 8 9 +TRAGOPOGON PRATENSIS Y.G.B. 9 10 +STELLARIA MEDIA C. 9 10 +LAPSANA COMMUNIS C.N. 10 0 +LACTUCA SATIVA G.L. 10 0 +SONCHUS LAEVIS S.T. 11 10 +PORTULACA OLERACEA S.P. 11 12 + +Of course it will be necessary to adjust the _Horologium Florae_ (or +Flower clock) to the nature of the climate. Flowers expand at a later +hour in a cold climate than in a warm one. "A flower," says Loudon, +"that opens at six o'clock in the morning at Senegal, will not open in +France or England till eight or nine, nor in Sweden till ten. A flower +that opens at ten o'clock at Senegal will not open in France or England +till noon or later, and in Sweden it will not open at all. And a flower +that does not open till noon or later at Senegal will not open at all in +France or England. This seems as if heat or its absence were also (as +well as light) an agent in the opening and shutting of flowers; though +the opening of such as blow only in the night cannot be attributed to +either light or heat." + +The seasons may be marked in a similar manner by their floral +representatives. Mary Howitt quotes as a motto to her poem on _Holy +Flowers_ the following example of religious devotion timed by flowers:-- + +"Mindful of the pious festivals which our church prescribes," (says a +Franciscan Friar) "I have sought to make these charming objects of +floral nature, the _time-pieces of my religious calendar_, and the +mementos of the hastening period of my mortality. Thus I can light the +taper to our Virgin Mother on the blowing of the white snow-drop which +opens its floweret at the time of Candlemas; the lady's smock and the +daffodil, remind me of the Annunciation; the blue harebell, of the +Festival of St George; the ranunculus, of the Invention of the Cross; +the scarlet lychnis, of St. John the Baptist's day; the white lily, of +the Visitation of our Lady, and the Virgin's bower, of her Assumption; +and Michaelmas, Martinmas, Holyrood, and Christmas, have all their +appropriate monitors. I learn the time of day from the shutting of the +blossoms of the Star of Jerusalem and the Dandelion, and the hour of the +night by the stars." + +Some flowers afford a certain means of determining the state of the +atmosphere. If I understand Mr. Tyas rightly he attributes the following +remarks to Hartley Coleridge.-- + +"Many species of flowers are admirable barometers. Most of the +bulbous-rooted flowers contract, or close their petals entirely on the +approach of rain. The African marigold indicates rain, if the corolla is +closed after seven or eight in the morning. The common bind-weed closes +its flowers on the approach of rain; but the anagallis arvensis, or scarlet +pimpernel, is the most sure in its indications as the petals constantly +close on the least humidity of the atmosphere. Barley is also singularly +affected by the moisture or dryness of the air. The awns are furnished +with stiff points, all turning towards one end, which extend when moist, +and shorten when dry. The points, too, prevent their receding, so that +they are drawn up or forward; as moisture is returned, they advance and +so on; indeed they may be actually seen to travel forwards. The capsules +of the geranium furnish admirable barometers. Fasten the beard, when +fully ripe, upon a stand, and it will twist itself, or untwist, +according as the air is moist or dry. The flowers of the chick-weed, +convolvulus, and oxalis, or wood sorrel, close their petals on the +approach of rain." + +The famous German writer, Jean Paul Richter, describes what he calls _a +Human Clock_. + +A HUMAN CLOCK. + +"I believe" says Richter "the flower clock of Linnaeus, in Upsal +(_Horologium Florae_) whose wheels are the sun and earth, and whose +index-figures are flowers, of which one always awakens and opens later +than another, was what secretly suggested my conception of the human +clock. + +I formerly occupied two chambers in Scheeraw, in the middle of the +market place: from the front room I overlooked the whole market-place +and the royal buildings and from the back one, the botanical garden. +Whoever now dwells in these two rooms possesses an excellent harmony, +arranged to his hand, between the flower clock in the garden and the +human clock in the marketplace. At three o'clock in the morning, the +yellow meadow goats-beard opens; and brides awake, and the stable-boy +begins to rattle and feed the horses beneath the lodger. At four o'clock +the little hawk weed awakes, choristers going to the Cathedral who are +clocks with chimes, and the bakers. At five, kitchen maids, dairy maids, +and butter-cups awake. At six, the sow-thistle and cooks. At seven +o'clock many of the Ladies' maids are awake in the Palace, the Chicory +in my botanical garden, and some tradesmen. At eight o'clock all the +colleges awake and the little mouse-ear. At nine o'clock, the female +nobility already begin to stir; the marigold, and even many young +ladies, who have come from the country on a visit, begin to look out of +their windows. Between ten and eleven o'clock the Court Ladies and the +whole staff of Lords of the Bed-chamber, the green colewort and the +Alpine dandelion, and the reader of the Princess rouse themselves out of +their morning sleep; and the whole Palace, considering that the morning +sun gleams so brightly to-day from the lofty sky through the coloured +silk curtains, curtails a little of its slumber. + +At twelve o'clock, the Prince: at one, his wife and the carnation have +their eyes open in their flower vase. What awakes late in the afternoon +at four o'clock is only the red-hawkweed, and the night watchman as +cuckoo-clock, and these two only tell the time as evening-clocks and +moon-clocks. + +From the eyes of the unfortunate man, who like the jalap plant +(Mirabilia jalapa), first opens them at five o'clock, we will turn our +own in pity aside. It is a rich man who only exchanges the fever fancies +of being pinched with hot pincers for waking pains. + +I could never know when it was two o'clock, because at that time, +together with a thousand other stout gentlemen and the yellow mouse-ear, +I always fell asleep; but at three o'clock in the afternoon, and at +three in the morning, I awoke as regularly as though I was a repeater. +Thus we mortals may be a flower-clock for higher beings, when our +flower-leaves close upon our last bed; or sand clocks, when the sand of +our life is so run down that it is renewed in the other world; or +picture-clocks because, when our death-bell here below strikes and +rings, our image steps forth, from its case into the next world. + +On each event of the kind, when seventy years of human life have passed +away, they may perhaps say, what! another hour already gone! how the +time flies!"--_From Balfour's Phyto-Theology_. + +Some of the natives of India who possess extensive estates might think +it worth their while to plant a LABYRINTH for the amusement of their +friends. I therefore give a plan of one from London's _Arboretum et +Fruticetum Britannicum_. It would not be advisable to occupy much of a +limited estate in a toy of this nature; but where the ground required +for it can be easily spared or would otherwise be wasted, there could be +no objection to adding this sort of amusement to the very many others +that may be included in a pleasure ground. The plan here given, +resembles the labyrinth at Hampton Court. The hedges should be a little +above a man's height and the paths should be just wide enough for two +persons abreast. The ground should be kept scrupulously clean and well +rolled and the hedges well trimmed, or in this country the labyrinth +would soon be damp and unwholesome, especially in the rains. To prevent +its affording a place of refuge and concealment for snakes and other +reptiles, the gardener should cut off all young shoots and leaves within +half a foot of the ground. The centre building should be a tasteful +summer-house, in which people might read or smoke or take refreshments. +To make the labyrinth still more intricate Mr. Loudon suggests that +stop-hedges might be introduced across the path, at different places, as +indicated in the figure by dotted lines.[110] + +[Illustration of A GARDEN LABYRINTH with a scale in feet.] + +Of strictly Oriental trees and shrubs and flowers, perhaps the majority +of Anglo Indians think with much less enthusiasm than of the common +weeds of England. The remembrance of the simplest wild flower of their +native fields will make them look with perfect indifference on the +decorations of an Indian Garden. This is in no degree surprizing. Yet +nature is lovely in all lands. + +Indian scenery has not been so much the subject of description in either +prose or verse as it deserves, but some two or three of our Anglo-Indian +authors have touched upon it. Here is a pleasant and truthful passage +from an article entitled "_A Morning Walk in India_," written by the +late Mr. Lawson, the Missionary, a truly good and a highly gifted man:-- + +"The rounded clumps that afford the deepest shade, are formed by the +mangoe, the banian, and the cotton trees. At the verge of this deep-green +forest are to be seen the long and slender hosts of the betle and +cocoanut trees; and the grey bark of their trunks, as they catch the +light of the morning, is in clear relief from the richness of the +back-ground. These as they wave their feathery tops, add much to the +picturesque interest of the straw-built hovels beneath them, which are +variegated with every tinge to be found amongst the browns and yellows, +according to the respective periods of their construction. Some of them +are enveloped in blue smoke, which oozes through every interstice of the +thatch, and spreads itself, like a cloud hovering over these frail +habitations, or moves slowly along, like a strata of vapour not far from +the ground, as though too heavy to ascend, and loses itself in the thin +air, so inspiring to all who have courage to leave their beds and enjoy +it. The champa tree forms a beautiful object in this jungle. It may be +recognized immediately from the surrounding scenery. It has always been +a favourite with me. I suppose most persons, at times, have been +unaccountably attracted by an object comparatively trifling in itself. +There are also particular seasons, when the mind is susceptible of +peculiar impressions, and the moments of happy, careless youth, rush +upon the imagination with a thousand tender feelings. There are few that +do not recollect with what pleasure they have grasped a bunch of wild +flowers, when, in the days of their childhood, the languor of a +lingering fever has prevented them for some weary months from enjoying +that chief of all the pleasures of a robust English boy, a ramble +through the fields, where every tree, and bush, and hillock, and +blossom, are endeared to him, because, next to a mother's caresses, they +were the first things in the world upon which he opened his eyes, and, +doubtless, the first which gave him those indescribable feelings of +fairy pleasure, which even in his dreams were excited; while the +coloured clouds of heaven, the golden sunshine of a landscape, the fresh +nosegay of dog-roses and early daisies, and the sounds of busy +whispering trees and tinkling brooks presented to the sleeping child all +the pure pleasure of his waking moments. And who is there here that does +not sometimes recal some of those feelings which were his solace perhaps +thirty years ago? Should I be wrong, were I to say that even, at his +desk, amid all the excitements and anxieties of commercial pursuits, the +weary Calcutta merchant has been lulled into a sort of pensive +reminiscence of the past, and, with his pen placed between his lips and +his fevered forehead leaning upon his hand, has felt his heart bound at +some vivid picture rising upon his imagination. The forms of a fond +mother, and an almost angel-looking sister, have been so strongly +conjured up with the scenes of his boyish days, that the pen has been +unceremoniously dashed to the ground, and 'I will go home' was the sigh +that heaved from a bosom full of kindness and English feeling; while, as +the dream vanished, plain truth told its tale, and the man of commerce +is still to be seen at his desk, pale, and getting into years and +perhaps less desirous than ever of winding up his concern. No wonder! +because the dearest ties of his heart have been broken, and those who +were the charm of home have gone down to the cold grave, the home of +all. Why then should he revisit his native place? What is the cottage of +his birth to him? What charms has the village now for the gentleman just +arrived from India? Every well remembered object of nature, seen after a +lapse of twenty years, would only serve to renew a host of buried, +painful feelings. Every visit to the house of a surviving neighbour +would but bring to mind some melancholy incident; for into what house +could he enter, to idle away an hour, without seeing some wreck of his +own family, such as a venerable clock, once so loved for the painted +moon that waxed and waned to the astonishment of the gazer, or some +favorite ancient chair, edged so nobly with rows of brass nails, + + --but perforated sore, and dull'd in holes + By worms voracious, eating through and through. + +These are little things, but they are objects which will live in his +memory to the latest day of his life, and with which are associated in +his mind the dearest feelings and thoughts of his happiest hours." + +Here is an attempt at a description in verse of some of the most common + +TREES AND FLOWERS OF BENGAL + + This land is not my father land, + And yet I love it--for the hand + Of God hath left its mark sublime + On nature's face in every clime-- + + Though from home and friends we part, + Nature and the human heart + Still may soothe the wanderer's care-- + And his God is every where + + Beneath BENGALA'S azure skies, + No vallies sink, no green hills rise, + Like those the vast sea billows make-- + The land is level as a lake[111] + But, oh, what giants of the wood + Wave their wide arms, or calmly brood + Each o'er his own deep rounded shade + When noon's fierce sun the breeze hath laid, + And all is still. On every plain + How green the sward, or rich the grain! + In jungle wild and garden trim, + And open lawn and covert dim, + What glorious shrubs and flowerets gay, + Bright buds, and lordly beasts of prey! + How prodigally Gunga pours + Her wealth of waves through verdant shores + O'er which the sacred peepul bends, + And oft its skeleton lines extends + Of twisted root, well laved and bare, + Half in water, half in air! + + Fair scenes! where breeze and sun diffuse + The sweetest odours, fairest hues-- + Where brightest the bright day god shows, + And where his gentle sister throws + Her softest spell on silent plain, + And stirless wood, and slumbering main-- + Where the lucid starry sky + Opens most to mortal eye + The wide and mystic dome serene + Meant for visitants unseen, + A dream like temple, air built hall, + Where spirits pure hold festival! + + Fair scenes! whence envious Art might steal + More charms than fancy's realms reveal-- + Where the tall palm to the sky + Lifts its wreath triumphantly-- + And the bambu's tapering bough + Loves its flexile arch to throw-- + Where sleeps the favored lotus white, + On the still lake's bosom bright-- + Where the champac's[112] blossoms shine, + Offerings meet for Brahma's shrine, + While the fragrance floateth wide + O'er velvet lawn and glassy tide-- + Where the mangoe tope bestows + Night at noon day--cool repose, + Neath burning heavens--a hush profound + Breathing o'er the shaded ground-- + Where the medicinal neem, + Of palest foliage, softest gleam, + And the small leafed tamarind + Tremble at each whispering wind-- + And the long plumed cocoas stand + Like the princes of the land, + Near the betel's pillar slim, + With capital richly wrought and trim-- + And the neglected wild sonail + Drops her yellow ringlets pale-- + And light airs summer odours throw + From the bala's breast of snow-- + Where the Briarean banyan shades + The crowded ghat, while Indian maids, + Untouched by noon tide's scorching rays, + Lave the sleek limb, or fill the vase + With liquid life, or on the head + Replace it, and with graceful tread + And form erect, and movement slow, + Back to their simple dwellings go-- + [Walls of earth, that stoutly stand, + Neatly smoothed with wetted hand-- + Straw roofs, yellow once and gay, + Turned by time and tempest gray--] + Where the merry minahs crowd + Unbrageous haunts, and chirrup loud-- + And shrilly talk the parrots green + 'Midst the thick leaves dimly seen-- + And through the quivering foliage play, + Light as buds, the squirrels gay, + Quickly as the noontide beams + Dance upon the rippled streams-- + Where the pariah[113] howls with fear, + If the white man passeth near-- + Where the beast that mocks our race + With taper finger, solemn face, + In the cool shade sits at ease + Calm and grave as Socrates-- + Where the sluggish buffaloe + Wallows in mud--and huge and slow, + Like massive cloud of sombre van, + Moves the land leviathan--[114] + Where beneath the jungle's screen + Close enwoven, lurks unseen + The couchant tiger--and the snake + His sly and sinuous way doth make + Through the rich mead's grassy net, + Like a miniature rivulet-- + Where small white cattle, scattered wide, + Browse, from dawn to even tide-- + Where the river watered soil + Scarce demands the ryot's toil-- + And the rice field's emerald light + Out vies Italian meadows bright,-- + Where leaves of every shape and dye, + And blossoms varied as the sky, + The fancy kindle,--fingers fair + That never closed on aught but air-- + Hearts, that never heaved a sigh-- + Wings, that never learned to fly-- + Cups, that ne'er went table round-- + Bells, that never rang with sound-- + Golden crowns, of little worth-- + Silver stars, that strew the earth-- + Filagree fine and curious braid, + Breathed, not labored, grown, not made-- + Tresses like the beams of morn + Without a thought of triumph worn-- + Tongues that prate not--many an eye + Untaught midst hidden things to pry-- + Brazen trumpets, long and bright, + That never summoned to the fight-- + Shafts, that never pierced a side-- + And plumes that never waved with pride;-- + Scarcely Art a shape may know + But Nature here that shape can show. + + Through this soft air, o'er this warm sod, + Stern deadly Winter never trod; + The woods their pride for centuries wear, + And not a living branch is bare; + Each field for ever boasts its bowers, + And every season brings its flowers. + +D.L.R. + +We all "uphold Adam's profession": we are all gardeners, either +practically or theoretically. The love of trees and flowers, and shrubs +and the green sward, with a summer sky above them, is an almost +universal sentiment. It may be smothered for a time by some one or other +of the innumerable chances and occupations of busy life; but a painting +in oils by Claude or Gainsborough, or a picture in words by Spenser or +Shakespeare that shall for ever + + Live in description and look green in song, + +or the sight of a few flowers on a window-sill in the city, can fill the +eye with tears of tenderness, or make the secret passion for nature +burst out again in sudden gusts of tumultuous pleasure and lighten up +the soul with images of rural beauty. There are few, indeed, who, when +they have the good fortune to escape on a summer holiday from the +crowded and smoky city and find themselves in the heart of a delicious +garden, have not a secret consciousness within them that the scene +affords them a glimpse of a true paradise below. Rich foliage and gay +flowers and rural quiet and seclusion and a smiling sun are ever +associated with ideas of earthly felicity. + + And oh, if there be an Elysium on earth, + It is this, it is this! + +The princely merchant and the petty trader, the soldier and the sailor, +the politician and the lawyer, the artist and the artisan, when they +pause for a moment in the midst of their career, and dream of the +happiness of some future day, almost invariably fix their imaginary +palace or cottage of delight in a garden, amidst embowering trees and +fragrant flowers. This disposition, even in the busiest men, to indulge +occasionally in fond anticipations of rural bliss-- + + In visions so profuse of pleasantness-- + +shows that God meant us to appreciate and enjoy the beauty of his works. +The taste for a garden is the one common feeling that unites us all. + + One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. + +There is this much of poetical sensibility--of a sense of natural +beauty--at the core of almost every human heart. The monarch shares it +with the peasant, and Nature takes care that as the thirst for her +society is the universal passion, the power of gratifying it shall be +more or less within the reach of all.[115] + +Our present Chief Justice, Sir Lawrence Peel, who has set so excellent +an example to his countrymen here in respect to Horticultural pursuits +and the tasteful embellishment of what we call our "_compounds_" and +who, like Sir William Jones and Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, sees no reason +why Themis should be hostile to the Muses, has obliged me with the +following stanzas on the moral or rather religious influence of a +garden. They form a highly appropriate and acceptable contribution to +this volume. + +I HEARD THY VOICE IN THE GARDEN. + + That voice yet speaketh, heed it well-- + But not in tones of wrath it chideth, + The moss rose, and the lily smell + Of God--in them his voice abideth. + + There is a blessing on the spot + The poor man decks--the sun delighteth + To smile upon each homely plot, + And why? The voice of God inviteth. + + God knows that he is worshipped there, + The chaliced cowslip's graceful bending + Is mute devotion, and the air + Is sweet with incense of her lending. + + The primrose, aye the children's pet, + Pale bride, yet proud of its uprooting, + The crocus, snowdrop, violet + And sweet-briar with its soft leaves shooting. + + There nestles each--a Preacher each-- + (Oh heart of man! be slow to harden) + Each cottage flower in sooth doth teach + God walketh with us in the garden. + +I am surprized that in this city (of Calcutta) where so many kinds of +experiments in education have been proposed, the directors of public +instruction have never thought of attaching tasteful Gardens to the +Government Colleges--especially where Botany is in the regular course of +Collegiate studies. The Company's Botanic Garden being on the other side +of the river and at an inconvenient distance from the city cannot be +much resorted to by any one whose time is precious. An attempt was made +not long ago to have the Garden of the Horticultural Society (now +forming part of the Company's Botanic Garden) on this side of the river, +but the public subscriptions that were called for to meet the necessary +expenses were so inadequate to the purpose that the money realized was +returned to the subscribers, and the idea relinquished, to the great +regret of many of the inhabitants of Calcutta who would have been +delighted to possess such a place of recreation and instruction within a +few minutes' drive. + +Hindu students, unlike English boys in general, remind us of Beattie's +Minstrel:-- + + The exploit of strength, dexterity and speed + To him nor vanity, nor joy could bring. + +A sort of Garden Academy, therefore, full of pleasant shades, would be +peculiarly suited to the tastes and habits of our Indian Collegians. +They are not fond of cricket or leap-frog. They would rejoice to devote +a leisure hour to pensive letterings in a pleasure-garden, and on an +occasional holiday would gladly pursue even their severest studies, book +in hand, amidst verdant bowers. A stranger from Europe beholding them, +in their half-Grecian garments, thus wandering amidst the trees, would +be reminded of the disciples of Plato. + +"It is not easy," observes Lord Kames, "to suppress a degree of +enthusiasm, when we reflect on the advantages of gardening with respect +to virtuous education. In the beginning of life the deepest impressions +are made; and it is a sad truth, that the young student, familiarized to +the dirtiness and disorder of many colleges pent within narrow bounds in +populous cities, is rendered in a measure insensible to the elegant +beauties of art and nature. It seems to me far from an exaggeration, +that good professors are not more essential to a college, than a +spacious garden, sweetly ornamented, but without any thing glaring or +fantastic, is upon the whole to inspire our youth with a taste no less +for simplicity than for elegance. In this respect the University of +Oxford may justly be deemed a model." + +It may be expected that I should offer a few hints on the laying out of +gardens. Much has been said (by writers on ornamental and landscape +gardening) on _art_ and _nature_, and almost always has it been implied +that these must necessarily be in direct opposition. I am far from being +of this opinion. If art and nature be not in some points of view almost +identical, they are at least very good friends, or may easily be made +so. They are not necessarily hostile. They admit of the most harmonious +combinations. In no place are such combinations more easy or more proper +than in a garden. Walter Scott very truly calls a garden the child of +Art. But is it not also the child of Nature?--of Nature and Art +together? To attempt to exclude art--or even, the appearance of +art--from a small garden enclosure, is idle and absurd. He who objects to +all art in the arrangement of a flower-bed, ought, if consistent with +himself, to turn away with an expression of disgust from a well arranged +nosegay in a rich porcelain vase. But who would not loathe or laugh at +such manifest affectation or such thoroughly bad taste? As there is a +time for every thing, so also is there a place for every thing. No man +of true judgment would desire to trace the hand of human art on the form +of nature in remote and gigantic forests, and amidst vast mountains, as +irregular as the billows of a troubled sea. In such scenery there is a +sublime grace in wildness,--_there_ "the very weeds are beautiful." But +what true judgment would be enchanted with weeds and wildness in the +small parterre. As Pope rightly says, we must + + Consult the genius of the place in all. + +It is pleasant to enter a rural lane overgrown with field-flowers, or to +behold an extensive common irregularly decorated with prickly gorse or +fern and thistle, but surely no man of taste would admire nature in this +wild and dishevelled state in a little suburban garden. Symmetry, +elegance and beauty, (--no _sublimity_ or _grandeur_--) trimness, +snugness, privacy, cleanliness, comfort, and convenience--the results of +a happy conjunction of art and nature--are all that we can aim at within +a limited extent of ground. In a small parterre we either trace with +pleasure the marks of the gardener's attention or are disgusted with his +negligence. In a mere patch of earth around a domestic dwelling nature +ought not to be left entirely to herself. + +What is agreeable in one sphere of life is offensive in another. A dirty +smock frock and a soiled face in a ploughman's child who has been +swinging on rustic gates a long summer morning or rolling down the +slopes of hills, or grubbing in the soil of his small garden, may remind +us, not unpleasantly, of one of Gainsborough's pictures; but we look for +a different sort of nature on the canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds or Sir +Thomas Lawrence, or in the brilliant drawing-rooms of the nobility; and +yet an Earl's child looks and moves at least as _naturally_ as a +peasant's. + +There is nature every where--in the palace as well as in the hut, in the +cultivated garden as well as in the wild wood. Civilized life is, after +all, as natural as savage life. All our faculties are natural, and +civilized man cultivates his mental powers and studies the arts of life +by as true an instinct as that which leads the savage to make the most +of his mud hut, and to improve himself or his child as a hunter, a +fisherman, or a warrior. The mind of man is the noblest work of its +Maker (--in this world--) and the movements of man's mind may be quite +as natural, and quite as poetical too, as the life that rises from the +ground. It is as natural for the mind, as it is for a tree or flower to +advance towards perfection. Nature suggests art, and art again imitates +and approximates to nature, and this principle of action and reaction +brings man by degrees towards that point of comparative excellence for +which God seems to have intended him. The mind of a Milton or a +Shakespeare is surely not in a more unnatural condition than that of an +ignorant rustic. We ought not then to decry refinement nor deem all +connection of art with nature an offensive incongruity. A noble mansion +in a spacious and well kept park is an object which even an observer who +has no share himself in the property may look upon with pleasure. It +makes him proud of his race.[116] We cannot witness so harmonious a +conjunction of art and nature without feeling that man is something +better than a mere beast of the field or forest. We see him turn both +art and nature to his service, and we cannot contemplate the lordly +dwelling and the richly decorated land around it--and the neatness and +security and order of the whole scene--without associating them with the +high accomplishments and refined tastes that in all probability +distinguish the proprietor and his family. It is a strange mistake to +suppose that nothing is natural beyond savage ignorance--that all +refinement is unnatural--that there is only one sort of simplicity. For +the mind elevated by civilization is in a more natural state than a mind +that has scarcely passed the boundary of brutal instinct, and the +simplicity of a savage's hut, does not prevent there being a nobler +simplicity in a Grecian temple. + +Kent[117] the famous landscape gardener, tells us that _nature_ _abhors +a straight line_. And so she does--in some cases--but not in all. A ray +of light is a straight line, and so also is a Grecian nose, and so also +is the stem of the betel-nut tree. It must, indeed, be admitted that he +who should now lay out a large park or pleasure-ground on strictly +geometrical principles or in the old topiary style would exhibit a +deplorable want of taste and judgment. But the provinces of the +landscape gardener and the parterre gardener are perfectly distinct. The +landscape gardener demands a wide canvas. All his operations are on a +large scale. In a small garden we have chiefly to aim at the +_gardenesque_ and in an extensive park at the _picturesque_. Even in the +latter case, however, though + + 'Tis Nature still, 'tis nature methodized: + +Or in other words: + + Nature to advantage dressed. + +for even in the largest parks or pleasure-grounds, an observer of true +taste is offended by an air of negligence or the absence of all traces +of human art or care. Such places ought to indicate the presence of +civilized life and security and order. We are not pleased to see weeds +and jungle--or litter of any sort--even dry leaves--upon the princely +domain, which should look like a portion of nature set apart or devoted +to the especial care and enjoyment of the owner and his friends:--a +strictly private property. The grass carpet should be trimly shorn and +well swept. The trees should be tastefully separated from each other at +irregular but judicious distances. They should have fine round heads of +foliage, clean stems, and no weeds or underwood below, nor a single dead +branch above. When we visit the finest estates of the nobility and +gentry in England it is impossible not to perceive in every case a +marked distinction between the wild nature of a wood and the civilized +nature of a park. In the latter you cannot overlook the fact that every +thing injurious to the health and growth and beauty of each individual +tree has been studiously removed, while on the other hand, light, air, +space, all things in fact that, if sentient, the tree could itself be +supposed to desire, are most liberally supplied. There is as great a +difference between the general aspect of the trees in a nobleman's +pleasure ground and those in a jungle, as between the rustics of a +village and the well bred gentry of a great city. Park trees have +generally a fine air of aristocracy about them. + +A Gainsborough or a Morland would seek his subjects in remote villages +and a Watteau or a Stothard in the well kept pleasure ground. The ruder +nature of woods and villages, of sturdy ploughmen and the healthy though +soiled and ragged children in rural neighbourhoods, affords a by no +means unpleasing contrast and introduction to the trim trees and +smoothly undulating lawns, and curved walks, and gay parterres, and fine +ladies and well dressed and graceful children on some old ancestral +estate. We look for rusticity in the village, and for elegance in the +park. The sleek and noble air of patrician trees, standing proudly on +the rich velvet sward, the order and grace and beauty of all that meets +the eye, lead us, as I have said already, to form a high opinion of the +owner. In this we may of course be sometimes disappointed; but a man's +character is generally to be traced in almost every object around him +over which he has the power of a proprietor, and in few things are a +man's taste and habits more distinctly marked than in his park and +garden. If we find the owner of a neatly kept garden and an elegant +mansion slovenly, rude and vulgar in appearance and manners, we +inevitably experience that shock of surprize which is excited by every +thing that is incongruous or out of keeping. On the other hand if the +garden be neglected and overgrown with weeds, or if every thing in its +arrangement indicate a want of taste, and a disregard of neatness and +order, we feel no astonishment whatever in discovering that the +proprietor is as negligent of his mind and person as of his shrubberies +and his lawns. + +A civilized country ought not to look like a savage one. We need not +have wild nature in front of our neatly finished porticos. Nothing can +be more strictly artificial than all architecture. It would be absurd to +erect an elegantly finished residence in the heart of a jungle. There +should be an harmonious gradation from the house to the grounds, and +true taste ought not to object to terraces of elegant design and +graceful urns and fine statues in the immediate neighbourhood of a noble +dwelling. + +Undoubtedly as a general rule, the undulating curve in garden scenery is +preferable to straight lines or abrupt turns or sharp angles, but if +there should happen to be only a few yards between the outer gateway and +the house, could anything be more fantastical or preposterous than an +attempt to give the ground between them a serpentine irregularity? Even +in the most spacious grounds the walks should not seem too studiously +winding, as if the short turns were meant for no other purpose than to +perplex or delay the walker.[118] They should have a natural sweep, and +seem to meander rather in accordance with the nature of the ground and +the points to which they lead than in obedience to some idle sport of +fancy. They should not remind us of Gray's description of the divisions +of an old mansion: + + Long passages that lead to nothing. + +Foot-paths in small gardens need not be broader than will allow two +persons to walk abreast with ease. A spacious garden may have walks of +greater breadth. A path for one person only is inconvenient and has a +mean look. + +I have made most of the foregoing observations in something of a spirit +of opposition to those Landscape gardeners who I think once carried a +true principle to an absurd excess. I dislike, as much as any one can, +the old topiary style of our remote ancestors, but the talk about free +nature degenerated at last into downright cant, and sheer extravagance; +the reformers were for bringing weeds and jungle right under our parlour +windows, and applied to an acre of ground those rules of Landscape +gardening which required a whole county for their proper +exemplification. It is true that Milton's Paradise had "no nice art" in +it, but then it was not a little suburban pleasure ground but a world. +When Milton alluded to private gardens, he spoke of their trimness. + + Retired Leisure + That in _trim_ gardens takes his pleasure. + +The larger an estate the less necessary is it to make it merely neat, +and symmetrical, especially in those parts of the ground that are +distant from the house; but near the architecture some degree of finish +and precision is always necessary, or at least advisable, to prevent the +too sudden contrast between the straight lines and artificial +construction of the dwelling and the flowing curves and wild but +beautiful irregularities of nature unmoulded by art. A garden adjacent +to the house should give the owner a sense of _home_. He should not feel +himself abroad at his own door. If it were only for the sake of variety +there should be some distinction between the private garden and the open +field. If the garden gradually blends itself with a spacious park or +chase, the more the ground recedes from the house the more it may +legitimately assume the aspect of a natural landscape. It will then be +necessary to appeal to the eye of a landscape gardener or a painter or a +poet before the owner, if ignorant of the principles of fine art, +attempt the completion of the general design. + +I should like to see my Native friends who have extensive grounds, vary +the shape of their tanks, but if they dislike a more natural form of +water, irregular or winding, and are determined to have them with four +sharp corners, let them at all events avoid the evil of several small +tanks in the same "compound." A large tank is more likely to have good +water and to retain it through the whole summer season than a smaller +one and is more easily kept clean and grassy to the water's edge. I do +not say that it would be proper to have a piece of winding water in a +small compound--that indeed would be impracticable. But even an oval or +round tank would be better than a square one.[119] + +If the Native gentry could obtain the aid of tasteful gardeners, I would +recommend that the level land should be varied with an occasional +artificial elevation, nicely sloped or graduated; but Native _malees_ +would be sure to aim rather at the production of abrupt round knobs +resembling warts or excrescences than easy and natural undulations of +the surface. + +With respect to lawns, the late Mr. Speede recommended the use of the +_doob_ grass, but it is so extremely difficult to keep it clear of any +intermixture of the _ooloo_ grass, which, when it intrudes upon the +_doob_ gives the lawn a patchwork and shabby look, that it is better to +use the _ooloo_ grass only, for it is far more manageable; and if kept +well rolled and closely shorn it has a very neat, and indeed, beautiful +appearance. The lawns in the compound of the Government House in +Calcutta are formed of _ooloo_ glass only, but as they have been very +carefully attended to they have really a most brilliant and agreeable +aspect. In fact, their beautiful bright green, in the hottest summer, +attracts even the notice and admiration of the stranger fresh from +England. The _ooloo_ grass, however, on close inspection is found to be +extremely coarse, nor has even the finest _doob_ the close texture and +velvet softness of the grass of English lawns. + +Flower beds should be well rounded. They should never have long narrow +necks or sharp angles in which no plant can have room to grow freely. +Nor should they be divided into compartments, too minute or numerous, +for so arranged they must always look petty and toy-like. A lawn should +be as open and spacious as the ground will fairly admit without too +greatly limiting the space for flowers. Nor should there be an +unnecessary multiplicity of walks. We should aim at a certain breadth of +style. Flower beds may be here and there distributed over the lawn, but +care should be taken that it be not too much broken up by them. A few +trees may be introduced upon the lawn, but they must not be placed so +close together as to prevent the growth of the grass by obstructing +either light or air. No large trees should be allowed to smother up the +house, particularly on the southern and western sides, for besides +impeding the circulation through the rooms of the most wholesome winds +of this country, they would attract mosquitoes, and give an air of +gloominess to the whole place. + +Natives are too fond of over-crowding their gardens with trees and +shrubs and flowers of all sorts, with no regard to individual or general +effects, with no eye to arrangement of size, form or color; and in this +hot and moist climate the consequent exclusion of free air and the +necessary degree of light has a most injurious influence not only upon +the health of the resident but upon vegetation itself. Neither the +finest blossoms nor the finest fruits can be expected from an +overstocked garden. The native malee generally plants his fruit trees so +close together that they impede each other's growth and strength. Every +Englishman when he enters a native's garden feels how much he could +improve its productiveness and beauty by a free use of the hatchet. Too +many trees and too much embellishment of a small garden make it look +still smaller, and even on a large piece of ground they produce confused +and disagreeable effects and indicate an absence of all true judgment. +This practice of over-filling a garden is an instance of bad taste, +analogous to that which is so conspicuously characteristic of our own +countrymen in India with respect to their apartments, which look more +like an upholsterer's show-rooms or splendid ornament-shops than +drawing-rooms or parlours. There is scarcely space enough to turn in +them without fracturing some frail and costly bauble. Where a garden is +over-planted the whole place is darkened, the ground is green and slimy, +the grass thin, sickly and straggling, and the trees and shrubs +deficient in freshness and vigor. + +Not only should the native gentry avoid having their flower-borders too +thickly filled,--they should take care also that they are not too broad. +We ought not to be obliged to leave the regular path and go across the +soft earth of the bed to obtain a sight of a particular shrub or flower. +Close and entangled foliage keeps the ground too damp, obstructs +wholesome air, and harbours snakes and a great variety of other noxious +reptiles. Similar objections suggest the propriety of having no shrubs +or flowers or even a grass-plot immediately under the windows and about +the doors of the house. A well exposed gravel or brick walk should be +laid down on all sides of the house, as a necessary safeguard against +both moisture and vermin. + +I have spoken already of the unrivalled beauty of English gravel. It +cannot be too much admired. _Kunkur_[120] looks extremely smart for a +few weeks while it preserves its solidity and freshness, but it is +rapidly ground into powder under carriage wheels or blackened by +occasional rain and the permanent moisture of low grounds when only +partially exposed to the sun and air. Why should not an opulent Rajah or +Nawaub send for a cargo of beautiful red gravel from the gravel pits at +Kensington? Any English House of Agency here would obtain it for him. It +would be cheap in the end, for it lasts at least five times as long as +the kunkur, and if of a proper depth admits of repeated turnings with +the spade, looking on every turn almost as fresh as the day on which it +was first laid down. + +Instead of brick-bat edgings, the wealthy Oriental nobleman might trim +all his flower-borders with the green box-plant of England, which would +flourish I suppose in this climate or in any other. Cobbett in his +_English Gardener_ speaks with so much enthusiasm and so much to the +purpose on the subject of box as an edging, that I must here repeat his +eulogium on it. + +The box is at once the most efficient of all possible things, and the +prettiest plant that can possibly be conceived; the color of its leaf; +the form of its leaf; its docility as to height, width and shape; the +compactness of its little branches; its great durability as a plant; its +thriving in all sorts of soils and in all sorts of aspects; _its +freshness under the hottest sun_, and its defiance of all shade and +drip: these are the beauties and qualities which, for ages upon ages, +have marked it out as the chosen plant for this very important purpose. + +The edging ought to be clipped in the winter or very early in spring on +both sides and at top; a line ought to be used to regulate the movements +of the shears; it ought to be clipped again in the same manner about +midsummer; and if there be _a more neat and beautiful thing than this in +the world, all that I can say is, that I never saw that thing_. + +A small green edging for a flower bed can hardly be too _trim_; but +large hedges with tops and sides cut as flat as boards, and trees +fantastically shaped with the shears into an exhibition as full of +incongruities as the wildest dream, have deservedly gone out of fashion +in England. Poets and prose writers have agreed to ridicule all verdant +sculpture on a large scale. Here is a description of the old topiary +gardens. + + These likewise mote be seen on every side + The shapely box, of all its branching pride + Ungently shorn, and, with preposterous skill + To various beasts, and birds of sundry quill + Transformed, and human shapes of monstrous size. + + * * * * * + + Also other wonders of the sportive shears + Fair Nature misadorning; there were found + Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers + With spouting urns and budding statues crowned; + And horizontal dials on the ground + In living box, by cunning artists traced, + And galleys trim, or on long voyage bound, + But by their roots there ever anchored fast. + +_G. West_. + +The same taste for torturing nature into artificial forms prevailed +amongst the ancients long after architecture and statuary had been +carried to such perfection that the finest British artists of these +times can do nothing but copy and repeat what was accomplished so many +ages ago by the people of another nation. Pliny, in his description of +his Tuscan villa, speaks of some of his trees having been cut into +letters and the forms of animals, and of others placed in such regular +order that they reminded the spectator of files of soldiers.[121] The +Dutch therefore should not bear all the odium of the topiary style of +gardening which they are said to have introduced into England and other +countries of Europe. They were not the first sinners against natural +taste. + +The Hindus are very fond of formally cut hedges and trimmed trees. All +sorts of verdant hedges are in some degree objectionable in a hot moist +country, rife with deadly vermin. I would recommend ornamental iron +railings or neatly cut and well painted wooden pales, as more airy, +light, and cheerful, and less favorable to snakes and centipedes. + +This is the finest country in the world for making gardens speedily. In +the rainy season vegetation springs up at once, as at the stroke of an +Enchanter's wand. The Landscape gardeners in England used to grieve that +they could hardly expect to live long enough to see the effect of their +designs. Such artists would have less reason, to grieve on that account +in this country. Indeed even in England, the source of uneasiness +alluded to, is now removed. "The deliberation with which trees grow," +wrote Horace Walpole, in a letter to a friend, "is extremely +inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous +an age when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am +persuaded that 150 years hence it will be as common to remove oaks 150 +years old as it now is to plant tulip roots." The writer was not a bad +prophet. He has not yet been dead much more than half a century and his +expectations are already more than half realized. Shakespeare could not +have anticipated this triumph of art when he made Macbeth ask + + Who can impress the forest? Bid the tree + Unfix his earth-bound root? + +The gardeners have at last discovered that the largest (though not +perhaps the _oldest_) trees can be removed from one place to another +with comparative facility and safety. Sir H. Stewart moved several +hundred lofty trees without the least injury to any of them. And if +broad and lofty trees can be transplanted in England, how much more +easily and securely might such a process be effected in the rainy season +in this country. In half a year a new garden might be made to look like +a garden of half a century. Or an old and ill-arranged plantation might +thus be speedily re-adjusted to the taste of the owner. The main object +is to secure a good ball of earth round the root, and the main +difficulty is to raise the tree and remove it. Many most ingenious +machines for raising a tree from the ground, and trucks for removing it, +have been lately invented by scientific gardeners in England. A +Scotchman, Mr. McGlashen, has been amongst the most successful of late +transplanters. He exhibited one of his machines at Paris to the present +Emperor of the French, and lifted with it a fir tree thirty feet high. +The French ruler lavished the warmest commendations on the ingenious +artist and purchased his apparatus at a large price.[122] + +Bengal is enriched with a boundless variety of noble trees admirably +suited to parks and pleasure grounds. These should be scattered about a +spacious compound with a spirited and graceful irregularity, and so +disposed with reference to the dwelling as in some degree to vary the +view of it, and occasionally to conceal it from the visitor driving up +the winding road from the outer gate to the portico. The trees, I must +repeat, should be so divided as to give them a free growth and admit +sufficient light and air beneath them to allow the grass to flourish. +Grassless ground under park trees has a look of barrenness, discomfort +and neglect, and is out of keeping with the general character of the +scene. + +The Banyan (_Ficus Indica or Bengaliensis_)-- + + The Indian tree, whose branches downward bent, + Take root again, a boundless canopy-- + +and the Peepul or Pippul (_Ficus Religiosa_) are amongst the finest +trees in this country--or perhaps in the world--and on a very spacious +pleasure ground or park they would present truly magnificent aspects. +Colonel Sykes alludes to a Banyan at the village of Nikow in Poonah with +68 stems descending from and supporting the branches. This tree is said +to be capable of affording shelter to 20,000 men. It is a tree of this +sort which Milton so well describes. + + The fig tree, not that kind for fruit renowned, + But such as at this day, to Indians known + In Malabar or Deccan, spreads her arms + Branching so broad and long, a pillared shade, + High over arched, and echoing walks between + There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat, + Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds + At loop holes cut through the thickest shade those leaves, + They gathered, broad as Amazonian taige; + And with what skill they had together sewed, + To gird their waste. + +Milton is mistaken as to the size of the leaves of this tree, though he +has given its general character with great exactness.[123] + +A remarkable banyan or buri tree, near Manjee, twenty miles west of +Patna, is 375 inches in diameter, the circumference of its shadow at +noon measuring 1116 feet. It has sixty stems, or dropped branches that +have taken root. Under this tree once sat a naked fakir who had occupied +that situation for 25 years; but he did not continue there the whole +year, for his vow obliged him to be during the four cold months up to +his neck in the water of the Ganges![124] + +It is said that there is a banyan tree near Gombroon on the Persian +gulf, computed to cover nearly 1,700 yards. + +The Banyan tree in the Company's Botanic garden, is a fine tree, but it +is of small dimensions compared with those of the trees just +mentioned.[125] + +The cocoanut tree has a characteristically Oriental aspect and a natural +grace, but it is not well suited to the ornamental garden or the +princely villa. It is too suggestive of the rudest village scenery, and +perhaps also of utilitarian ideas of mere profit, as every poor man who +has half a dozen cocoanut trees on his ground disposes of the produce in +the bazar. + +I would recommend my native friends to confine their clumps of plaintain +trees to the kitchen garden, for though the leaf of the plaintain is a +proud specimen of oriental foliage when it is first opened out to the +sun, it soon gets torn to shreds by the lightest breeze. The tattered +leaves then dry up and the whole of the tree presents the most beggarly +aspect imaginable. The stem is as ragged and untidy as the leaves. + +The kitchen garden and the orchard should be in the rear of the house. +The former should not be too visible from the windows and the latter is +on many accounts better at the extremity of the grounds than close to +the house, as we too often find it. A native of high rank should keep as +much out of sight as possible every thing that would remind a visitor +that any portion of the ground was intended rather for pecuniary profit +than the immediate pleasure of the owner. The people of India do not +seem to be sufficiently aware that any sign of parsimony in the +management of a large park or pleasure ground produces in the mind of +the visitor an unfavorable impression of the character of the owner. I +have seen in Calcutta vast mansions of which every little niche and +corner towards the street was let out to very small traders at a few +annas a month. What would the people of England think of an opulent +English Nobleman who should try to squeeze a few pence from the poor by +dividing the street front of his palace into little pigeon-sheds of +petty shops for the retail of petty wares? Oh! Princes of India "reform +this altogether." This sordid saving, this widely published parsimony, +is not only not princely, it is not only not decorous, it is positively +disgusting to every passer-by who himself possesses any right thought or +feeling. + +The Natives seem every day more and more inclined to imitate European +fashions, and there are few European fashions, which could be borrowed +by the highest or lowest of the people of this country with a more +humanizing and delightful effect than that attention to the exterior +elegance and neatness of the dwelling-house, and that tasteful garniture +of the contiguous ground, which in England is a taste common to the +prince and the peasant, and which has made that noble country so full of +those beautiful homes which surprize and enchant its foreign visitors. + +The climate and soil of this country are peculiarly favorable to the +cultivation of trees and shrubs and flowers; and the garden here is at +no season of the year without its ornaments. + +The example of the Horticultural Society of India, and the attractions +of the Company's Botanic Garden ought to have created a more general +taste amongst us for the culture of flowers. Bishop Heber tells us that +the Botanic Garden here reminded hint more of Milton's description of +the Garden of Eden than any other public garden, that he had ever +seen.[126] + +There is a Botanic Garden at Serampore. In 1813 it was in charge of Dr. +Roxburgh. Subsequently came the amiable and able Dr. Wallich; then the +venerable Dr. Carey was for a time the Officiating Superintendent. Dr. +Voigt followed and then one of the greatest of our Anglo-Indian +botanists, Dr. Griffiths. After him came Dr. McLelland, who is at this +present time counting the teak trees in the forests of Pegu. He was +succeeded by Dr. Falconer who left this country but a few months ago. +The garden is now in charge of Dr. Thomson who is said to be an +enthusiast in his profession. He explored the region beyond the snowy +range I think with Captain Cunningham, some years ago. With the +exceptions of Voigt and Carey, all who have had charge of the garden at +Serampore have held at the same time the more important appointment of +Superintendent of the Company's Botanic Garden at Garden Beach. + +There is a Botanic Garden at Bhagulpore, which owes its origin to Major +Napleton. I have been unable to obtain any information regarding its +present condition. A good Botanic Garden has been already established in +the Punjab, where there is also an Agricultural and Horticultural +Society. + +I regret that it should have been deemed necessary to make stupid +pedants of Hindu malees by providing them with a classical nomenclature +for plants. Hindostanee names would have answered the purpose just as +well. The natives make a sad mess of our simplest English names, but +their Greek must be Greek indeed! A _Quarterly Reviewer_ observes that +Miss Mitford has found it difficult to make the maurandias and +alstraemerias and eschxholtzias--the commonest flowers of our modern +garden--look passable even in prose. But what are these, he asks, to the +pollopostemonopetalae and eleutheroromacrostemones of Wachendorf, with +such daily additions as the native name of iztactepotzacuxochitl +icohueyo, or the more classical ponderosity of Erisymum Peroffskyanum. + + --like the verbum Graecum + Spermagoraiolekitholakanopolides, + Words that should only be said upon holidays, + When one has nothing else to do. + +If these names are unpronounceable even by Europeans, what would the +poor Hindu malee make of them? The pedantry of some of our scientific +Botanists is something marvellous. One would think that a love of +flowers must produce or imply a taste for simplicity and nature in all +things.[127] + +As by way of encouragement to the native gardeners--to enable them to +dispose of the floral produce of their gardens at a fair price--the +Horticultural Society has withdrawn from the public the indulgence of +gratuitous supplies of plants, it would be as well if some men of taste +were to instruct these native nursery-men how to lay out their grounds, +(as their fellow-traders do at home,) with some regard to neatness, +cleanliness and order. These flower-merchants, and even the common +_malees_, should also be instructed, I think, how to make up a decent +bouquet, for if it be possible to render the most elegant things in the +creation offensive to the eye of taste, that object is assuredly very +completely effected by these swarthy artists when they arrange, with +such worse than Dutch precision and formality, the ill-selected, +ill-arranged, and tightly bound treasures of the parterre for the +classical vases of their British masters. I am often vexed to observe the +idleness or apathy which suffers such atrocities as these specimens of +Indian taste to disgrace the drawing-rooms of the City of Palaces. This is +quite inexcusable in a family where there are feminine hands for the +truly graceful and congenial task of selecting and arranging the daily +supply of garden decorations. A young lady--"herself a fairer +flower"--is rarely exhibited to a loving eye in a more delightful point of +view than when her delicate and dainty fingers are so employed. + +If a lovely woman arranging the nosegays and flower-vases, in her +parlour, is a sweet living picture, a still sweeter sight does she +present to us when she is in the garden itself. Milton thus represents +the fair mother of the fair in the first garden:-- + + Eve separate he spies. + Veil'd in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood, + Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round + About her glow'd, oft stooping to support + Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay, + Carnation, purple, azure, or speck'd with gold, + Hung drooping unsustain'd; them she upstays + Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while + Herself, though fairest unsupported flower, + From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh. + Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed + Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm; + Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen, + Among thick woven arborets, and flowers + Imborder'd on each bank, the hand of Eve[128] + +_Paradise Lost. Book IX_. + +Chaucer (in "The Knight's Tale,") describes Emily in her garden as +fairer to be seen + + Than is the lily on his stalkie green; + +And Dryden, in his modernized version of the old poet, says, + + At every turn she made a little stand, + And thrust among the thorns her lily hand + To draw the rose. + +Eve's roses were without thorns-- + + "And without thorn the rose,"[129] + +It is pleasant to see flowers plucked by the fairest fingers for some +elegant or worthy purpose, but it is not pleasant to see them _wasted_. +Some people pluck them wantonly, and then fling them away and litter the +garden walks with them. Some idle coxcombs, vain + + Of the nice conduct of a clouded cane, + +amuse themselves with switching off their lovely heads. "That's +villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it." +Lander says + + And 'tis my wish, and over was my way, + To let all flowers live freely, and so die. + +Here is a poetical petitioner against a needless destruction of the +little tenants of the parterre. + + Oh, spare my flower, my gentle flower, + The slender creature of a day, + Let it bloom out its little hour, + And pass away. + + So soon its fleeting charms must lie + Decayed, unnoticed and o'erthrown, + Oh, hasten not its destiny, + Too like thine own. + +_Lyte_. + +Those who pluck flowers needlessly and thoughtlessly should be told that +other people like to see them flourish, and that it is as well for every +one to bear in mind the beautiful remark of Lord Bacon that "the breath +of flowers is far sweeter in the air than in the hand; for in the air it +comes and goes like the warbling of music." + +The British portion of this community allow their exile to be much more +dull and dreary than it need be, by neglecting to cultivate their +gardens, and leaving them entirely to the taste and industry of the +_malee_. I never feel half so much inclined to envy the great men of +this now crowded city the possession of vast but gardenless mansions, +(partly blocked up by those of their neighbours,) as I do to felicitate +the owner of some humbler but more airy and wholesome dwelling in the +suburbs, when the well-sized grounds attached to it have been touched +into beauty by the tasteful hand of a lover of flowers. + +But generally speaking my countrymen in most parts of India allow their +grounds to remain in a state which I cannot help characterizing as +disreputable. It is amazing how men or women accustomed to English modes +of life can reconcile themselves to that air of neglect, disorder, and +discomfort which most of their "compounds" here exhibit. + +It would afford me peculiar gratification to find this book read with +interest by my Hindu friends, (for whom, chiefly, it has been written,) +and to hear that it has induced some of them to pay more attention to +the ornamental cultivation of their grounds; for it would be difficult +to confer upon them a greater blessing than a taste for the innocent and +elegant pleasures of the FLOWER-GARDEN. + + + +SUPPLEMENT. + + +SACRED TREES AND SHRUBS OF THE HINDUS. + +The following list of the trees and shrubs held sacred by the Hindus is +from the friend who furnished me with the list of Flowers used in Hindu +ceremonies.[130] It was received too late to enable me to include it in +the body of the volume. + +AMALAKI (_Phyllanthus emblica_).--A tree held sacred to Shiva. It has no +flowers, and its leaves are in consequence used in worshipping that +deity as well as Durga, Kali, and others. The natives of Bengal do not +look upon it with any degree of religious veneration, but those of the +Upper Provinces annually worship it on the day of the _Shiva Ratri_, +which generally falls in the latter end of February or the beginning of +March, and on which all the public offices are closed. + +ASWATH-THA (_Ficus Religiosa_).--It is commonly called by Europeans the +Peepul tree, by which name, it is known to the natives of the Upper +Provinces. The _Bhagavat Gita_ says that Krishna in giving an account of +his power and glory to Arjuna, before the commencement of the celebrated +battle between the _Kauravas_ and _Pándavas_ at _Kurukshetra_, +identified himself with the _Aswath-tha_ whence the natives consider it +to be a sacred tree.[131] + +BILWA OR SREEFUL (_Aegle marmelos_).--It is the common wood-apple tree, +which is held sacred to Shiva, and its leaves are used in worshipping +him as well as Durga, Kali, and others. The _Mahabharat_ says that when +Shiva at the request of Krishna and the Pandavas undertook the +protection of their camp at Kurukshetra on the night of the last day of +the battle, between them and the sons of Dhritarashtra, Aswathama, a +friend and follower of the latter, took up a Bilwa tree by its roots and +threw it upon the god, who considering it in the light of an offering +made to him, was so much pleased with Aswathama that he allowed him to +enter the camp, where he killed the five sons of the Pandavas and the +whole of the remnants of their army. Other similar stories are also told +of the Bilwa tree to prove its sacredness, but the one I have given +above, will be sufficient to shew in what estimation it is held by the +Hindus. + +BAT (_Ficus indica_).--Is the Indian Banian tree, supposed to be +immortal and coeval with the gods; whence it is venerated as one of +them. It is also supposed to be a male tree, while the Aswath-tha or +Peepul is looked upon as a female, whence the lower orders of the people +plant them side by side and perform the ceremony of matrimony with a +view to connect them as man and wife.[132] + +DURVA' (_Panicum dactylon_).--A grass held to be sacred to Vishnu, who +in his seventh _Avatara_ or incarnation, as Rama, the son of Dasaratha, +king of Oude, assumed the colour of the grass, which is used in all +religious ceremonies of the Hindus. It has medicinal properties. + +KA'STA' (_Saccharum spontaneum_).--It is a large species of grass. In +those ceremonies which the Hindus perform after the death of a person, +or with a view to propitiate the Manes of their ancestors this grass is +used whenever the Kusa is not to be had. When it is in flower, the +natives look upon the circumstance as indicative of the close of the +rains. + +KU'SA (_Poa cynosuroides_).--The grass to which, reference has been made +above. It is used in all ceremonies performed in connection with the +death of a person or having for their object the propitiation of the +Manes of ancestors. + +MANSA-SHIJ (_Euphorbia ligularia_).--This plant is supposed by the +natives of Bengal to be sacred to _Mansa_, the goddess of snakes, and is +worshipped by them on certain days of the months of June, July, August, +and September, during which those reptiles lay their eggs and breed +their young. The festival of Arandhana, which is more especially +observed by the lower orders of the people, is in honor of the Goddess +Mansa.[133] + +NA'RIKELA (_Coccos nucifera_).--The Cocoanut tree, which is supposed to +possess the attributes of a Brahmin and is therefore held sacred.[134] + +NIMBA (_Melia azadirachta_).--A tree from the trunk of which the idol at +Pooree was manufactured, and which is in consequence identified with the +ribs of Vishnu.[135] + +TU'LSI (_Ocymum_).--The Indian Basil, of which there are several +species, such as the _Ram Tulsi_ (ocymum gratissimum) the _Babooye +Tulsi_ (ocymum pilosum) the _Krishna Tulsi_ (osymum sanctum) and the +common _Tulsi_ (ocymum villosum) all of which possess medicinal +properties, but the two latter are held to be sacred to Vishnu and used +in his worship. The _Puranas_ say that Krishna assumed the form of +_Saukasura_, and seduced his wife Brinda. When he was discovered he +manifested his extreme regard for her by turning her into the _Tulsi_ +and put the leaves upon his head.[136] + + + +APPENDIX. + + + * * * * * + +THE FLOWER GARDEN IN INDIA. + +The following practical directions and useful information respecting the +Indian Flower-Garden, are extracted from the late Mr. Speede's _New +Indian Gardener_, with the kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. +Thacker Spink and Company of Calcutta. + +THE SOIL. + +So far as practicable, the soil should be renewed every year, by turning +in vegetable mould, river sand, and well rotted manure to the depth of +about a foot; and every second or third year the perennials should be +taken up, and reduced, when a greater proportion of manure may be added, +or what is yet better, the whole of the old earth removed, and new mould +substituted. + +It used to be supposed that the only time for sowing annuals or other +plants, (in Bengal) is the beginning of the cold weather, but although +this is the case with a great number of this class of plants, it is a +popular error to think it applies to all, since there are many that grow +more luxuriantly if sown at other periods. The Pink, for instance, may +be sown at any time, Sweet William thrives best if sown in March or +April, the variegated and light colored Larkspurs should not be put in +until December, the Dahlia germinates most successfully in the rains, +and the beautiful class of Zinnias are never seen to perfection unless +sown in June. + +This is the more deserving of attention, as it holds out the prospect of +maintaining our Indian flower gardens, in life and beauty, throughout +the whole year, instead of during the confined period hitherto +attempted. + +The several classes of flowering plants are divided into PERENNIAL, +BIENNIAL, and ANNUAL. + +PERENNIALS. + +The HERON'S BILL, Erodium; the STORK'S BILL, Pelargonium; and the +CRANE'S BILL, Geranium; all popularly known under the common designation +of Geranium, which gives name to the family, are well known, and are +favorite plants, of which but few of the numerous varieties are found +in this country. + +Of the first of these there are about five and twenty fixed species, +besides a vast number of varieties; of which there are here found only +the following:-- + +The _Flesh-colored Heron's bill_, E. incarnatum, is a pretty plant of +about six inches high, flowering in the hot weather, with flesh-colored +blossoms, but apt to become rather straggling. + +Of the hundred and ninety species of the second class, independently of +their varieties, there are few indeed that have found their way here, +only thirteen, most of which are but rarely met with. + +The _Rose-colored Stork's bill_, P. roseum, is tuberous rooted, and in +April yields pretty pink flowers. + +The _Brick-colored Stork's bill_, P. lateritium, affords red flowers in +March and April. + +The _Botany Bay Stork's bill_, P. Australe, is rare, but may be made to +give a pretty red flower in March. + +The _Common horse-shoe Stork's bill_, P. zonale, is often seen, and +yields its scarlet blossoms freely in April. + +The _Scarlet-flowered Stork's bill_, P. inquinans, affords a very fine +flower towards the latter end of the cold weather, and approaching to +the hot; it requires protection from the rains, as it is naturally of a +succulent nature, and will rot at the joints if the roots become at all +sodden: many people lay the pots down on their sides to prevent this, +which is tolerably successful to their preservation. + +The _Sweet-Scented Stork's bill_, P. odoratissimum, with pink flowers, +but it does not blossom freely, and the branches are apt to grow long +and straggling. + +The _Cut-leaved Stork's bill_, P. incisum, has small flowers, the petals +being long and thin, and the flowers which appear in April are white, +marked with pink. + +The _Ivy-leaved Stork's bill_, P. lateripes, has not been known to yield +flowers in this country. + +The _Rose-scented Stork's bill_, P. capitatum, the odour of the leaves +is very pleasant, but it is very difficult to force into blossom. + +The _Ternate Stork's bill_, P. ternatum, has variegated pink flowers in +April. + +The _Oak-leaved Stork's bill_, P. quercifolium, is much esteemed for the +beauty of its leaves, but has not been known to blossom in this climate. + +The _Tooth-leaved Stork's bill_, P. denticulatum, is not a free +flowerer, but may with care be made to bloom in April. + +The _Lemon, or Citron-scented Stork's bill_, P. gratum, grows freely, +and has a pretty appearance, but does not blossom. + +Of the second class of these plants the forty-eight species have only +three representatives. + +The _Aconite-leaved Crane's bill_, G. aconiti-folium, is a pretty plant, +but rare, yielding its pale blue flowers with difficulty. + +The _Wallich's Crane's bill_ G. Wallichianum, indigenous to Nepal, +having pale pink blossoms and rather pretty foliage, flowering in March +and April; but requiring protection in the succeeding hot weather, and +the beginning of the rains, as it is very susceptible of heat, or excess +of moisture. + +_Propagation_--may be effected by seed to multiply, or produce fresh +varieties, but the ordinary mode of increasing the different sorts is by +cuttings, no plant growing more readily by this mode. These should be +taken off at a joint where the wood is ripening, at which point the root +fibres are formed, and put into a pot with a compost of one part garden +mould, one part vegetable mould, and one part sand, and then kept +moderately moist, in the shade, until they have formed strong root +fibres, when they may be planted out. The best method is to plant each +cutting in a separate pot of the smallest size. The germinating of the +seeds will be greatly promoted by sinking the pots three parts of their +depth in a hot bed, keeping them moist and shaded and until they +germinate. + +_Soil, &c._ A rich garden mould, composed of light loam, rather sandy +than otherwise, with very rotten dung, is desirable for this shrub. + +_Culture_. Most kinds are rapid and luxurious growers, and it is +necessary to pay them constant attention in pruning or nipping the +extremities of the shoots, or they will soon become ill-formed and +straggling. This is particularly requisite during the rains, when heat +and moisture combine to increase their growth to excess; allowing them +to enjoy the full influence of the sun during the whole of the cold +weather, and part of the hot. At the close of the rains, the plants had +better be put out into the open ground, and closely pruned, the shoots +taken off affording an ample supply of cuttings for multiplying the +plants; this putting out will cause them to throw up strong healthy +shoots and rich blossoms; but as the hot weather approaches, or in the +beginning of March, they must be re-placed in moderate sized pots, with +a compost similar to that required for cuttings and placed in the plant +shed, as before described. The earth in the pots should be covered with +pebbles, or pounded brick of moderate size, which prevents the +accumulation of moss or fungi. Geraniums should at no time be over +watered, and must at all seasons be allowed a free ventilation. + +There is no doubt that if visitors from this to the Cape, would pay a +little attention to the subject, the varieties might be greatly +increased, and that without much trouble, as many kinds may be produced +freely by seed, if brought to the country fresh, and sown immediately on +arrival; young plants also in well glazed cases would not take up much +space in some of the large vessels coming from thence. + +The ANEMONE has numerous varieties, and is, in England, a very favorite +flower, but although A. cernua is a native of Japan, and many varieties +are indigenous to the Cape, it is very rare here. + +The _Double anemone_ is the most prized, but there are several _Single_ +and _Half double_ kinds which are very handsome. The stem of a good +anemone should be eight or nine inches in height, with a strong upright +stalk. The flower ought not to be less than seven inches in +circumference, the outer row of petals being well rounded, flat, and +expanding at the base, turning up with a full rounded edge, so as to +form a well shaped cup, within which, in the double kinds, should arise +a large group of long small petals reverted from the centre, and +regularly overlapping each other; the colors clear, each shade being +distinct in such as are variegated. + +The _Garden, or Star Wind flower_, A. hortensis, _Boostan afrooz_, is +another variety, found in Persia, and brought thence to Upper India, of +a bright scarlet color; a blue variety has also blossomed in Calcutta, +and was exhibited at the Show of February, 1847, by Mrs. Macleod, to +whom Floriculture is indebted for the introduction of many beautiful +exotics heretofore new to India. But it is to be hoped this handsome +species of flowering plants will soon be more extensively found under +cultivation. + +_Propagation_. Seed can hardly be expected to succeed in this country, +as even in Europe it fails of germinating; for if not sown immediately +that it is ripe, the length of journey or voyage would inevitably +destroy its power of producing. Offsets of the tubers therefore are the +only means that are left, and these should not be replanted until they +have been a sufficient time out of the ground, say a month or so, to +become hardened, nor should they be put into the earth until they have +dried, or the whole offset will rot by exposure of the newly fractured +side to the moisture of the earth. The tubers should be selected which +are plump and firm, as well as of moderate size, the larger ones being +generally hollow; these may be obtained in good order from Hobart Town. + +_Soil, &c._ A strong rich loamy soil is preferable, having a +considerable portion of well rotted cow-dung, with a little leaf mould, +dug to a depth of two feet, and the beds not raised too high, as it is +desirable to preserve moisture in the subsoil; if in pots, this is +effected by keeping a saucer of water under them continually, the pot +must however be deep, or the fibres will have too much wet; an open airy +situation is desirable. + +_Culture_. When the plant appears above ground the earth must be pressed +well down around the root, as the crowns and tubers are injured by +exposure to dry weather, and the plants should be sheltered from the +heat of the sun, but not so as to confine the air; they require the +morning and evening sun to shine on them, particularly the former. + +The IRIS is a handsome plant, attractive alike from the variety and the +beauty of its blossoms; some of them are also used medicinally. All +varieties produce abundance of seed, in which form the plant might with +great care be introduced into this country. + +The _Florence Iris_, I. florentina, _Ueersa_, is a large variety, +growing some two feet in height, the flower being white, and produced in +the hot weather. + +The _Persian Iris_ I. persica, _Hoobur_, is esteemed not only for its +handsome blue and purple flowers, but also for its fragrance, blossoming +in the latter part of the cold weather; one variety has blue and yellow +blossoms. + +The _Chinese Iris_, I. chinensis, _Soosun peelgoosh_, in a small sized +variety, but has very pretty blue and purple flowers in the beginning of +the hot weather. + +_Propagation_. Besides seed, which should be sown in drills, at the +close of the rains, in a sandy soil, it may be produced by offsets. + +_Soil, &c._ Almost any kind of soil suits the Iris, but the best flowers +are obtained from a mixture of sandy loam, with leaf mould, the Persian +kind requiring a larger proportion of sand. + +_Culture_. Little after culture is required, except keeping the beds +clear from weeds, and occasionally loosening the earth. But the roots +must be taken, up every two, or at most three years, and replanted, +after having been kept to harden for a month or six weeks; the proper +season for doing this being when the leaves decay after blossoming. + +The TUBEROSE, Polianthes, is well deserving of culture, but it is not by +any means a rare plant, and like many indigenous odoriferous flowers, +has rather too strong an odour to be borne near at hand, and it is +considered unwholesome in a room. + +The _Common Tuberose_, P. tuberosa, _Chubugulshubboo_, being a native of +India thrives in almost any soil, and requires no cultivation: it is +multiplied by dividing the roots. It flowers at all times of the year in +bunches of white flowers with long sepals. + +The _Double Tuberose_, P. florepleno, is very rich in appearance, and of +more delicate fragrance, although still too powerful for the room. Crows +are great destroyers of the blossoms, which they appear fond of pecking. +This variety is more rare, and the best specimens have been obtained +from Hobart Town. It is rather more delicate and requires more attention +in culture than the indigenous variety, and should be earthed up, so as +to prevent water lodging around the stem. + +The LOBELIA is a brilliant class of flowers which may be greatly +improved by careful cultivation. + +The _Splendid Lobelia_, L. splendens, is found in many gardens, and is a +showy scarlet flower, well worthy of culture. + +The _Pyramidal Lobelia_, L. pyramidalis, is a native of Nepal, and is a +modest pretty flower, of a purple color. + +_Propagation_--is best performed by offsets, suckers, or cuttings, but +seeds produce good strong plants, which may with care, be made to +improve. + +_Soil, &c._--A moist, sandy soil is requisite for them, the small +varieties especially delighting in wet ground. Some few of this family +are annuals, and the roots of no varieties should remain more than three +years without renewal, as the blossoms are apt to deteriorate; they all +flower during the rains. + +The PITCAIRNIA is a very handsome species, having long narrow leaves, +with, spined edges and throwing up blossoms in upright spines. + +The _Long Stamened Pitcairnia_, P. staminea, is a splendid scarlet +flower, lasting long in blossom, which, appears in July or August, and +continues till December. + +The _Scarlet Pitcairnia_, P. bromeliaefolia, is also a fine rich scarlet +flower, but blossoming somewhat sooner, and may be made to continue +about a month later. + +_Propagation_--is by dividing the roots, or by suckers, which is best +performed at the close of the rains. + +_Soil, &c._ A sandy peat is the favorite soil of this plant, which +should be kept very moist. + +The DAHLIA, Dahlia; a few years since an attempt was made to rename this +beautiful and extensive family and to call it Georgina, but it failed, +and it is still better known throughout the world by its old name than +the new. It was long supposed that the Dahlia was only found indigenous +in Mexico, but Captain Kirke some few years back brought to the notice +of the Horticultural Society, that it was to be met with in great +abundance in Dheyra Dhoon, producing many varieties both single and +double; and he has from time to time sent down quantities of seed, which +have greatly assisted its increase in all parts of India. It has also +been found in Nagpore. + +A good Dahlia is judged of by its form, size, and color. In respect to +the first of these its _form_ should be perfectly round, without any +inequalities of projecting points of the petals, or being notched, or +irregular. These should also be so far revolute that the side view +should exhibit a perfect semicircle in its outline, and the eye or +prolific disc, in the centre should be entirely concealed. There has +been recently introduced into this country a new variety, all the petals +of which are quilled, which has a very handsome appearance. + +In _size_ although of small estimation if the other qualities are +defective, it is yet of some consideration, but the larger flowers are +apt to be wanting in that perfect hemispherical form that is so much +admired. + +The _color_ is of great importance to the perfection of the flower; of +those that are of one color this should be clear, unbroken, and +distinct; but when mixed hues are sought, each color should be clearly +and distinctly defined without any mingling of shades, or running into +each other. Further, the flowers ought to be erect so as to exhibit the +blossom in the fullest manner to the view. The most usual colors of the +imported double Dahlias, met with in India, are crimson, scarlet, +orange, purple, and white. Amongst those raised from seed from. Dheyra +Dhoon[137] of the double kind, there are of single colors, crimson, deep +crimson approaching to maroon, deep lilac, pale lilac, violet, pink, +light purple, canary color, yellow, red, and white; and of mixed colors, +white and pink, red and yellow, and orange and white: the single ones of +good star shaped flowers and even petals being of crimson, puce, lilac, +pale lilac, white, and orange. Those from Nagpore seed have yielded, +double flowers of deep crimson, lilac, and pale purple, amongst single +colors; lilac and blue, and red and yellow of mixed shades; and single +flowered, crimson, and orange, with mixed colors of lilac and yellow, +and lilac and white. + +_Propagation_--is by dividing the roots, by cuttings, by suckers, or by +seed; the latter is generally resorted to, where new varieties are +desired. Mr. George A. Lake, in an article on this subject (_Gardeners' +Magazine_, 1833) says: "I speak advisedly, and from, experience, when I +assert that plants raised from cuttings do not produce equally perfect +flowers, in regard to size, form, and fulness, with those produced by +plants grown from division of tubers;" and he more fully shews in +another part of the same paper, that this appears altogether conformable +to reason, as the cutting must necessarily for a long period want that +store of starch, which is heaped up in the full grown tuber for the +nutriment of the plant. This objection however might be met by not +allowing the cuttings to flower in the season when they are struck. + +To those who are curious in the cultivation of this handsome species, it +may be well to know how to secure varieties, especially of mixed colors; +for this purpose it is necessary to cover the blossoms intended for +fecundation with fine gauze tied firmly to the foot stalk, and when it +expands take the pollen from the male flowers with a camel's hair +pencil, and touch with it each floret of the intended bearing flower, +tying the gauze again over it, and keeping it on until the petals are +withered. The operation requires to be performed two or three successive +days, as the florets do not expand together. + +_Soil &c._ They thrive best in a rich loam, mixed with sand; but should +not be repeated too often on the same spot, as they exhaust the soil +considerably. + +_Culture_. The Dahlia requires an open, airy position unsheltered by +trees or walls, the plants should be put out where they are to blossom, +immediately on the cessation of the rains, at a distance of three feet +apart, either in rows or in clumps, as they make a handsome show in a +mass; and as they grow should be trimmed from the lower shoots, to about +a foot in height, and either tied carefully to a stake, or, what is +better, surrounded by a square or circular trellis, about five feet in +height. As the buds form they should be trimmed off, so as to leave but +one on each stalk, this being the only method by which full, large, and +perfectly shaped blossoms are obtained. Some people take up the tubers +every year in February or March, but this is unnecessary. The plants +blossom in November and December in the greatest perfection, but may +with attention be continued from the beginning of October to the end of +February. + +Those plants which are left in the ground during the whole year should +have their roots opened immediately on the close of the rains, the +superabundant or decayed tubers, and all suckers being removed, and +fresh earth filled in. The earth should always be heaped up high around +the stems, and it is a good plan to surround each plant with a small +trench to be filled daily with water so as to keep the stem and leaves +dry. + +The PINK, Dianthus, _Kurunful_, is a well known species of great +variety, and acknowledged beauty. + +The _Carnation_, D. caryophyilus, _Gul kurunful_, is by this time +naturalized in India, adding both beauty and fragrance to the parterre; +the only variety however that has yet appeared in the country is the +clove, or deep crimson colored: but the success attending the culture of +this beautiful flower is surely an encouragement to the introduction of +other sorts, there being above four hundred kinds, especially as they +may be obtained from seed or pipings sent packed in moss, which will +remain in good condition for two or three months, provided no moisture +beyond what is natural to the moss, have access to them. + +The distinguishing marks of a good carnation may be thus described: the +stem should be tall and straight, strong, elastic, and having rather +short foot stalks, the flower should be fully three inches in diameter +with large well formed petals, round and uncut, long and broad, so as to +stand out well, rising about half an inch above the calyx, and then the +outer ones turned off in a horizontal direction, supporting those of the +centre, decreasing gradually in size, the whole forming a near approach +to a hemisphere. It flowers in April and May. + +_Propagation_--is performed either by seed, by layers, or by pipings; +the best time for making the two latter is when the plant is in full +blossom, as they then root more strongly. In this operation the lower +leaves should be trimmed off, and an incision made with a sharp knife, +by entering the knife about a quarter of an inch below the joint, +passing it through its centre; it must then be pegged down with a hooked +peg, and covered with about a quarter of an inch of light rich mould; if +kept regularly moist, the layers will root in about a month's time: they +may then be taken off and planted out into pots in a sheltered +situation, neither exposed to excessive rain, nor sun, until they shoot +out freely. + +Pipings (or cuttings as they are called in other plants) must be taken +off from a healthy, free growing plant, and should have two complete +joints, being cut off horizontally close under the second one; the +extremities of the leaves must also be shortened, leaving the whole +length of each piping two inches; they should be thrown into a basin of +soft water for a few minutes to plump them, and then planted out in +moist rich mould, not more than an inch being inserted therein, and +slightly watered to settle the earth close around them; after this the +soil should be kept moderately moist, and never exposed to the sun. Seed +is seldom resorted to except to introduce new varieties. + +_Soil, &c._--A mixture of old well rotted stable manure, with one-third +the quantity of good fine loamy earth, and a small portion of sand, is +the best soil for carnations. + +_Culture_.--The plants should be sheltered from too heavy a fall of +rain, although they require to be kept moderately moist, and desire an +airy situation. When the flower stalks are about six or eight inches in +height, they must be supported by sticks, and, if large full blossoms be +sought for, all the buds, except the leading one, must be removed with a +pair of scissors; the calyx must also be frequently examined, as it is +apt to burst, and if any disposition to this should appear, it will be +well to assist the uniform expansion by cutting the angles with a sharp +penknife. If, despite all precautions the calyx burst and let out the +petals, it should be carefully tied with thread, or a circular piece of +card having a hole in the centre should be drawn over the bud so as to +hold the petals together, and display them to advantage by the contrast +of the white color. + +_Insects, &c._--The most destructive are the red, and the large black +ant, which attack, and frequently entirely destroy the roots before you +can be aware of its approach; powdered turmeric should therefore be +constantly kept strewed around this flower. + +The _Common Pink_, Dianthus Chinensis, _Kurunful_, and the _Sweet +William_, D: barbatus, are pretty, ornamental plants, and may be +propagated and cultivated in the same way as the carnation, save that +they do not require so much care, or so good a soil, any garden mould +sufficing; they are also more easily produced from seed. + +The VIOLET, Viola, _Puroos_, is a class containing many beautiful +flowers, some highly ornamental and others odoriferous. + +The _Sweet Violet_, V. odorata, _Bunufsh'eh_, truly the poet's flower. +It is a deserved favorite for its delightful fragrance as well as its +delicate and retiring purple flowers; there is also a white variety, but +it is rare in this country, as is also the double kind. This blossoms in +the latter part of the cold weather. + +The _Shrubby Violet_, V. arborescens, or suffruticosa, _Rutunpuroos_, +grows wild in the hills, and is a pretty blue flower, but wants the +fragrance of the foregoing. + +The _Dog's Violet_, V. canina, is also indigenous in the hills. + +_Propagation_.--All varieties may be propagated by seed, but the most +usual method is by dividing the roots, or taking off the runners. + +_Soil, &c._--The natural _habitat_ of the indigenous varieties is the +sides and interstices of the rocks, where leaf mould, and micaceous +sand, has accumulated and moisture been retained, indicating that the +kind of soil favorable to the growth of this interesting little plant is +a rich vegetable mould, with an admixture of sand, somewhat moist, but +having a dry subsoil. + +_Culture_.--It would not be safe to trust this plant in the open ground +except during a very short period of the early part of the cold weather, +when the so doing will give it strength to form blossoms. In January, +however, it should be re-potted, filling the pots about half-full of +pebbles or stone-mason's cuttings, over which should be placed good rich +vegetable mould, mixed with a large proportion of sand, covering with a +thin layer of the same material as has been put into the bottom of the +pot; a top dressing of ground bones is said to improve the fineness of +the blossoms. They should not be kept too dry, but at the same time +watered cautiously, as too much of either heat or moisture destroys the +plants. + +The _Pansy_ or _Heart's-ease_, V. tricolor, _Kheeroo, kheearee_, derives +its first name from the French _Pensée_. It was known amongst the early +Christians by the name of _Flos Trinitatis_, and worn as a symbol of +their faith. The high estimation which it has of late years attained in +Great Britain as a florist's flower has, in the last two or three years, +extended itself to this country. There are nearly four hundred +varieties, a few of which only have been found here. + +_The characters of a fine Heart's-ease_ are, the flower being well +expanded, offering a flat, or if any thing, rather a revolute surface, +and the petals so overlapping each other as to form a circle without any +break in the outline. These should be as nearly as possible of a size, +and the greater length of the two upper ones concealed by the covering +of those at the side in such manner as to preserve the appearance of +just proportion: the bottom petal being broad and two-lobed, and well +expanded, not curving inwards. The eye should be of moderate, or rather +small size, and much additional beauty is afforded, if the pencilling is +so arranged as to give the appearance of a dark angular spot. The colors +must also be clear, bright, and even, not clouded or indistinct. +Undoubtedly the handsomest kinds are those in which the two upper petals +are of deep purple and the triade of a shade less: in all, the flower +stalk should be long and stiff. The plant blossoms in this country in +February and March, although it is elsewhere a summer flower. + +_Propagation_.--In England the moat usual methods are dividing the +roots, layers, or cuttings from the stem, and these are certainly the +only sure means of preserving a good variety; but it is almost +impossible in India to preserve the plant through the hot weather, and +therefore it is more generally treated as an annual, and raised every +year from seed, which should be sown at the close of the rains; as +however their growth, in India is as yet little known, most people put +the imported seed into pots as soon as it arrives, lest the climate +should deteriorate its germinating power, as it is well known, that even +in Europe the seed should be sown as soon as possible after ripening. It +will be well also to assist its sprouting with a little bottom heat, by +plunging the pot up to its rim in a hot bed. American seed should be +avoided as the blossoms are little to be depended on, and generally +yield small, ill-formed flowers, clouded and run in color. + +_Soil, &c._--This should be moist, and the best compost is formed of +one-sixth of well rotted dung from an old hot bed, and five-sixth of +loam, or one-fourth of leaf mould and the remainder loam, but in either +case well incorporated and exposed for some time previous to use to the +action of the sun and air by frequent turning. + +_Culture_.--A shady situation is to be preferred, especially for the +dark varieties which assume a deeper hue if so placed. But it has been +observed by Mackintosh, that "the light varieties bloomed lighter in the +shade, and darker in the sunshine--a very remarkable effect, for which I +cannot account." The plants must at all times be kept moist, never being +allowed to become dry, and should be so placed as to receive only the +morning sun before ten o'clock. Under good management the plants will +extend a foot or more in height, and have a handsome appearance if +trained over a circular trellis of rattan twisted. When they rise too +high, or it is desirable to fill out with side shoots, the tops must be +pinched off, and larger flowers will be obtained if the flower buds are +thinned out where they appear crowded. + +These plants look very handsome when grown in large masses of several +varieties, but the seeds of those grown in this manner should not be +made use of, as they are sure to sport; to prevent which it is also +necessary that the plants which it is desired to perpetuate in this +manner should be isolated at a distance from any other kind, and it +would be advisable to cover them with thin gauze to prevent impregnation +from others by means of the bees and other insects. For show flowers the +branches should be kept down, and not suffered to straggle out or +multiply; these will also be improved by pegging the longer branches +down under the soil, and thereby increasing the number of the root +fibres, hence adding to their power of accumulating nourishment, and not +allowing them to expand beyond a limited number of blossoms, and those +retained should be as nearly equal in age as possible. + +The HYDRANGEA is a hardy plant requiring a good deal of moisture, being +by nature an inhabitant of the marshes. + +The _Changeable Hydrangea_, H. hortensis, is of Chinese origin and a +pretty growing plant that deserves to be a favorite; it blossoms in +bunches of flowers at the extremities of the branches which are +naturally pink, but in old peat earth, or having a mixture of alum, or +iron filings, the color changes to blue. It blooms in March and April. + +_Propagation_ may be effected by cuttings, which root freely, or by +layers. + +_Soil, &c._--Loam and old leaf mould, or peat with a very small +admixture of sand suits this plant. Their growth is much promoted by +being turned out, for a month or two in the rains, into the open ground, +and then re-potted with new soil, the old being entirely removed from +the roots: and to make it flower well it must not be encumbered with too +many branches. + +The HOYA is properly a trailing plant, rooting at the joints, but have +been generally cultivated here as a twiner. + +The _Fleshy-leaved Hoya_, H. carnosa, is vulgarly called the wax flower +from its singular star shaped-whitish pink blossoms, with a deep colored +varnished centre, having more the appearance of a wax model than a +production of nature. The flowers appear in globular groups and have a +very handsome appearance from the beginning of April to the close of the +rains. + +The _Green flowered Hoya_, H. viridiflora, _Nukchukoree, teel kunga_, +with its green flowers in numerous groups, is also an interesting plant, +it is esteemed also for its medicinal properties. + +_Propagation_.--Every morsel of these plants, even a piece of the leaf, +will form roots if put in the ground, cuttings therefore strike very +freely, as do layers, the joints naturally throwing out root-fibres +although not in the earth. + +_Soil, &c._--A light loam moderately dry is the best for these plants, +which look well if trained round a circular trellis in the open border. + +The STAPELIA is an extensive genus of low succulent plants without +leaves, but yielding singularly handsome star-shaped flowers; they are +of African origin growing in the sandy deserts, but in a natural state +very diminutive being increased to their present condition and numerous +varieties by cultivation, they mostly have an offensive smell whence +some people call them the carrion plant. They deserve more attention +than has hitherto been shown to them in India. + +The _Variegated Stapelia_, S. variegata, yields a flower in November, +the thick petals of which are yellowish green with brown irregular +spots, it is the simplest of the family. + +The _Revolute-flowered Stapelia_, S. revoluta, has a green blossom very +fully sprinkled with deep purple, it flowers at the close of the rains. + +The _Toad Stapelia_, S. bufonia, as its name implies, is marked like the +back of the reptile from whence it has its name; it flowers in December +and January. + +The _Hairy Stapelia_, S. hirsuta, is a very handsome variety, being, +like the rest, of green and brown, but the entire flower covered with +fine filaments or hairs of a light purple, at various periods of the +year. + +The _Starry Stapelia_, S. stellaris, is perhaps the most beautiful of +the whole, being like the last covered with hairs, but they are of a +bright pinkish blue color; there appears to be no fixed period for +flowering. + +The HAIRY CARRULLUMA, C. crinalata, belongs to the same family as the +foregoing species, which it much resembles, except that it blossoms in +good sized globular groups of small star-shaped flowers of green, +studded and streaked with brown. + +_Propagation_ is exceedingly easy with each of the last named two +species; as the smallest piece put in any soil that is moist, without +being saturated, will throw out root fibres. + +_Soil, &c._--This should consist of one-half sand, one-fourth garden +mould, and one-fourth well rotted stable manure. The pots in which they +are planted should have on the top a layer of pebbles, or broken brick. +All the after culture they require is to keep them within bounds, +removing decayed portions as they appear and avoiding their having too +much moisture. + +The perennial border plants, besides those included above, are very +numerous; the directions for cultivation admitting, from their +similarity, of the following general rules:-- + +_Propagation_.--Although some few will admit of other modes of +multiplication, the most usually successful are by seed, by suckers, or +by offsets, and by division of the root, the last being applicable to +nine-tenths of the hardy herbaceous plants, and performed either by +taking up the whole plant and gently separating it by the hand, or by +opening the ground near the one to be divided, and cutting off a part of +the roots and crown to make new the sections being either at once +planted where they are to stand, or placed for a short period in a +nursery; the best time for this operation is the beginning of the rains. +Offsets or suckers being rapidly produced during the rains, will be best +removed towards their close, at which period, also, seed should be sown +to benefit by the moisture remaining in the soil. The depth at which +seeds are buried in the earth varies with their magnitude, all the pea +or vetch kind will bear being put at a depth of from half an inch to one +inch; but with the smallest seeds it will be sufficient to scatter them, +on the sifted soil, beating them down with, the palm of the hand. + +_Culture_.--Transplanting this description of plants will be performed +to best advantage during the rains. The general management is +comprehended in stirring the soil occasionally in the immediate vicinity +of the roots; taking up overgrown plants, reducing and replanting them, +for which the rains is the best time; renewing the soil around the +roots; sticking the weak plants; pruning and trimming others, so as to +remove all weakly or decayed parts. + +Once a year, before the rains, the whole border should be dug one or two +spits deep, adding soil from the bottom of a tank or river; and again, +in the cold weather, giving a moderate supply of well rotted stable +manure, and leaf mould in equal portions. + +Crossing is considered as yet in its infancy even in England, and has, +except with the Marvel of Peru, hardly even been attempted in this +country. The principles under which this is effected are fully explained +at page 27 of the former part of this work; but it may also be done in +the more woody kinds by grafting one or more of the same genus on the +stock of another, the seed of which would give a new variety. + +Saving seed requires great attention in India, as it should be taken +during the hot weather if possible; to effect which the earliest +blossoms must be preserved for this purpose. With some kinds it will be +advisable to assist nature by artificial impregnation with a camel hair +pencil, carefully placing the pollen on the point of the stigma. The +seeds should be carefully dried in some open, airy place, but not +exposed to the sun, care being afterwards taken that they shall be +deposited in a dry place, not close or damp, whence the usual plan of +storing the seeds in bottles is not advisable. + + * * * * * + +BULBS. + +Bulbs have not as yet received that degree of attention in this country +(India) that they deserve, and they may be considered to form a separate +class, requiring a mode of culture differing from that of others. Their +slow progress has discouraged many and a supposition that they will only +thrive in the Upper Provinces, has deterred others from attempting to +grow them, an idea which has also been somewhat fostered by the +Horticultural Society, when they received a supply from England, having +sent the larger portion of them to their subscribers in the North West +Provinces. + +The NARCISSUS will thrive with care, in all parts of India, and it is a +matter of surprise that it is not more frequently met with. A good +Narcissus should have the six petals well formed, regularly and evenly +disposed, with a cup of good form, the colors distinct and clear, raised +on strong erect stems, and flowering together. + +The _Polyanthes Narcissus_, N. tazetta, _Narjus, hur'huft nusreen_, is +of two classes, white and sulphur colored, but these have sported into +almost endless varieties, especially amongst the Dutch, with whom this +and most other bulbs are great favorites. It flowers in February and +March. + +The _Poet's Narcissus_, N. poeticus, _Moozhan, zureenkuda_ is the +favorite, alike for its fragrance and its delicate and graceful +appearance, the petals being white and the cup a deep yellow: it flowers +from the beginning of January to the end of March and thrives well. The +first within the recollection of the author, in Bengal, was at Patna, +nearly twelve years since, in possession of a lady there under whose +care it blossomed freely in the shade, in the month of February. + +The _Daffodil_, N. pseudo-narcissus, _Khumsee buroonk_, is of pale +yellow, and some of the double varieties are very handsome. + +_Propagation_ is by offsets, pulled off after the bulbs are taken out of +the ground, and sufficiently hardened. + +_Soil, &c._--The best is a fresh, light loam with some well rotted cow +dung for the root fibres to strike into, and the bottom of the pot to +the height of one-third filled with pebbles or broken brick. They will +not blossom until the fifth year, and to secure strong flowers the bulbs +should only be taken up every third year. An eastern aspect where they +get only the morning sun, is to be preferred. The PANCRATIUM is a +handsome species that thrives well, some varieties being indigenous, and +others fully acclimated, generally flowering about May or June. + +The _One-flowered Pancratium_, P. zeylanicum, is rather later than the +rest in flowering and bears a curiously formed white flower. + +The _Two-flowered Pancratium_, P. triflorum, _Sada kunool_, was so named +by Roxburg, and gives a white flower in groups of threes, as its name +implies. + +The _Oval leaved pancratium_, P. ovatum, although of West Indian origin, +is so thoroughly acclimated as to be quite common in the Indian Garden. + +_Propagation_.--The best method is by suckers or offsets which are +thrown out very freely by all the varieties. + +_Soil, &c._--Any common garden soil will suit this plant, but they +thrive best with a good admixture of rich vegetable mould. + +The HYACINTH, Hyacinthus, is an elegant flower, especially the double +kind. The first bloomed in Calcutta was exhibited at the flower show +some three years since, but proved an imperfect blossom and not clear +colored; a very handsome one, however, was shown by Mrs. Macleod in +February 1847, and was raised from a stock originally obtained at +Simlah. The Dutch florists have nearly two thousand varieties. + +The distinguishing marks of a good hyacinth are clear bright colors, +free from clouding or sporting, broad bold petals, full, large and +perfectly doubled, sufficiently revolute to give the whole mass a degree +of convexity: the stem strong and erect and the foot stalks horizontal +at the base, gradually taking an angle upwards as they approach the +crown, so as to place the flowers in a pyramidical form, occupying about +one-half the length of the stem. + +The _Amethyst colored Hyacinth_, H. amethystimus, is a fine handsome +flower, varying in shade from pale blue to purple, and having bell +shaped flowers, but the foot stalks are generally not strong and they +are apt to become pendulous. + +The _Garden Hyacinth_, H. orientalis, _Sumbul, abrood_, is the handsomer +variety, the flowers being trumpet shaped, very double and of varying +colors--pink, red, blue, white, or yellow, and originally of eastern +growth. It flowers in February and has considerable fragrance. + +_Propagation_.--In Europe this is sometimes performed by seed, but as +this requires to be put into the ground as soon as possible after +ripening, and moreover takes a long time to germinate, this method would +hardly answer in this country, which must therefore, at least for the +present, depend upon imported bulbs and offsets. + +_Soil, &c._--This, as well as its after culture, is the same as for the +Narcissus. They will not show flowers until the second year, and not in +good bloom before the fifth or sixth of their planting out. + +The CROCUS, Crocus lutens, having no native name, has yet, it is +believed, been hardly ever known to flower here, even with the utmost +care. A good crocus has its colors clear, brilliant, and distinctly +marked. + +_Propagation_--must be effected, for new varieties, by seeds, but the +species are multiplied by offsets of the bulb. + +_Soil, &c._ Any fair garden soil is good for the crocus, but it prefers +that which is somewhat sandy. + +_Culture_. The small bulbs should be planted in clumps at the depth of +two inches; the leaves should not be cut off after the plant has done +blossoming, as the nourishment for the future season's flower is +gathered by them. + +The IXIA, is originally from the Cape, and belongs to the class of +Iridae: the Ixia Chinensis, more properly Morea Chinensis, is a native +of India and China, and common in most gardens. + +_Propagation_--is by offsets. + +_Soil, &c._ The best is of peat and sand, it thrives however in good +garden soil, if not too stiff, and requires no particular cultivation. + +The LILY, Lilium, _Soosun_, the latter derived from the Hebrew, is a +handsome species that deserves more care than it has yet received in +India, where some of the varieties are indigenous. + +The _Japan Lily_, L. japonicum, is a very tall growing plant, reaching +about 5 feet in height with broad handsome flowers of pure white, and a +small streak of blue, in the rains. + +The _Daunan Lily_, L. dauricum, _Rufeef, soosun_, gives an erect, light +orange flower in the rains. + +The _Canadian lily_, L. Canadense _B'uhmutan_, flowers in the rains in +pairs of drooping reflexed blossoms of a rather darker orange, sometimes +spotted with a deeper shade. + +_Propagation_--is effected by offsets, which however will not flower +until the third or fourth year. + +_Soil, &c._ This is the same as for the Narcissus, but they do not +require taking up more frequently than once in three years, and that +only for about a month at the close of the rains, the Japan lily will +thrive even under the shade of trees. + +The AMARYLLIS is a very handsome flower, which has been found to thrive +well in this country, and has a great variety, all of which possess much +beauty, some kinds are very hardy, and will grow freely in the open +ground. + +The _Mexican Lily_, A. regina Mexicanae, is a common hardy variety found +in most gardens, yielding an orange red flower in the months of March +and April, and will thrive even under the shades of trees. + +The _Ceylonese Amaryllis_, A: zeylanica, _Suk'h dursun_, gives a pretty +flower about the same period. + +The _Jacoboean Lily_, A, formosissima, has a handsome dark red flower of +singular form, having three petals well expanded above, and three others +downwards rolled over the fructile organs on the base, so as to give the +idea of its being the model whence the Bourbon _fleur de lis_ was taken, +the stem is shorter than the two previous kinds, blossoming in April or +May. + +The _Noble Amaryllis_, A: insignia, is a tall variety, having pink +flowers in March or April. + +The _Broad-leaved Amaryllis_, A: latifolia, is a native of India with +pinkish white flowers about the same period of the year. + +The _Belladonna Lily_. A: belladonna is of moderately high stem, +supporting a pink flower of the same singular form as the Jacoboean +lily, in May and June. + +_Propagation_--is by offsets of the bulb, which most kinds throw out +very freely, sometimes to the extent of ten, or a dozen in the season. + +_Soil, &c._--For the choice kinds is the same as is required for the +narcissus, and water should on no account be given over the leaves or +upper part of the bulb. + +The common kinds look well in masses, and a good form of planting them +is in a series of raised circles, so as for the whole to form a round +bed. + +The DOG'S TOOTH VIOLET, Erythronium, is a pretty flowering bulb and a +great favorite with florists in Europe. + +The _Common Dog's tooth Violet_, E. dens canis, is ordinarily found of +reddish purple, there is also a white variety, but it is rare, neither +of them grow above three or four inches in height, and flower in March +or April. + +The _Indian Dog's tooth Violet_, E. indicum, _junglee kanda_, is found +in the hills, and flowers at about the same time, with a pink blossom. + +The SUPERB GLORIOSA, Gloriosa superba, _Kareearee, eeskooee langula_, is +a very beautiful species of climbing bulb, a native of this country, and +on that account neglected, although highly esteemed as a stove plant in +England; the leaves bear tendrils at the points, and the flower, which +is pendulous, when first expanded, throws its petals nearly erect of +yellowish green, which gradually changes to yellow at the base and +bright scarlet at the point; the pistil which shoots from the seed +vessel horizontally possesses the singular property of making an entire +circuit between sun-rise and sun-set each day that the flower continues, +which is generally for some time, receiving impregnation from every +author as it visits them in succession. It blooms in the latter part of +the rains. + +_Propagation_ is in India sometimes from seed, but in Europe it is +confined to division of the offsets. + +_Soil, &c._--Most garden soils will suit this plant, but it affords the +handsomest, and richest colored flowers in fresh loam mixed with peat or +leaf mould, without dung. It should not have too much water when first +commencing its growth, and it requires the support of a trellis over +which it will bear training to a considerable extent, growing to the +height of from five to six feet. + +MANY OTHER BULBS, there is no doubt, might be successfully grown in +India where every thing is favorable to their growth, and so much +facility presents itself for procuring them from the Cape of Good Hope; +the natural _habitat_ of so many varieties of the handsomest species, +nearly all of them flowering between the end of the cold weather and the +close of the rains. + +Some of these being hardy, thrive in the open ground with but little +care or trouble, others requiring very great attention, protection from +exposure, and shelter from the heat of the sun, and the intensity of its +rays; which should therefore have a particular portion of the plant-shed +assigned to them, such being inhabitants of the green house in colder +climates, and the reason of assigning them such separated part of the +chief house, or what is better perhaps, a small house to themselves, is +that in culture, treatment, and other respects they do not associate +with plants of a different character. + +One great obstacle which the more extensive culture of bulbs has had to +contend against, may be found in that impatience that refuses to give +attention to what requires from three to five years to perfect, +generally speaking people in India prefer therefore to cultivate such +plants only as afford an immediate result, especially with relation to +the ornamental classes. + +_Propagation_.--The bulb after the formation of the first floral core is +instigated by nature to continue its species, as immediately the flower +fades the portion of bulb that gave it birth dies, for which purpose it +each year forms embryo bulbs on each side of the blossoming one, and +which although continued in the same external coat, are each perfect and +complete plants in themselves, rising from the crown of the root fibres: +in some kinds this is more distinctly exhibited by being as it were, +altogether outside and distinct from, the main, or original bulb. These +being separated for what are called offsets, and should be taken off +only when the parent bulb has been taken up and hardened, or the young +plant will suffer. + +Some species of bulbous rooted plants produce seeds, but this method of +reproduction, can seldom be resorted to in this country, and certainly +not to obtain new kinds, as the seeds require to be sown as soon as +ripe. + +_Soil, Culture, &c_.--For the delicate and rare bulbs, it is advisable +to have pots purposely made of some fifteen inches in height with a +diameter of about seven or eight inches at the top, tapering down to +five, with a hole at the bottom as in ordinary flower pots, and for this +to stand in, another pot should be made without any hole, of a height of +about four inches, sufficient size to leave the space of about an inch +all round between the outer side of the plant pot and the inner side of +the smaller pot or saucer. + +This will allow the plant pot to be filled with crocks, pebbles, or +stone chippings to the height of five inches, or about an inch higher +than the level of the water in the saucer, above which may be placed +eight inches in depth of soil and one inch on the top of that, pebbles +or small broken brick. By this arrangement, the saucer being kept +filled, or partly filled, as the plant may require, with water, the +fibres of the root obtain a sufficiency of moisture for the maintenance +and advancement of the plant without chance of injury to the bulb or +stem, by applying water to the upper earth which is also in this +prevented from becoming too much saturated. Light rich sandy loam, with +a portion of sufficiently decomposed leaf mould, is the best soil for +the early stages of growing bulbs. + +So soon as the leaves change color and wither, then all moisture must be +withheld, but as the repose obtained by this means is not sufficient to +secure health to the plant, and ensure its giving strong blossoms, +something more is required to effect this purpose. This being rendered +the more necessary because in those that form offsets by the sides of +the old bulbs, they would otherwise become crowded and degenerate, the +same occurring also with those forming under the old ones, which will +get down so deep that they cease to appear. + +The time to take up the bulb is when the flower-stem and leaves have +commenced decay; taking dry weather for the purpose, if the bulbs are +hardy, or if in pots having reduced the moisture as above shown, but it +must be left to individual experience to discover how long the different +varieties should remain out of the ground, some requiring one month's +rest, and others enduring three or four, with advantage; more than that +is likely to be injurious. When out of the ground, during the first part +of the period they are so kept, it should be, say for a fortnight at +least, in any room where no glare exists, with free circulation of air, +after which the off-sets may be removed, and the whole exposed to dry on +a table in the verandah, or any other place that is open to the air, but +protected from the sunshine, which would destroy them. + +Little peculiarity of after treatment is requisite, except perhaps that +the bulbs which are to flower in the season should have a rather larger +proportion of leaf mould in the compost, and that if handsome flowers +are required, it will be well to examine the bulb every week at least by +gently taking the mould from around them, and removing all off-sets that +appear on the old bulb. For the securing strength to the plant also, it +will be well to pinch off the flower so soon as it shews symptoms of +decay. + +The wire worm is a great enemy to bulbs, and whenever it appears they +should be taken up, cleaned, and re-planted. It is hardly necessary to +say that all other vermin and insects must be watched, and immediately +removed. + + * * * * * + +THE BIENNIAL BORDER PLANTS. + +It is only necessary to mention a few of these, as the curious in +floriculture will always make their own selection, the following will +therefore suffice.-- + +The SPEEDWELL-LEAVED HEDGE HYSSOP, Gratiola veronicifolia, _Bhoomee, +sooél chumnee_, seldom cultivated, though deserving to be so, has a +small blue flower. + +The SIMPLE-STALKED LOBELIA, Lobelia simplex, introduced from the Cape, +yields a pretty blue flower. + +The EVENING PRIMROSE, Oenothera mutabilis, a pretty white flower that +blossoms in the evening, its petals becoming pink by morning. + +The FLAX-LEAVED PIMPERNEL, Anagallis linifolia, a rare plant, giving a +blue flower in the rains; introduced from Portugal. + +The BROWALLIA, of two lauds, both pretty and interesting plants; +originally from South America. + +The _Spreading Browallia_, B. demissa is the smallest of these, and +blossoms in single flowers of bright blue, at the beginning of the cold +weather. + +The _Upright Browallia_, B. alata, gives bloom in groups, of a bright +blue; there is also a white variety, both growing to the height of +nearly two feet. + +The SMALL-FLOWERED TURNSOLE, Heliotropium parviflorum, _B'hoo roodee_, +differs from the rest of this family which are mostly perennials; it +yields groups of white flowers, which are fragrant. + +The FLAX-LEAVED CANDYTUFT, Iberis linifolia, with its purple blossoms, +is very rare, but it has been sometimes grown with, success. + +The STOCK, Mathiola, is a very popular plant, and deserves more +extensive cultivation in this country. + +The _Great Sea Stock_, M sinuata, is rare and somewhat difficult to +bring into bloom, it possesses some fragrance and its violet colored +groups of flowers have rather a handsome appearance about May. + +The _Ten weeks' Stock_, M annua, is also a pleasing flower about the +same time. In England this is an annual, but here it is not found to +bloom freely until the second year, its color is scarlet, and it has +some fragrance. + +The _Purple Gilly flower_, M incana, is a pretty flower of purple color, +and fragrant. There are some varieties of it such as the _Double_, +multiplex, the _Brompton_, coccinea, and the _White_, alba, varying in +color and blossoming in April. + +The STARWORT, Aster, is a hardy flowering plant not very attractive, +except as it yields blossoms at all seasons, if the foot stalks are cut +off as soon as the flower has faded, there are very numerous varieties +of this plant which is, in Europe a perennial, but it is preferable to +treat it here as only biennial, otherwise it degenerates. + +The _Bushy Starwort_, A dumosus, is a free blossoming plant in the +rains, with white flowers. + +The _Silky leaved Starwort_, A. sericeus, is Indigenous in the hills, +putting forth its blue blossoms during the rains. + +The _Hairy Starwort_, A pilosus, is of very pale blue, and may, with +care, be made to blossom throughout the year. + +The _Chinese Starwort,_ A chinensis, is of dark purple and very prolific +of blossoms at all times. + +The BEAUTIFUL JUSTICIA, J speciosa, although, described by Roxburgh as a +perennial, degenerates very much after the second year, it affords +bright carmine colored flowers at the end of the cold weather. + +The COMMON MARVEL OF PERU, Mirabilis Jalapa _Gul abas, krushna kelee_, +is vulgarly called the Four o'clock from its blossoms expanding in the +afternoon. There are several varieties distinguished only by difference +of color, lilac, red, yellow, orange, and white, which hybridize +naturally, and may easily be obliged to do so artificially, if any +particular shades are desired. + +The HAIRY INDIGO, Indigofera hirsuta, yields an ornamental flower with +abundance of purple blossoms. + +The HIBISCUS This class numbers many ornamental plants, the blossoms of +which all maintain the same character of having a darkened spot at the +base of each petal. + +The _Althaea frutex_, H syriacus, _Gurhul,_ yields a handsome purple +flower in the latter part of the rains, there are also a white, and a +red variety. + +The _Stinging Hibiscus_ H pruriens, has a yellow flower at the same +season. + +The _Hemp leaved Hibiscus_, H cannabinus, _Anbaree_, is much the same as +the last. + +The _Bladder Ketmia_, H trionum, is a dwarf species, yellow, with a +brown spot at the base of the petal. + +The _African Hibiscus_ H africanus, is a very handsome flower growing to +a considerable height, expanding to the diameter of six to seven inches, +of a bright canary color, the dark blown spots at the base of the petals +very distinctly marked, the seeds were considered a great acquisition +when first obtained from Hobarton, but the plant has since been seen in +great perfection growing wild in the _Turaee_ at the foot of the +Darjeeling range of hills, blooming in great perfection at the close of +the rains. + +The _Chinese Hibiscus_, H rosa sinensis, _Jooua, jasoon, jupa_, +although, really a perennial flower, is in greatest perfection if kept +as a biennial, it flowers during the greater part of the season a dark +red flower with a darker hued spot, there are also some other varieties +of different colors yellow, scarlet, and purple. + +The TREE MALLOW, Lavatera arborea, has of late years been introduced +from Europe, and may now be found in many gardens in India yielding +handsome purple flowers in the latter part of the rains. + +But it is unnecessary to continue such a mere catalogue, the character +and general cultivation of which require no distinct rules, but may all +be resolved into one general method, of which the following is a sketch. + +_Propagation_--They are all raised from seed, but the finest double +varieties require to be continued by cuttings. The seed should be sown +as soon as it can after opening, but if this occur during the rains, the +beds, or pots, perhaps better, must be sheltered, removing the plants +when they are few inches high to the spot where they are to remain, care +being at the same time taken in removing those that have tap roots, such +as Hollyhock, Lavatera, &c not to injure them, as it will check their +flowering strongly, the best mode is to sow those in pots and transplant +them, with balls of earth entire, into the borders, at the close of the +rains. Cuttings of such as are multiplied by that method, are taken +either from the flower stalks, or root-shoots, early in the rains, and +rooted either in pots, under shelter, or in beds, protected from the +heavy showers. + +_Culture_--Cultivation after the plants are put into the borders, is the +same as for perennial plants. But the duration and beauty of the flowers +is greatly improved by cutting off the buds that shew the earliest, so +as to retard the bloom--and for the same reason the footstalk should be +cut off when the flowers fade, for as soon as the plant begins to form +seed, the blossoms deteriorate. + + * * * * * + +THE ANNUAL BORDER PLANTS. + +These are generally known to every one, and many of them are so common +as hardly to need notice, a few of the most usual are however mentioned, +rather to recal the scattered thoughts of the many, than as a list of +annuals. + +The MIGNIONETTE, Resoda odorata, is too great a favorite both on account +of its fragrance and delicate flowers not to be well known, and by +repeated sowings it may be made under care to give flowers throughout +the year but it is advisable to renew the seed occasionally by fresh +importations from Europe, the Cape, or Hobarton. + +The PROLIFIC PINK, Dianthus prolifer _Kurumful_, is a pretty variety; +that blossoms freely throughout the year, sowing to keep up succession, +the shades and net work marks on them are much varied, and they make a +very pretty group together. + +The LUPINE, Lupinus, is a very handsome class of annuals, many of which +grow well in India, all of them flowering in the cold season. + +The _Small blue Lupine_, L. varius, was introduced from the Cape and is +the only one noticed by Roxburgh. + +The _Rose, and great blue Lupine_, L. pilosus and hirsutus, are both +good sized handsome flowers. + +The _Egyptian, or African Lupins_, L. thermis, _Turmus_, is the only one +named in the native language, and has a white flower. + +The _Tree Lupine_, L. arboreus, is a shrubby plant with a profusion of +yellow flowers which has been successfully cultivated from Hobarton +seed. + +The CATCHFLY, Silene, the only one known here is the small red, S. +rubella, having a very pretty pink flower appearing in the cold weather. + +The LARKSPUR, Delphinum, has not yet received any native name, and +deserves to be much more extensively cultivated, especially the +Neapolitan and variegated sorts. The common purple, D. Bhinensis, being +the one usually met with; it should be sown in succession from September +to December, but the rarer kinds must not be put in sooner than the +middle of November, as these do not blossom well before February, March, +or April. + +The SWEET PEA, Lathyrus odoralus, is not usually cultivated with +success, because it has been generally sown too late in the season, to +give a sufficient advance to secure blossoming. The seeds should be put +in about the middle of the rains in pots and afterwards planted out when +these cease, and carefully cultivated to obtain blossoms in February or +March. + +The ZINNIA, has only of late years been introduced, but by a mistake it +has generally been sown too late in the year to produce good flowers, +whereas if the seed is put into the ground about June, fine handsome +flowers will be the result, in the cold weather. + +The CENTAURY, Centaurea, is a very pretty class of annuals which grows, +and blossoms freely in this country. + +The _Woolly Centaury_, C. lanata, is mentioned by Roxburgh as indigenous +to the country, but the flowers are very small, of a purple color, +blossoming in December. + +The _Blue bottle_ O. cyanus, _Azeez_, flowers in December and January, +of pink and blue. + +The _Sweet Sultan_, C. moschata, _Shah pusund_ is known by its fragrant +and delicate lilac blossoms in January and February. + +The BALSAM, Impatiens, _Gulmu'hudee, doopatee_ is not cultivated, or +encouraged as it should be in India, where some of the varieties are +indigenous. A very rich soil should be used. + +Dr. R. Wight observes, that Balsams of the colder Hymalayas, like those +of Europe, split from the base, rolling the segment towards the apex, +whilst those of the hotter regions do the reverse. + +All annuals require the same, or nearly the same treatment, of which the +following may be considered a fair sketch. + +_Propagation_.--These plants are all raised from seed put in the earth +generally on the close of the rains, although some plants, such as +nasturtium, sweet pea, scabious, wall-flower, and stock, are better to +be sown in pots about June or July, and then put out into the border as +soon as the rains cease. The seed must be sown in patches, rings, or +small beds according to taste, the ground being previously stirred, and +made quite fine, the earth sifted over them to a depth proportioned to +the size of the seed, and then gently pressed down, so as closely to +embrace every part of the seed. When the plants are an inch high they +must be thinned out to a distance of two, three, five, seven, or more +inches apart, according to their kind, whether spreading, or upright, +having reference also to their size; the plants thinned out, if +carefully taken up, may generally be transplanted to fill up any parts +of the border where the seed may have failed. + +_Culture_. Weeding and occasionally stirring the soil, and sticking such +as require support, is all the cultivation necessary for annuals. If it +be desired to save seed, some of the earliest and most perfect blossoms +should be preserved for this purpose, so as to secure the best possible +seed for the ensuing year, not leaving it to chance to gather seed from +such plants as may remain after the flowers have been taken, as is +generally the case with native gardeners, if left to themselves. + + * * * * * + +FLOWERS THAT GROW UNDER THE SHADE OF TREES. + +It is of some value to know what these are, but at the same time it must +be observed that no plant will grow under trees of the fir tribe, and it +would be a great risk to place any under the _Deodar_--with all others +also it must not be expected that any trees having their foliage so low +as to affect the circulation of air under their branches, can do +otherwise than destroy the plants placed beneath them. + +Those which may be so planted are;--Wood Anemone.--Common Arum.--Deadly +Nightshade--Indian ditto.--Chinese Clematis--Upright ditto--Woody +Strawberry--Woody Geranium.--Green Hellebore.--Hairy St. John's +Wort.--Dog's Violet.--Imperial Fritillaria--The common Oxalis, and some +other bulbs.--Common Hound's Tongue.--Common Antirrhinum.--Common +Balsam.--To these may be added many of the orchidaceous plants. + + * * * * * + +ROSES. + +THE ROSE, ROSA, _Gul_ or _gulab_: as the most universally admired, +stands first amongst shrubs. The London catalogues of this beautiful +plant contain upwards of two thousand names: Mr. Loudon, in his +"_Encyclopaedia of Plants_" enumerates five hundred and twenty-two, of +which he describes three species, viz. Macrophylla, Brunonii, and +Moschata Nepalensis, as natives of Nepal; two, viz. Involucrata, and +Microphylla, as indigenous to India, and Berberifolia, and Moschata +arborea, as of Persian origin, whilst twelve appear to have come from +China. Dr. Roxburgh describes the following eleven species as +inhabitants of these regions:-- + +Rosa involucrata, + -- Chinensis, + -- semperflorens, + -- recurva, + -- microphylla, + -- inermis, +Rosa centiflora, + -- glandulifera, + -- pubescens, + -- diffusa, + -- triphylla, + +most of which, however, he represents to have been of Chinese origin. + +The varieties cultivated generally in gardens are, however, all that +will be here described. + +These are-- + +1. The _Madras rose,_ or _Rose Edward_, a variety of R centifolia, _Gul +ssudburul_, is the most common, and has multiplied so fast within a few +years, that no garden is without it, it blossoms all the year round, +producing large bunches of buds at the extremities of its shoots of the +year, but, if handsome, well-shaped flowers are desired, these must be +thinned out on their first appearance, to one or two, or at the most +three on each stalk. It is a pretty flower, but has little fragrance. +This and the other double sorts require a rich loam rather inclining to +clay, and they must be kept moist.[138] + +2. The _Bussorah Rose_, R gallica, _Gulsooree_, red, and white, the +latter seldom met with, is one of a species containing an immense number +of varieties. The fragrance of this rose is its greatest recommendation, +for if not kept down, and constantly looked to, it soon gets straggling, +and unsightly, like the preceding species too, the buds issue from the +ends of the branches in great clusters, which must be thinned, if well +formed fragrant blossoms are desired. The same soil is required as for +the preceding, with alternating periods of rest by opening the roots, +and of excitement by stimulating manure. + +3. The _Persian rose_, apparently R collina, _Gul eeran_ bears a very +full-petaled blossom, assuming a darker shade as these approach nearer +to the centre, but, it is difficult to obtain a perfect flower, the +calyx being so apt to burst with excess of fulness, that if perfect +flowers are required a thread should be tied gently round the bud, it +has no fragrance. A more sandy soil will suit this kind, with less +moisture. + +4. The _Sweet briar_ R rubiginosa, _Gul nusreen usturoon_, grows to a +large size, and blossoms freely in India, but is apt to become +straggling, although, if carefully clipped, it may be raised as a hedge +the same as in England, it is so universally a favorite as to need no +description. + +5. The _China blush rose_, R Indica (R Chinensis of Roxburgh), _Kut'h +gulab_, forms a pretty hedge, if carefully clipped, but is chiefly +usefully as a stock for grafting on. It has no odour. + +6 The _China ever-blowing rose_, R damascena of Roxburgh, _Adnee gula, +gulsurkh_, bearing handsome dark crimson blossoms during the whole of +the year, it is branching and bushy, but rather delicate, and wants +odour. + + 7 The _Moss Rose_, R muscosa, having no native name is found to exist, +but has only been known to have once blossomed in India; good plants may +be obtained from Hobart Town without much trouble. + +8 The _Indian dog-rose_, R arvensis, R involucrata of Roxburgh, _Gul bé +furman_, is found to glow wild in some parts of Nepal and Bengal, as +well as in the province of Buhar, flowering in February, the blossoms +large, white, and very fragrant, its cultivation extending is improving +the blossoms, particularly in causing the petals to be multiplied. + +9. The _Bramble-flowered rose_ R multiflora, _Gul rana_, naturally a +trailer, may be trained to great advantage, when it will give beautiful +bunches of small many petaled flowers in February and March, of +delightful fragrance. + +10. The _Due de Berri rose_, a variety of R damascena, but having the +petals more rounded and more regular, it is a low rather drooping shrub +with delicately small branches. + +_Propagation_.--All the species may be multiplied by seed, by layers, by +cuttings, by suckers, or from grafts, almost indiscriminately. Layering +is the easiest, and most certain mode of propagating this most beautiful +shrub. + +The roots that branch, out and throw up distinct shoots may be divided, +or cut off from the main root, and even an eye thus taken off may be +made to produce a good plant. + +Suckers, when they have pushed through the soil, may be taken up by +digging down, and gently detaching them from the roots. + +Grafting or budding is used for the more delicate kinds, especially the +sweet briar, and, by the curious, to produce two or more varieties on +one stem, the best stocks being obtained from the China, or the Dog +Rose. + +_Soil &c._--Any good loamy garden soil without much sand, suits the +rose, but to produce it in perfection the ground can hardly be too rich. + +_Culture_.--Immediately at the close of the rains, the branches of most +kinds of roses, especially the double ones, should be cut down to not +more than six inches in length, removing at the same time, all old and +decayed wood, as well as all stools that have branched out from the main +one, and which will form new plants; the knife being at the same time +freely exercised in the removal of sickly and crowded fibres from the +roots; these should likewise be laid open, cleaned and pinned, and +allowed to remain exposed until blossom buds begin to appear at the end +of the first shoots; the hole must then be filled with good strong +stable manure, and slightly earthed over. About a month after, a basket +of stable dung, with the litter, should be heaped up round the stems, +and broken brick or turf placed over it to relieve the unsightly +appearance. + +While flowering, too, it will be well to water with liquid manure at +least once a week. If it be desired to continue the trees in blossom, +each shoot should be removed as soon as it has ceased flowering. To +secure full large blossoms, all the buds from a shoot should be cut off, +when quite young, except one. + +The _Sweet briar rose_ strikes its root low, and prefers shade, the best +soil being a deep rich loam with very little sand, rather strong than +otherwise; it will be well to place a heap of manure round the stem, +above ground, covering over with turf, but it is not requisite to open +the roots, or give them so much manure as for other varieties. The sweet +briar must not be much pruned, overgrowth being checked rather by +pinching the young shoots, or it will not blossom, and it is rather +slower in throwing out shoots than other roses. In this country the best +mode of multiplying this shrub is by grafting on a China rose stock, as +layers do not strike freely, and cuttings cannot be made to root at all. + +The _Bramble-flowered rose_ is a climber, and though not needing so +strong a soil as other kinds, requires it to be rich, and frequently +renewed, by taking away the soil from about the roots and supplying its +place with a good compost of loam, leaf mould, and well rotted dung, +pruning the root. The plants require shelter from the cold wind from the +North, or West, this, however, if carefully trained, they will form for +themselves, but until they do so, it is impossible to make them blossom +freely, the higher branches should be allowed to droop, and if growing +luxuriantly, with the shoots not shortened, they will the following +season, produce bunches of flowers at the end of every one, and have a +very beautiful effect, no pruning should be given, except what is just +enough to keep the plants within bounds, as they invariably suffer from +the use of the knife. This rose is easily propagated by cuttings or +layers, both of which root readily. + +The _China rose_ thrives almost anywhere, but is best in a soil of loam +and peat, a moderate supply of water being given daily during the hot +weather. They will require frequent thinning out of the branches, and +are propagated by cuttings, which strike freely.[139] + +As before mentioned, Rose trees look well in a parterre by themselves, +but a few may be dispersed along the borders of the garden. + +_Insects, &c._ The green, and the black plant louse are great enemies to +the rose tree, and, whenever they appear, it is advisable to cut out at +once the shoot attacked, the green caterpillar too, often makes +skeletons of the leaves in a short time, the ladybird, as it is commonly +called, is an useful insect, and worthy of encouragement, as it is a +destroyer of the plant louse. + + * * * * * + +CREEPERS AND CLIMBERS + +The CLIMBING, and TWINING SHRUBS offer a numerous family, highly +deserving of cultivation, the following being a few of the most +desirable. + +The HONEY-SUCKLE, Caprifolium, having no native name, is too well known, +and too closely connected with the home associations of all to need +particularizing. It is remarkable that they always twine from east to +west, and rather die than submit to a change. + +The TRUMPET FLOWER, Bignonia, are an eminently handsome family, chiefly +considered stove plants in Europe, but here growing freely in the open +ground, and flowering in loose spikes. + +The MOUNTAIN EBONY, Bauhinia, the distinguishing mark of the class being +its two lobed leaves, most of them are indigenous, and in their native +woods attain an immense size, far beyond what botanists in Europe appear +to give them credit for. + +The VIRGIN'S BOWER, Clematis, finds some indigenous representatives in +this country, although unnamed in the native language; the odour however +is rather too powerful, and of some kinds even offensive, except +immediately after a shower of rain. They are all climbers, requiring the +same treatment as the honey suckle. + +The PASSION FLOWER, Passiflora, is a very large family of twining +shrubs, many of them really beautiful, and generally of easy +cultivation, this country being of the same temperature with their +indigenous localities. + +The RACEMOSE ASPARAGUS, A. racemosus, _Sadabooree, sutmoolee_, is a +native of India, and by nature a trailing plant, but better cultivated +as a climber on a trellis, in which way its delicate setaceous foliage +makes it at all times ornamental, and at the close of the rains it sends +forth abundant bunches of long erect spires of greenish white color, and +of delicious fragrance, shedding perfume all around to a great distance. + + * * * * * + +KALENDAR WORK TO BE PERFORMED. + + +JANUARY. + +Thin out seeding annuals wherever they appear too thick. Water freely, +especially such plants as are in bloom, and keep all clean from weeds. +Cut off the footstalks of flowers, except such as are reserved for seed, +as soon as the petals fade. Collect the seeds of early annuals as they +ripen. + + +FEBRUARY. + +Continue as directed in last month. Prepare stocks for roses to be +grafted on, R. bengalensis, and R. canina are the best. Great care must +be paid to thinning out the buds of roses to insure perfect blossoms, as +well as to rubbing off the succulent upright shoots and suckers that are +apt to spring up at this period. Collect seeds as they ripen, to be +dried, or hardened in the shade. + +Collect seeds as they ripen, drying them carefully, for a few days in +the pods, and subsequently when freed from them in the shade, to put +them in the sun being highly injurious. Give a plentiful supply of water +in saucers to Narcissus, or other bulbs when flowering. + + +MARCH. + +Cut down the flower stalks of Narcissus that have ceased flowering, and +lessen the supply of water. Take up the tubers of Dahlias, and dry +gradually in an open place in the shade, but do not remove the offsets +for some days. Pot any of the species of Geranium that have been put out +after the rains, provided they are not in bloom. Give water freely to +the roots of all flowers that are in blossom. Mignionette that is in +blossom should have the seed pods clipped off with a pair of scissors +every day to continue it. Convolvulus in flower should be shaded early +in the morning, or it will quickly fade. The Evening Primrose should be +freely watered to increase the number of blossoms. Look to the +Carnations that are coming into bloom, give support to the flower stem, +cutting off all side shoots and buds, except the one intended to give a +handsome flower. + + +APRIL. + +Careful watering, avoiding any wetting of the leaves is necessary at +this period, and the saucers of all bulbs not yet flowered should be +kept constantly full, to promote blossoming--the saucers should however +be kept clean, and washed out every third day at least. Frequent weeding +must be attended to, with occasional watering all grass plots, or paths. +Wherever any part of the garden becomes empty by the clearing off of +annuals, it should be well dug to a depth of at least eighteen inches, +and after laying exposed in clods for a week or two, manured with tank +or road mud; leaf mould, or other good well rotted manure. + + +MAY. + +This is the time to make layers of Honeysuckle, Bauhinia, and other +climbing and twining shrubs. + +Mignionette must be very carefully treated, kept moist, and every +seed-pod clipped off as soon as the flower fades, or it will not be +preserved. Continue to dig, and manure the borders, not leaving the +manure exposed, or it will lose power. Make pipings and layers of +Carnations. + + +JUNE. + +Thin out the multitudinous buds of the Madras rose, also examine the +buds of the Persian rose, to prevent the bursting of the calyx by tying +with thread, or with a piece of parchment, or cardboard as directed for +Carnations. + +Watch Carnations to prevent the bursting of the calyx, and to remove +superfluous buds. Re pot Geraniums that are in sheds, or verandahs, so +soon as they have done flowering, also take up, and pot any that may yet +remain in the borders. Prune off also all superfluous, or straggling +branches. Continue digging over and manuring the flowering borders. Sow +Zinnias, also make cuttings of perennials and biennials that are +propagated by that means, and put in seeds of biennials under shelter, +as well as a few of the early annuals, particularly Stock and Sweet-pea. + + +JULY. + +Make cuttings and layers of hardy shrubs, and of the Fragrant Olive; put +in cuttings of the Willow, and some other trees. Plant out Pines, and +Casuarina, Cypress, Large-leaved fig, and the Laurel tribe. Transplant +young shrubs of a hardy nature. + +Divide the roots, and plant out suckers, or offsets of perennial border +plants. Make cuttings and sow seeds of biennials, as required; also a +few annuals to be hereafter transplanted. Sow also Geraniums. Continue +making pipings of Carnation, plant out, or transplant hardy perennials +into the borders. + + +AUGUST. + +This may be considered the best time for sowing the seeds of hardy +shrubs. Plant out Aralia, Canella, Magnolia, and other ornamental trees. +Transplant delicate and exotic shrubs. Remove, and plant out suckers, +and layers of hardy shrubs. Prune all shrubs freely. + +Divide, and plant out suckers, and offsets of hardy perennials, that +have formed during the rains. Plant out tender perennial plants, in the +borders, also biennials. Prune, and thin out perennial plants in the +borders. Put out in the borders such annuals as were sown in June, +protecting them from the heat of the sun in the afternoon. Sow a few +early annuals. Plant out Dahlia tubers where they are intended to +blossom, keeping them as much as possible in classes of colors. Make +pipings of Carnations. + + +SEPTEMBER. + +Prick out the cuttings of hardy shrubs that have been made before, or +during the rains, in beds for growing. Prune all flowering shrubs, +having due regard to the character of each, as bearing flowers on the +end of the shoots, or from the side exits, give the annual dressing of +manure to the entire shrubbery, with new upper soil. + +Remove the top soil from the borders, and renew with addition of a +moderate quantity of manure. Put out Geraniums into the borders, and set +rooted cuttings singly in pots. Plant out biennials in the borders, also +such annuals as have been sown in pots. Re-pot and give fresh earth to +plants in the shed. + + +OCTOBER. + +Open out the roots of a few Bussorah roses for early flowering, pruning +down all the branches to a height of six inches, removing all decayed, +and superannuated wood, dividing the roots, and pruning them freely. The +Madras roses should be treated in the same manner, not all at the same +time, but at intervals of a week between each cutting down, so as to +secure a succession for blossoming. Plant out rooted cuttings in beds, +to increase in size. + +Sow annuals freely, and thin out those put in last month, so as to leave +sufficient space for growing, at the same time transplanting the most +healthy to other parts of the border. + + +NOVEMBER. + +Continue opening the roots of Bussorah roses, as well as the Rose +Edward, and Madras roses, for succession to those on which this +operation was performed last month. Prune, and trim the Sweetbriar, and +Many-flowered rose. + +_Flower-Garden_--Divide, and plant bulbs of all kinds, both, for border, +and pot flowering. Continue to sow annuals. + + +DECEMBER + +Continue opening the roots, and cutting down the branches of Bussorah, +and other roses for late flowering. Prune, and thin out also the China +and Persian roses, as well as the Many-flowered rose, if not done last +month. Train carefully all climbing and twining shrubs. + +Weed beds of annuals, and thin out, where necessary. Sow Nepolitan, and +other fine descriptions of Larkspur, as well as all other annuals for a +late show. Dahlias are now blooming in perfection, and should be closely +watched that every side-bud, or more than one on each stalk may be cut +off close, with a pair of scissors to secure full, distinctly colored, +and handsome flowers. + +[For further instructions respecting the culture of flowers in India I +must refer my readers to the late Mr. Speede's works, where they will +find a great deal of useful information not only respecting the +flower-garden, but the kitchen-garden and the orchard.] + + * * * * * + +MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS. + +THE TREE-MIGNONETTE.--This plant does not appear to be a distinct +variety, for the common mignonette, properly trained becomes shrubby. It +may be propagated by either seed or cuttings. When it has put forth four +leaves or is about an inch high, take it from the bed and put it by +itself into a moderate sized pot. As it advances in growth, carefully +pick off all the side shoots, leaving the leaf at the base of each shoot +to assist the growth of the plant. When it has reached a foot in height +it will show flower. But every flower must be nipped off carefully. +Support the stem with a stick to make it grow straight. Even when it has +attained its proper height of two feet again cut off the bloom for a few +days. + +It is said that Miss Mitford, the admired authoress, was the first to +discover that the common mignonette could be induced to adopt tree-like +habits. The experiment has been tried in India, but it has sometimes +failed from its being made at the wrong season. The seed should be sown +at the end of the rains. + +GRAFTING.--Take care to unite exactly the inner bark of the scion with +the inner bark of the stock in order to facilitate the free course of +the sap. Almost any scion will take to almost any sort of tree or plant +provided there be a resemblance in their barks. The Chinese are fond of +making fantastic experiments in grafting and sometimes succeed in the +most heterogeneous combinations, such as grafting flowers upon fruit +trees. Plants growing near each other can sometimes be grafted by the +roots, or on the living root of a tree cut down another tree can be +grafted. The scions are those shoots which united with the stock form +the graft. It is desirable that the sap of the stock should be in brisk +and healthy motion at the time of grafting. The graft should be +surrounded with good stiff clay with a little horse or cow manure in it +and a portion of cut hay. Mix the materials with a little water and then +beat them up with a stick until the compound is quite ductile. When +applied it may be bandaged with a cloth. The best season for grafting in +India is the rains. + +MANURE.--Almost any thing that rots quickly is a good manure. It is +possible to manure too highly. A plant sometimes dies from too much +richness of soil as well as from too barren a one. + +WATERING.--Keep up a regular moisture, but do not deluge your plants +until the roots rot. Avoid giving very cold water in the heat of the day +or in the sunshine. Even in England some gardeners in a hot summer use +luke-warm water for delicate plants. But do not in your fear of +overwatering only wet the surface. The earth all round and below the +root should be equally moist, and not one part wet and the other dry. If +the plant requires but little water, water it seldom, but let the water +reach all parts of the root equally when you water at all. + +GATHERING AND PRESERVING FLOWERS.--Always use the knife, and prefer such +as are coming into flower rather than such as are fully expanded. If +possible gather from crowded plants, or parts of plants, so that every +gathering may operate at the same time as a judicious pruning and +thinning. Flowers may be preserved when gathered, by inserting their +ends in winter, in moist earth, or moss; and may be freshened, when +withered, by sprinkling them with water, and putting them in a close +vessel, as under a bellglass, handglass, flowerpot or in a botanic box; +if this will not do, sprinkle them with warm water heated to 80° or 90°, +and cover them with a glass.--_Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening_. + +PIPING---is a mode of propagation by cuttings and is adopted in plants +having joined tubular stems, as the dianthus tribe. When the shoot has +nearly done growing (soon after its blossom has fallen) its extremity is +to be separated at a part of the stem where it is hard and ripe. This is +done by holding the root with one hand and with the other pulling the +top part above the pair of leaves so as to separate it from the root +part of the stem at the socket, formed by the axillae of the leaves, +leaving the stem to remain with a tubular or pipe-looking termination. +The piping is inserted in finely sifted earth to the depth of the first +joint or pipe and its future management regulated on the same general +principles as cuttings.--_From the same_. + +BUDDING.--This is performed when the leaves of plants have grown to +their full size and the bud is to be seen at the base of it. The +relative nature of the bud and the stock is the same as in grafting. +Make a slit in the bark of the stock, to reach from half an inch to an +inch and a half down the stock, according to the size of the plant; then +make another short slit across, that you may easily raise the bark from +the wood, then take a very thin slice of the bark from the tree or plant +to be budded, a little below a leaf, and bring the knife out a little +above it, so that you remove the leaf and the bud at its base, with the +little slice you have taken. You will perhaps have removed a small bit +of the wood with the bark, which you must take carefully out with the +sharp point of your knife and your thumb; then tuck the bark and bud +under the bark of the stock which you carefully bind over, letting the +bud come at the part where the slits cross each other. No part of the +stock should be allowed to grow after it is budded, except a little +shoot or so, above the bud, just to draw the sap past the +bud.--_Gleenny's Hand Book of Gardening_. + +ON PYRAMIDS OF ROSES.--The standard Roses give a fine effect to a bed of +Roses by being planted in the middle, forming a pyramidal bed, or alone +on grass lawns; but the _ne plus ultra_ of a pyramid of Roses is that +formed of from one, two, or three plants, forming a pyramid by being +trained up three strong stakes, to any length from 10 to 25 feet high +(as may suit situation or taste), placed about two feet apart at the +bottom; three forming an angle on the ground, and meeting close together +at the top; the plant, or plants to be planted inside the stakes. In two +or three years, they will form a pyramid of Roses which baffles all +description. When gardens are small, and the owners are desirous of +having _multum in parvo_, three or four may be planted to form one +pyramid; and this is not the only object of planting more sorts than one +together, but the beauty is also much increased by the mingled hues of +the varieties planted. For instance, plant together a white Boursault, a +purple Noisette, a Stadtholder, Sinensis (fine pink), and a Moschata +scandens and such a variety may be obtained, that twenty pyramids may +have each, three or four kinds, and no two sorts alike on the whole +twenty pyramids. A temple of Roses, planted in the same way, has a +beautiful appearance in a flower garden--that is, eight, ten, or twelve +stout peeled Larch poles, well painted, set in the ground, with a light +iron rafter from each, meeting at the top and forming a dome. An old +cable, or other old rope, twisted round the pillar and iron, gives an +additional beauty to the whole. Then plant against the pillars with two +or three varieties, each of which will soon run up the pillars, and form +a pretty mass of Roses, which amply repays the trouble and expense, by +the elegance it gives to the garden--_Floricultural Cabinet_. + +How TO MAKE ROSE WATER, &c--Take an earthen pot or jar well glazed +inside, wide in the month, narrow at the bottom, about 15 inches high, +and place over the mouth a strainer of clean coarse muslin, to contain a +considerable quantity of rose leaves, of some highly fragrant kind. +Cover them with a second strainer of the same material, and close the +mouth of the jar with an iron lid, or tin cover, hermetically sealed. On +this lid place hot embers, either of coal or charcoal, that the heat may +reach the rose-leaves without scorching or burning them. + +The aromatic oil will fall drop by drop to the bottom with the water +contained in the petals. When time has been allowed for extracting the +whole, the embers must be removed, and the vase placed in a cool spot. + +Rose-water obtained in this mode is not so durable as that obtained in +the regular way by a still but it serves all ordinary purposes. Small +alembics of copper with a glass capital, may be used in three different +ways. + +In the first process, the still or alembic must be mounted on a small +brick furnace, and furnished with a worm long enough to pass through a +pan of cold water. The petals of the rose being carefully picked so as +to leave no extraneous parts, should be thrown into the boiler of the +still with a little water. + +The great point is to keep up a moderate fire in the furnace, such as +will cause the vapour to rise without imparting a burnt smell to the +rose water. + +The operation is ended when the rose water, which falls drop by drop in +the tube, ceases to be fragrant. That which is first condensed has very +little scent, that which is next obtained is the best, and the third and +last portion is generally a little burnt in smell, and bitter in taste. +In a very small still, having no worm, the condensation must be produced +by linen, wetted in cold water, applied round the capital. A third +method consists in plunging the boiler of the still into a larger vessel +of boiling water placed over a fire, when the rose-water never acquires +the burnt flavour to which we have alluded. By another process, the +still is placed in a boiler filled with sand instead of water, and +heated to the necessary temperature. + +But this requires alteration, or it is apt to communicate a baked +flavour. + +SYRUP OF ROSES--May be obtained from Belgian or monthly roses, picked +over, one by one, and the base of the petal removed. In a China Jar +prepared with a layer of powdered sugar, place a layer of rose-leaves +about half an inch thick; then of sugar, then of leaves, till the vessel +is full. + +On the top, place a fresh wooden cover, pressed down with a weight. By +degrees, the rose-leaves produce a highly-coloured, highly-scented +syrup; and the leaves form a colouring-matter for liqueurs. + +PASTILLES DU SERAIL.--Sold in France as Turkish, in rosaries and other +ornaments, are made of the petals of the Belgian or Puteem Rose, ground +to powder and formed into a paste by means of liquid gum. + +Ivory-black is mixed with the gum to produce a black colour; and +cinnabar or vermilion, to render the paste either brown or red. + +It may be modelled by hand or in a mould, and when dried in the sun, or +a moderate oven, attains sufficient hardness to be mounted in gold or +silver.--_Mrs. Gore's Rose Fancier's Manual_. + +OF FORMING AND PRESERVING HERBARIUMS.--The most exact descriptions, +accompanied with the most perfect figures, leave still something to be +desired by him who wishes to know completely a natural being. This +nothing can supply but the autopsy or view of the object itself. Hence +the advantage of being able to see plants at pleasure, by forming dried +collections of them, in what are called herbariums. + +A good practical botanist, Sir J.E. Smith observes, must be educated +among the wild scenes of nature, while a finished theoretical one +requires the additional assistance of gardens and books, to which must +be superadded the frequent use of a good herbarium. When plants are well +dried, the original forms and positions of even their minutest parts, +though not their colours, may at any time be restored by immersion in +hot water. By this means the productions of the most distant and various +countries, such as no garden could possibly supply, are brought together +at once under our eyes, at any season of the year. If these be assisted +with drawings and descriptions, nothing less than an actual survey of +the whole vegetable world in a state of nature, could excel such a store +of information. + +With regard to the mode or state in which plants are preserved, +desiccation, accompanied by pressing, is the most generally used. Some +persons, Sir J.E. Smith observes, recommend the preservation of +specimens in weak spirits of wine, and this mode is by far the most +eligible for such as are very juicy: but it totally destroys their +colours, and often renders their parts less fit for examination than by +the process of drying. It is, besides, incommodious for frequent study, +and a very expensive and bulky way of making an herbarium. + +The greater part of plants dry with facility between the leaves of +books, or other paper, the smoother the better. If there be plenty of +paper, they often dry best without shifting; but if the specimens are +crowded, they must be taken out frequently, and the paper dried before +they are replaced. The great point to be attended to is, that the +process should meet with no check. Several vegetables are so tenacious +of their vital principle, that they will grow between papers; the +consequence of which is, a destruction of their proper habit and colors. +It is necessary to destroy the life of such, either by immersion in +boiling water or by the application of a hot iron, such as is used for +linen, after which they are easily dried. The practice of applying such +an iron, as some persons do, with great labor and perseverance, till the +plants are quite dry, and all their parts incorporated into a smooth +flat mass is not approved of. This renders them unfit for subsequent +examination, and destroys their natural habit, the most important thing +to be preserved. Even in spreading plants between papers, we should +refrain from that practice and artificial disposition of their branches, +leaves, and other parts, which takes away from their natural aspect, +except for the purpose of displaying the internal parts of some one or +two of their flowers, for ready observation. The most approved method of +pressing is by a box or frame, with a bottom of cloth or leather, like a +square sieve. In this, coarse sand or small shot may be placed; in any +quantity very little pressing is required in drying specimens; what is +found necessary should be applied equally to every part of the bundle +under the operation. + +Hot-pressing, by means of steel net-work heated, and placed in alternate +layers with the papers, in the manner of hot pressing paper, and the +whole covered with the equalizing press, above described, would probably +be an improvement, but we have not heard of its being tried. At all +events, pressing by screw presses, or weighty non-elastic bodies, must +be avoided, as tending to bruise the stalks and other protuberant parts +of plants. + +"After all we can do," Sir J.E. Smith observes, "plants dry very +variously. The blue colours of their flowers generally fade, nor are +reds always permanent. Yellows are much more so, but very few white +flowers retain their natural aspect. The snowdrop and parnassia, if well +dried, continue white. Some greens are much more permanent than others; +for there are some natural families whose leaves, as well as flowers, +turn almost black by drying, as melampyrum, bartsia, and their allies, +several willows, and most of the orchideae. The heaths and firs in +general cast off their leaves between papers, which appears to be an +effort of the living principle, for it is prevented by immersion of the +fresh specimen in boiling water." + +The specimens being dried, are sometimes kept loose between leaves of +paper; at other times wholly gummed or glued to paper, but most +generally attached by one or more transverse slips of paper, glued on +one end and pinned at the other, so that such specimens can readily be +taken out, examined, and replaced. On account of the aptitude of the +leaves and other parts of dried plants to drop off, many glue them +entirely, and such seems to be the method adopted by Linnaeus, and +recommended by Sir J.E. Smith. "Dried specimens," the professor +observes, "are best preserved by being fastened, with weak carpenter's +glue, to paper, so that they may be turned over without damage. Thick +and heavy stalks require the additional support of a few transverse +strips of paper, to bind them more firmly down. A half sheet, of a +convenient folio size, should be allotted to each species, and all the +species of a genus may be placed in one or more whole sheets or folios. +On the latter outside should be written the name of the genus, while the +name of every species, with its place of growth, time of gathering, the +finder's name, or any other concise piece of information, may be +inscribed on its appropriate paper. This is the plan of the Linnaean +herbarium."--_Loudon_. + +THE END. + + + +FOOTNOTES. + +[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. + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Flowers and Flower-Gardens +by David Lester Richardson + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS *** + +***** This file should be named 12286-8.txt or 12286-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/2/8/12286/ + +Produced by Tony Browne and PG Distributed Proofreaders. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Flowers and Flower-Gardens + With an Appendix of Practical Instructions and Useful Information + Respecting the Anglo-Indian Flower-Garden + + +Author: David Lester Richardson + +Release Date: May 7, 2004 [EBook #12286] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS *** + + + + +Produced by Tony Browne and PG Distributed Proofreaders. Produced +from images provided by the Million Book Project. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<H1>FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS.</H1> + +<H3>BY</H3> + +<H2>DAVID LESTER RICHARDSON,</H2> + +<H3>PRINCIPAL OF THE HINDU METROPOLITAN COLLEGE, AND AUTHOR OF "LITERARY +LEAVES," "LITERARY RECREATIONS," &C.</H3> + +<H4>WITH AN APPENDIX OF</H4> + +<H3>PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS AND USEFUL INFORMATION RESPECTING THE ANGLO- +INDIAN FLOWER-GARDEN.</H3> + + + + +<H3>CALCUTTA:</H3> + + + +<H4>MDCCCLV.</H4> + + + +<H2>PREFACE.</H2> + + +<pre> + In every work regard the writer's end, + Since none can compass more than they intend. +</pre> + +<div><i>Pope</i>.</div> + + + +<p>This volume is far indeed from being a scientific treatise <i>On Flowers +and Flower-Gardens</i>:--it is mere gossip in print upon a pleasant +subject. But I hope it will not be altogether useless. If I succeed in +my object I shall consider that I have gossipped to some purpose. On +several points--such as that of the mythology and language of flowers--I +have said a good deal more than I should have done had I been writing +for a different community. I beg the London critics to bear this in +mind. I wished to make the subject as attractive as possible to some +classes of people here who might not have been disposed to pay any +attention to it whatever if I had not studied their amusement as much as +their instruction. I have tried to sweeten the edge of the cup.</p> + +<p>I did not at first intend the book to exceed fifty pages: but I was +almost insensibly carried on further and further from the proposed limit +by the attractive nature of the materials that pressed upon my notice. +As by far the largest portion, of it has been written hurriedly, amidst +other avocations, and bit by bit; just as the Press demanded an +additional supply of "<i>copy</i>," I have but too much reason to apprehend +that it will seem to many of my readers, fragmentary and ill-connected. +Then again, in a city like Calcutta, it is not easy to prepare any thing +satisfactorily that demands much literary or scientific research. There +are very many volumes in all the London Catalogues, but not immediately +obtainable in Calcutta, that I should have been most eager to refer to +for interesting and valuable information, if they had been at hand. The +mere titles of these books have often tantalized me with visions of +riches beyond my reach. I might indeed have sent for some of these from +England, but I had announced this volume, and commenced the printing of +it, before it occurred to me that it would be advisable to extend the +matter beyond the limits I had originally contemplated. I must now send +it forth, "with all its imperfections on its head;" but not without the +hope that in spite of these, it will be found calculated to increase the +taste amongst my brother exiles here for flowers and flower-gardens, and +lead many of my Native friends--(particularly those who have been +educated at the Government Colleges,--who have imbibed some English +thoughts and feelings--and who are so fortunate as to be in possession +of landed property)--to improve their parterres,--and set an example to +their poorer countrymen of that neatness and care and cleanliness and +order which may make even the peasant's cottage and the smallest plot of +ground assume an aspect of comfort, and afford a favorable indication of +the character of the possessor.</p> + +<p>D.L.R.</p> + +<p><i>Calcutta, September 21st</i> 1855.</p> + + + +<H3>ERRATA.</H3> + + +<p>A friend tells me that the allusion to the <a href="#acanthus">Acanthus</a> on the first page of +this book is obscurely expressed, that it was not the <i>root</i> but the +<i>leaves</i> of the plant that suggested the idea of the Corinthian capital. +The root of the Acanthus produced the leaves which overhanging the sides +of the basket struck the fancy of the Architect. This was, indeed, what +I <i>meant</i> to say, and though I have not very lucidly expressed myself, I +still think that some readers might have understood me rightly even +without the aid of this explanation, which, however, it is as well for +me to give, as I wish to be intelligible to <i>all</i>. A writer should +endeavor to make it impossible for any one to misapprehend his meaning, +though there are some writers of high name both in England and America +who seem to delight in puzzling their readers.</p> + +<p>At the bottom of page 200, allusion is made to the dotted lines at some +of the open turns in the <a href="#labyrinth">engraved labyrinth</a>. By some accident or mistake +the dots have been omitted, but any one can understand where the stop +hedges which the dotted lines indicated might be placed so as to give +the wanderer in the maze, additional trouble to find his way out of it.</p> + + + + +<div><img src="garden.png" alt="Illustration of a garden."></div> + + + + +<H2>ON FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS,</H2> + + + +<pre> + For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the + flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is + come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. +</pre> + +<div><i>The Song of Solomon</i>.</div> + +<hr> + +<pre> + These are thy glorious works, Parent of good! + Almighty, Thine this universal frame, + Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then! +</pre> + +<div><i>Milton</i>.</div> + +<hr> + +<pre> + Soft roll your incense, herbs and fruits and flowers, + In mingled clouds to HIM whose sun exalts + Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints. +</pre> + +<div><i>Thomson</i>.</div> + +<p>A taste for floriculture is spreading amongst Anglo-Indians. It is a +good sign. It would be gratifying to learn that the same refining taste +had reached the Natives also--even the lower classes of them. It is a +cheap enjoyment. A mere palm of ground may be glorified by a few radiant +blossoms. A single clay jar of the rudest form may be so enriched and +beautified with leaves and blossoms as to fascinate the eye of taste. An +old basket, with a broken tile at the top of it, and <a name="acanthus">the root of the +acanthus</a> within, produced an effect which seemed to Calimachus, the +architect, "the work of the Graces." It suggested the idea of the +capital of the Corinthian column, the most elegant architectural +ornament that Art has yet conceived.</p> + +<p>Flowers are the poor man's luxury; a refinement for the uneducated. It +has been prettily said that the melody of birds is the poor man's music, +and that flowers are the poor man's poetry. They are "a discipline of +humanity," and may sometimes ameliorate even a coarse and vulgar nature, +just as the cherub faces of innocent and happy children are sometimes +found to soften and purify the corrupted heart. It would be a delightful +thing to see the swarthy cottagers of India throwing a cheerful grace on +their humble sheds and small plots of ground with those natural +embellishments which no productions of human skill can rival.</p> + +<p>The peasant who is fond of flowers--if he begin with but a dozen little +pots of geraniums and double daisies upon his window sills, or with a +honeysuckle over his humble porch--gradually acquires a habit, not only +of decorating the outside of his dwelling and of cultivating with care +his small plot of ground, but of setting his house in order within, and +making every thing around him agreeable to the eye. A love of +cleanliness and neatness and simple ornament is a moral feeling. The +country laborer, or the industrious mechanic, who has a little garden to +be proud of, the work of his own hand, becomes attached to his place of +residence, and is perhaps not only a better subject on that account, but +a better neighbour--a better man. A taste for flowers is, at all events, +infinitely preferable to a taste for the excitements of the pot-house or +the tavern or the turf or the gaming table, or even the festal board, +especially for people of feeble health--and above all, for the poor--who +should endeavor to satisfy themselves with inexpensive pleasures.<a href="#note001">[001]</a></p> + +<p>In all countries, civilized or savage, and on all occasions, whether of +grief or rejoicing, a natural fondness for flowers has been exhibited, +with more or less tenderness or enthusiasm. They beautify religious +rites. They are national emblems: they find a place in the blazonry of +heraldic devices. They are the gifts and the language of friendship and +of love.</p> + +<p>Flowers gleam in original hues from graceful vases in almost every +domicile where Taste presides; and the hand of "nice Art" charms us with +"counterfeit presentments" of their forms and colors, not only on the +living canvas, but even on our domestic China-ware, and our mahogany +furniture, and our wall-papers and hangings and carpets, and on our +richest apparel for holiday occasions and our simplest garments for +daily wear. Even human Beauty, the Queen of all loveliness on earth, +engages Flora as her handmaid at the toilet, in spite of the dictum of +the poet of 'The Seasons,' that "Beauty when unadorned is adorned the +most."</p> + +<p>Flowers are hung in graceful festoons both in churches and in ball- +rooms. They decorate the altar, the bride-bed, the cradle, and the bier. +They grace festivals, and triumphs, and processions; and cast a glory on +gala days; and are amongst the last sad honors we pay to the objects of +our love.</p> + +<p>I remember the death of a sweet little English girl of but a year old, +over whom, in her small coffin, a young and lovely mother sprinkled the +freshest and fairest flowers. The task seemed to soften--perhaps to +sweeten--her maternal grief. I shall never forget the sight. The bright- +hued blossoms seemed to make her oblivious for a moment of the darkness +and corruption to which she was so soon to consign her priceless +treasure. The child's sweet face, even in death, reminded me that the +flowers of the field and garden, however lovely, are all outshone by +human beauty. What floral glory of the wild-wood, or what queen of the +parterre, in all the pride of bloom, laughing in the sun-light or +dancing in the breeze, hath a charm that could vie for a single moment +with the soft and holy lustre of that motionless and faded human lily? I +never more deeply felt the force of Milton's noble phrase "<i>the human +face divine</i>" than when gazing on that sleeping child. The fixed placid +smile, the smoothly closed eye with its transparent lid, the air of +profound tranquillity, the simple purity (elevated into an aspect of +bright intelligence, as if the little cherub already experienced the +beatitude of another and a better world,) were perfectly angelic--and +mocked all attempt at description. "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!"</p> + +<p>O flower of an earthly spring! destined to blossom in the eternal summer +of another and more genial region! Loveliest of lovely children-- +loveliest to the last! More beautiful in death than aught still living! +Thou seemest now to all who miss and mourn thee but a sweet name--a fair +vision--a precious memory;--but in reality thou art a more truly living +thing than thou wert before or than aught thou hast left behind. Thou +hast come early into a rich inheritance. Thou hast now a substantial +existence, a genuine glory, an everlasting possession, beyond the sky. +Thou hast exchanged the frail flowers that decked thy bier for +amaranthine hues and fragrance, and the brief and uncertain delights of +mortal being for the eternal and perfect felicity of angels!</p> + +<p>I never behold elsewhere any of the specimens of the several varieties +of flowers which the afflicted parent consigned to the hallowed little +coffin without recalling to memory the sainted child taking her last +rest on earth. The mother was a woman of taste and sensibility, of high +mind and gentle heart, with the liveliest sense of the loveliness of all +lovely things; and it is hardly necessary to remind the reader how much +refinement such as hers may sometimes alleviate the severity of sorrow.</p> + +<p>Byron tells us that the stars are</p> + +<pre> + A beauty and a mystery, and create + In us such love and reverence from afar + That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves <i>a star</i>. +</pre> + +<p>But might we not with equal justice say that every thing excellent and +beautiful and precious has named itself <i>a flower</i>?</p> + +<p>If stars teach as well as shine--so do flowers. In "still small accents" +they charm "the nice and delicate ear of thought" and sweetly whisper +that "the hand that made them is divine."</p> + +<p>The stars are the poetry of heaven--the clouds are the poetry of the +middle sky--the flowers are the poetry of the earth. The last is the +loveliest to the eye and the nearest to the heart. It is incomparably +the sweetest external poetry that Nature provides for man. Its +attractions are the most popular; its language is the most intelligible. +It is of all others the best adapted to every variety and degree of +mind. It is the most endearing, the most familiar, the most homefelt, +and congenial. The stars are for the meditation of poets and +philosophers; but flowers are not exclusively for the gifted or the +scientific; they are the property of all. They address themselves to our +common nature. They are equally the delight of the innocent little +prattler and the thoughtful sage. Even the rude unlettered rustic +betrays some feeling for the beautiful in the presence of the lovely +little community of the field and garden. He has no sympathy for the +stars: they are too mystical and remote. But the flowers as they blush +and smile beneath his eye may stir the often deeply hidden lovingness +and gentleness of his nature. They have a social and domestic aspect to +which no one with a human heart can be quite indifferent. Few can doat +upon the distant flowers of the sky as many of us doat upon the flowers +at our feet. The stars are wholly independent of man: not so the sweet +children of Flora. We tend upon and cherish them with a parental pride. +They seem especially meant for man and man for them. They often need his +kindest nursing. We place them with guardian hand in the brightest light +and the most wholesome air. We quench with liquid life their sun-raised +thirst, or shelter them from the wintry blast, or prepare and enrich +their nutritious beds. As they pine or prosper they agitate us with +tender anxieties, or thrill us with exultation and delight. In the +little plot of ground that fronts an English cottage the flowers are +like members of the household. They are of the same family. They are +almost as lovely as the children that play with them--though their happy +human associates may be amongst</p> + +<pre> + The sweetest things that ever grew + Beside a human door. +</pre> + +<p>The Greeks called flowers the <i>Festival of the eye</i>: and so they are: +but they are something else, and something better.</p> + +<pre> + A flower is not a flower alone, + A thousand sanctities invest it. +</pre> + +<p>Flowers not only touch the heart; they also elevate the soul. They bind +us not entirely to earth; though they make earth delightful. They +attract our thoughts downward to the richly embroidered ground only to +raise them up again to heaven. If the stars are the scriptures of the +sky, the flowers are the scriptures of the earth. If the stars are a +more glorious revelation of the Creator's majesty and might, the flowers +are at least as sweet a revelation of his gentler attributes. It has +been observed that</p> + +<pre> + An undevout astronomer is mad. +</pre> + +<p>The same thing may be said of an irreverent floriculturist, and with +equal truth--perhaps indeed with greater. For the astronomer, in some +cases, may be hard and cold, from indulging in habits of thought too +exclusively mathematical. But the true lover of flowers has always +something gentle and genial in his nature. He never looks upon his +floral-family without a sweetened smile upon his face and a softened +feeling in his heart; unless his temperament be strangely changed and +his mind disordered. The poets, who, speaking generally, are +constitutionally religious, are always delighted readers of the flower- +illumined pages of the book of nature. One of these disciples of Flora +earnestly exclaims:</p> + +<pre> + Were I, O God, in churchless lands remaining + Far from all voice of teachers and divines, + My soul would find in flowers of thy ordaining + Priests, sermons, shrines +</pre> + +<p>The popular little preachers of the field and garden, with their lovely +faces, and angelic language--sending the while such ambrosial incense up +to heaven--insinuate the sweetest truths into the human heart. They lead +us to the delightful conclusion that beauty is in the list of the +<i>utilities</i>--that the Divine Artist himself is <i>a lover of loveliness</i>-- +that he has communicated a taste for it to his creatures and most +lavishly provided for its gratification.</p> + +<pre> + Not a flower + But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain, + Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires + Their balmy odours, and imparts then hues, + And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes + In grains as countless as the sea side sands + The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth. +</pre> + +<div><i>Cowper</i>.</div> + +<p>In the eye of Utilitarianism the flowers are but idle shows. God might +indeed have made this world as plain as a Quaker's garment, without +retrenching one actual necessary of physical existence; but He has +chosen otherwise; and no earthly potentate was ever so richly clad as +his mother earth. "Behold the lilies of the field, they spin not, +neither do they toil, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like +one of these!" We are thus instructed that man was not meant to live by +bread alone, and that the gratification of a sense of beauty is equally +innocent and natural and refining. The rose is permitted to spread its +sweet leaves to the air and dedicate its beauty to the sun, in a way +that is quite perplexing to bigots and stoics and political economists. +Yet God has made nothing in vain! The Great Artist of the Universe must +have scattered his living hues and his forms of grace over the surface +of the earth for some especial and worthy purpose. When Voltaire was +congratulated on the rapid growth of his plants, he observed that "<i>they +had nothing else to do</i>." Oh, yes--they had something else to do,--they +had to adorn the earth, and to charm the human eye, and through the eye +to soften and cheer the heart and elevate the soul!</p> + +<p>I have often wished that Lecturers on Botany, instead of confining their +instructions to the mere physiology, or anatomy, or classification or +nomenclature of their favorite science, would go more into the poetry +of it, and teach young people to appreciate the moral influences of the +floral tribes--to draw honey for the human heart from the sweet breasts +of flowers--to sip from their radiant chalices a delicious medicine for +the soul.</p> + +<p>Flowers are frequently hallowed by associations far sweeter than their +sweetest perfume. "I am no botanist:" says Southey in a letter to Walter +Savage Landor, "but like you, my earliest and best recollections are +connected with flowers, and they always carry me back to other days. +Perhaps this is because they are the only things which affect our senses +precisely as they did in our childhood. The sweetness of the violet is +always the same; and when you rifle a rose and drink, as it were, its +fragrance, the refreshment is the same to the old man as to the boy. +Sounds recal the past in the same manner, but they do not bring with +them individual scenes like the cowslip field, or the corner of the +garden to which we have transplanted field-flowers."</p> + +<p>George Wither has well said in commendation of his Muse:</p> + +<pre> + Her divine skill taught me this; + That from every thing I saw + I could some instruction draw, + And raise pleasure to the height + By the meanest object's sight, + By the murmur of a spring + <i>Or the least bough's rustelling; + By a daisy whose leaves spread + Shut, when Titan goes to bed; + Or a shady bush or tree</i>, + She could more infuse in me + Than all Nature's beauties can + In some other wiser man. +</pre> + +<p>We must not interpret the epithet <i>wiser</i> too literally. Perhaps the +poet speaks ironically, or means by some other <i>wiser man</i>, one allied +in character and temperament to a modern utilitarian Philosopher. +Wordsworth seems to have had the lines of George Wither in his mind when +he said</p> + +<pre> + Thanks to the human heart by which we live, + Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, + To me the meanest flower that blows can give + Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. +</pre> + +<p>Thomas Campbell, with a poet's natural gallantry, has exclaimed,</p> + +<pre> + Without the smile from partial Beauty won, + Oh! what were man?--a world without a sun! +</pre> + +<p>Let a similar compliment be presented to the "painted populace that +dwell in fields and lead ambrosial lives." What a desert were this scene +without its flowers--it would be like the sky of night without its +stars! "The disenchanted earth" would "lose her lustre." Stars of the +day! Beautifiers of the world! Ministrants of delight! Inspirers of +kindly emotions and the holiest meditations! Sweet teachers of the +serenest wisdom! So beautiful and bright, and graceful, and fragrant--it +is no marvel that ye are equally the favorites of the rich and the poor, +of the young and the old, of the playful and the pensive!</p> + +<p>Our country, though originally but sparingly endowed with the living +jewelry of nature, is now rich in the choicest flowers of all other +countries.</p> + +<pre> + Foreigners of many lands, + They form one social shade, as if convened + By magic summons of the Orphean lyre. +</pre> + +<div><i>Cowper</i>.</div> + +<p>These little "foreigners of many lands" have been so skilfully +acclimatized and multiplied and rendered common, that for a few +shillings an English peasant may have a parterre more magnificent than +any ever gazed upon by the Median Queen in the hanging gardens of +Babylon. There is no reason, indeed, to suppose that even the first +parents of mankind looked on finer flowers in Paradise itself than are +to be found in the cottage gardens that are so thickly distributed over +the hills and plains and vallies of our native land.</p> + +<pre> + The red rose, is the red rose still, and from the lily's cup + An odor fragrant as at first, like frankincense goes up. +</pre> + +<div><i>Mary Howitt</i>.</div> + +<p>Our neat little gardens and white cottages give to dear old England that +lovely and cheerful aspect, which is so striking and attractive to her +foreign visitors. These beautiful signs of a happy political security +and individual independence and domestic peace and a love of order and a +homely refinement, are scattered all over the land, from sea to sea. +When Miss Sedgwick, the American authoress, visited England, nothing so +much surprised and delighted her as the gay flower-filled gardens of our +cottagers. Many other travellers, from almost all parts of the world, +have experienced and expressed the same sensations on visiting our +shores, and it would be easy to compile a voluminous collection of their +published tributes of admiration. To a foreign visitor the whole country +seems a garden--in the words of Shakespeare--"a <i>sea-walled garden</i>."</p> + +<p>In the year 1843, on a temporary return to England after a long Indian +exile, I travelled by railway for the first time in my life. As I glided +on, as smoothly as in a sledge, over the level iron road, with such +magical rapidity--from the pretty and cheerful town of Southampton to +the greatest city of the civilized world--every thing was new to me, and +I gave way to child-like wonder and child-like exultation.<a href="#note002">[002]</a> What a +quick succession of lovely landscapes greeted the eye on either side? +What a garden-like air of universal cultivation! What beautiful smooth +slopes! What green, quiet meadows! What rich round trees, brooding over +their silent shadows! What exquisite dark nooks and romantic lanes! What +an aspect of unpretending happiness in the clean cottages, with their +little trim gardens! What tranquil grandeur and rural luxury in the +noble mansions and glorious parks of the British aristocracy! How the +love of nature thrilled my heart with a gentle and delicious agitation, +and how proud I felt of my dear native land! It is, indeed, a fine thing +to be an Englishman. Whether at home or abroad, he is made conscious of +the claims of his country to respect and admiration. As I fed my eyes on +the loveliness of Nature, or turned to the miracles of Art and Science +on every hand, I had always in my mind a secret reference to the effect +which a visit to England must produce upon an intelligent and observant +foreigner.</p> + +<pre> + Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around + Of hills and dales and woods and lawns and spires, + And glittering towns and gilded streams, 'till all + The stretching landscape into smoke decays! + Happy Brittannia! where the Queen of Arts, + Inspiring vigor, Liberty, abroad + Walks unconfined, even to thy farthest cots, + And scatters plenty with unsparing hand. +</pre> + +<div><i>Thomson</i>.</div> + +<p>And here let me put in a word in favor of the much-abused English +climate. I cannot echo the unpatriotic discontent of Byron when he +speaks of</p> + +<pre> + The cold and cloudy clime + Where he was born, but where he would not die. +</pre> + +<p>Rather let me say with the author of "<i>The Seasons</i>," in his address to +England.</p> + +<pre> + Rich is thy soil and merciful thy clime. +</pre> + +<p>King Charles the Second when he heard some foreigners condemning our +climate and exulting in their own, observed that in his opinion that was +the best climate in which a man could be out in the open air with +pleasure, or at least without trouble and inconvenience, the most days +of the year and the most hours of the day; and this he held was the case +with the climate of England more than that of any other country in +Europe. To say nothing of the lovely and noble specimens of human nature +to which it seems so congenial, I may safely assert that it is +peculiarly favorable, with, rare exceptions, to the sweet children of +Flora. There is no country in the world in which there are at this day +such innumerable tribes of flowers. There are in England two thousand +varieties of the rose alone, and I venture to express a doubt whether +the richest gardens of Persia or Cashmere could produce finer specimens +of that universal favorite than are to be found in some of the small but +highly cultivated enclosures of respectable English rustics.</p> + +<p>The actual beauty of some of the commonest flowers in our gardens can be +in no degree exaggerated--even in the daydreams of the most inspired +poet. And when the author of Lalla Rookh talks so musically and +pleasantly of the fragrant bowers of Amberabad, the country of Delight, +a Province in Jinnistan or Fairy Land, he is only thinking of the +shrubberies and flower-beds at Sloperton Cottage, and the green hills +and vales of Wiltshire.</p> + +<p>Sir William Temple observes that "besides the temper of our climate +there are two things particular to us, that contribute much to the +beauty and elegance of our gardens--which are, <i>the gravel of our walks +and the fineness and almost perpetual greenness of our turf</i>."</p> + +<p>"The face of England is so beautiful," says Horace Walpole, "that I do +not believe that Tempe or Arcadia was half so rural; for both lying in +hot climates must have wanted <i>the moss of our gardens</i>." Meyer, a +German, a scientific practical gardener, who was also a writer on +gardening, and had studied his art in the Royal Gardens at Paris, and +afterwards visited England, was a great admirer of English Gardens, but +despaired of introducing our style of gardening into Germany, <i>chiefly +on account of its inferior turf for lawns</i>. "Lawns and gravel walks," +says a writer in the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, "are the pride of English +Gardens," "The smoothness and verdure of our lawns," continues the same +writer, "is the first thing in our gardens that catches the eye of a +foreigner; the next is the fineness and firmness of our gravel walks." +Mr. Charles Mackintosh makes the same observation. "In no other country +in the world," he says, "do such things exist." Mrs. Stowe, whose <i>Uncle +Tom</i> has done such service to the cause of liberty in America, on her +visit to England seems to have been quite as much enchanted with our +scenery, as was her countrywoman, Miss Sedgwick. I am pleased to find +Mrs. Stowe recognize the superiority of English landscape-gardening and +of our English verdure. She speaks of, "the princely art of landscape- +gardening, for which England is so famous," and of "<i>vistas of verdure +and wide sweeps of grass, short, thick, and vividly green</i> as the velvet +moss sometimes seen growing on rocks in new England." "Grass," she +observes, "is an art and a science in England--it is an institution. The +pains that are taken in sowing, tending, cutting, clipping, rolling and +otherwise nursing and coaxing it, being seconded by the often-falling +tears of the climate, produce results which must be seen to be +appreciated." This is literally true: any sight more inexpressibly +exquisite than that of an English lawn in fine order is what I am quite +unable to conceive.<a href="#note003">[003]</a></p> + +<p>I recollect that in one of my visits to England, (in 1827) I attempted +to describe the scenery of India to William Hazlitt--not the living son +but the dead father. Would that he were still in the land of the living +by the side of his friend Leigh Hunt, who has been pensioned by the +Government for his support of that cause for which they were both so +bitterly persecuted by the ruling powers in days gone by. I flattered +myself into the belief that Hazlitt was interested in some of my +descriptions of Oriental scenes. What moved him most was an account of +the dry, dusty, burning, grassless plains of Bundelcund in the hot +season. I told him how once while gasping for breath in a hot verandah +and leaning over the rails I looked down upon the sun-baked ground.</p> + +<pre> + "A change came o'er the spirit of my dream." +</pre> + +<p>I suddenly beheld with all the distinctness of reality the rich, cool, +green, unrivalled meads of England. But the vision soon melted away, and +I was again in exile. I wept like a child. It was like a beautiful +mirage of the desert, or one of those waking dreams of home which have +sometimes driven the long-voyaging seaman to distraction and urged him +by an irresistible impulse to plunge headlong into the ocean.</p> + +<p>When I had once more crossed the wide Atlantic--and (not by the +necromancy of imagination but by a longer and more tedious transit) +found myself in an English meadow,--I exclaimed with the poet,</p> + +<pre> + Thou art free + My country! and 'tis joy enough and pride + For one hour's perfect bliss, <i>to tread the grass + Of England once again</i>. +</pre> + +<p>I felt my childhood for a time renewed, and was by no means disposed to +second the assertion that</p> + +<pre> + "Nothing can bring back the hour + Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower." +</pre> + +<p>I have never beheld any thing more lovely than scenery +characteristically English; and Goldsmith, who was something of a +traveller, and had gazed on several beautiful countries, was justified +in speaking with such affectionate admiration of our still more +beautiful England,</p> + +<pre> + Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride. +</pre> + +<p>It is impossible to put into any form of words the faintest +representation of that delightful summer feeling which, is excited in +fine weather by the sight of the mossy turf of our country. It is sweet +indeed to go,</p> + +<pre> + Musing through the <i>lawny</i> vale: +</pre> + +<p>alluded to by Warton, or over Milton's "level downs," or to climb up +Thomson's</p> + +<pre> + Stupendous rocks + That from the sun-redoubling valley lift + Cool to the middle air their <i>lawny</i> tops. +</pre> + +<p>It gives the Anglo-Indian Exile the heart-ache to think of these +ramblings over English scenes.</p> + +<p>ENGLAND.</p> + +<pre> + Bengala's plains are richly green, + Her azure skies of dazzling sheen, + Her rivers vast, her forests grand. + Her bowers brilliant,--but the land, + Though dear to countless eyes it be, + And fair to mine, hath not for me + The charm ineffable of <i>home</i>; + For still I yearn to see the foam + Of wild waves on thy pebbled shore, + Dear Albion! to ascend once more + Thy snow-white cliffs; to hear again + The murmur of thy circling main-- + To stroll down each romantic dale + Beloved in boyhood--to inhale + Fresh life on green and breezy hills-- + To trace the coy retreating rills-- + To see the clouds at summer-tide + Dappling all the landscape wide-- + To mark the varying gloom and glow + As the seasons come and go-- + Again the green meads to behold + Thick strewn with silvery gems and gold, + Where kine, bright-spotted, large, and sleek, + Browse silently, with aspect meek, + Or motionless, in shallow stream + Stand mirror'd, till their twin shapes seem, + Feet linked to feet, forbid to sever, + By some strange magic fixed for ever. + + And oh! once more I fain would see + (Here never seen) a poor man <i>free</i>,<a href="#note004">[004]</a> + And valuing more an humble name, + But stainless, than a guilty fame, + How sacred is the simplest cot, + Where Freedom dwells!--where she is not + How mean the palace! Where's the spot + She loveth more than thy small isle, + Queen of the sea? Where hath her smile + So stirred man's inmost nature? Where + Are courage firm, and virtue fair, + And manly pride, so often found + As in rude huts on English ground, + Where e'en the serf who slaves for hire + May kindle with a freeman's fire? + + How proud a sight to English eyes + Are England's village families! + The patriarch, with his silver hair, + The matron grave, the maiden fair. + The rose-cheeked boy, the sturdy lad, + On Sabbath day all neatly clad:-- + Methinks I see them wend their way + On some refulgent morn of May, + By hedgerows trim, of fragrance rare, + Towards the hallowed House of Prayer! + + I can love <i>all</i> lovely lands, + But England <i>most</i>; for she commands. + As if she bore a parent's part, + The dearest movements of my heart; + And here I may not breathe her name. + Without a thrill through all my frame. + + Never shall this heart be cold + To thee, my country! till the mould + (Or <i>thine</i> or <i>this</i>) be o'er it spread. + And form its dark and silent bed. + I never think of bliss below + But thy sweet hills their green heads show, + Of love and beauty never dream. + But English faces round me gleam! +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>I have often observed that children never wear a more charming aspect +than when playing in fields and gardens. In another volume I have +recorded some of my impressions respecting the prominent interest +excited by these little flowers of humanity in an English landscape.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>THE RETURN TO ENGLAND.</p> + +<p>When I re-visited my dear native country, after an absence of many weary +years, and a long dull voyage, my heart was filled with unutterable +delight and admiration. The land seemed a perfect paradise. It was in +the spring of the year. The blue vault of heaven--the clear atmosphere-- +the balmy vernal breeze--the quiet and picturesque cattle, browsing on +luxuriant verdure, or standing knee deep in a crystal lake--the hills +sprinkled with snow-white sheep and sometimes partially shadowed by a +wandering cloud--the meadows glowing with golden butter-cups and be- +dropped with daisies--the trim hedges of crisp and sparkling holly--the +sound of near but unseen rivulets, and the songs of foliage-hidden +birds--the white cottages almost buried amidst trees, like happy human +nests--the ivy-covered church, with its old grey spire "pointing up to +heaven," and its gilded vane gleaming in the light--the sturdy peasants +with their instruments of healthy toil--the white-capped matrons +bleaching their newly-washed garments in the sun, and throwing them like +snow-patches on green slopes, or glossy garden shrubs--the sun-browned +village girls, resting idly on their round elbows at small open +casements, their faces in sweet keeping with the trellised flowers:--all +formed a combination of enchantments that would mock the happiest +imitative efforts of human art. But though the bare enumeration of the +details of this English picture, will, perhaps, awaken many dear +recollections in the reader's mind, I have omitted by far the most +interesting feature of the whole scene--<i>the rosy children, loitering +about the cottage gates, or tumbling gaily on the warm grass</i>.<a href="#note005">[005]</a><a href="#note006">[006]</a></p> + +<p>Two scraps of verse of a similar tendency shall follow this prose +description:--</p> + +<p>AN ENGLISH LANDSCAPE.</p> + +<pre> + I stood, upon an English hill, + And saw the far meandering rill, + A vein of liquid silver, run + Sparkling in the summer sun; + While adown that green hill's side, + And along the valley wide, + Sheep, like small clouds touched with light, + Or like little breakers bright, + Sprinkled o'er a smiling sea, + Seemed to float at liberty. + + Scattered all around were seen, + White cots on the meadows green. + Open to the sky and breeze, + Or peeping through the sheltering trees, + On a light gate, loosely hung, + Laughing children gaily swung; + Oft their glad shouts, shrill and clear, + Came upon the startled ear. + Blended with the tremulous bleat, + Of truant lambs, or voices sweet, + Of birds, that take us by surprise, + And mock the quickly-searching eyes. + + Nearer sat a fair-haired boy, + Whistling with a thoughtless joy; + A shepherd's crook was in his hand, + Emblem of a mild command; + And upon his rounded cheek + Were hues that ripened apples streak. + Disease, nor pain, nor sorrowing, + Touched that small Arcadian king; + His sinless subjects wandered free-- + Confusion without anarchy. + Happier he upon his throne. + The breezy hill--though all alone-- + Than the grandest monarchs proud + Who mistrust the kneeling crowd. + + On a gently rising ground, + The lovely valley's farthest bound, + Bordered by an ancient wood, + The cots in thicker clusters stood; + And a church, uprose between, + Hallowing the peaceful scene. + Distance o'er its old walls threw + A soft and dim cerulean hue, + While the sun-lit gilded spire + Gleamed as with celestial fire! + + I have crossed the ocean wave, + Haply for a foreign grave; + Haply never more to look + On a British hill or brook; + Haply never more to hear + Sounds unto my childhood dear; + Yet if sometimes on my soul + Bitter thoughts beyond controul + Throw a shade more dark than night, + Soon upon the mental sight + Flashes forth a pleasant ray + Brighter, holier than the day; + And unto that happy mood + All seems beautiful and good. +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>LINES TO A LADY,</p> + +<p>WHO PRESENTED THE AUTHOR WITH SOME ENGLISH FRUITS AND FLOWERS.</p> + +<pre> + Green herbs and gushing springs in some hot waste + Though, grateful to the traveller's sight and taste, + Seem far less sweet and fair than fruits and flowers + That breathe, in foreign lands, of English bowers. + + Thy gracious gift, dear lady, well recalls + Sweet scenes of home,--the white cot's trellised walls-- + The trim red garden path--the rustic seat-- + The jasmine-covered arbour, fit retreat + For hearts that love repose. Each spot displays + Some long-remembered charm. In sweet amaze + I feel as one who from a weary dream + Of exile wakes, and sees the morning beam + Illume the glorious clouds of every hue + That float o'er scenes his happy childhood knew. + + How small a spark may kindle fancy's flame + And light up all the past! The very same + Glad sounds and sights that charmed my heart of old + Arrest me now--I hear them and behold. + + Ah! yonder is the happy circle seated + Within, the favorite bower! I am greeted + With joyous shouts; my rosy boys have heard + A father's voice--their little hearts are stirred + With eager hope of some new toy or treat + And on they rush, with never-resting feet! + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + Gone is the sweet illusion--like a scene + Formed by the western vapors, when between + The dusky earth, and day's departing light + The curtain falls of India's sudden night. +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>The verdant carpet embroidered with little stars of gold and silver--the +short-grown, smooth, and close-woven, but most delicate and elastic +fresh sward--so soothing to the dazzled eye, so welcome to the wearied +limbs--so suggestive of innocent and happy thoughts,--so refreshing to +the freed visitor, long pent up in the smoky city--is surely no where to +be seen in such exquisite perfection as on the broad meadows and softly- +swelling hills of England. And perhaps in no country in the world could +<i>pic-nic</i> holiday-makers or playful children with more perfect security +of life and health stroll about or rest upon Earth's richly enamelled +floor from sunrise to sunset on a summer's day. No Englishman would dare +to stretch himself at full length and address himself to sleep upon an +Oriental meadow unless he were perfectly indifferent to life itself and +could see nothing terrible in the hostility of the deadliest reptiles. +When wading through the long grass and thick jungles of Bengal, he is +made to acknowledge the full force of the true and beautiful +expression--"<i>In the midst of life we are in death</i>." The British Indian +exile on his return home is delighted with the "sweet security" of his +native fields. He may then feel with Wordsworth how</p> + +<pre> + Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head. + And dear <i>the velvet greensward</i> to his tread. +</pre> + +<p>Or he may exclaim in the words of poor Keats--now slumbering under a +foreign turf--</p> + +<pre> + Happy is England! I could be content + To see no other verdure than her own. +</pre> + +<p>It is a pleasing proof of the fine moral influence of natural scenery +that the most ceremonious strangers can hardly be long seated together +in the open air on the "velvet greensward" without casting off for a +while the cold formalities of artificial life, and becoming as frank and +social as ingenuous school-boys. Nature breathes peace and geniality +into almost every human heart.</p> + +<p>"John Thelwall," says Coleridge, "had something very good about him. We +were sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks when I said to him +'Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in!' 'Nay, Citizen +Samuel,' replied he, 'it is rather a place to make us forget that there +is any necessity for treason!'"</p> + +<p>Leigh Hunt, who always looks on nature with the eye of a true painter +and the imagination of a true poet, has represented with delightful +force and vividness some of those accidents of light and shade that +diversify an English meadow.</p> + +<p>RAIN AND SUNSHINE IN MAY.</p> + +<p>"Can any thing be more lovely, than the meadows between the rains of +May, when the sun smites them on the sudden like a painter, and they +laugh up at him, as if he had lighted a loving cheek!</p> + +<p>I speak of a season when the returning threats of cold and the resisting +warmth of summer time, make robust mirth in the air; when the winds +imitate on a sudden the vehemence of winter; and silver-white clouds are +abrupt in their coming down and shadows on the grass chase one another, +panting, over the fields, like a pursuit of spirits. With undulating +necks they pant forward, like hounds or the leopard.</p> + +<p>See! the cloud is after the light, gliding over the country like the +shadow of a god; and now the meadows are lit up here and there with +sunshine, as if the soul of Titian were standing in heaven, and playing +his fancies on them. Green are the trees in shadow; but the trees in the +sun how twenty-fold green <i>they</i> are--rich and variegated with gold!"</p> + +<p>One of the many exquisite out-of-doors enjoyments for the observers of +nature, is the sight of an English harvest. How cheering it is to behold +the sickles flashing in the sun, as the reapers with well sinewed arm, +and with a sweeping movement, mow down the close-arrayed ranks of the +harvest field! What are "the rapture of the strife" and all the "pomp, +pride and circumstance of glorious war," that bring death to some and +agony and grief to others, compared with the green and golden trophies +of the honest Husbandman whose bloodless blade makes no wife a widow, no +child an orphan,--whose office is not to spread horror and desolation +through shrieking cities, but to multiply and distribute the riches of +nature over a smiling land.</p> + +<p>But let us quit the open fields for a time, and turn again to the +flowery retreats of</p> + +<pre> + Retired Leisure + That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. +</pre> + +<p>In all ages, in all countries, in all creeds, a garden is represented as +the scene not only of earthly but of celestial enjoyment. The ancients +had their Elysian Fields and the garden of the Hesperides, the Christian +has his Garden of Eden, the Mahommedan his Paradise of groves and +flowers and crystal fountains and black eyed Houries.</p> + +<p>"God Almighty," says Lord Bacon, "first planted a garden; and indeed it +is the purest of all pleasures: it is the greatest refreshment to the +spirits of man." Bacon, though a utilitarian philosopher, was such a +lover of flowers that he was never satisfied unless he saw them in +almost every room of his house, and when he came to discourse of them in +his Essays, his thoughts involuntarily moved harmonious numbers. How +naturally the following prose sentence in Bacon's Essay on Gardens +almost resolves itself into verse.</p> + +<p>"For the heath which was the first part of our plot, I wish it to be +framed as much as may be to a natural wildness. Trees I would have none +in it, but some thickets made only of sweet briar and honeysuckle, and +some wild vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, strawberries +and primroses; for these are sweet, and prosper in the shade."</p> + +<pre> + "For the heath which was the third part of our plot-- + I wish it to be framed + As much as may be to a natural wildness. + Trees I'd have none in't, but some thickets made + Only of sweet-briar and honey-suckle, + And some wild vine amongst; and the ground set + With violets, strawberries, and primroses; + For these are sweet and prosper in the shade." +</pre> + +<p>It has been observed that the love of gardens is the only passion which +increases with age. It is generally the most indulged in the two +extremes of life. In middle age men are often too much involved in the +affairs of the busy world fully to appreciate the tranquil pleasures in +the gift of Flora. Flowers are the toys of the young and a source of the +sweetest and serenest enjoyments for the old. But there is no season of +life for which they are unfitted and of which they cannot increase the +charm.</p> + +<p>"Give me," says the poet Rogers, "a garden well kept, however small, two +or three spreading trees and a mind at ease, and I defy the world." The +poet adds that he would not have his garden, too much extended. He seems +to think it possible to have too much of a good thing. "Three acres of +flowers and a regiment of gardeners," he says, "bring no more pleasure +than a sufficiency." "A hundred thousand roses," he adds, "which we look +at <i>en masse</i>, do not identify themselves in the same manner as even a +very small border; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly +attuned, the little cottage-garden may give him more real delight than +belongs to the owner of a thousand acres." In a smaller garden "we +become acquainted, as it were," says the same poet, "and even form +friendships with, individual flowers." It is delightful to observe how +nature thus adjusts the inequalities of fortune and puts the poor man, +in point of innocent happiness, on a level with the rich. The man of the +most moderate means may cultivate many elegant tastes, and may have +flowers in his little garden that the greatest sovereign in the world +might enthusiastically admire. Flowers are never vulgar. A rose from a +peasant's patch of ground is as fresh and elegant and fragrant as if it +had been nurtured in a Royal parterre, and it would not be out of place +in the richest porcelain vase of the most aristocratical drawing-room in +Europe. The poor man's flower is a present for a princess, and of all +gifts it is the one least liable to be rejected even by the haughty. It +might he worn on the fair brow or bosom of Queen Victoria with a nobler +grace than the costliest or most elaborate production of the goldsmith +or the milliner.</p> + +<p>The majority of mankind, in the most active spheres of life, have +moments in which they sigh for rural retirement, and seldom dream of +such a retreat without making a garden the leading charm of it. Sir +Henry Wotton says that Lord Bacon's garden was one of the best that he +had seen either at home or abroad. Evelyn, the author of "Sylva, or a +Discourse of Forest Trees," dwells with fond admiration, and a pleasing +egotism, on the charms of his own beautiful and highly cultivated estate +at Wooton in the county of Surrey. He tells us that the house is large +and ancient and is "sweetly environed with delicious streams and +venerable woods." "I will say nothing," he continues, "of the air, +because the pre-eminence is universally given to Surrey, the soil being +dry and sandy; but I should speak much of the gardens, fountains and +groves that adorn it, were they not generally known to be amongst the +most natural, and (till this later and universal luxury of the whole +nation, since abounding in such expenses) the most magnificent that +England afforded, and which indeed gave one of the first examples to +that elegancy, since so much in vogue and followed, for the managing of +their waters and other elegancies of that nature." Before he came into +the possession of his paternal estate he resided at <i>Say's Court</i>, near +Deptford, an estate which he possessed by purchase, and where he had a +superb holly hedge four hundred feet long, nine feet high and five feet +broad. Of this hedge, he was particularly proud, and he exultantly asks, +"Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the +kind?" When the Czar of Muscovy visited England in 1698 to instruct +himself in the art of ship-building, he had the use of Evelyn's house +and garden, at <i>Say's Court</i>, and while there did so much damage to the +latter that the owner loudly and bitterly complained. At last the +Government gave Evelyn £150 as an indemnification. Czar Peter's favorite +amusement was to ride in a wheel barrow through what its owner had once +called the "impregnable hedge of holly." Evelyn was passionately fond of +gardening. "The life and felicity of an excellent gardener," he +observes, "is preferable to all other diversions." His faith in the art +of Landscape-gardening was unwavering. It could <i>remove mountains</i>. Here +is an extract from his Diary.</p> + +<pre> + "Gave his brother some directions about his garden" (at Wooton + Surrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, for + which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and + thickets and a moat within ten yards of the house." +</pre> + +<p>No sooner said than done. His brother dug down the mountain and +"flinging it into a rapid stream (which carried away the sand) filled up +the moat and levelled that noble area where now the garden and fountain +is."</p> + +<p>Though Evelyn dearly loved a garden, his chief delight was not in +flowers but in forest trees, and he was more anxious to improve the +growth of plants indigenous to the soil than to introduce exotics.<a href="#note007">[007]</a></p> + +<p>Sir William Temple was so attached to his garden, that he left +directions in his will that his heart should be buried there. It was +enclosed in a silver box and placed under a sun-dial.</p> + +<p>Dr. Thomson Reid, the eminent Scottish metaphysician, used to be found +working in his garden in his eighty-seventh year.</p> + +<p>The name of Chatham is in the long list of eminent men who have enjoyed +a garden. We are told that "he loved the country: took peculiar pleasure +in gardening; and had an extremely happy taste in laying out grounds." +What a delightful thing it must have been for that great statesman, thus +to relieve his mind from the weight of public care in the midst of quiet +bowers planted and trained by his own hand!</p> + +<p>Burton, in his <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, notices the attractions of a +garden as amongst the finest remedies for depression of the mind. I must +give the following extracts from his quaint but interesting pages.</p> + +<pre> + "To see the pleasant fields, the crystal fountains, + And take the gentle air amongst the mountains. +</pre> + +<p>"To walk amongst orchards, gardens, bowers, mounts, and arbours, +artificial wildernesses, green thickets, arches, groves, lawns, +rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, (like that +Antiochian Daphne,) brooks, pools, fishponds, between wood and water, in +a fair meadow, by a river side, <i>ubi variae avium cantationes, florum +colores, pratorum frutices</i>, &c. to disport in some pleasant plain, or +park, run up a steep hill sometimes, or sit in a shady seat, must needs +be a delectable recreation. <i>Hortus principis et domus ad delectationem +facta, cum sylvâ, monte et piscinâ, vulgò la montagna</i>: the prince's +garden at Ferrara, Schottus highly magnifies, with the groves, +mountains, ponds, for a delectable prospect; he was much affected with +it; a Persian paradise, or pleasant park, could not be more delectable +in his sight. St. Bernard, in the description of his monastery, is +almost ravished with the pleasures of it. "A sick man (saith he) sits +upon a green bank, and when the dog-star parcheth the plains, and dries +up rivers, he lies in a shady bower," <i>Fronde sub arborea ferventia +temperat astra</i>, "and feeds his eyes with variety of objects, herbs, +trees, to comfort his misery; he receives many delightsome smells, and +fills his ears with that sweet and various harmony of birds; <i>good God</i>, +(saith he), <i>what a company of pleasures hast thou made for man!</i>"</p> + +<hr> + +<p>"The country hath his recreations, the city his several gymnics and +exercises, May games, feasts, wakes, and merry meetings to solace +themselves; the very being in the country; that life itself is a +sufficient recreation to some men, to enjoy such pleasures, as those old +patriarchs did. Dioclesian, the emperor, was so much affected with it, +that he gave over his sceptre, and turned gardener. Constantine wrote +twenty books of husbandry. Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him, +bragged of nothing more than of his orchard, <i>hi sunt ordines mei</i>. What +shall I say of Cincinnatus, Cato, Tully, and many such? how they have +been pleased with it, to prune, plant, inoculate and graft, to show so +many several kinds of pears, apples, plums, peaches, &c."</p> + +<p>The Romans of all ranks made use of flowers as ornaments and emblems, +but they were not generally so fond of directing or assisting the +gardener, or taking the spade or hoe into their own hands, as are the +British peasantry, gentry and nobility of the present day. They were not +amateur Florists. They prized highly their fruit trees and pastures and +cool grottoes and umbrageous groves; but they expended comparatively +little time, skill or taste upon the flower-garden. Even their love of +nature, though thoroughly genuine as far as it went, did not imply that +minute and exact knowledge of her charms which characterizes some of our +best British poets. They had no Thompson or Cowper. Their country seats +were richer in architectural than floral beauty. Tully's Tuscan Villa, +so fondly and minutely described by the proprietor himself, would appear +to little advantage in the eyes of a true worshipper of Flora, if +compared with Pope's retreat at Twickenham. The ancients had a taste for +the <i>rural</i>, not for the <i>gardenesque</i>, nor perhaps even for the +<i>picturesque</i>. The English have a taste for all three. Hence they have +good landscape-gardeners and first-rate landscape-painters. The old +Romans had neither. But though, some of our Spitalfields weavers have +shown a deeper love, and perhaps even a finer taste, for flowers, than +were exhibited by the citizens of Rome, abundant evidence is furnished +to us by the poets in all ages and in all countries that nature, in some +form or another has ever charmed the eye and the heart of man. The +following version of a famous passage in Virgil, especially the lines in +Italics, may give the English reader some idea of a Roman's dream of</p> + +<p>RURAL HAPPINESS.</p> + +<pre> + Ah! happy Swains! if they their bliss but knew, + Whom, far from boisterous war, Earth's bosom true + With easy food supplies. If they behold + No lofty dome its gorgeous gates unfold + And pour at morn from all its chambers wide + Of flattering visitants the mighty tide; + Nor gaze on beauteous columns richly wrought, + Or tissued robes, or busts from Corinth brought; + Nor their white wool with Tyrian poison soil, + Nor taint with Cassia's bark their native oil; + <i>Yet peace is theirs; a life true bliss that yields; + And various wealth; leisure mid ample fields, + Grottoes, and living lakes, and vallies green, + And lowing herds; and 'neath a sylvan screen, + Delicious slumbers. There the lawn and cave + With beasts of chase abound.</i> The young ne'er crave + A prouder lot; their patient toil is cheered; + Their Gods are worshipped and their sires revered; + And there when Justice passed from earth away + She left the latest traces of her sway. +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>Lord Bacon was perhaps the first Englishman who endeavored to reform the +old system of English gardening, and to show that it was contrary to +good taste and an insult to nature. "As for making knots or figures," he +says, "with divers colored earths, that may lie under the windows of the +house on that side on which the garden stands, they be but toys: you may +see as good sights many times in tarts." Bacon here alludes, I suppose, +to the old Dutch fashion of dividing flowerbeds into many compartments, +and instead of filling them with flowers, covering one with red brick +dust, another with charcoal, a third with yellow sand, a fourth with +chalk, a fifth with broken China, and others with green glass, or with +spars and ores. But Milton, in his exquisite description of the garden +of Eden, does not allude to the same absurd fashion when he speaks of +"curious knots,"</p> + +<pre> + Which not nice art, + In beds and <i>curious knots</i>, but nature boon + Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain. +</pre> + +<p>By these <i>curious knots</i> the poet seems to allude, not to figures of +"divers colored earth," but to the artificial and complicated +arrangements and divisions of flowers and flower-beds.</p> + +<p>Though Bacon went not quite so freely to nature as our latest landscape- +gardeners have done, he made the <i>first step</i> in the right direction and +deserves therefore the compliment which Mason has paid him in his poem +of <i>The English Garden</i>.</p> + +<pre> + On thy realm + Philosophy his sovereign lustre spread; + Yet did he deign to light with casual glance + The wilds of Taste, Yes, sagest Verulam, + 'Twas thine to banish from the royal groves + Each childish vanity of crisped knot<a href="#note008">[008]</a> + + And sculptured foliage; to the lawn restore + Its ample space, and bid it feast the sight + With verdure pure, unbroken, unabridged; + For verdure soothes the eye, as roseate sweets + The smell, or music's melting strains the ear. +</pre> + +<p>Yes--"<i>verdure soothes the eye</i>:"--and the mind too. Bacon himself +observes, that "nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass +kept finely shorn." Mason slightly qualifies his commendation of "the +sage" by admitting that he had not quite completed his emancipation from +the bad taste of his day.</p> + +<pre> + Witness his high arched hedge + In pillored state by carpentry upborn, + With colored mirrors decked and prisoned birds. + But, when our step has paced the proud parterre, + And reached the heath, then Nature glads our eye + Sporting in all her lovely carelessness, + There smiles in varied tufts the velvet rose, + There flaunts the gadding woodbine, swells the ground + In gentle hillocks, and around its sides + Through blossomed shades the secret pathway steals. +</pre> + +<div><i>The English Garden</i>.</div> + +<p>In one of the notes to <i>The English Garden</i> it is stated that "Bacon was +the prophet, Milton the herald of modern Gardening; and Addison, Pope, +and Kent the champions of true taste." Kent was by profession both a +Painter and a Landscape-Gardener. Addison who had a pretty little +retreat at Bilton, near Rugby, evinces in most of his occasional +allusions to gardens a correct judgment. He complains that even in <i>his</i> +time our British gardeners, instead of humouring nature, loved to +deviate from it as much as possible. The system of verdant sculpture had +not gone out of fashion. Our trees still rose in cones, globes, and +pyramids. The work of the scissors was on every plant and bush. It was +Pope, however, who did most to bring the topiary style into contempt and +to encourage a more natural taste, by his humorous paper in the +<i>Guardian</i> and his poetical Epistle to the Earl of Burlington. Gray, the +poet, observes in one of his letters, that "our skill in gardening, or +rather laying out grounds, is the only taste we can call our own; the +only proof of original talent in matters of pleasure. This is no small +honor to us;" he continues, "since neither France nor Italy, has ever +had the least notion of it." "Whatever may have been reported, whether +truly or falsely" (says a contributor to <i>The World</i>) "of the Chinese +gardens, it is certain that we are the first of the Europeans who have +founded this taste; and we have been so fortunate in the genius of those +who have had the direction of some of the finest spots of ground, that +we may now boast a success equal to that profusion of expense which has +been destined to promote the rapid progress of this happy enthusiasm. +Our gardens are already the astonishment of foreigners, and, in +proportion as they accustom themselves to consider and understand them +will become their admiration." The periodical from which this is taken +was published exactly a century ago, and the writer's prophecy has been +long verified. Foreigners send to us for gardeners to help them to lay +out their grounds in the English fashion. And we are told by the writer +of an interesting article on gardens, in the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, that +"the lawns at Paris, to say nothing of Naples, are regularly irrigated +to keep up even the semblance of English verdure; and at the gardens of +Versailles, and Caserta, near Naples, the walks have been supplied from +the Kensington gravel-pits." "It is not probably known," adds the same +writer, "that among our exportations every year is a large quantity of +evergreens for the markets of France and Germany, and that there are +some nurserymen almost wholly engaged in this branch of trade."</p> + +<p>Pomfret, a poet of small powers, if a poet at all, has yet contrived to +produce a popular composition in verse--<i>The Choice</i>--because he has +touched with great good fortune on some of the sweetest domestic hopes +and enjoyments of his countrymen.</p> + +<pre> + If Heaven the grateful liberty would give + That I might choose my method how to live; + And all those hours propitious Fate should lend + In blissful ease and satisfaction spend; + Near some fair town I'd have a private seat + Built uniform; not little; nor too great: + Better if on a rising ground it stood, + On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood. +</pre> + +<div><i>The Choice</i>.</div> + +<p>Pomfret perhaps illustrates the general taste when he places his garden +"<i>near some fair town</i>." Our present laureate, though a truly inspired +poet, and a genuine lover of Nature even in her remotest retreats, has +the garden of his preference, "<i>not quite beyond the busy world</i>."</p> + +<pre> + Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite + Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love, + News from the humming city comes to it + In sound of funeral or of marriage bells; + And sitting muffled in dark leaves you hear + The windy clanging of the minster clock; + Although between it and the garden lies + A league of grass. +</pre> + +<p>Even "sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh" are often pleasing +when mellowed by the space of air through which they pass.</p> + +<pre> + 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the <i>sound</i>. +</pre> + +<p>Shelley, in one of his sweetest poems, speaking of a scene in the +neighbourhood of Naples, beautifully says:--</p> + +<pre> + Like many a voice of one delight, + The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, + <i>The city's voice itself is soft</i>, like solitude's. +</pre> + +<p>No doubt the feeling that we are <i>near</i> the crowd but not <i>in</i> it, may +deepen the sense of our own happy rural seclusion and doubly endear that +pensive leisure in which we can "think down hours to moments," and in</p> + +<pre> + This our life, exempt from public haunt, + Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, + Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. +</pre> + +<div><i>Shakespeare</i>.</div> + +<p>Besides, to speak truly, few men, however studious or philosophical, +desire a total isolation from the world. It is pleasant to be able to +take a sort of side glance at humanity, even when we are most in love +with nature, and to feel that we can join our fellow creatures again +when the social feeling returns upon us. Man was not made to live alone. +Cowper, though he clearly loved retirement and a garden, did not desire +to have the pleasure entirely to himself. "Grant me," he says, "a friend +in my retreat."</p> + +<pre> + To whom to whisper solitude is sweet. +</pre> + +<p>Cowper lived and died a bachelor. In the case of a married man and a +father, garden delights are doubled by the presence of the family and +friends, if wife and children happen to be what they should be, and the +friends are genuine and genial.</p> + +<p>All true poets delight in gardens. The truest that ever lived spent his +latter days at New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. He had a spacious and +beautiful garden. Charles Knight tells us that "the Avon washed its +banks; and within its enclosures it had its sunny terraces and green +lawns, its pleached alleys and honeysuckle bowers," In this garden +Shakespeare planted with his own hands his celebrated Mulberry tree. It +was a noble specimen of the black Mulberry introduced into England in +1548<a href="#note009">[009]</a>. In 1605, James I. issued a Royal edict recommending the +cultivation of silkworms and offering packets of mulberry seeds to those +amongst his subjects who were willing to sow them. Shakespeare's tree +was planted in 1609. Mr. Loudon, observes that the black Mulberry has +been known from the earliest records of antiquity and that it is twice +mentioned in the Bible: namely, in the second Book of Samuel and in the +Psalms. When New Place was in the possession of Sir Hough Clopton, who +was proud of its interesting association with the history of our great +poet, not only were Garrick and Macklin most hospitably entertained +under the Mulberry tree, but all strangers on a proper application were +admitted to a sight of it. But when Sir Hough Clopton was succeeded by +the Reverend Francis Gastrell, that gentleman, to save himself the +trouble of showing the tree to visitors, had "the gothic barbarity" to +cut down and root up that interesting--indeed <i>sacred</i> memorial--of the +Pride of the British Isles. The people of Stratford were so enraged at +this sacrilege that they broke Mr. Gastrell's windows. That prosaic +personage at last found the place too hot for him, and took his +departure from a town whose inhabitants "doated on his very absence;" +but before he went he completed the fall sum of his sins against good +taste and good feeling by pulling to the ground the house in which +Shakespeare had lived and died. This was done, it is said, out of sheer +spite to the towns-people, with some of whom Mr. Gastrell had had a +dispute about the rate at which the house was taxed. His change of +residence was no great relief to him, for the whole British public felt +sorely aggrieved, and wherever he went he was peppered with all sorts of +squibs and satires. He "slid into verse," and "hitched in a rhyme."</p> + +<pre> + Sacred to ridicule his whole life long, + And the sad burden of a merry song. +</pre> + +<p>Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker, got possession of the fragments of +Shakespeare's Mulberry tree, and worked them into all sorts of elegant +ornaments and toys, and disposed of them at great prices. The +corporation of Stratford presented Garrick with the freedom of the town +in a box made of the wood of this famous tree, and the compliment seems +to have suggested to him his public festival or pageant in honor of the +poet. This Jubilee, which was got up with great zeal, and at great +expense and trouble, was attended by vast throngs of the admirers of +Shakespeare from all parts of the kingdom. It was repeated on the stage +and became so popular as a theatrical exhibition that it was represented +night after night for more than half a season to crowded audiences.</p> + +<p>Upon the subject of gardens, let us hear what has been said by the self- +styled "melancholy Cowley." When in the smoky city pent, amidst the busy +hum of men, he sighed unceasingly for some green retreat. As he paced +the crowded thorough-fares of London, he thought of the velvet turf and +the pure air of the country. His imagination carried him into secluded +groves or to the bank of a murmuring river, or into some trim and quiet +garden. "I never," he says, "had any other desire so strong and so like +to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be +master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate +conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life +only to the culture of them and the study of nature," The late Miss +Mitford, whose writings breathe so freshly of the nature that she loved +so dearly, realized for herself a similar desire. It is said that she +had the cottage of a peasant with the garden of a Duchess. Cowley is not +contented with expressing in plain prose his appreciation of garden +enjoyments. He repeatedly alludes to them in verse.</p> + +<pre> + Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil's praise) + The old Corycian yeoman passed his days; + Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent; + Th' ambassadors, which the great emperor sent + To offer him a crown, with wonder found + The reverend gardener, hoeing of his ground; + Unwillingly and slow and discontent + From his loved cottage to a throne he went; + And oft he stopped, on his triumphant way: + And oft looked back: and oft was heard to say + Not without sighs, Alas! I there forsake + A happier kingdom than I go to take. +</pre> + +<div><i>Lib. IV. Plantarum</i>.</div> + +<p>Here is a similar allusion by the same poet to the delights which great +men amongst the ancients have taken in a rural retirement.</p> + +<pre> + Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walk + In the Salonian garden's noble shade + Which by his own imperial hands was made, + I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk + With the ambassadors, who come in vain + To entice him to a throne again. + + "If I, my friends," said he, "should to you show + All the delights which in these gardens grow, + 'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay, + Than 'tis that you should carry me away: + And trust me not, my friends, if every day + I walk not here with more delight, + + Than ever, after the most happy sight + In triumph to the Capitol I rode, + To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god," +</pre> + +<div><i>The Garden</i>.</div> + +<p>Cowley does not omit the important moral which a garden furnishes.</p> + +<pre> + Where does the wisdom and the power divine + In a more bright and sweet reflection shine? + Where do we finer strokes and colors see + Of the Creator's real poetry. + Than when we with attention look + Upon the third day's volume of the book? + If we could open and intend our eye + <i>We all, like Moses, might espy, + E'en in a bush, the radiant Deity</i>. +</pre> + +<p>In Leigh Hunt's charming book entitled <i>The Town</i>, I find the following +notice of the partiality of poets for houses with gardens attached to +them:--</p> + +<p>"It is not surprizing that <i>garden-houses</i> as they were called; should +have formerly abounded in Holborn, in Bunhill Row, and other (at that +time) suburban places. We notice the fact, in order to observe <i>how fond +the poets were of occupying houses of this description. Milton seems to +have made a point of having one</i>. The only London residence of Chapman +which is known, was in Old Street Road; doubtless at that time a rural +suburb. Beaumont and Fletcher's house, on the Surrey side of the Thames, +(for they lived as well as wrote together,) most probably had a garden; +and Dryden's house in Gerard Street looked into the garden of the +mansion built by the Earls of Leicester. A tree, or even a flower, put +in a window in the streets of a great city, (and the London citizens, to +their credit, are fond of flowers,) affects the eye something in the +same way as the hand-organs, which bring unexpected music to the ear. +They refresh the common-places of life, shed a harmony through the busy +discord, and appeal to those first sources of emotion, which are +associated with the remembrance of all that is young and innocent."</p> + +<p>Milton must have been a passionate lover of flowers and flower-gardens +or he could never have exhibited the exquisite taste and genial feeling +which characterize all the floral allusions and descriptions with which +so much of his poetry is embellished. He lived for some time in a house +in Westminster over-looking the Park. The same house was tenanted by +Jeremy Bentham for forty years. It would be difficult to meet with any +two individuals of more opposite temperaments than the author of +<i>Paradise Lost</i> and the Utilitarian Philosopher. There is or was a stone +in the wall at the end of the garden inscribed TO THE PRINCE OF POETS. +Two beautiful cotton trees overarched the inscription, "and to show" +says Hazlitt, (who subsequently lived in the same house himself,) "how +little the refinements of taste or fancy entered Bentham's system, he +proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the +garden, where he had breathed an air of truth and heaven for near half a +century, into a paltry Chreistomathic School, and to make Milton's house +(the cradle of <i>Paradise Lost</i>) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled +stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and +forwards to it with their cloven hoofs!"</p> + +<p>No poet, ancient or modern, has described a garden on a large scale in +so noble a style as Milton. He has anticipated the finest conceptions of +the latest landscape-gardeners, and infinitely surpassed all the +accounts we have met with of the gardens of the olden time before us. +His Paradise is a</p> + +<pre> + Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned + Or of revived Adonis or renowned + Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son + Or that, not mystic, where the sapient King + Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse<a href="#note010">[010]</a> +</pre> + +<p>The description is too long to quote entire, but I must make room for a +delightful extract. Familiar as it must be to all lovers of poetry, who +will object to read it again and again? Genuine poetry is like a +masterpiece of the painter's art:--we can gaze with admiration for the +hundredth time on a noble picture. The mind and the eye are never +satiated with the truly beautiful. "A thing of beauty is a joy for +ever."</p> + +<p>PARADISE.<a href="#note011">[011]</a></p> + +<pre> + So on he fares, and to the border comes + Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, + Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, + As with a rural mound, the champaign head + Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides + With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, + Access denied: and overhead up grew + Insuperable height of loftiest shade, + Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm, + A sylvan scene; and as, the ranks ascend + Shade above shade, a woody theatre + Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops, + The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung: + Which to our general sire gave prospect large + Into his nether empire neighbouring round; + And higher than that wall a circling row + Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit, + Blossoms and fruits at once, of golden hue, + Appear'd, with gay enamell'd colours mix'd; + On which the sun more glad impress'd his beams, + Than on fair evening cloud, or humid bow. + When God hath shower'd the earth; so lovely seem'd + That landscape: and of pure now purer air + Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires + Vernal delight and joy, able to drive + All sadness but despair: now gentle gales, + Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense + Native perfumes and whisper whence they stole + Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail + Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past + Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow + Sabean odours from the spicy shore + Of Araby the Blest; with such delay + Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league + Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles. + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + Southward through Eden went a river large, + Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill + Pass'd underneath ingulf'd; for God had thrown + That mountain as his garden mould, high raised + Upon the rapid current, which through veins + Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn, + Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill + Water'd the garden; thence united fell + Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, + Which from his darksome passage now appears; + And now, divided into four main streams, + Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm + And country, whereof here needs no account; + But rather to tell how, if art could tell, + How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, + Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, + With mazy error under pendent shades, + Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed + Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art + In beds and curious knots, but nature boon + Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, + Both where the morning sun first warmly smote + The open field, and where the unpierced shade + Imbrown'd the noontide bowers; thus was this place + A happy rural seat of various view; + Groves whose rich, trees wept odorous gums and balm; + Others whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind, + Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, + If true, here only, and of delicious taste: + Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks + Grazing the tender herb, were interposed; + Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap + Of some irriguous valley spread her store, + Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose: + Another side, umbrageous grots and caves + Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine + Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps + Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall + Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake, + That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd + Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams. + The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs, + Breathing the smell of field and grove attune, + The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, + Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, + Led on the eternal Spring. +</pre> + +<p>Pope in his grounds at Twickenham, and Shenstone in his garden farm of +the Leasowes, taught their countrymen to understand how much taste and +refinement of soul may be connected with the laying out of gardens and +the cultivation of flowers. I am sorry to learn that the famous retreats +of these poets are not now what they were. The lovely nest of the little +Nightingale of Twickenham has fallen into vulgar hands. And when Mr. +Loudon visited (in 1831) the once beautiful grounds of Shenstone, he +"found them in a state of indescribable neglect and ruin."</p> + +<p>Pope said that of all his works that of which he was proudest was his +garden. It was of but five acres, or perhaps less, but to this he is +said to have given a charming variety. He enumerates amongst the friends +who assisted him in the improvement of his grounds, the gallant Earl of +Peterborough "whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines."</p> + +<pre> + Know, all the distant din that world can keep, + Rolls o'er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep. + There my retreat the best companions grace + Chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place. + There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl + The feast of reason and the flow of soul; + And he whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines + Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines; + Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain + Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain. +</pre> + +<p>Frederick Prince of Wales took a lively interest in Pope's tasteful +Tusculanum and made him a present of some urns or vases either for his +"laurel circus or to terminate his points." His famous grotto, which he +is so fond of alluding to, was excavated to avoid an inconvenience. His +property lying on both sides of the public highway, he contrived his +highly ornamented passage under the road to preserve privacy and to +connect the two portions of his estate.</p> + +<p>The poet has given us in one of his letters a long and lively +description of his subterranean embellishments. But his verse will live +longer than his prose. He has immortalized this grotto, so radiant with +spars and ores and shells, in the following poetical inscription:--</p> + +<pre> + Thou, who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent wave + Shines a broad mirror through the shadowy cave, + Where lingering drops from mineral roofs distil, + And pointed crystals break the sparkling rill, + Unpolished gems no ray on pride bestow, + And latent metals innocently glow, + Approach! Great Nature studiously behold, + And eye the mine without a wish for gold + Approach--but awful! Lo, the Egerian grot, + Where, nobly pensive, ST JOHN sat and thought, + Where British sighs from dying WYNDHAM stole, + And the bright flame was shot thro' MARCHMONT'S soul; + Let such, such only, tread this sacred floor + Who dare to love their country, and be poor. +</pre> + +<p>Horace Walpole, speaking of the poet's garden, tells us that "the +passing through the gloom from the grotto to the opening day, the +retiring and again assembling shades, the dusky groves, the larger lawn, +and the solemnity at the cypresses that led up to his mother's tomb, +were managed with exquisite judgment."</p> + +<pre> + Cliveden's proud alcove, + The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love, +</pre> + +<p>alluded to by Pope in his sketch of the character of Villiers, Duke of +Buckingham, though laid out by Kent, was probably improved by the poet's +suggestions. Walpole seems to think that the beautiful grounds at +Rousham, laid out for General Dormer, were planned on the model of the +garden at Twickenham, at least the opening and retiring "shades of +Venus's Vale." And these grounds at Rousham were pronounced "the most +engaging of all Kent's works." It is said that the design of the garden +at Carlton House, was borrowed from that of Pope.</p> + +<p>Wordsworth was correct in his observation that "Landscape gardening is a +liberal art akin to the arts of poetry and painting." Walpole describes +it as "an art that realizes painting and improves nature." "Mahomet," he +adds, "imagined an Elysium, but Kent created many."</p> + +<p>Pope's mansion was not a very spacious one, but it was large enough for +a private gentleman of inexpensive habits. After the poet's death it was +purchased by Sir William Stanhope who enlarged both the house and +garden.<a href="#note012">[012]</a> A bust of Pope, in white marble, has been placed over an +arched way with the following inscription from the pen of Lord Nugent:</p> + +<pre> + The humble roof, the garden's scanty line, + Ill suit the genius of the bard divine; + But fancy now displays a fairer scope + And Stanhope's plans unfold the soul of Pope. +</pre> + +<p>I have not heard who set up this bust with its impudent inscription. I +hope it was not Stanhope himself. I cannot help thinking that it would +have been a truer compliment to the memory of Pope if the house and +grounds had been kept up exactly as he had left them. Most people, I +suspect, would greatly have preferred the poet's own "unfolding of his +soul" to that "<i>unfolding</i>" attempted for him by a Stanhope and +commemorated by a Nugent. Pope exhibited as much taste in laying out his +grounds as in constructing his poems. Sir William, after his attempt to +make the garden more worthy of the original designer, might just as +modestly have undertaken to enlarge and improve the poetry of Pope on +the plea that it did not sufficiently <i>unfold his soul</i>. A line of Lord +Nugent's might in that case have been transferred from the marble bust +to the printed volume:</p> + +<pre> + His fancy now displays a fairer scope. +</pre> + +<p>Or the enlarger and improver might have taken his motto from +Shakespeare:</p> + +<pre> + To my <i>unfolding</i> lend a gracious ear. +</pre> + +<p>This would have been an appropriate motto for the title-page of "<i>The +Poems of Pope: enlarged and improved: or The Soul of the Poet +Unfolded</i>."</p> + +<p>But in sober truth, Pope, whether as a gardener or as a poet, required +no enlarger or improver of his works. After Sir William Stanhope had +left Pope's villa it came into the possession of Lord Mendip, who +exhibited a proper respect for the poet's memory; but when in 1807 it +was sold to the Baroness Howe, that lady pulled down the house and built +another. The place subsequently came into the possession of a Mr. Young. +The grounds have now no resemblance to what the taste of Pope had once +made them. Even his mother's monument has been removed! Few things would +have more deeply touched the heart of the poet than the anticipation of +this insult to the memory of so revered a parent. His filial piety was +as remarkable as his poetical genius. No passages in his works do him +more honor both as a man and as a poet than those which are mellowed +into a deeper tenderness of sentiment and a softer and sweeter music by +his domestic affections. There are probably few readers of English +poetry who have not the following lines by heart,</p> + +<pre> + Me, let the tender office long engage + To rock the cradle of reposing age; + With lenient arts extend a mother's breath; + Make langour smile, and smooth the bed of death; + Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, + And keep at least one parent from the sky. +</pre> + +<p>In a letter to Swift (dated March 29, 1731) begun by Lord Bolingbroke +and concluded by Pope, the latter speaks thus touchingly of his dear old +parent:</p> + +<p>"My Lord has spoken justly of his lady; why not I of my mother? +Yesterday was her birth-day, now entering on the ninety-first year of +her age; her memory much diminished, but her senses very little hurt, +her sight and hearing good; she sleeps not ill, eats moderately, drinks +water, says her prayers; this is all she does. I have reason to thank +God for continuing so long to me a very good and tender parent, and for +allowing me to exercise for some years those cares which are now as +necessary to her, as hers have been to me."</p> + +<p>Pope lost his mother two years, two months, and a few days after the +date of this letter. Three days after her death he entreated Richardson, +the painter, to take a sketch of her face, as she lay in her coffin: and +for this purpose Pope somewhat delayed her interment. "I thank God," he +says, "her death was as easy as her life was innocent; and as it cost +her not a groan, nor even a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such +an expression of tranquillity, nay almost of pleasure, that it is even +amiable to behold it. It would afford the finest image of a saint +expired, that ever painting drew, and it would be the greatest +obligation which even that obliging art could ever bestow upon a friend +if you would come and sketch it for me." The writer adds, "I shall hope +to see you this evening, as late as you will, or to-morrow morning as +early, <i>before this winter flower is faded</i>."</p> + +<p>On the small obelisk in the garden, erected by Pope to the memory of his +mother, he placed the following simple and pathetic inscription.</p> + +<pre> + AH! EDITHA! + MATRUM OPTIMA! + MULIERUM AMANTISSIMA! + VALE! +</pre> + +<p>I wonder that any one could have had the heart to remove or to destroy +so interesting a memorial.</p> + +<p>It is said that Pope planted his celebrated weeping willow at Twickenham +with his own hands, and that it was the first of its particular species +introduced into England. Happening to be with Lady Suffolk when she +received a parcel from Spain, he observed that it was bound with green +twigs which looked as if they might vegetate. "Perhaps," said he, "these +may produce something that we have not yet in England." He tried a +cutting, and it succeeded. The tree was removed by some person as +barbarous as the reverend gentleman who cut down Shakespeare's Mulberry +Tree. The Willow was destroyed for the same reason, as the Mulberry +Tree--because the owner was annoyed at persons asking to see it. The +Weeping Willow</p> + +<pre> + That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,<a href="#note013">[013]</a> +</pre> + +<p>has had its interest with people in general much increased by its +association with the history of Napoleon in the Island of St. Helena. +The tree whose boughs seemed to hang so fondly over his remains has now +its scions in all parts of the world. Few travellers visited the tomb +without taking a small cutting of the Napoleon Willow for cultivation in +their own land. Slips of the Willow at Twickenham, like those of the +Willow at St. Helena, have also found their way into many countries. In +1789 the Empress of Russia had some of them planted in her garden at St. +Petersburgh.</p> + +<p>Mr. Loudon tells us that there is an old <i>oak</i> in Binfield Wood, Windsor +Forest, which is called <i>Pope's Oak</i>, and which bears the inscription +"HERE POPE SANG:"<a href="#note014">[014]</a> but according to general tradition it was a +<i>beech</i> tree, under which Pope wrote his "Windsor Forest." It is said +that as that tree was decayed, Lady Gower had the inscription alluded to +carved upon another tree near it. Perhaps the substituted tree was an +oak.</p> + +<p>I may here mention that in the Vale of Avoca there is a tree celebrated +as that under which Thomas Moore wrote the verses entitled "The meeting +of the Waters."</p> + +<p>The allusion to <i>Pope's Oak</i> reminds me that Chaucer is said to have +planted three oak trees in Donnington Park near Newbury. Not one of them +is now, I believe, in existence. There is an oak tree in Windsor Forest +above 1000 years old. In the hollow of this tree twenty people might be +accommodated with standing room. It is called <i>King's Oak</i>: it was +William the Conqueror's favorite tree. <i>Herne's Oak</i> in Windsor Park, is +said by some to be still standing, but it is described as a mere +anatomy.</p> + +<pre> + ----An old oak whose boughs are mossed with age, + And high top bald with dry antiquity. +</pre> + +<div><i>As You Like it</i>.</div> + +<p>"It stretches out its bare and sapless branches," says Mr. Jesse, "like +the skeleton arms of some enormous giant, and is almost fearful in its +decay." <i>Herne's Oak</i>, as every one knows, is immortalised by +Shakespeare, who has spread its fame over many lands.</p> + +<pre> + There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter, + Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, + Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, + Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns, + And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle; + And makes milch cows yield blood, and shakes a chain + In a most hideous and dreadful manner. + You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know, + The superstitious, idle-headed eld + Received, and did deliver to our age, + This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth. +</pre> + +<div><i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>.</div> + +<p>"Herne, the hunter" is said to have hung himself upon one of the +branches of this tree, and even,</p> + +<pre> + ----Yet there want not many that do fear, + In deep of night to walk by this Herne's Oak. +</pre> + +<div><i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>.</div> + +<p>It was not long ago visited by the King of Prussia to whom Shakespeare +had rendered it an object of great interest.</p> + +<p>It is unpleasant to add that there is considerable doubt and dispute as +to its identity. Charles Knight and a Quarterly Reviewer both maintain +that <i>Herne's Oak</i> was cut down with a number of other old trees in +obedience to an order from George the Third when he was not in his right +mind, and that his Majesty deeply regretted the order he had given when +he found that the most interesting tree in his Park had been destroyed. +Mr. Jesse, in his <i>Gleanings in Natural History</i>, says that after some +pains to ascertain the truth, he is convinced that this story is not +correct, and that the famous old tree is still standing. He adds that +George the Fourth often alluded to the story and said that though one of +the trees cut down was supposed to have been <i>Herne's Oak</i>, it was not +so in reality. George the Third, it is said, once called the attention +of Mr. Ingalt, the manager of Windsor Home Park to a particular tree, +and said "I brought you here to point out this tree to you. I commit it +to your especial charge; and take care that no damage is ever done to +it. I had rather that every tree in the park should be cut down than +that this tree should be hurt. <i>This is Hernes Oak</i>."</p> + +<p>Sir Philip Sidney's Oak at Penshurst mentioned by Ben Jonson--</p> + +<pre> + That taller tree, of which the nut was set + At his great birth, where all the Muses met-- +</pre> + +<p>is still in existence. It is thirty feet in circumference. Waller also +alludes to</p> + +<pre> + Yonder tree which stands the sacred mark + Of noble Sidney's birth. +</pre> + +<p>Yardley Oak, immortalized by Cowper, is now in a state of decay.</p> + +<pre> + Time made thee what thou wert--king of the woods! + And time hath made thee what thou art--a cave + For owls to roost in. +</pre> + +<div><i>Cowper</i>.</div> + +<p>The tree is said to be at least fifteen hundred years old. It cannot +hold its present place much longer; but for many centuries to come it +will</p> + +<pre> + Live in description and look green in song. +</pre> + +<p>It stands on the grounds of the Marquis of Northampton; and to prevent +people from cutting off and carrying away pieces of it as relics, the +following notice has been painted on a board and nailed to the +tree:--"<i>Out of respect to the memory of the poet Cowper, the Marquis of +Northampton is particularly desirous of preserving this Oak</i>."</p> + +<p>Lord Byron, in early life, planted an oak in the garden at Newstead and +indulged the fancy, that as that flourished so should he. The oak has +survived the poet, but it will not outlive the memory of its planter or +even the boyish verses which he addressed to it.</p> + +<p>Pope observes, that "a tree is a nobler object than a prince in his +coronation robes." Yet probably the poet had never seen any tree larger +than a British oak. What would he have thought of the Baobab tree in +Abyssinia, which measures from 80 to 120 feet in girth, and sometimes +reaches the age of five thousand years. We have no such sylvan patriarch +in Europe. The oldest British tree I have heard of, is a yew tree of +Fortingall in Scotland, of which the age is said to be two thousand five +hundred years. If trees had long memories and could converse with man, +what interesting chapters these survivors of centuries might add to the +history of the world!</p> + +<p>Pope was not always happy in his Twickenham Paradise. His rural delights +were interrupted for a time by an unrequited passion for the beautiful +and highly-gifted but eccentric Lady Mary Wortley Montague.</p> + +<pre> + Ah! friend, 'tis true--this truth you lovers know; + In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow; + In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes + Of hanging mountains and of sloping greens; + Joy lives not here, to happier seats it flies, + And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes. + + What are the gay parterre, the chequered shade, + The morning bower, the evening colonnade, + But soft recesses of uneasy minds, + To sigh unheard in to the passing winds? + + So the struck deer, in some sequestered part, + Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart; + He, stretched unseen, in coverts hid from day, + Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away. +</pre> + +<p>These are exquisite lines, and have given delight to innumerable +readers, but they gave no delight to Lady Mary. In writing to her +sister, the Countess of Mar, then at Paris, she says in allusion to +these "most musical, most melancholy" verses--"<i>I stifled them here; and +I beg they may die the same death at Paris</i>." It is not, however, quite +so easy a thing as Lady Mary seemed to think, to "stifle" such poetry as +Pope's.</p> + +<p>Pope's notions respecting the laying out of gardens are well expressed +in the following extract from the fourth Epistle of his Moral +Essays.<a href="#note015">[015]</a> This fourth Epistle was addressed, as most readers will +remember, to the accomplished Lord Burlington, who, as Walpole says, +"had every quality of a genius and an artist, except envy. Though his +own designs were more chaste and classic than Kent's, he entertained him +in his house till his death, and was more studious to extend his +friend's fame than his own."</p> + +<pre> + Something there is more needful than expense, + And something previous e'en to taste--'tis sense; + Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, + And though no science fairly worth the seven; + A light, which in yourself you must perceive; + Jones and Le Nôtre have it not to give. + To build, or plant, whatever you intend, + To rear the column or the arch to bend; + To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot; + In all let Nature never be forgot. + But treat the goddess like a modest fair, + Nor over dress nor leave her wholly bare; + Let not each beauty every where be spied, + Where half the skill is decently to hide. + He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds, + Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds. + <i>Consult the genius of the place in all</i>;<a href="#note016">[016]</a> + That tells the waters or to rise or fall; + Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale, + Or scoops in circling theatres the vale; + Calls in the country, catches opening glades, + Joins willing woods and varies shades from shades; + Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines; + Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs. + Still follow sense, of every art the soul; + Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole, + Spontaneous beauties all around advance, + Start e'en from difficulty, strike from chance; + Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow + A work to wonder at--perhaps a STOWE.<a href="#note017">[017]</a> + Without it proud Versailles!<a href="#note018">[018]</a> Thy glory falls; + And Nero's terraces desert their walls. + The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make, + Lo! Cobham comes and floats them with a lake; + Or cut wide views through mountains to the plain, + You'll wish your hill or sheltered seat again. +</pre> + +<p>Pope is in most instances singularly happy in his compliments, but the +allusion to STOWE--as "<i>a work to wonder at</i>"--has rather an equivocal +appearance, and so also has the mention of Lord Cobham, the proprietor +of the place. In the first draught of the poem, the name of Bridgeman +was inserted where Cobham's now stands, but as Bridgeman mistook the +compliment for a sneer, the poet thought the landscape-gardener had +proved himself undeserving of the intended honor, and presented the +second-hand compliment to the peer. The grounds at Stowe, more praised +by poets than any other private estate in England, extend to 400 acres. +There are many other fine estates in our country of far greater extent, +but of less celebrity. Some of them are much too extensive, perhaps, for +true enjoyment. The Earl of Leicester, when he had completed his seat at +Holkham, observed, that "It was a melancholy thing to stand alone in +one's country. I look round; not a house is to be seen but mine. I am +the Giant of Giant-castle and have ate up all my neighbours." The Earl +must have felt that the political economy of Goldsmith in his <i>Deserted +Village</i> was not wholly the work of imagination.</p> + +<pre> + Sweet smiling village! Loveliest of the lawn, + Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn; + Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen + And desolation saddens all the green,-- + <i>One only master grasps thy whole domain</i>. + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + Where then, ah! where shall poverty reside, + To scape the pressure of contiguous pride? +</pre> + +<p>"Hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton," as Lamb calls him, describes Stowe as a +Paradise.</p> + +<p>ON LORD COBHAM'S GARDEN.</p> + +<pre> + It puzzles much the sage's brains + Where Eden stood of yore, + Some place it in Arabia's plains, + Some say it is no more. + + But Cobham can these tales confute, + As all the curious know; + For he hath proved beyond dispute, + That Paradise is STOWE. +</pre> + +<p>Thomson also calls the place a paradise:</p> + +<pre> + Ye Powers + That o'er the garden and the rural seat + Preside, which shining through the cheerful land + In countless numbers blest Britannia sees; + O, lead me to the wide-extended walks, + <i>The fair majestic paradise of Stowe!</i> + Not Persian Cyrus on Ionia's shore + E'er saw such sylvan scenes; such various art + By genius fired, such ardent genius tamed + By cool judicious art, that in the strife + All-beauteous Nature fears to be out-done. +</pre> + +<p>The poet somewhat mars the effect of this compliment to the charms of +Stowe, by making it a matter of regret that the owner</p> + +<pre> + His verdant files + Of ordered trees should here inglorious range, + Instead of squadrons flaming o'er the field, + And long embattled hosts. +</pre> + +<p>This representation of rural pursuits as inglorious, a sentiment so out +of keeping with his subject, is soon after followed rather +inconsistently, by a sort of paraphrase of Virgil's celebrated picture +of rural felicity, and some of Thomson's own thoughts on the advantages +of a retreat from active life.</p> + +<pre> + Oh, knew he but his happiness, of men + The happiest he! Who far from public rage + Deep in the vale, with a choice few retired + Drinks the pure pleasures of the rural life, &c. +</pre> + +<p>Then again:--</p> + +<pre> + Let others brave the flood in quest of gain + And beat for joyless months, the gloomy wave. + <i>Let such as deem it glory to destroy, + Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek; + Unpierced, exulting in the widow's wail, + The virgin's shriek and infant's trembling cry.</i> + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + While he, from all the stormy passions free + That restless men involve, hears and <i>but</i> hears, + At distance safe, the human tempest roar, + Wrapt close in conscious peace. The fall of kings, + The rage of nations, and the crush of states, + Move not the man, who from the world escaped, + In still retreats and flowery solitudes, + To nature's voice attends, from month to month, + And day to day, through the revolving year; + Admiring sees her in her every shape; + Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart; + Takes what she liberal gives, nor asks for more. + He, when young Spring, protudes the bursting gems + Marks the first bud, and sucks the healthful gale + Into his freshened soul; her genial hour + He full enjoys, and not a beauty blows + And not an opening blossom breathes in vain. +</pre> + +<p>Thomson in his description of Lord Townshend's seat of Rainham--another +English estate once much celebrated and still much admired--exclaims:</p> + +<pre> + Such are thy beauties, Rainham, such the haunts + Of angels, in primeval guiltless days + When man, imparadised, conversed with God. +</pre> + +<p>And Broome after quoting the whole description in his dedication of his +own poems to Lord Townshend, observes, in the old fashioned fulsome +strain, "This, my lord, is but a faint picture of the place of your +retirement which no one ever enjoyed more elegantly."<a href="#note019">[019]</a> "A faint +picture!" What more would the dedicator have wished Thomson to say? +Broome, if not contented with his patron's seat being described as an +earthly Paradise, must have desired it to be compared with Heaven +itself, and thus have left his Lordship no hope of the enjoyment of a +better place than he already possessed.</p> + +<p>Samuel Boyse, who when without a shirt to his back sat up in his bed to +write verses, with his arms through two holes in his blanket, and when +he went into the streets wore paper collars to conceal the sad +deficiency of linen, has a poem of considerable length entitled <i>The +Triumphs of Nature</i>. It is wholly devoted to a description of this +magnificent garden,<a href="#note020">[020]</a> in which, amongst other architectural +ornaments, was a temple dedicated to British worthies, where the busts +of Pope and Congreve held conspicuous places. I may as well give a +specimen of the lines of poor Boyse. Here is his description of that +part of Lord Cobham's grounds in which is erected to the Goddess of +Love, a Temple containing a statue of the Venus de Medicis.</p> + +<pre> + Next to the fair ascent our steps we traced, + Where shines afar the bold rotunda placed; + The artful dome Ionic columns bear + Light as the fabric swells in ambient air. + Beneath enshrined the Tuscan Venus stands + And beauty's queen the beauteous scene commands: + The fond beholder sees with glad surprize, + Streams glisten, lawns appear, and forests rise-- + Here through thick shades alternate buildings break, + There through the borders steals the silver lake, + A soft variety delights the soul, + And harmony resulting crowns the whole. +</pre> + +<p>Congreve in his Letter in verse addressed to Lord Cobham asks him to</p> + +<pre> + Tell how his pleasing Stowe employs his time. +</pre> + +<p>It would seem that the proprietor of Stowe took particular interest in +the disposition of the water on his grounds. Congreve enquires</p> + +<pre> + Or dost thou give the winds afar to blow + Each vexing thought, and heart-devouring woe, + And fix thy mind alone on rural scenes, + <i>To turn the level lawns to liquid plains</i>? + To raise the creeping rills from humble beds + And force the latent spring to lift their heads, + On watery columns, capitals to rear, + That mix their flowing curls with upper air? + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + Or slowly walk along the mazy wood + To meditate on all that's wise and good. +</pre> + +<p>The line:--</p> + +<pre> + To turn the level lawn to liquid plains-- +</pre> + +<p>Will remind the reader of Pope's</p> + +<pre> + Lo! Cobham comes and floats them with a lake-- +</pre> + +<p>And it might be thought that Congreve had taken the hint from the bard +of Twickenham if Congreve's poem had not preceded that of Pope. The one +was published in 1729, the other in 1731.</p> + +<p>Cowper is in the list of poets who have alluded to "Cobham's groves" and +Pope's commemoration of them.</p> + +<pre> + And <i>Cobham's groves</i> and Windsor's green retreats + When Pope describes them have a thousand sweets. +</pre> + +<p>"Magnificence and splendour," says Mr. Whately, the author of +<i>Observations on Modern Gardening</i>, "are the characteristics of Stowe. +It is like one of those places celebrated in antiquity which were +devoted to the purposes of religion, and filled with sacred groves, +hallowed fountains, and temples dedicated to several deities; the resort +of distant nations and the object of veneration to half the heathen +world: the pomp is, at Stowe, blended with beauty; and the place is +equally distinguished by its amenity and grandeur." Horace Walpole +speaks of its "visionary enchantment." "I have been strolling about in +Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, from garden to garden," says Pope in +one of his letters, "but still returning to Lord Cobham's with fresh +satisfaction."<a href="#note021">[021]</a></p> + +<p>The grounds at Stowe, until the year 1714, were laid out in the old +formal style. Bridgeman then commenced the improvements and Kent +subsequently completed them.</p> + +<p>Stowe is now, I believe, in the possession of the Marquis of Chandos, +son of the Duke of Buckingham. It is melancholy to state that the +library, the statues, the furniture, and even some of the timber on the +estate, were sold in 1848 to satisfy the creditors of the Duke.</p> + +<p>Pope was never tired of improving his own grounds. "I pity you, Sir," +said a friend to him, "because you have now completed every thing +belonging to your gardens."<a href="#note022">[022]</a> "Why," replied Pope, "I really shall be +at a loss for the diversion I used to take in carrying out and finishing +things: I have now nothing left me to do but to add a little ornament or +two along the line of the Thames." I dare say Pope was by no means so +near the end of his improvements as he and his friend imagined. One +little change in a garden is sure to suggest or be followed by another. +Garden-improvements are "never ending, still beginning." The late Dr. +Arnold, the famous schoolmaster, writing to a friend, says--"The garden +is a constant source of amusement to us both (self and wife); there are +always some little alterations to be made, some few spots where an +additional shrub or two would be ornamental, something coming into +blossom; so that I can always delight to go round and see how things are +going on." A garden is indeed a scene of continual change. Nature, even +without the aid of the gardener, has "infinite variety," and supplies "a +perpetual feast of nectared sweets where no crude surfeit reigns."</p> + +<p>Spence reports Pope to have said: "I have sometimes had an idea of +planting an old gothic cathedral in trees. Good large poplars, with +their white stems, cleared of boughs to a proper height would serve very +well for the columns, and might form the different aisles or +peristilliums, by their different distances and heights. These would +look very well near, and the dome rising all in a proper tuft in the +middle would look well at a distance." This sort of verdant architecture +would perhaps have a pleasing effect, but it is rather too much in the +artificial style, to be quite consistent with Pope's own idea of +landscape-gardening. And there are other trees that would form a nobler +natural cathedral than the formal poplar. Cowper did not think of the +poplar, when he described a green temple-roof.</p> + +<pre> + How airy and how light the graceful arch, + Yet awful as the consecrated roof + Re-echoing pious anthems. +</pre> + +<p>Almost the only traces of <a name="twickenham">Pope's garden</a> that now remain are the splendid +Spanish chesnut-trees and some elms and cedars planted by the poet +himself. A space once laid out in winding walks and beautiful +shrubberies is now a potatoe field! The present proprietor, Mr. Young, +is a wholesale tea-dealer. Even the bones of the poet, it is said, have +been disturbed. The skull of Pope, according to William Howitt, is now +in the private collection of a phrenologist! The manner in which it was +obtained, he says, is this:--On some occasion of alteration in the +church at Twickenham, or burial of some one in the same spot, the coffin +of Pope was disinterred, and opened to see the state of the remains. By +a bribe of £50 to the Sexton, possession of the skull was obtained for +one night; another skull was then returned instead of the poet's.</p> + +<p>It has been stated that the French term <i>Ferme Ornée</i> was first used in +England by Shenstone. It exactly expressed the character of his grounds. +Mr. Repton said that he never strolled over the scenery of the Leasowes +without lamenting the constant disappointment to which Shenstone exposed +himself by a vain attempt to unite the incompatible objects of ornament +and profit. "Thus," continued Mr. Repton, "the poet lived under the +continual mortification of disappointed hope, and with a mind +exquisitely sensible, he felt equally the sneer of the great man at the +magnificence of his attempt and the ridicule of the farmer at the +misapplication of his paternal acres." The "sneer of the great man." is +perhaps an allusion to what Dr. Johnson says of Lord Lyttelton:--that he +"looked with disdain" on "the petty State" of his neighbour. "For a +while," says Dr. Johnson, "the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell +their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself +admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, +they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress, by +conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, +and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; +injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain." Mr. Graves, the +zealous friend of Shenstone, indignantly denies that any of the +Lyttelton family had evinced so ungenerous a feeling towards the +proprietor of the Leasowes who though his "empire" was less "spacious +and opulent" had probably a larger share of true taste than even the +proprietor of Hagley, the Lyttelton domain--though Hagley has been much, +and I doubt not, deservedly, admired.<a href="#note023">[023]</a></p> + +<p>Dr. Johnson states that Shenstone's expenses were beyond his means,-- +that he spent his estate in adorning it--that at last the clamours of +creditors "overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and that +his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns and +fairies." But this is gross exaggeration. Shenstone was occasionally, +indeed, in slight pecuniary difficulties, but he could always have +protected himself from the intrusion of the myrmidons of the law by +raising money on his estate; for it appears that after the payment of +all his debts, he left legacies to his friends and annuities to his +servants.</p> + +<p>Johnson himself is the most scornful of the critics upon Shenstone's +rural pursuits. "The pleasure of Shenstone," says the Doctor, "was all +in his eye: he valued what he valued merely for its looks. Nothing +raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his +water." Dr. Johnson would have seen no use in the loveliest piece of +running water in the world if it had contained nothing that he could +masticate! Mrs. Piozzi says of him, "The truth is, he hated to hear +about prospects and views, and laying out grounds and taste in +gardening." "That was the best garden," he said, "which produced most +roots and fruits; and that water was most to be prized which contained +most fish." On this principle of the valuelessness of those pleasures +which enter the mind through the eye, Dr. Johnson should have blamed the +lovers of painting for dwelling with such fond admiration on the canvas +of his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds. In point of fact, Dr. Johnson had no +more sympathy with the genius of the painter or the musician than with +that of the Landscape gardener, for he had neither an eye nor an ear for +Art. He wondered how any man could be such a fool as to be moved to +tears by music, and observed, that, "one could not fill one's belly with +hearing soft murmurs or looking at rough cascades." No; the loveliness +of nature does not satisfy the thirst and hunger of the body, but it +<i>does</i> satisfy the thirst and hunger of the soul. No one can find +wheaten bread or wine or venison or beef or plum-pudding or turtle-soup +in mere sounds and sights, however exquisite--neither can any one find +such substantial diet within the boards of a book--no not even on the +pages of Shakespeare, or even those of the Bible itself,--but men can +find in sweet music and lovely scenery and good books something +infinitely more precious than all the wine, venison, beef, or plum- +pudding, or turtle-soup that could be swallowed during a long life by +the most craving and capacious alderman of London! Man is of a dual +nature: he is not all body. He has other and far higher wants and +enjoyments than the purely physical--and these nobler appetites are +gratified by the charms of nature and the creations of inspired genius.</p> + +<p>Dr. Johnson's gastronomic allusions to nature recal the old story of a +poet pointing out to a utilitarian friend some white lambs frolicking in +a meadow. "Aye," said, the other, "only think of a quarter of one of +them with asparagus and mint sauce!" The story is by some supposed to +have had a Scottish origin, and a prosaic North Briton is made to say +that the pretty little lambs, sporting amidst the daisies and +buttercups, would "<i>mak braw pies</i>."</p> + +<p>A profound feeling for the beautiful is generally held to be an +essential quality in the poet. It is a curious fact, however, that there +are some who aspire to the rank of poet, and have their claims allowed, +who yet cannot be said to be poetical in their nature--for how can that +nature be, strictly speaking, <i>poetical</i> which denies the sentiment of +Keats, that</p> + +<pre> + A thing of beauty is a joy for ever? +</pre> + +<p>Both Scott and Byron very earnestly admired Dr. Johnson's "<i>London</i>" and +"<i>The Vanity of Human Wishes</i>." Yet the sentiments just quoted from the +author of those productions are far more characteristic of a utilitarian +philosopher than of one who has been endowed by nature with</p> + +<pre> + The vision and the faculty divine, +</pre> + +<p>and made capable, like some mysterious enchanter, of</p> + +<pre> + Clothing the palpable and the familiar + With golden exhalations of the dawn. +</pre> + +<p>Crabbe, also a prime favorite with the authors of the <i>Lay of the Last +Minstrel</i>, and <i>Childe Harold</i>, is recorded by his biographer--his own +son--to have exhibited "a remarkable indifference to all the proper +objects of taste;" to have had "no real love for painting, or music, or +architecture or for what a painter's eye considers as the beauties of +landscape." "In botany, grasses, the most <i>useful</i> but the least +ornamental, were his favorites." "He never seemed to be captivated with +the mere beauty of natural objects or even to catch any taste for the +arrangement of his specimens. Within, the house was a kind of scientific +confusion; in the garden the usual showy foreigners gave place to the +most scarce flowers, especially to the rarer weeds, of Britain; and were +scattered here and there only for preservation. In fact he neither loved +order for its own sake nor had any very high opinion of that passion in +others."<a href="#note024">[024]</a> Lord Byron described Crabbe to be</p> + +<pre> + Though nature's sternest painter, yet <i>the best</i>. +</pre> + +<p>What! was he a better painter of nature than Shakespeare? The truth is +that Byron was a wretched critic, though a powerful poet. His praises +and his censures were alike unmeasured.</p> + +<pre> + His generous ardor no cold medium knew. +</pre> + +<p>He seemed to recognize no great general principles of criticism, but to +found all his judgments on mere prejudice and passion. He thought Cowper +"no poet," pronounced Spenser "a dull fellow," and placed Pope above +Shakespeare. Byron's line on Crabbe is inscribed on the poet's tombstone +at Trowbridge. Perhaps some foreign visitor on reading the inscription +may be surprized at his own ignorance when he learns that it is not the +author of <i>Macbeth</i> and <i>Othello</i> that he is to regard as the best +painter of nature that England has produced, but the author of the +<i>Parish Register</i> and the <i>Tales of the Hall</i>. Absurd and indiscriminate +laudations of this kind confound all intellectual distinctions and make +criticism ridiculous. Crabbe is unquestionably a vigorous and truthful +writer, but he is not the <i>best</i> we have, in any sense of the word.</p> + +<p>Though Dr. Johnson speaks so contemptuously of Shenstone's rural +pursuits, he could not help acknowledging that when the poet began "to +point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks and +to wind his waters," he did all this with such judgment and fancy as +"made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the +skilful; a place to be visited by travellers, and copied by designers."</p> + +<p>Mason, in his <i>English Garden</i>, a poem once greatly admired, but now +rarely read, and never perhaps with much delight, does justice to the +taste of the Poet of the Leasowes.</p> + +<pre> + Nor, Shenstone, thou + Shalt pass without thy meed, thou son of peace! + Who knew'st, perchance, to harmonize thy shades + Still softer than thy song; yet was that song + Nor rude nor inharmonious when attuned + To pastoral plaint, or tale of slighted love. +</pre> + +<p>English pleasure-gardens have been much imitated by the French. Viscomte +Girardin, at his estate of Ermenonville, dedicated an inscription in +amusing French-English to the proprietor of the Leasowes--</p> + +<pre> + THIS PLAIN STONE + TO WILLIAM SHENSTONE; + IN HIS WRITINGS HE DISPLAYED + A MIND NATURAL; + AT LEASOWES HE LAID + ARCADIAN GREENS RURAL. +</pre> + +<p>The Viscomte, though his English composition was so quaint and +imperfect, was an elegant writer in his own language, and showed great +taste and skill in laying out his grounds. He had visited England, and +carefully studied our modern style of gardening. He had personally +consulted Shenstone, Mason, Whateley and other English authors on +subjects of rural taste. He published an eloquent description of his own +estate. His famous friend Rousseau wrote the preface to it. The book was +translated into English. Rousseau spent his last days at Ermenonville +and was buried there in what is called <i>The Isle of Poplars</i>. The garden +is now in a neglected state, but the tomb of Rousseau remains uninjured, +and is frequently visited by the admirers of his genius.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Warton," says Bowles, "mentions Milton and Pope as the poets to +whom English Landscape is indebted, but <i>he forgot poor Shenstone</i>." A +later writer, however, whose sympathy for genius communicates such a +charm to all his anecdotes and comments in illustration of the literary +character, has devoted a chapter of his <i>Curiosities of Literature</i> to a +notice of the rural tastes of the proprietor of the Leasowes. I must +give a brief extract from it.</p> + +<p>"When we consider that Shenstone, in developing his fine pastoral ideas +in the Leasowes, educated the nation into that taste for landscape- +gardening, which has become the model of all Europe, this itself +constitutes a claim on the gratitude of posterity. Thus the private +pleasures of a man of genius may become at length those of a whole +people. The creator of this new taste appears to have received far less +notice than he merited. The name of Shenstone does not appear in the +Essay on Gardening, by Lord Orford; even the supercilious Gray only +bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his +friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by +nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after describing some of the +offices of the landscape designer, adds, that 'he will not inquire +whether they demand any great powers of mind.' Johnson, however, conveys +to us his own feelings, when he immediately expresses them under the +character of 'a sullen and surly speculator.' The anxious life of +Shenstone would indeed have been remunerated, could he have read the +enchanting eulogium of Whateley on the Leasowes; which, said he, 'is a +perfect picture of his mind--simple, elegant and amiable; and will +always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verse, or whether +in the scenes which he formed, he only realised the pastoral images +which abound in his songs.' Yes! Shenstone had been delighted could he +have heard that Montesquieu, on his return home, adorned his 'Chateau +Gothique, mais orné de bois charmans, don't j'ai pris l'idée en +Angleterre;' and Shenstone, even with his modest and timid nature, had +been proud to have witnessed a noble foreigner, amidst memorials +dedicated to Theocritus and Virgil, to Thomson and Gesner, raising in +his grounds an inscription, in bad English, but in pure taste, to +Shenstone himself; for having displayed in his writings 'a mind +natural,' and in his Leasowes 'laid Arcadian greens rural;' and recently +Pindemonte has traced the taste of English gardening to Shenstone. A man +of genius sometimes receives from foreigners, who are placed out of the +prejudices of his compatriots, the tribute of posterity!"</p> + +<p>"The Leasowes," says William Howitt, "now belongs to the Atwood family; +and a Miss Atwood resides there occasionally. But the whole place bears +the impress of desertion and neglect. The house has a dull look; the +same heavy spirit broods over the lawns and glades: And it is only when +you survey it from a distance, as when approaching Hales-Owen from +Hagley, that the whole presents an aspect of unusual beauty."</p> + +<p>Shenstone was at least as proud of his estate of the Leasowes as was +Pope of his Twickenham Villa--perhaps more so. By mere men of the world, +this pride in a garden may be regarded as a weakness, but if it be a +weakness it is at least an innocent and inoffensive one, and it has been +associated with the noblest intellectual endowments. Pitt and Fox and +Burke and Warren Hastings were not weak men, and yet were they all +extremely proud of their gardens. Every one, indeed, who takes an active +interest in the culture and embellishment of his garden, finds his pride +in it and his love for it increase daily. He is delighted to see it +flourish and improve beneath his care. Even the humble mechanic, in his +fondness for a garden, often indicates a feeling for the beautiful, and +a genial nature. If a rich man were openly to boast of his plate or his +equipages, or a literary man of his essays or his sonnets, as lovers of +flowers boast of their geraniums or dahlias or rhododendrons, they would +disgust the most indulgent hearer. But no one is shocked at the +exultation of a gardener, amateur or professional, when in the fulness +of his heart he descants upon the unrivalled beauty of his favorite +flowers:</p> + +<pre> + 'Plants of his hand, and children of his care.' +</pre> + +<p>"I have made myself two gardens," says Petrarch, "and I do not imagine +that they are to be equalled in all the world. I should feel myself +inclined to be angry with fortune if there were any so beautiful out of +Italy." "I wish," says poor Kirke White writing to a friend, "I wish you +to have a taste of these (rural) pleasures with me, and if ever I should +live to be blessed with a quiet parsonage, and <i>another great object of +my ambition--a garden</i>, I have no doubt but we shall be for some short +intervals at least two quite contented bodies." The poet Young, in the +latter part of his life, after years of vain hopes and worldly +struggles, gave himself up almost entirely to the sweet seclusion of a +garden; and that peace and repose which cannot be found in courts and +political cabinets, he found at last</p> + +<pre> + In sunny garden bowers + Where vernal winds each tree's low tones awaken, + And buds and bells with changes mark the hours. +</pre> + +<p>He discovered that it was more profitable to solicit nature than to +flatter the great.</p> + +<pre> + For Nature never did betray + The heart that loved her. +</pre> + +<p>People of a poetical temperament--all true lovers of nature--can afford, +far better than more essentially worldly beings, to exclaim with +Thomson.</p> + +<pre> + I care not Fortune what you me deny, + You cannot bar me of free Nature's grace, + You cannot shut the windows of the sky + Through which Aurora shows her brightening face: + You cannot bar my constant feet to trace + The woods and lawns and living streams at eve: + Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, + And I their toys to the <i>great children</i> leave:-- + Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave. +</pre> + +<p>The pride in a garden laid out under one's own directions and partly +cultivated by one's own hand has been alluded to as in some degree +unworthy of the dignity of manhood, not only by mere men of the world, +or silly coxcombs, but by people who should have known better. Even Sir +William Temple, though so enthusiastic about his fruit-trees, tells us +that he will not enter upon any account of <i>flowers</i>, having only +pleased himself with seeing or smelling them, and not troubled himself +with the care of them, which he observes "<i>is more the ladies part than +the men's</i>." Sir William makes some amends for this almost contemptuous +allusion to flowers in particular by his ardent appreciation of the use +of gardens and gardening in general. He thus speaks of their attractions +and advantages: "The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of the +smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the +exercise of working or walking, but above all, the exemption from cares +and solicitude, seem equally to favor and improve both contemplation and +health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet +and ease of the body and mind." Again: "As gardening has been the +inclination of kings and the choice of philosophers, so it has been the +common favorite of public and private men, a pleasure of the greatest +and the care of the meanest; and indeed <i>an employment and a possession +for which no man is too high or too low</i>." This is just and liberal; +though I can hardly help still feeling a little sore at Sir William's +having implied in the passage previously quoted, that the care of +flowers is but a feminine occupation. As an elegant amusement, it is +surely equally well fitted for all lovers of the beautiful, without +reference to their sex.</p> + +<p>It is not women and children only who delight in flower-gardens. Lord +Bacon and William Pitt and the Earl of Chatham and Fox and Burke and +Warren Hastings--all lovers of flowers--were assuredly not men of +frivolous minds or of feminine habits. They were always eager to exhibit +to visitors the beauty of their parterres. In his declining years the +stately John Kemble left the stage for his garden. That sturdy English +yeoman, William Cobbett, was almost as proud of his beds of flowers as +of the pages of his <i>Political Register</i>. He thus speaks of gardening:</p> + +<p>"Gardening is a source of much greater profit than is generally +imagined; but, merely as an amusement or recreation it is a thing of +very great value. It is not only compatible with but favorable to the +study of any art or science; it is conducive to health by means of the +irresistible temptation which it offers to early rising; to the stirring +abroad upon one's legs, for a man may really ride till he cannot walk, +sit till he cannot stand, and lie abed till he cannot get up. It tends +to turn the minds of youth from amusements and attachments of a +frivolous and vicious nature, it is a taste which is indulged at home; +it tends to make home pleasant, and to endear to us the spot on which it +is our lot to live,--and as to the <i>expenses</i> attending it, what are all +these expenses compared with those of the short, the unsatisfactory, the +injurious enjoyment of the card-table, and the rest of those amusements +which are sought from the town." <i>Cobbett's English Gardener</i>.</p> + +<p>"Other fine arts," observes Lord Kames, "may be perverted to excite +irregular and even vicious emotions: but gardening, which inspires the +purest and most refined pleasures, cannot fail to promote every good +affection. The gaiety and harmony of mind it produceth, inclining the +spectator to communicate his satisfaction to others, and to make them +happy as he is himself, tend naturally to establish in him a habit of +humanity and benevolence."</p> + +<p>Every thoughtful mind knows how much the face of nature has to do with +human happiness. In the open air and in the midst of summer-flowers, we +often feel the truth of the observation that "a fair day is a kind of +sensual pleasure, and of all others the most innocent." But it is also +something more, and better. It kindles a spiritual delight. At such a +time and in such a scene every observer capable of a religious emotion +is ready to exclaim--</p> + +<pre> + Oh! there is joy and happiness in every thing I see, + Which bids my soul rise up and bless the God that blesses me +</pre> + +<div><i>Anon.</i></div> + +<p>The amiable and pious Doctor Carey of Serampore, in whose grounds sprang +up that dear little English daisy so beautifully addressed by his +poetical proxy, James Montgomery of Sheffield, in the stanzas +commencing:--</p> + +<pre> + Thrice welcome, little English flower! + My mother country's white and red-- +</pre> + +<p>was so much attached to his Indian garden, that it was always in his +heart in the intervals of more important cares. It is said that he +remembered it even upon his death-bed, and that it was amongst his last +injunctions to his friends that they should see to its being kept up +with care. He was particularly anxious that the hedges or railings +should always be in such good order as to protect his favorite shrubs +and flowers from the intrusion of Bengalee cattle.</p> + +<p>A garden is a more interesting possession than a gallery of pictures or +a cabinet of curiosities. Its glories are never stationary or stale. It +has infinite variety. It is not the same to-day as it was yesterday. It +is always changing the character of its charms and always increasing +them in number. It delights all the senses. Its pleasures are not of an +unsocial character; for every visitor, high or low, learned or +illiterate, may be fascinated with the fragrance and beauty of a garden. +But shells and minerals and other curiosities are for the man of science +and the connoisseur. And a single inspection of them is generally +sufficient: they never change their aspect. The Picture-Gallery may +charm an instructed eye but the multitude have little relish for human +Art, because they rarely understand it:--while the skill of the Great +Limner of Nature is visible in every flower of the garden even to the +humblest swain.</p> + +<p>It is pleasant to read how the wits and beauties of the time of Queen +Anne used to meet together in delightful garden-retreats, 'like the +companies in Boccaccio's Decameron or in one of Watteau's pictures.' +Ritchings Lodge, for instance, the seat of Lord Bathurst, was visited by +most of the celebrities of England, and frequently exhibited bright +groups of the polite and accomplished of both sexes; of men +distinguished for their heroism or their genius, and of women eminent +for their easy and elegant conversation, or for gaiety and grace of +manner, or perfect loveliness of face and form--all in harmonious union +with the charms of nature. The gardens at Ritchings were enriched with +Inscriptions from the pens of Congreve and Pope and Gay and Addison and +Prior. When the estate passed into the possession of the Earl of +Hertford, his literary lady devoted it to the Muses. "She invited every +summer," says Dr. Johnson, "some poet into the country to hear her +verses and assist her studies." Thomson, who praises her so lavishly in +his "Spring," offended her ladyship by allowing her too clearly to +perceive that he was resolved not to place himself in the dilemma of +which Pope speaks so feelingly with reference to other poetasters.</p> + +<pre> + Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I, + Who can't be silent, and who will not lie. + I sit with sad civility, I read + With honest anguish and an aching head. +</pre> + +<p>But though "the bard more fat than bard beseems" was restive under her +ladyship's "poetical operations," and too plainly exhibited a desire to +escape the infliction, preferring the Earl's claret to the lady's +rhymes, she should have been a little more generously forgiving towards +one who had already made her immortal. It is stated, that she never +repeated her invitation to the Poet of the Seasons, who though so +impatient of the sound of her tongue when it "rolled" her own +"raptures," seems to have been charmed with her <i>at a distance</i>--while +meditating upon her excellencies in the seclusion of his own study. The +compliment to the Countess is rather awkwardly wedged in between +descriptions of "gentle Spring" with her "shadowing roses" and "surly +Winter" with his "ruffian blasts." It should have commenced the poem.</p> + +<pre> + O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts + With unaffected grace, or walk the plain, + With innocence and meditation joined + In soft assemblage, listen to my song, + Which thy own season paints; when nature all + Is blooming and benevolent like thee. +</pre> + +<p>Thomson had no objection to strike off a brief compliment in verse, but +he was too indolent to keep up <i>in propriâ personâ</i> an incessant fire of +compliments, like the <i>bon bons</i> at a Carnival. It was easier to write +her praises than listen to her verses. Shenstone seems to have been more +pliable. He was personally obsequious, lent her recitations an attentive +ear, and was ever ready with the expected commendation. It is not likely +that her ladyship found much, difficulty in collecting around her a +crowd of critics more docile than Thomson and quite as complaisant as +Shenstone. Let but a <i>Countess</i></p> + +<pre> + Once own the happy lines, + How the wit brightens, how the style refines! +</pre> + +<p>Though Thomson's first want on his arrival in London from the North was +a pair of shoes, and he lived for a time in great indigence, he was +comfortable enough at last. Lord Lyttleton introduced him to the Prince +of Wales (who professed himself the patron of literature) and when his +Highness questioned him about the state of his affairs, Thomson assured +him that they "were in a more poetical posture than formerly." The +prince bestowed upon the poet a pension of a hundred pounds a year, and +when his friend Lord Lyttleton was in power his Lordship obtained for +him the office of Surveyor General of the Leeward Islands. He sent a +deputy there who was more trustworthy than Thomas Moore's at Bermuda. +Thomson's deputy after deducting his own salary remitted his principal +three hundred pounds per annum, so that the bard 'more fat than bard +beseems' was not in a condition to grow thinner, and could afford to +make his cottage a Castle of Indolence. Leigh Hunt has versified an +anecdote illustrative of Thomson's luxurious idleness. He who could +describe "<i>Indolence</i>" so well, and so often appeared in the part +himself,</p> + +<pre> + Slippered, and with hands, + Each in a waistcoat pocket, (so that all + Might yet repose that could) was seen one morn + Eating a wondering peach from off the tree. +</pre> + +<p>A little summer-house at Richmond which Thomson made his study is still +preserved, and even some articles of furniture, just as he left +them.<a href="#note025">[025]</a> Over the entrance is erected a tablet on which is the +following inscription:</p> + +<pre> + HERE + THOMSON SANG + THE SEASONS + AND THEIR CHANGE. +</pre> + +<p>Thomson was buried in Richmond Church. Collins's lines to his memory, +beginning</p> + +<pre> + In yonder grave a Druid lies, +</pre> + +<p>are familiar to all readers of English poetry.</p> + +<p>Richmond Hill has always been the delight not of poets only but of +painters. Sir Joshua Reynolds built a house there, and one of the only +three landscapes which seem to have survived him, is a view from the +window of his drawing-room. Gainsborough was also a resident in +Richmond. Richmond gardens laid out or rather altered by Brown, are now +united with those of Kew.</p> + +<p>Savage resided for some time at Richmond. It was the favorite haunt of +Collins, one of the most poetical of poets, who, as Dr. Johnson says, +"delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the +magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian +gardens." Wordsworth composed a poem upon the Thames near Richmond in +remembrance of Collins. Here is a stanza of it.</p> + +<pre> + Glide gently, thus for ever glide, + O Thames, that other bards may see + As lovely visions by thy side + As now fair river! come to me; + O glide, fair stream for ever so, + Thy quiet soul on all bestowing, + Till all our minds for ever flow + As thy deep waters now are flowing. +</pre> + +<p>Thomson's description of the scenery of Richmond Hill perhaps hardly +does it justice, but the lines are too interesting to be omitted.</p> + +<pre> + Say, shall we wind + Along the streams? or walk the smiling mead? + Or court the forest-glades? or wander wild + Among the waving harvests? or ascend, + While radiant Summer opens all its pride, + Thy hill, delightful Shene<a href="#note026">[026]</a>? Here let us sweep + The boundless landscape now the raptur'd eye, + Exulting swift, to huge Augusta send, + Now to the sister hills<a href="#note027">[027]</a> that skirt her plain, + To lofty Harrow now, and now to where + Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow + In lovely contrast to this glorious view + Calmly magnificent, then will we turn + To where the silver Thames first rural grows + There let the feasted eye unwearied stray, + Luxurious, there, rove through the pendent woods + That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat, + And stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks, + Beneath whose shades, in spotless peace retir'd, + With her the pleasing partner of his heart, + The worthy Queensbury yet laments his Gay, + And polish'd Cornbury woos the willing Muse + Slow let us trace the matchless vale of Thames + Fair winding up to where the Muses haunt + In Twit nam's bowers, and for their Pope implore + The healing god<a href="#note028">[028]</a>, to loyal Hampton's pile, + To Clermont's terrass'd height, and Esher's groves; + Where in the sweetest solitude, embrac'd + By the soft windings of the silent Mole, + From courts and senates Pelham finds repose + Enchanting vale! beyond whate'er the Muse + Has of Achaia or Hesperia sung! + O vale of bliss! O softly swelling hills! + On which the <i>Power of Cultivation</i> lies, + And joys to see the wonders of his toil. +</pre> + +<p>The Revd. Thomas Maurice wrote a poem entitled <i>Richmond Hill</i>, but it +contains nothing deserving of quotation after the above passage from +Thomson. In the <i>English Bards and Scotch Reviewers</i> the labors of +Maurice are compared to those of Sisyphus</p> + +<pre> + So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond, heaves + Dull Maurice, all his granite weight of leaves. +</pre> + +<p>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.<a href="#note029">[029]</a> "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 <i>plantomanie</i>."<a href="#note030">[030]</a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>elysium, antrum, nemus, paradysus, +hortus, lucus</i>, &c., signifie all of them <i>rem sacram it divinam</i>; 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 <i>paradisi cultores</i> 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 <i>Vulgar Errours</i>, and +still propagating them, as so many bold men do yet presume to do."</p> + +<p>The English style of landscape-gardening being founded on natural +principles must be recognized by true taste in all countries. Even in +Rome, when art was most allowed to predominate over nature, there were +occasional instances of that correct feeling for rural beauty which the +English during the last century and a half have exhibited more +conspicuously than other nations. Atticus preferred Tully's villa at +Arpinum to all his other villas; because at Arpinum, Nature predominated +over art. Our Kents and Browns<a href="#note031">[031]</a> never expressed a greater contempt, +than was expressed by Atticus, for all formal and artificial decorations +of natural scenery.</p> + +<p>The spot where Cicero's villa stood, was, in the time of Middleton, +possessed by a convent of monks and was called the Villa of St. Dominic. +It was built, observes Mr. Dunlop, in the year 1030, from the fragments +of the Arpine Villa!</p> + +<pre> + Art, glory, Freedom, fail--but Nature still is fair. +</pre> + +<p>"Nothing," says Mr. Kelsall, "can be imagined finer than the surrounding +landscape. The deep azure of the sky, unvaried by a single cloud--Sora +on a rock at the foot of the precipitous Appennines--both banks of the +Garigliano covered with vineyards--the <i>fragor aquarum</i>, alluded to by +Atticus in his work <i>De Legibus</i>--the coolness, the rapidity and +ultramarine hue of the Fibrenus--the noise of its cataracts--the rich +turquoise color of the Liris--the minor Appennines round Arpino, crowned +with umbrageous oaks to the very summits--present scenery hardly +elsewhere to be equalled, certainly not to be surpassed, even in Italy."</p> + +<p>This description of an Italian landscape can hardly fail to charm the +imagination of the coldest reader; but after all, I cannot help +confessing to so inveterate a partiality for dear old England as to be +delighted with the compliment which Gray, the poet, pays to English +scenery when he prefers it to the scenery of Italy. "Mr. Walpole," +writes the poet from Italy, "says, our <i>memory</i> sees more than our eyes +in this country. This is extremely true, since for <i>realities</i> WINDSOR +or RICHMOND HILL is infinitely preferable to ALBANO or FRESCATI."</p> + +<p>Sir Walter Scott, with all his patriotic love for his own romantic land, +could not withhold his tribute to the loveliness of Richmond Hill,--its +"<i>unrivalled landscape</i>" its "<i>sea of verdure</i>."</p> + +<pre> + "They" (The Duke of Argyle and Jeanie Deans) "paused for a + moment on the brow of a hill, to gaze on the unrivalled + landscape it presented. A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and + intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves was + tenanted by numberless flocks and herds which seemed to wander + unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The + Thames, here turreted with villas, and there garlanded with + forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch + of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but + accessaries, and bore on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs + whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the + whole." <i>The Heart of Mid-Lothian</i>. +</pre> + +<p>It must of course be admitted that there are grander, more sublime, more +varied and extensive prospects in other countries, but it would be +difficult to persuade me that the richness of English verdure could be +surpassed or even equalled, or that any part of the world can exhibit +landscapes more truly <i>lovely</i> and <i>loveable</i>, than those of England, or +more calculated to leave a deep and enduring impression upon the heart. +Mr. Kelsall speaks of an Italian sky "<i>uncovered by a single cloud</i>," +but every painter and poet knows how much variety and beauty of effect +are bestowed upon hill and plain and grove and river by passing clouds; +and even our over-hanging vapours remind us of the veil upon the cheek +of beauty; and ever as the sun uplifts the darkness the glory of the +landscape seems renewed and freshened. It would cheer the saddest heart +and send the blood dancing through the veins, to behold after a dull +misty dawn, the sun break out over Richmond Hill, and with one broad +light make the whole landscape smile; but I have been still more +interested in the prospect when on a cloudy day the whole "sea of +verdure" has been swayed to and fro into fresher life by the fitful +breeze, while the lights and shadows amidst the foliage and on the lawns +have been almost momentarily varied by the varying sky. These changes +fascinate the eye, keep the soul awake, and save the scenery from the +comparatively monotonous character of landscapes in less varying climes. +And for my own part, I cordially echo the sentiment of Wordsworth, who +when conversing with Mrs. Hemans about the scenery of the Lakes in the +North of England, observed: "I would not give up the mists that +<i>spiritualize</i> our mountains for all the blue skies of Italy."</p> + +<p>Though Mrs. Stowe, the American authoress already quoted as one of the +admirers of England, duly appreciates the natural grandeur of her own +land, she was struck with admiration and delight at the aspect of our +English landscapes. Our trees, she observes, "are of an order of +nobility and they wear their crowns right kingly." "Leaving out of +account," she adds, "our <i>mammoth arboria</i>, the English Parks have trees +as fine and effective as ours, and when I say their trees are of an +order of nobility, I mean that they (the English) pay a reverence to +them such as their magnificence deserves."</p> + +<p>Walter Savage Landor, one of the most accomplished and most highly +endowed both by nature and by fortune of our living men of letters, has +done, or rather has tried to do, almost as much for his country in the +way of enriching its collection of noble trees as Evelyn himself. He +laid out £70,000 on the improvement of an estate in Monmouthshire, where +he planted and fenced half a million of trees, and had a million more +ready to plant, when the conduct of some of his tenants, who spitefully +uprooted them and destroyed the whole plantation, so disgusted him with +the place, that he razed to the ground the house which had cost him +£8,000, and left the country. He then purchased a beautiful estate in +Italy, which is still in possession of his family. He himself has long +since returned to his native land. Landor loves Italy, but he loves +England better. In one of his <i>Imaginary Conversations</i> he tells an +Italian nobleman:</p> + +<p>"The English are more zealous of introducing new fruits, shrubs and +plants, than other nations; you Italians are less so than any civilized +one. Better fruit is eaten in Scotland than in the most fertile and +cultivated parts of your peninsula. <i>As for flowers, there is a greater +variety in the worst of our fields than in the best of your gardens.</i> As +for shrubs, I have rarely seen a lilac, a laburnum, a mezereon, in any +of them, and yet they flourish before almost every cottage in our +poorest villages."</p> + +<p>"We wonder in England, when we hear it related by travellers, that +peaches in Italy are left under the trees for swine; but, when we +ourselves come into the country, our wonder is rather that the swine do +not leave them for animals less nice."</p> + +<p>Landor acknowledges that he has eaten better pears and cherries in Italy +than in England, but that all the other kinds of fruitage in Italy +appeared to him unfit for dessert.</p> + +<p>The most celebrated of the private estates of the present day in England +is Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire. The mansion, called +the Palace of the Peak, is considered one of the most splendid +residences in the land. The grounds are truly beautiful and most +carefully attended to. The elaborate waterworks are perhaps not in the +severest taste. Some of them are but costly puerilities. There is a +water-work in the form of a tree that sends a shower from every branch +on the unwary visitor, and there are snakes that spit forth jets upon +him as he retires. This is silly trifling: but ill adapted to interest +those who have passed their teens; and not at all an agreeable sort of +hospitality in a climate like that of England. It is in the style of the +water-works at Versailles, where wooden soldiers shoot from their +muskets vollies of water at the spectators.<a href="#note032">[032]</a></p> + +<p>It was an old English custom on certain occasions to sprinkle water over +the company at a grand entertainment. Bacon, in his Essay on Masques, +seems to object to getting drenched, when he observes that "some sweet +odours suddenly coming forth, <i>without any drops falling</i>, are in such +a company as there is steam and heat, things of great pleasure and +refreshment." It was a custom also of the ancient Greeks and Romans to +sprinkle their guests with fragrant waters. The Gascons had once the +same taste: "At times," says Montaigne, "from the bottom of the stage, +they caused sweet-scented waters to spout upwards and dart their thread +to such a prodigious height, as to sprinkle and perfume the vast +multitudes of spectators." The Native gentry of India always slightly +sprinkle their visitors with rose-water. It is flung from a small silver +utensil tapering off into a sort of upright spout with a pierced top in +the fashion of that part of a watering pot which English gardeners call +the <i>rose</i>.</p> + +<p>The finest of the water-works at Chatsworth is one called the <i>Emperor +Fountain</i> which throws up a jet 267 feet high. This height exceeds that +of any fountain in Europe. There is a vast Conservatory on the estate, +built of glass by Sir Joseph Paxton, who designed and constructed the +Crystal Palace. His experience in the building of conservatories no +doubt suggested to him the idea of the splendid glass edifice in Hyde +Park. The conservatory at Chatsworth required 70,000 square feet of +glass. Four miles of iron tubing are used in heating the building. There +is a broad carriage way running right through the centre of the +conservatory.<a href="#note033">[033]</a> This conservatory is peculiarly rich in exotic plants +of all kinds, collected at an enormous cost. This most princely estate, +contrasted with the little cottages and cottage-gardens in the +neighbourhood, suggested to Wordsworth the following sonnet.</p> + +<p>CHATSWORTH.</p> + +<pre> + Chatsworth! thy stately mansion, and the pride + Of thy domain, strange contrast do present + To house and home in many a craggy tent + Of the wild Peak, where new born waters glide + Through fields whose thrifty occupants abide + As in a dear and chosen banishment + With every semblance of entire content; + So kind is simple Nature, fairly tried! + Yet he whose heart in childhood gave his troth + To pastoral dales, then set with modest farms, + May learn, if judgment strengthen with his growth, + That not for Fancy only, pomp hath charms; + And, strenuous to protect from lawless harms + The extremes of favored life, may honour both. +</pre> + +<p>The two noblest of modern public gardens in England are those at +Kensington and Kew. Kensington Gardens were begun by King William the +III, but were originally only twenty-six acres in extent. Queen Anne +added thirty acres more. The grounds were laid out by the well-known +garden-designers, London and Wise.<a href="#note034">[034]</a> Queen Caroline, who formed the +Serpentine River by connecting several detached pieces of water into +one, and set the example of a picturesque deviation from the straight +line,<a href="#note035">[035]</a> added from Hyde Park no less than three hundred acres which +were laid out by Bridgeman. This was a great boon to the Londoners. +Horace Walpole says that Queen Caroline at first proposed to shut up St. +James's Park and convert it into a private garden for herself, but when +she asked Sir Robert Walpole what it would cost, he answered--"Only +three Crowns." This changed her intentions.</p> + +<p>The reader of Pope will remember an allusion to the famous Ring in Hyde +Park. The fair Belinda was sometimes attended there by her guardian +Sylphs:</p> + +<pre> + The light militia of the lower sky. +</pre> + +<p>They guarded her from 'the white-gloved beaux,'</p> + +<pre> + These though unseen are ever on the wing, + Hang o'er the box, <i>and hover o'er the Ring</i>. +</pre> + +<p>It was here that the gallantries of the "Merry Monarch" were but too +often exhibited to his people. "After dinner," says the right garrulous +Pepys in his journal, "to Hyde Parke; at the Parke was the King, and in +another Coach, Lady Castlemaine, they greeting one another at every +turn."</p> + +<p>The Gardens at Kew "Imperial Kew," as Darwin styles it, are the richest +in the world. They consist of one hundred and seventy acres. They were +once private gardens, and were long in the possession of Royalty, until +the accession of Queen Victoria, who opened the gardens to the public +and placed them under the control of the Commissioners of Her Majesty's +Woods and Forests, "with a view of rendering them available to the +general good."</p> + +<pre> + She hath left you all her walks, + Her private arbors and new planted orchards + On this side Tiber. She hath left them you + And to your heirs for ever; common pleasures + To walk abroad and recreate yourselves. +</pre> + +<p>They contain a large Palm-house built in 1848.<a href="#note036">[036]</a> The extent of glass +for covering the building is said to be 360,000 square feet. My +Mahomedan readers in Hindostan, (I hope they will be numerous,) will +perhaps be pleased to hear that there is an ornamental mosque in these +gardens. On each of the doors of this mosque is an Arabic inscription in +golden characters, taken from the Koran. The Arabic has been thus +translated:--</p> + +<pre> + LET THERE BE NO FORCE IN RELIGION. + THERE IS NO OTHER GOD EXCEPT THE DEITY. + MAKE NOT ANY LIKENESS UNTO GOD. +</pre> + +<p>The first sentence of the translation is rather ambiguously worded. The +sentiment has even an impious air: an apparent meaning very different +from that which was intended. Of course the original text <i>means</i>, +though the English translator has not expressed that meaning--"Let there +be no force <i>used</i> in religion."</p> + +<p>When William Cobbett was a boy of eleven years of age he worked in the +garden of the Bishop of Winchester at Farnham. Having heard much of Kew +gardens he resolved to change his locality and his master. He started +off for Kew, a distance of about thirty miles, with only thirteen pence +in his pocket. The head gardener at Kew at once engaged his services. A +few days after, George the Fourth, then Prince of Wales, saw the boy +sweeping the lawns, and laughed heartily at his blue smock frock and +long red knotted garters. But the poor gardener's boy became a public +writer, whose productions were not exactly calculated to excite the +merriment of princes.</p> + +<p>Most poets have a painter's eye for the disposition of forms and +colours. Kent's practice as a painter no doubt helped to make him what +he was as a landscape-gardener. When an architect was consulted about +laying out the grounds at Blenheim he replied, "you must send for a +landscape-painter:" he might have added--"<i>or a poet</i>."</p> + +<p>Our late Laureate, William Wordsworth, exhibited great taste in his +small garden at Rydal Mount. He said of himself--very truly though not +very modestly perhaps,--but modesty was never Wordsworth's weakness-- +that nature seemed to have fitted him for three callings--that of the +poet, the critic on works of art, and the landscape-gardener. The poet's +nest--(Mrs. Hemans calls it 'a lovely cottage-like building'<a href="#note037">[037]</a>)--is +almost hidden in a rich profusion of roses and ivy and jessamine and +virginia-creeper. Wordsworth, though he passionately admired the shapes +and hues of flowers, knew nothing of their fragrance. In this respect +knowledge at one entrance was quite shut out. He had possessed at no +time of his life the sense of smell. To make up for this deficiency, he +is said (by De Quincey) to have had "a peculiar depth of organic +sensibility of form and color."</p> + +<p>Mr. Justice Coleridge tells us that Wordsworth dealt with shrubs, +flower-beds and lawns with the readiness of a practised landscape- +gardener, and that it was curious to observe how he had imparted a +portion of his taste to his servant, James Dixon. In fact, honest James +regarded himself as a sort of Arbiter Elegantiarum. The master and his +servant often discussed together a question of taste. Wordsworth +communicated to Mr. Justice Coleridge how "he and James" were once "in a +puzzle" about certain discolored spots upon the lawn. "Cover them with +soap-lees," said the master. "That will make the green there darker than +the rest," said the gardener. "Then we must cover the whole." "That will +not do," objects the gardener, "with reference to the little lawn to +which you pass from this." "Cover that," said the poet. "You will then," +replied the gardener, "have an unpleasant contrast with the foliage +surrounding it."</p> + +<p>Pope too had communicated to his gardener at Twickenham something of his +own taste. The man, long after his master's death, in reference to the +training of the branches of plants, used to talk of their being made to +hang "<i>something poetical</i>".</p> + +<p>It would have grieved Shakespeare and Pope and Shenstone had they +anticipated the neglect or destruction of their beloved retreats. +Wordsworth said, "I often ask myself what will become of Rydal Mount +after our day. Will the old walls and steps remain in front of the house +and about the grounds, or will they be swept away with all the beautiful +mosses and ferns and wild geraniums and other flowers which their rude +construction suffered and encouraged to grow among them. This little +wild flower, <i>Poor Robin</i>, is here constantly courting my attention and +exciting what may be called a domestic interest in the varying aspect of +its stalks and leaves and flowers." I hope no Englishman meditating to +reside on the grounds now sacred to the memory of a national poet will +ever forget these words of the poet or treat his cottage and garden at +Rydal Mount as some of Pope's countrymen have treated the house and +grounds at Twickenham.<a href="#note038">[038]</a> It would be sad indeed to hear, after this, +that any one had refused to spare the <i>Poor Robins</i> and <i>wild geraniums</i> +of Rydal Mount. Miss Jewsbury has a poem descriptive of "the Poet's +Home." I must give the first stanza:--</p> + +<p>WORDSWORTH'S COTTAGE.</p> + +<pre> + Low and white, yet scarcely seen + Are its walls of mantling green; + Not a window lets in light + But through flowers clustering bright, + Not a glance may wander there + But it falls on something fair; + Garden choice and fairy mound + Only that no elves are found; + Winding walk and sheltered nook + For student grave and graver book, + Or a bird-like bower perchance + Fit for maiden and romance. +</pre> + +<p>Another lady-poet has poured forth in verse her admiration of</p> + +<p>THE RESIDENCE OF WORDSWORTH.</p> + +<pre> + Not for the glory on their heads + Those stately hill-tops wear, + Although the summer sunset sheds + Its constant crimson there: + Not for the gleaming lights that break + The purple of the twilight lake, + Half dusky and half fair, + Does that sweet valley seem to be + A sacred place on earth to me. + + The influence of a moral spell + Is found around the scene, + Giving new shadows to the dell, + New verdure to the green. + With every mountain-top is wrought + The presence of associate thought, + A music that has been; + Calling that loveliness to life, + With which the inward world is rife. + + His home--our English poet's home-- + Amid these hills is made; + Here, with the morning, hath he come, + There, with the night delayed. + On all things is his memory cast, + For every place wherein he past, + Is with his mind arrayed, + That, wandering in a summer hour, + Asked wisdom of the leaf and flower. +</pre> + +<div>L.E.L.</div> + +<p>The cottage and garden of the poet are not only picturesque and +delightful in themselves, but from their position in the midst of some +of the finest scenery of England. One of the writers in the book +entitled '<i>The Land we Live in</i>' observes that the bard of the mountains +and the lakes could not have found a more fitting habitation had the +whole land been before him, where to choose his place of rest. "Snugly +sheltered by the mountains, embowered among trees, and having in itself +prospects of surpassing beauty, it also lies in the midst of the very +noblest objects in the district, and in one of the happiest social +positions. The grounds are delightful in every respect; but one view-- +that from the terrace of moss-like grass--is, to our thinking, the most +exquisitely graceful in all this land of beauty. It embraces the whole +valley of Windermere, with hills on either side softened into perfect +loveliness."</p> + +<p>Eustace, the Italian tourist, seems inclined to deprive the English of +the honor of being the first cultivators of the natural style in +gardening, and thinks that it was borrowed not from Milton but from +Tasso. I suppose that most genuine poets, in all ages and in all +countries, when they give full play to the imagination, have glimpses of +the truly natural in the arts. The reader will probably be glad to renew +his acquaintance with Tasso's description of the garden of Armida. I +shall give the good old version of Edward Fairfax from the edition of +1687. Fairfax was a true poet and wrote musically at a time when +sweetness of versification was not so much aimed at as in a later day. +Waller confessed that he owed the smoothness of his verse to the example +of Fairfax, who, as Warton observes, "well vowelled his lines."</p> + +<p>THE GARDEN OF ARMIDA.</p> + +<pre> + When they had passed all those troubled ways, + The Garden sweet spread forth her green to shew; + The moving crystal from the fountains plays; + Fair trees, high plants, strange herbs and flowerets new, + Sunshiny hills, vales hid from Phoebus' rays, + Groves, arbours, mossie caves at once they view, + And that which beauty most, most wonder brought, + No where appear'd the Art which all this wrought. + + So with the rude the polished mingled was, + That natural seem'd all and every part, + Nature would craft in counterfeiting pass, + And imitate her imitator Art: + Mild was the air, the skies were clear as glass, + The trees no whirlwind felt, nor tempest's smart, + But ere the fruit drop off, the blossom comes, + This springs, that falls, that ripeneth and this blooms. + + The leaves upon the self-same bough did hide, + Beside the young, the old and ripened fig, + Here fruit was green, there ripe with vermeil side; + The apples new and old grew on one twig, + The fruitful vine her arms spread high and wide, + That bended underneath their clusters big; + The grapes were tender here, hard, young and sour, + There purple ripe, and nectar sweet forth pour. + + The joyous birds, hid under green-wood shade, + Sung merry notes on every branch and bow, + The wind that in the leaves and waters plaid + With murmer sweet, now sung and whistled now; + Ceaséd the birds, the wind loud answer made: + And while they sung, it rumbled soft and low; + Thus were it hap or cunning, chance or art, + The wind in this strange musick bore his part. + + With party-coloured plumes and purple bill, + A wondrous bird among the rest there flew, + That in plain speech sung love-lays loud and shrill, + Her leden was like humane language true; + So much she talkt, and with such wit and skill, + That strange it seeméd how much good she knew; + Her feathered fellows all stood hush to hear, + Dumb was the wind, the waters silent were. + + The <a name="fairfax">gently budding rose</a> (quoth she) behold, + That first scant peeping forth with virgin beams, + Half ope, half shut, her beauties doth upfold + In their dear leaves, and less seen, fairer seems, + And after spreads them forth more broad and bold, + Then languisheth and dies in last extreams, + Nor seems the same, that deckéd bed and bower + Of many a lady late, and paramour. + + So, in the passing of a day, doth pass + The bud and blossom of the life of man, + Nor ere doth flourish more, but like the grass + Cut down, becometh wither'd, pale and wan: + O gather then the rose while time thou hast, + Short is the day, done when it scant began; + Gather the rose of love, while yet thou may'st + Loving be lov'd; embracing, be embrac'd. + + He ceas'd, and as approving all he spoke, + The quire of birds their heav'nly tunes renew, + The turtles sigh'd, and sighs with kisses broke, + The fowls to shades unseen, by pairs withdrew; + It seem'd the laurel chaste, and stubborn oak, + And all the gentle trees on earth that grew, + It seem'd the land, the sea, and heav'n above, + All breath'd out fancy sweet, and sigh'd out love. +</pre> + +<div><i>Godfrey of Bulloigne</i></div> + +<p>I must place near the garden of Armida, Ariosto's garden of Alcina. +"Ariosto," says Leigh Hunt, "cared for none of the pleasures of the +great, except building, and was content in Cowley's fashion, with "a +small house in a large garden." He loved gardening better than he +understood it, was always shifting his plants, and destroying the seeds, +out of impatience to see them germinate. He was rejoicing once on the +coming up of some "capers" which he had been visiting every day, to see +how they got on, when it turned out that his capers were elder trees!"</p> + +<p>THE GARDEN OF ALCINA.</p> + +<pre> + 'A more delightful place, wherever hurled, + Through the whole air, Rogero had not found; + And had he ranged the universal world, + Would not have seen a lovelier in his round, + Than that, where, wheeling wide, the courser furled + His spreading wings, and lighted on the ground + Mid cultivated plain, delicious hill, + Moist meadow, shady bank, and crystal rill; + + 'Small thickets, with the scented laurel gay, + Cedar, and orange, full of fruit and flower, + Myrtle and palm, with interwoven spray, + Pleached in mixed modes, all lovely, form a bower; + And, breaking with their shade the scorching ray, + Make a cool shelter from the noon-tide hour. + And nightingales among those branches wing + Their flight, and safely amorous descants sing. + + 'Amid red roses and white lilies <i>there</i>, + Which the soft breezes freshen as they fly, + Secure the cony haunts, and timid hare, + And stag, with branching forehead broad and high. + These, fearless of the hunter's dart or snare, + Feed at their ease, or ruminating lie; + While, swarming in those wilds, from tuft or steep, + Dun deer or nimble goat disporting leap.' +</pre> + +<div><i>Rose's Orlando Furioso</i>.</div> + +<p>Spenser's description of the garden of Adonis is too long to give +entire, but I shall quote a few stanzas. The old story on which Spenser +founds his description is told with many variations of circumstance and +meaning; but we need not quit the pages of the Faerie Queene to lose +ourselves amidst obscure mythologies. We have too much of these indeed +even in Spenser's own version of the fable.</p> + +<p>THE GARDEN OF ADONIS.</p> + +<pre> + Great enimy to it, and all the rest + That in the Gardin of Adonis springs, + Is wicked Time; who with his scythe addrest + Does mow the flowring herbes and goodly things, + And all their glory to the ground downe flings, + Where they do wither and are fowly mard + He flyes about, and with his flaggy wings + Beates downe both leaves and buds without regard, + Ne ever pitty may relent his malice hard. + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + But were it not that Time their troubler is, + All that in this delightful gardin growes + Should happy bee, and have immortall blis: + For here all plenty and all pleasure flowes; + And sweete Love gentle fitts emongst them throwes, + Without fell rancor or fond gealosy. + Franckly each paramour his leman knowes, + Each bird his mate; ne any does envy + Their goodly meriment and gay felicity. + + There is continual spring, and harvest there + Continuall, both meeting at one tyme: + For both the boughes doe laughing blossoms beare. + And with fresh colours decke the wanton pryme, + And eke attonce the heavy trees they clyme, + Which seeme to labour under their fruites lode: + The whiles the ioyous birdes make their pastyme + Emongst the shady leaves, their sweet abode, + And their trew loves without suspition tell abrode. + + Right in the middest of that Paradise + There stood a stately mount, on whose round top + A gloomy grove of mirtle trees did rise, + Whose shady boughes sharp steele did never lop, + Nor wicked beastes their tender buds did crop, + But like a girlond compasséd the hight, + And from their fruitfull sydes sweet gum did drop, + That all the ground, with pretious deaw bedight, + Threw forth most dainty odours and most sweet delight. + + And in the thickest covert of that shade + There was a pleasaunt arber, not by art + But of the trees owne inclination made, + Which knitting their rancke braunches part to part, + With wanton yvie-twine entrayld athwart, + And eglantine and caprifole emong, + Fashioned above within their inmost part, + That neither Phoebus beams could through them throng, + Nor Aeolus sharp blast could worke them any wrong. + + And all about grew every sort of flowre, + To which sad lovers were transformde of yore, + Fresh Hyacinthus, Phoebus paramoure + And dearest love; + Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watry shore; + Sad Amaranthus, made a flowre but late, + Sad Amaranthus, in whose purple gore + Me seemes I see Amintas wretched fate, + To whom sweet poet's verse hath given endlesse date. +</pre> + +<div><i>Fairie Queene, Book III. Canto VI</i>.</div> + +<p>I must here give a few stanzas from Spenser's description of the <i>Bower +of Bliss</i></p> + +<pre> + In which whatever in this worldly state + Is sweet and pleasing unto living sense, + Or that may dayntiest fantasy aggrate + Was pouréd forth with pleantiful dispence. +</pre> + +<p>The English poet in his Fairie Queene has borrowed a great deal from +Tasso and Ariosto, but generally speaking, his borrowings, like those of +most true poets, are improvements upon the original.</p> + +<p>THE BOWER OF BLISS.</p> + +<pre> + There the most daintie paradise on ground + Itself doth offer to his sober eye, + In which all pleasures plenteously abownd, + And none does others happinesse envye; + The painted flowres; the trees upshooting hye; + The dales for shade; the hilles for breathing-space; + The trembling groves; the christall running by; + And that which all faire workes doth most aggrace, + The art, which all that wrought, appearéd in no place. + + One would have thought, (so cunningly the rude<a href="#note039">[039]</a> + And scornéd partes were mingled with the fine,) + That Nature had for wantonesse ensude + Art, and that Art at Nature did repine; + So striving each th' other to undermine, + Each did the others worke more beautify; + So diff'ring both in willes agreed in fine; + So all agreed, through sweete diversity, + This Gardin to adorn with all variety. + + And in the midst of all a fountaine stood, + Of richest substance that on earth might bee, + So pure and shiny that the silver flood + Through every channel running one might see; + Most goodly it with curious ymageree + Was over-wrought, and shapes of naked boyes, + Of which some seemed with lively iollitee + To fly about, playing their wanton toyes, + Whylest others did themselves embay in liquid ioyes. + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, + Of all that mote delight a daintie eare, + Such as attonce might not on living ground, + Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: + Right hard it was for wight which did it heare, + To read what manner musicke that mote bee; + For all that pleasing is to living eare + Was there consorted in one harmonee; + Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters all agree: + + The ioyous birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade, + Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet; + Th' angelicall soft trembling voyces made + To th' instruments divine respondence meet; + The silver-sounding instruments did meet + With the base murmure of the waters fall; + The waters fall with difference discreet, + Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; + The gentle warbling wind low answeréd to all. +</pre> + +<div><i>The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto XII.</i></div> + +<p>Every school-boy has heard of the gardens of the Hesperides. The story +is told in many different ways. According to some accounts, the +Hesperides, the daughters of Hesperus, were appointed to keep charge of +the tree of golden apples which Jupiter presented to Juno on their +wedding day. A hundred-headed dragon that never slept, (the offspring of +Typhon,) couched at the foot of the tree. It was one of the twelve +labors of Hercules to obtain possession of some of these apples. He slew +the dragon and gathered three golden apples. The gardens, according to +some authorities, were situated near Mount Atlas.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare seems to have taken <i>Hesperides</i> to be the name of the +garden instead of that of its fair keepers. Even the learned Milton in +his <i>Paradise Regained</i>, (Book II) talks of <i>the ladies of the +Hesperides</i>, and appears to make the word Hesperides synonymous with +"Hesperian gardens." Bishop Newton, in a foot-note to the passage in +"Paradise Regained," asks, "What are the Hesperides famous for, but the +gardens and orchards which <i>they had</i> bearing golden fruit in the +western Isles of Africa." Perhaps after all there may be some good +authority in favor of extending the names of the nymphs to the garden +itself. Malone, while condemning Shakespeare's use of the words as +inaccurate, acknowledges that other poets have used it in the same way, +and quotes as an instance, the following lines from Robert Greene:--</p> + +<pre> + Shew thee the tree, leaved with refined gold, + Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat, + That watched <i>the garden</i> called the <i>Hesperides</i>. +</pre> + +<div><i>Robert Greene</i>.</div> + +<pre> + For valour is not love a Hercules, + Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? +</pre> + +<div><i>Love's Labour Lost</i>.</div> + +<pre> + Before thee stands this fair Hesperides, + With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched + For death-like dragons here affright thee hard. +</pre> + +<div><i>Pericles, Prince of Tyre</i>.</div> + +<p>Milton, after the fourth line of his Comus, had originally inserted, in +his manuscript draft of the poem, the following description of the +garden of the Hesperides.</p> + +<p>THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES</p> + +<pre> + Amid the Hesperian gardens, on whose banks + Bedewed with nectar and celestial songs + Eternal roses grow, and hyacinth, + And fruits of golden rind, on whose fair tree + The scaly harnessed dragon ever keeps + His uninchanted eye, around the verge + And sacred limits of this blissful Isle + The jealous ocean that old river winds + His far extended aims, till with steep fall + Half his waste flood the wide Atlantic fills; + And half the slow unfathomed Stygian pool + But soft, I was not sent to court your wonder + With distant worlds and strange removéd climes + Yet thence I come and oft from thence behold + The smoke and stir of this dim narrow spot +</pre> + +<p>Milton subsequently drew his pen through these lines, for what reason is +not known. Bishop Newton observes, that this passage, saved from +intended destruction, may serve as a specimen of the truth of the +observation that</p> + +<pre> + Poets lose half the praise they should have got + Could it be known what they discreetly blot. +</pre> + +<div><i>Waller</i>.</div> + +<p>As I have quoted in an <a href="#note011">earlier page</a> some unfavorable allusions to +Homer's description of a Grecian garden, it will be but fair to follow +up Milton's picture of Paradise, and Tasso's garden of Armida, and +Ariosto's Garden of Alcina, and Spenser's Garden of Adonis and his Bower +of Bliss, with Homer's description of the Garden of Alcinous. Minerva +tells Ulysses that the Royal mansion to which the garden of Alcinous is +attached is of such conspicuous grandeur and so generally known, that +any child might lead him to it;</p> + +<pre> + For Phoeacia's sons + Possess not houses equalling in aught + The mansion of Alcinous, the king. +</pre> + +<p>I shall give Cowper's version, because it may be less familiar to the +reader than Pope's, which is in every one's hand.</p> + +<p>THE GARDEN OF ALCINOUS</p> + +<pre> + Without the court, and to the gates adjoined + A spacious garden lay, fenced all around, + Secure, four acres measuring complete, + There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree, + Pomgranate, pear, the apple blushing bright, + The honeyed fig, and unctuous olive smooth. + Those fruits, nor winter's cold nor summer's heat + Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang + Perennial, while unceasing zephyr breathes + Gently on all, enlarging these, and those + Maturing genial; in an endless course. + Pears after pears to full dimensions swell, + Figs follow figs, grapes clustering grow again + Where clusters grew, and (every apple stripped) + The boughs soon tempt the gatherer as before. + There too, well rooted, and of fruit profuse, + His vineyard grows; part, wide extended, basks + In the sun's beams; the arid level glows; + In part they gather, and in part they tread + The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes + Here put their blossoms forth, there gather fast + Their blackness. On the garden's verge extreme + Flowers of all hues<a href="#note040">[040]</a> smile all the year, arranged + With neatest art judicious, and amid + The lovely scene two fountains welling forth, + One visits, into every part diffused, + The garden-ground, the other soft beneath + The threshold steals into the palace court + Whence every citizen his vase supplies. +</pre> + +<div><i>Homer's Odyssey, Book VII</i>.</div> + +<p>The mode of watering the garden-ground, and the use made of the water by +the public--</p> + +<pre> + Whence every citizen his vase supplies-- +</pre> + +<p>can hardly fail to remind Indian and Anglo-Indian readers of a Hindu +gentleman's garden in Bengal.</p> + +<p>Pope first published in the <i>Guardian</i> his own version of the account of +the garden of Alcinous and subsequently gave it a place in his entire +translation of Homer. In introducing the readers of the <i>Guardian</i> to +the garden of Alcinous he observes that "the two most celebrated wits of +the world have each left us a particular picture of a garden; wherein +those great masters, being wholly unconfined and pointing at pleasure, +may be thought to have given a full idea of what seemed most excellent +in that way. These (one may observe) consist entirely of the useful part +of horticulture, fruit trees, herbs, waters, &c. The pieces I am +speaking of are Virgil's account of the garden of the old Corycian, and +Homer's of that of Alcinous. The first of these is already known to the +English reader, by the excellent versions of Mr. Dryden and Mr. +Addison."</p> + +<p>I do not think our present landscape-gardeners, or parterre-gardeners or +even our fruit or kitchen-gardeners can be much enchanted with Virgil's +ideal of a garden, but here it is, as "done into English," by John +Dryden, who describes the Roman Poet as "a profound naturalist," and "<i>a +curious Florist</i>."</p> + +<p>THE GARDEN OF THE OLD CORYCIAN.</p> + +<pre> + I chanc'd an old Corycian swain to know, + Lord of few acres, and those barren too, + Unfit for sheep or vines, and more unfit to sow: + Yet, lab'ring well his little spot of ground, + Some scatt'ring pot-herbs here and there he found, + Which, cultivated with his daily care + And bruis'd with vervain, were his frugal fare. + With wholesome poppy-flow'rs, to mend his homely board: + For, late returning home, he supp'd at ease, + And wisely deem'd the wealth of monarchs less: + The little of his own, because his own, did please. + To quit his care, he gather'd, first of all, + In spring the roses, apples in the fall: + And, when cold winter split the rocks in twain, + And ice the running rivers did restrain, + He stripp'd the bear's foot of its leafy growth, + And, calling western winds, accus'd the spring of sloth + He therefore first among the swains was found + To reap the product of his labour'd ground, + And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crown'd + His limes were first in flow'rs, his lofty pines, + With friendly shade, secur'd his tender vines. + For ev'ry bloom his trees in spring afford, + An autumn apple was by tale restor'd + He knew to rank his elms in even rows, + For fruit the grafted pear tree to dispose, + And tame to plums the sourness of the sloes + With spreading planes he made a cool retreat, + To shade good fellows from the summer's heat +</pre> + +<div><i>Virgil's Georgics, Book IV</i>.</div> + +<p>An excellent Scottish poet--Allan Ramsay--a true and unaffected +describer of rural life and scenery--seems to have had as great a +dislike to topiary gardens, and quite as earnest a love of nature, as +any of the best Italian poets. The author of the "Gentle Shepherd" tells +us in the following lines what sort of garden most pleased his fancy.</p> + +<p>ALLAN RAMSAY'S GARDEN.</p> + +<pre> + I love the garden wild and wide, + Where oaks have plum-trees by their side, + Where woodbines and the twisting vine + Clip round the pear tree and the pine + Where mixed jonquils and gowans grow + And roses midst rank clover grow + Upon a bank of a clear strand, + In wrimplings made by Nature's hand + Though docks and brambles here and there + May sometimes cheat the gardener's care, + <i>Yet this to me is Paradise</i>, + <i>Compared with prim cut plots and nice</i>, + <i>Where Nature has to Act resigned,</i> + <i>Till all looks mean, stiff and confined</i>. +</pre> + +<p>I cannot say that I should wish to see forest trees and docks and +brambles in garden borders. Honest Allan here runs a little into the +extreme, as men are apt enough to do, when they try to get as far as +possible from the side advocated by an opposite party.</p> + +<p>I shall now exhibit two paintings of bowers. I begin with one from +Spenser.</p> + +<p>A BOWER</p> + +<pre> + And over him Art stryving to compayre + With Nature did an arber greene dispied<a href="#note041">[041]</a> + Framéd of wanton yvie, flouring, fayre, + Through which the fragrant eglantine did spred + His prickling armes, entrayld with roses red, + Which daintie odours round about them threw + And all within with flowers was garnishéd + That, when myld Zephyrus emongst them blew, + Did breathe out bounteous smels, and painted colors shew + + And fast beside these trickled softly downe + A gentle streame, whose murmuring wave did play + Emongst the pumy stones, and made a sowne, + To lull him soft asleepe that by it lay + The wearie traveiler wandring that way, + Therein did often quench his thirsty head + And then by it his wearie limbes display, + (Whiles creeping slomber made him to forget + His former payne,) and wypt away his toilsom sweat. + + And on the other syde a pleasaunt grove + Was shott up high, full of the stately tree + That dedicated is t'Olympick Iove, + And to his son Alcides,<a href="#note042">[042]</a> whenas hee + In Nemus gaynéd goodly victoree + Theirin the merry birds of every sorte + Chaunted alowd their cheerful harmonee, + And made emongst themselves a sweete consórt + That quickned the dull spright with musicall comfórt. +</pre> + +<div><i>Fairie Queene, Book 2 Cant. 5 Stanzas 29, 30 and 31.</i></div> + +<p>Here is a sweet picture of a "shady lodge" from the hand of Milton.</p> + +<p>EVE'S NUPTIAL BOWER.</p> + +<pre> + Thus talking, hand in hand alone they pass'd + On to their blissful bower. It was a place + Chosen by the sov'reign Planter, when he framed + All things to man's delightful use, the roof + Of thickest covert was inwoven shade, + Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew + Of firm and fragrant leaf, on either side + Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub, + Fenced up the verdant wall, each beauteous flower + Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine, + Rear'd high their flourish'd heads between, and wrought + Mosaic, under foot the violet, + Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay + Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone + Of costliest emblem other creature here, + Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none, + Such was their awe of man. In shadier bower + More sacred and sequester'd, though but feign'd, + Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph + Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess, + With flowers, garlands, and sweet smelling herbs, + Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed, + And heavenly quires the hymenean sung +</pre> + +<p>I have already quoted from Leigh Hunt's "Stories from the Italian poets" +an amusing anecdote illustrative of Ariosto's ignorance of botany. But +even in these days when all sorts of sciences are forced upon all sorts +of students, we often meet with persons of considerable sagacity and +much information of a different kind who are marvellously ignorant of +the vegetable world.</p> + +<p>In the just published Memoirs of the late James Montgomery, of +Sheffield, it is recorded that the poet and his brother Robert, a +tradesman at Woolwich, (not Robert Montgomery, the author of 'Satan,' +&c.) were one day walking together, when the trader seeing a field of +flax in full flower, asked the poet what sort of corn it was. "Such corn +as your shirt is made of," was the reply. "But Robert," observes a +writer in the <i>Athenaeum</i>, "need not be ashamed of his simplicity. +Rousseau, naturalist as he was, could hardly tell one berry from +another, and three of our greatest wits disputing in the field whether +the crop growing there was rye, barley, or oats, were set right by a +clown, who truly pronounced it wheat."</p> + +<p>Men of genius who have concentrated all their powers on some one +favorite profession or pursuit are often thus triumphed over by the +vulgar, whose eyes are more observant of the familiar objects and +details of daily life and of the scenes around them. Wordsworth and +Coleridge, on one occasion, after a long drive, and in the absence of a +groom, endeavored to relieve the tired horse of its harness. After +torturing the poor animal's neck and endangering its eyes by their +clumsy and vain attempts to slip off the collar, they at last gave up +the matter in despair. They felt convinced that the horse's head must +have swollen since the collar was put on. At last a servant-girl beheld +their perplexity. "La, masters," she exclaimed, "you dont set about it +the right way." She then seized hold of the collar, turned it broad end +up, and slipped it off in a second. The mystery that had puzzled two of +the finest intellects of their time was a very simple matter indeed to a +country wench who had perhaps never heard that England possessed a +Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>James Montgomery was a great lover of flowers, and few of our English +poets have written about the family of Flora, the sweet wife of Zephyr, +in a more genial spirit. He used to regret that the old Floral games and +processions on May-day and other holidays had gone out of fashion. +Southey tells us that in George the First's reign a grand Florist's +Feast was held at Bethnall Green, and that a carnation named after his +Majesty was <i>King of the Year</i>. The Stewards were dressed with laurel +leaves and flowers. They carried gilded staves. Ninety cultivators +followed in procession to the sound of music, each bearing his own +flowers before him. All elegant customs of this nature have fallen into +desuetude in England, though many of them are still kept up in other +parts of Europe.</p> + +<p>Chaucer who dearly loved all images associated with the open air and the +dewy fields and bright mornings and radiant flowers makes the gentle +Emily,</p> + +<pre> + That fairer was to seene + Than is the lily upon his stalkie greene, +</pre> + +<p>rise early and do honor to the birth of May-day. All things now seem to +breathe of hope and joy.</p> + +<pre> + Though long hath been + The trance of Nature on the naked bier + Where ruthless Winter mocked her slumbers drear + And rent with icy hand her robes of green, + That trance is brightly broken! Glossy trees, + Resplendent meads and variegated flowers + Flash in the sun and flutter in the breeze + And now with dreaming eye the poet sees + Fair shapes of pleasure haunt romantic bowers, + And laughing streamlets chase the flying hours. +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>The great describer of our Lost Paradise did not disdain to sing a</p> + +<p>SONG ON MAY-MORNING.</p> + +<pre> + Now the bright Morning star, Day's harbinger, + Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her + The flowery May, who from her green lap throws + The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose + Hail bounteous-May, that dost inspire + Mirth and youth and warm desire; + Woods and groves are of thy dressing, + Hill and dale do boast thy blessing. + Thus we salute thee with our early song, + And welcome thee and wish thee long. +</pre> + +<p>Nor did the Poet of the World, William Shakespeare, hesitate to</p> + +<pre> + Do observance to a morn of May. +</pre> + +<p>He makes one of his characters (in <i>King Henry VIII</i>.) complain that it +is as impossible to keep certain persons quiet on an ordinary day, as it +is to make them sleep on May-day--once the time of universal merriment-- +when every one was wont "<i>to put himself into triumph</i>."</p> + +<pre> + 'Tis as much impossible, + Unless we sweep 'em from the doors with cannons + To scatter 'em, <i>as 'tis to make 'em sleep + On May-day Morning</i>. +</pre> + +<p>Spenser duly celebrates, in his "Shepheard's Calender,"</p> + +<pre> + Thilke mery moneth of May + When love-lads masken in fresh aray, +</pre> + +<p>when "all is yclad with pleasaunce, the ground with grasse, the woods +with greene leaves, and the bushes with bloosming buds."</p> + +<pre> + Sicker<a href="#note043">[043]</a> this morowe, no longer agoe, + I saw a shole of shepeardes outgoe + With singing and shouting and iolly chere: + Before them yode<a href="#note044">[044]</a> a lustre tabrere,<a href="#note045">[045]</a> + That to the many a hornepype playd + Whereto they dauncen eche one with his mayd. + To see those folks make such iovysaunce, + Made my heart after the pype to daunce. + Tho<a href="#note046">[046]</a> to the greene wood they speeden hem all + To fetchen home May with their musicall; + And home they bringen in a royall throne + Crowned as king; and his queene attone<a href="#note047">[047]</a> + Was LADY FLORA. +</pre> + +<div><i>Spenser</i>.</div> + +<p>This is the season when the birds seem almost intoxicated with delight +at the departure of the dismal and cold and cloudy days of winter and +the return of the warm sun. The music of these little May musicians +seems as fresh as the fragrance of the flowers. The Skylark is the +prince of British Singing-birds--the leader of their cheerful band.</p> + +<p>LINES TO A SKYLARK.</p> + +<pre> + Wanderer through the wilds of air! + Freely as an angel fair + Thou dost leave the solid earth, + Man is bound to from his birth + Scarce a cubit from the grass + Springs the foot of lightest lass-- + <i>Thou</i> upon a cloud can'st leap, + And o'er broadest rivers sweep, + Climb up heaven's steepest height, + Fluttering, twinkling, in the light, + Soaring, singing, till, sweet bird, + Thou art neither seen nor heard, + Lost in azure fields afar + Like a distance hidden star, + That alone for angels bright + Breathes its music, sheds its light + + Warbler of the morning's mirth! + When the gray mists rise from earth, + And the round dews on each spray + Glitter in the golden ray, + And thy wild notes, sweet though high, + Fill the wide cerulean, sky, + Is there human heart or brain + Can resist thy merry strain? + + But not always soaring high, + Making man up turn his eye + Just to learn what shape of love, + Raineth music from above,-- + All the sunny cloudlets fair + Floating on the azure air, + All the glories of the sky + Thou leavest unreluctantly, + Silently with happy breast + To drop into thy lowly nest. + + Though the frame of man must be + Bound to earth, the soul is free, + But that freedom oft doth bring + Discontent and sorrowing. + Oh! that from each waking vision, + Gorgeous vista, gleam Elysian, + From ambition's dizzy height, + And from hope's illusive light, + Man, like thee, glad lark, could brook + Upon a low green spot to look, + And with home affections blest + Sink into as calm a nest! D.L.R. +</pre> + +<p>I brought from England to India two English skylarks. I thought they +would help to remind me of English meadows and keep alive many agreeable +home-associations. In crossing the desert they were carefully lashed on +the top of one of the vans, and in spite of the dreadful jolting and the +heat of the sun they sang the whole way until night-fall. It was +pleasant to hear English larks from rich clover fields singing so +joyously in the sandy waste. In crossing some fields between Cairo and +the Pyramids I was surprized and delighted with the songs of Egyptian +skylarks. Their notes were much the same as those of the English lark. +The lark of Bengal is about the size of a sparrow and has a poor weak +note. At this moment a lark from Caubul (larger than an English lark) is +doing his best to cheer me with his music. This noble bird, though so +far from his native fields, and shut up in his narrow prison, pours +forth his rapturous melody in an almost unbroken stream from dawn to +sunset. He allows no change of season to abate his minstrelsy, to any +observable degree, and seems equally happy and musical all the year +round. I have had him nearly two years, and though of course he must +moult his feathers yearly, I have not observed the change of plumage, +nor have I noticed that he has sung less at one period of the year than +another. One of my two English larks was stolen the very day I landed in +India, and the other soon died. The loss of an English lark is not to be +replaced in Calcutta, though almost every week, canaries, linnets, gold- +finches and bull-finches are sold at public auctions here.</p> + +<p>But I must return to my main subject.--The ancients used to keep the +great Feast of the goddess Flora on the 28th of April. It lasted till +the 3rd of May. The Floral Games of antiquity were unhappily debased by +indecent exhibitions; but they were not entirely devoid of better +characteristics.<a href="#note048">[048]</a> Ovid describing the goddess Flora says that "while +she was speaking she breathed forth vernal roses from her mouth." The +same poet has represented her in her garden with the Florae gathering +flowers and the Graces making garlands of them. The British borrowed the +idea of this festival from the Romans. Some of our Kings and Queens used +'<i>to go a Maying</i>,' and to have feasts of wine and venison in the open +meadows or under the good green-wood. Prior says:</p> + +<pre> + Let one great day + To celebrate sports and floral play + Be set aside. +</pre> + +<p>But few people, in England, in these times, distinguish May-day from the +initial day of any other month of the twelve. I am old enough to +remember <i>Jack-in-the-Green</i>. Nor have I forgotten the cheerful +clatter--the brush-and-shovel music--of our little British +negroes--"innocent blacknesses," as Lamb calls them--the chimney- +sweepers,--a class now almost <i>swept away</i> themselves by <i>machinery</i>. +One May-morning in the streets of London these tinsel-decorated merry- +makers with their sooty cheeks and black lips lined with red, and +staring eyes whose white seemed whiter still by contrast with the +darkness of their cases, and their ivory teeth kept sound and brilliant +with the professional powder, besieged George Selwyn and his arm-in-arm +companion, Lord Pembroke, for May-day boxes. Selwyn making them a low +bow, said, very solemnly "I have often heard of <i>the sovereignty of the +people</i>, and I suppose you are some of the young princes in court +mourning."</p> + +<p>My Native readers in Bengal can form no conception of the delight with +which the British people at home still hail the spring of the year, or +the deep interest which they take in all "the Seasons and their change"; +though they have dropped some of the oldest and most romantic of the +ceremonies once connected with them. If there were an annual fall of the +leaf in the groves of India, instead of an eternal summer, the natives +would discover how much the charms of the vegetable world are enhanced +by these vicissitudes, and how even winter itself can be made +delightful. My brother exiles will remember as long as life is in them, +how exquisite, in dear old England, is the enjoyment of a brisk morning +walk in the clear frosty air, and how cheering and cosy is the social +evening fire! Though a cold day in Calcutta is not exactly like a cold +day in London, it sometimes revives the remembrance of it. An Indian +winter, if winter it may be called, is indeed far less agreeable than a +winter in England, but it is not wholly without its pleasures. It is, at +all events, a grateful change--a welcome relief and refreshment after a +sultry summer or a <i>muggy</i> rainy season.</p> + +<p>An Englishman, however, must always prefer the keener but more wholesome +frigidity of his own clime. There, the external gloom and bleakness of a +severe winter day enhance our in-door comforts, and we do not miss sunny +skies when greeted with sunny looks. If we then see no blooming flowers, +we see blooming faces. But as we have few domestic enjoyments in this +country--no social snugness,--no sweet seclusion--and as our houses are +as open as bird-cages,--and as we almost live in public and in the open +air--we have little comfort when compelled, with an enfeebled frame and +a morbidly sensitive cuticle, to remain at home on what an Anglo-Indian +Invalid calls a cold day, with an easterly wind whistling through every +room.<a href="#note049">[049]</a> In our dear native country each season has its peculiar moral +or physical attractions. It is not easy to say which is the most +agreeable--its summer or its winter. Perhaps I must decide in favor of +the first. The memory of many a smiling summer day still flashes upon my +soul. If the whole of human life were like a fine English day in June, +we should cease to wish for "another and a better world." It is often +from dawn to sunset one revel of delight. How pleasantly, from the first +break of day, have I lain wide awake and traced the approach of the +breakfast hour by the increasing notes of birds and the advancing sun- +light on my curtains! A summer feeling, at such a time, would make my +heart dance within me, as I thought of the long, cheerful day to be +enjoyed, and planned some rural walk, or rustic entertainment. The ills +that flesh is heir to, if they occurred for a moment, appeared like idle +visions. They were inconceivable as real things. As I heard the lark +singing in "a glorious privacy of light," and saw the boughs of the +green and gold laburnum waving at my window, and had my fancy filled +with images of natural beauty, I felt a glow of fresh life in my veins, +and my soul was inebriated with joy. It is difficult, amidst such +exhilarating influences, to entertain those melancholy ideas which +sometimes crowd upon, us, and appear so natural, at a less happy hour. +Even actual misfortune comes in a questionable shape, when our physical +constitution is in perfect health, and the flowers are in full bloom, +and the skies are blue, and the streams are glittering in the sun. So +powerfully does the light of external nature sometimes act upon the +moral system, that a sweet sensation steals gradually over the heart, +even when we think we have reason to be sorrowful, and while we almost +accuse ourselves of a want of feeling. The fretful hypochondriac would +do well to bear this fact in mind, and not take it for granted that all +are cold and selfish who fail to sympathize with his fantastic cares. He +should remember that men are sometimes so buoyed up by the sense of +corporeal power, and a communion with nature in her cheerful moods, that +things connected with their own personal interests, and which at other +times might irritate and wound their feelings, pass by them like the +idle wind which they regard not. He himself must have had his intervals +of comparative happiness, in which the causes of his present grief would +have appeared trivial and absurd. He should not, then, expect persons +whose blood is warm in their veins, and whose eyes are open to the +blessed sun in heaven, to think more of the apparent causes of his +sorrow than he would himself, were his mind and body in a healthful +state.</p> + +<p>With what a light heart and eager appetite did I enter the little +breakfast parlour of which the glass-doors opened upon a bright green +lawn, variegated with small beds of flowers! The table was spread with +dewy and delicious fruits from our own garden, and gathered by fair and +friendly hands. Beautiful and luscious as were these garden dainties, +they were of small account in comparison with the fresh cheeks and +cherry lips that so frankly accepted the wonted early greeting. Alas! +how that circle of early friends is now divided, and what a change has +since come over the spirit of our dreams! Yet still I cherish boyish +feelings, and the past is sometimes present. As I give an imaginary kiss +to an "old familiar face," and catch myself almost unconsciously, yet +literally, returning imaginary smiles, my heart is as fresh and fervid +as of yore.</p> + +<p>A lapse of fifteen years, and a distance of fifteen thousand miles, and +the glare of a tropical sky and the presence of foreign faces, need not +make an Indian Exile quite forgetful of home-delights. Parted friends +may still share the light of love as severed clouds are equally kindled +by the same sun. No number of miles or days can change or separate +faithful spirits or annihilate early associations. That strange +magician, Fancy, who supplies so many corporeal deficiencies and +overcomes so many physical obstructions, and mocks at space and time, +enables us to pass in the twinkling of an eye over the dreary waste of +waters that separates the exile from the scenes and companions of his +youth. He treads again his native shore. He sits by the hospitable +hearth and listens to the ringing laugh of children. He exchanges +cordial greetings with the "old familiar faces." There is a resurrection +of the dead, and a return of vanished years. He abandons himself to the +sweet illusion, and again</p> + +<pre> + Lives over each scene, and is what he beholds. +</pre> + +<p>I must not be too egotistically garrulous in print, or I would now +attempt to describe the various ways in which I have spent a summer's +day in England. I would dilate upon my noon-day loiterings amidst wild +ruins, and thick forests, and on the shaded banks of rivers--the pic-nic +parties--the gipsy prophecies--the twilight homeward walk--the social +tea-drinking, and, the last scene of all, the "rosy dreams and slumbers +light," induced by wholesome exercise and placid thoughts.<a href="#note050">[050]</a> But +perhaps these few simple allusions are sufficient to awaken a train of +kindred associations in the reader's mind, and he will thank me for +those words and images that are like the keys of memory, and "open all +her cells with easy force."</p> + +<p>If a summer's day be thus rife with pleasure, scarcely less so is a day +in winter, though with some little drawbacks, that give, by contrast, a +zest to its enjoyments. It is difficult to leave the warm morning bed +and brave the external air. The fireless grate and frosted windows may +well make the stoutest shudder. But when we have once screwed our +courage to the sticking place, and with a single jerk of the clothes, +and a brisk jump from the bed, have commenced the operations of the +toilet, the battle is nearly over. The teeth chatter for a while, and +the limbs shiver, and we do not feel particularly comfortable while +breaking the ice in our jugs, and performing our cold ablutions amidst +the sharp, glass-like fragments, and wiping our faces with a frozen +towel. But these petty evils are quickly vanquished, and as we rush out +of the house, and tread briskly and firmly on the hard ringing earth, +and breathe our visible breath in the clear air, our strength and self- +importance miraculously increase, and the whole frame begins to glow. +The warmth and vigour thus acquired are inexpressibly delightful. As we +re-enter the house, we are proud of our intrepidity and vigour, and pity +the effeminacy of our less enterprising friends, who, though huddled +together round the fire, like flies upon a sunny wall, still complain of +cold, and instead of the bloom of health and animation, exhibit pale and +pinched and discolored features, and hands cold, rigid, and of a deadly +hue. Those who rise with spirit on a winter morning, and stir and thrill +themselves with early exercise, are indifferent to the cold for the rest +of the day, and feel a confidence in their corporeal energies, and a +lightness of heart that are experienced at no other season.</p> + +<p>But even the timid and luxurious are not without their pleasures. As the +shades of evening draw in, the parlour twilight--the closed curtains-- +and the cheerful fire--make home a little paradise to all.</p> + +<pre> + Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, + Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, + And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn + Throws up a steamy column, and the cups + That cheer but not inebriate wait on each, + So let us welcome peaceful evening in +</pre> + +<div><i>Cowper</i>.</div> + +<p>The warm and cold seasons of India have no charms like those of England, +but yet people who are guiltless of what Milton so finely calls "a +sullenness against nature," and who are willing, in a spirit of true +philosophy and piety, to extract good from every thing, may save +themselves from wretchedness even in this land of exile. While I am +writing this paragraph, a bird in my room, (not the Caubul songster that +I have already alluded to, but a fine little English linnet,) who is as +much a foreigner here as I am, is pouring out his soul in a flood of +song. His notes ring with joy. He pines not for his native meadows--he +cares not for his wiry bars--he envies not the little denizens of air +that sometimes flutter past my window, nor imagines, for a moment, that +they come to mock him with their freedom. He is contented with his +present enjoyments, because they are utterly undisturbed by idle +comparisons with those experienced in the past or anticipated in the +future. He has no thankless repinings and no vain desires. Is intellect +or reason then so fatal, though sublime a gift that we cannot possess it +without the poisonous alloy of care? Must grief and ingratitude +inevitably find entrance into the heart, in proportion to the loftiness +and number of our mental endowments? Are we to seek for happiness in +ignorance? To these questions the reply is obvious. Every good quality +may be abused, and the greatest, most; and he who perversely employs his +powers of thought and imagination to a wrong purpose deserves the misery +that he gains. Were we honestly to deduct from the ills of life all +those of our own creation, how trifling, in the majority of cases, the +amount that would remain! We seem to invite and encourage sorrow, while +happiness is, as it were, forced upon us against our will. It is +wonderful how some men pertinaciously cling to care, and argue +themselves into a dissatisfaction with their lot. Thus it is really a +matter of little moment whether fortune smile or frown, for it is in +vain to look for superior felicity amongst those who have more +"appliances and means to boot," than their fellow-men. Wealth, rank, and +reputation, do not secure their possessors from the misery of +discontent.</p> + +<p>As happiness then depends upon the right direction and employment of our +faculties, and not on worldly goods or mere localities, our countrymen +might be cheerful enough, even in this foreign land, if they would only +accustom themselves to a proper train of thinking, and be ready on every +occasion to look on the brighter side of all things.<a href="#note051">[051]</a> In reverting +to home-scenes we should regard them for their intrinsic charms, and not +turn them into a source of disquiet by mournfully comparing them with +those around us. India, let Englishmen murmur as they will, has some +attractions, enjoyments and advantages. No Englishman is here in danger +of dying of starvation as some of our poets have done in the +inhospitable streets of London. The comparatively princely and generous +style in which we live in this country, the frank and familiar tone of +our little society, and the general mildness of the climate, (excepting +a few months of a too sultry summer) can hardly be denied by the most +determined malcontent. The weather is indeed too often a great deal +warmer than we like it; but if "the excessive heat" did not form a +convenient subject for complaint and conversation, it is perhaps +doubtful if it would so often be thought of or alluded to. But admit the +objection. What climate is without its peculiar evils? In the cold +season a walk in India either in the morning or the evening is often +extremely pleasant in pleasant company, and I am glad to see many +sensible people paying the climate the compliment of treating it like +that of England. It is now fashionable to use our limbs in the ordinary +way, and the "Garden of Eden"<a href="#note052">[052]</a> has become a favorite promenade, +particularly on the evenings when a band from the Fort fills the air +with a cheerful harmony and throws a fresher life upon the scene. It is +not to be denied that besides the mere exercise, pedestrians at home +have great advantages over those who are too indolent or aristocratic to +leave their equipages, because they can cut across green and quiet +fields, enter rural by-ways, and enjoy a thousand little patches of +lovely scenery that are secrets to the high-road traveller. But still +the Calcutta pedestrian has also his gratifications. He can enjoy no +exclusive prospects, but he beholds upon an Indian river a forest of +British masts--the noble shipping of the Queen of the Sea--and has a +fine panoramic view of this City of Palaces erected by his countrymen on +a foreign shore;--and if he is fond of children, he must be delighted +with the numberless pretty and happy little faces--the fair forms of +Saxon men and women in miniature--that crowd about him on the green +sward;--he must be charmed with their innocent prattle, their quick and +graceful movements, and their winning ways, that awaken a tone of tender +sentiment in his heart, and rekindle many sweet associations.</p> + +<p>SONNETS,</p> + +<p>WRITTEN IN EXILE.</p> + +<pre> + I. + + Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never;-- + And while the soul's internal cell is bright, + The cloudless eye lets in the bloom and light + Of earth and heaven to charm and cheer us ever. + Though youth hath vanished, like a winding river + Lost in the shadowy woods; and the dear sight + Of native hill and nest-like cottage white, + 'Mid breeze-stirred boughs whose crisp leaves gleam and quiver, + And murmur sea-like sounds, perchance no more + My homeward step shall hasten cheerily; + Yet still I feel as I have felt of yore, + And love this radiant world. Yon clear blue sky-- + These gorgeous groves--this flower-enamelled floor-- + Have deep enchantments for my heart and eye. + + II. + + Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never, + Though to the sullen gaze of grief the sight + Of sun illumined skies may <i>seem</i> less bright, + Or gathering clouds less grand, yet she, as ever, + Is lovely or majestic. Though fate sever + The long linked bands of love, and all delight + Be lost, as in a sudden starless night, + The radiance may return, if He, the giver + Of peace on earth, vouchsafe the storm to still + This breast once shaken with the strife of care + Is touched with silent joy. The cot--the hill, + Beyond the broad blue wave--and faces fair, + Are pictured in my dreams, yet scenes that fill + My waking eye can save me from despair. + + III. + + Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never,-- + Strange features throng around me, and the shore + Is not my own dear land. Yet why deplore + This change of doom? All mortal ties must sever. + The pang is past,--and now with blest endeavour + I check the ready tear, the rising sigh + The common earth is here--the common sky-- + The common FATHER. And how high soever + O'er other tribes proud England's hosts may seem, + God's children, fair or sable, equal find + A FATHER'S love. Then learn, O man, to deem + All difference idle save of heart or mind + Thy duty, love--each cause of strife, a dream-- + Thy home, the world--thy family, mankind. +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>For the sake of my home readers I must now say a word or two on the +effect produced upon the mind of a stranger on his approach to Calcutta +from the Sandheads.</p> + +<p>As we run up the Bay of Bengal and approach the dangerous Sandheads, the +beautiful deep blue of the ocean suddenly disappears. It turns into a +pale green. The sea, even in calm weather, rolls over soundings in long +swells. The hue of the water is varied by different depths, and in +passing over the edge of soundings, it is curious to observe how +distinctly the form of the sands may be traced by the different shades +of green in the water above and beyond them. In the lower part of the +bay, the crisp foam of the dark sea at night is instinct with phosphoric +lustre. The ship seems to make her way through galaxies of little ocean +stars. We lose sight of this poetical phenomenon as we approach the +mouth of the Hooghly. But the passengers, towards the termination of +their voyage, become less observant of the changeful aspect of the sea. +Though amused occasionally by flights of sea-gulls, immense shoals of +porpoises, apparently tumbling or rolling head over tail against the +wind, and the small sprat-like fishes that sometimes play and glitter on +the surface, the stranger grows impatient to catch a glimpse of an +Indian jungle; and even the swampy tiger-haunted Saugor Island is +greeted with that degree of interest which novelty usually inspires.</p> + +<p>At first the land is but little above the level of the water. It rises +gradually as we pass up further from the sea. As we come still nearer to +Calcutta, the soil on shore seems to improve in richness and the trees +to increase in size. The little clusters of nest-like villages snugly +sheltered in foliage--the groups of dark figures in white garments--the +cattle wandering over the open plain--the emerald-colored fields of +rice--the rich groves of mangoe trees--the vast and magnificent banyans, +with straight roots dropping from their highest branches, (hundreds of +these branch-dropped roots being fixed into the earth and forming "a +pillared shade"),--the tall, slim palms of different characters and with +crowns of different forms, feathery or fan-like,--the many-stemmed and +long, sharp-leaved bamboos, whose thin pliant branches swing gracefully +under the weight of the lightest bird,--the beautifully rounded and +bright green peepuls, with their burnished leaves glittering in the +sunshine, and trembling at the zephyr's softest touch with a pleasant +rustling sound, suggestive of images of coolness and repose,--form a +striking and singularly interesting scene (or rather succession of +scenes) after the monotony of a long voyage during which nothing has +been visible but sea and sky.</p> + +<p>But it is not until he arrives at a bend of the river called <i>Garden +Reach</i>, where the City of Palaces first opens on the view, that the +stranger has a full sense of the value of our possessions in the East. +The princely mansions on our right;--(residences of English gentry), +with their rich gardens and smooth slopes verdant to the water's edge,-- +the large and rich Botanic Garden and the Gothic edifice of Bishop's +College on our left--and in front, as we advance a little further, the +countless masts of vessels of all sizes and characters, and from almost +every clime,--Fort William, with its grassy ramparts and white +barracks,--the Government House, a magnificent edifice in spite of many +imperfections,--the substantial looking Town Hall--the Supreme Court +House--the broad and ever verdant plain (or <i>madaun</i>) in front--and the +noble lines of buildings along the Esplanade and Chowringhee Road,--the +new Cathedral almost at the extremity of the plain, and half-hidden +amidst the trees,--the suburban groves and buildings of Kidderpore +beyond, their outlines softened by the haze of distance, like scenes +contemplated through colored glass--the high-sterned budgerows and small +trim bauleahs along the edge of the river,--the neatly-painted +palanquins and other vehicles of all sorts and sizes,--the variously- +hued and variously-clad people of all conditions; the fair European, the +black and nearly naked Cooly, the clean-robed and lighter-skinned native +Baboo, the Oriental nobleman with his jewelled turban and kincob vest, +and costly necklace and twisted cummerbund, on a horse fantastically +caparisoned, and followed in barbaric state by a train of attendants +with long, golden-handled punkahs, peacock feather chowries, and golden +chattahs and silver sticks,--present altogether a scene that is +calculated to at once delight and bewilder the traveller, to whom all +the strange objects before him have something of the enchantment and +confusion of an Arabian Night's dream. When he recovers from his +surprise, the first emotion in the breast of an Englishman is a feeling +of national pride. He exults in the recognition of so many glorious +indications of the power of a small and remote nation that has founded a +splendid empire in so strange and vast a land.</p> + +<p>When the first impression begins to fade, and he takes a closer view of +the great metropolis of India--and observes what miserable straw huts +are intermingled with magnificent palaces--how much Oriental filth and +squalor and idleness and superstition and poverty and ignorance are +associated with savage splendour, and are brought into immediate and +most incongruous contact with Saxon energy and enterprize and taste and +skill and love of order, and the amazing intelligence of the West in +this nineteenth century--and when familiarity breeds something like +contempt for many things that originally excited a vague and pleasing +wonder--the English traveller in the East is apt to dwell too +exclusively on the worst side of the picture, and to become insensible +to the real interest, and blind to the actual beauty of much of the +scene around him. Extravagant astonishment and admiration, under the +influence of novelty, a strong re-action, and a subsequent feeling of +unreasonable disappointment, seem, in some degree, natural to all men; +but in no other part of the world, and under no other circumstances, is +this peculiarity of our condition more conspicuously displayed than in +the case of Englishmen in India. John Bull, who is always a grumbler +even on his own shores, is sure to become a still more inveterate +grumbler in other countries, and perhaps the climate of Bengal, +producing lassitude and low spirits, and a yearning for their native +land, of which they are so justly proud, contribute to make our +countrymen in the East even more than usually unsusceptible of +pleasurable emotions until at last they turn away in positive disgust +from the scenes and objects which remind them that they are in a state +of exile.</p> + +<p>"There is nothing," says Hamlet, "either good or bad, but thinking makes +it so." At every change of the mind's colored optics the scene before it +changes also. I have sometimes contemplated the vast metropolis of +England--or rather <i>of the world</i>--multitudinous and mighty LONDON--with +the pride and hope and exultation, not of a patriot only, but of a +cosmopolite--a man. Its grand national structures that seem built for +eternity--its noble institutions, charitable, and learned, and +scientific, and artistical--the genius and science and bravery and moral +excellence within its countless walls--have overwhelmed me with a sense +of its glory and majesty and power. But in a less admiring mood, I have +quite reversed the picture. Perhaps the following sonnet may seem to +indicate that the writer while composing it, must have worn his colored +spectacles.</p> + +<p>LONDON, IN THE MORNING.</p> + +<pre> + The morning wakes, and through the misty air + In sickly radiance struggles--like the dream + Of sorrow-shrouded hope. O'er Thames' dull stream, + Whose sluggish waves a wealthy burden bear + From every port and clime, the pallid glare + Of early sun-light spreads. The long streets seem + Unpeopled still, but soon each path shall teem + With hurried feet, and visages of care. + And eager throngs shall meet where dusky marts + Resound like ocean-caverns, with the din + Of toil and strife and agony and sin. + Trade's busy Babel! Ah! how many hearts + By lust of gold to thy dim temples brought + In happier hours have scorned the prize they sought? +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>I now give a pair of sonnets upon the City of Palaces as viewed through +somewhat clearer glasses.</p> + +<p>VIEW OF CALCUTTA.</p> + +<pre> + Here Passion's restless eye and spirit rude + May greet no kindred images of power + To fear or wonder ministrant. No tower, + Time-struck and tenantless, here seems to brood, + In the dread majesty of solitude, + O'er human pride departed--no rocks lower + O'er ravenous billows--no vast hollow wood + Rings with the lion's thunder--no dark bower + The crouching tiger haunts--no gloomy cave + Glitters with savage eyes! But all the scene + Is calm and cheerful. At the mild command + Of Britain's sons, the skilful and the brave, + Fair palace-structures decorate the land, + And proud ships float on Hooghly's breast serene! +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>SONNET, ON RETURNING TO CALCUTTA AFTER A VOYAGE TO THE STRAITS OF +MALACCA.</p> + +<pre> + Umbrageous woods, green dells, and mountains high, + And bright cascades, and wide cerulean seas, + Slumbering, or snow-wreathed by the freshening breeze, + And isles like motionless clouds upon the sky + In silent summer noons, late charmed mine eye, + Until my soul was stirred like wind-touched trees, + And passionate love and speechless ecstasies + Up-raised the thoughts in spiritual depths that lie. + Fair scenes, ye haunt me still! Yet I behold + This sultry city on the level shore + Not all unmoved; for here our fathers bold + Won proud historic names in days of yore, + And here are generous hearts that ne'er grow cold, + And many a friendly hand and open door. +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>There are several extremely elegant customs connected with some of the +Indian Festivals, at which flowers are used in great profusion. The +surface of the "sacred river" is often thickly strewn with them. In Mrs. +Carshore's pleasing volume of <i>Songs of the East</i><a href="#note053">[053]</a> there is a long +poem (too long to quote entire) in which the <i>Beara Festival</i> is +described. I must give the introductory passage.</p> + +<p>"THE BEARA FESTIVAL.</p> + +<pre> + "Upon the Ganges' overflowing banks, + Where palm trees lined the shore in graceful ranks, + I stood one night amidst a merry throng + Of British youths and maidens, to behold + A witching Indian scene of light and song, + Crowds of veiled native loveliness untold, + Each streaming path poured duskily along. + The air was filled with the sweet breath of flowers, + And music that awoke the silent hours, + It was the BEARA FESTIVAL and feast + When proud and lowly, loftiest and least, + Matron and Moslem maiden pay their vows, + With impetratory and votive gift, + And to the Moslem Jonas bent their brows. + <i>Each brought her floating lamp of flowers</i>, and swift + A thousand lights along the current drift, + Till the vast bosom of the swollen stream, + Glittering and gliding onward like a dream, + Seems a wide mirror of the starry sphere + Or more as if the stars had dropt from air, + And in an earthly heaven were shining here, + And far above were, but reflected there + Still group on group, advancing to the brink, + As group on group retired link by link; + For one pale lamp that floated out of view + Five brighter ones they quickly placed anew; + At length the slackening multitudes grew less, + And the lamps floated scattered and apart. + As stars grow few when morning's footsteps press + When a slight girl, shy as the timid halt, + Not far from where we stood, her offering brought. + Singing a low sweet strain, with lips untaught. + Her song proclaimed, that 'twas not many hours + Since she had left her childhood's innocent home; + And now with Beara lamp, and wreathed flowers, + To propitiate heaven, for wedded bliss had come" +</pre> + +<p>To these lines Mrs. Carshore (who has been in this country, I believe, +from her birth, and who ought to know something of Indian customs) +appends the following notes.</p> + +<p>"<i>It was the Beara festival</i>." Much has been said about the Beara or +floating lamp, but I have never yet seen a correct description. Moore +mentions that Lalla Rookh saw a solitary Hindoo girl bring her lamp to +the river. D.L.R. says the same, whereas the Beara festival is a Moslem +feast that takes place once a year in the monsoons, when thousands of +females offer their vows to the patron of rivers.</p> + +<p>"<i>Moslem Jonas</i>" Khauj Khoddir is the Jonas of the Mussulman; he, like +the prophet of Nineveh, was for three days inside a fish, and for that +reason is called the patron of rivers."</p> + +<p>I suppose Mrs. Carshore alludes, in the first of these notes, to the +following passage in the prose part of Lalla Rookh:--</p> + +<p>"As they passed along a sequestered river after sunset, they saw a young +Hindoo girl upon the bank whose employment seemed to them so strange +that they stopped their palanquins to observe her. She had lighted a +small lamp, filled with oil of cocoa, and placing it in an earthern +dish, adorned with a wreath of flowers, had committed it with a +trembling hand to the stream: and was now anxiously watching its +progress down the current, heedless of the gay cavalcade which had drawn +up beside her. Lalla Rookh was all curiosity;--when one of her +attendants, who had lived upon the banks of the Ganges, (where this +ceremony is so frequent that often, in the dusk of evening, the river is +seen glittering all over with lights, like the Oton-Jala or Sea of +Stars,) informed the Princess that it was the usual way, in which the +friends of those who had gone on dangerous voyages offered up vows for +their safe return. If the lamp sunk immediately, the omen was +disastrous; but if it went shining down the stream, and continued to +burn till entirely out of sight, the return of the beloved object was +considered as certain.</p> + +<p>Lalla Rookh, as they moved on, more than once looked back, to observe +how the young Hindoo's lamp proceeded: and while she saw with pleasure +that it was unextinguished, she could not help fearing that all the hopes +of this life were no better than that feeble light upon the river."</p> + +<p>Moore prepared himself for the writing of Lalla Rookh by "long and +laborious reading." He himself narrates that Sir James Mackintosh was +asked by Colonel Wilks, the Historian of British India, whether it was +true that the poet had never been in the East. Sir James replied, +"<i>Never</i>." "Well, that shows me," said Colonel Wilks, "that reading over +D'Herbelot is as good as riding on the back of a camel." Sir John +Malcolm, Sir William Ouseley and other high authorities have testified +to the accuracy of Moore's descriptions of Eastern scenes and customs.</p> + +<p>The following lines were composed on the banks of the Hooghly at +Cossipore, (many long years ago) just after beholding the river one +evening almost covered with floating lamps.<a href="#note054">[054]</a></p> + +<p>A HINDU FESTIVAL.</p> + +<pre> + Seated on a bank of green, + Gazing on an Indian scene, + I have dreams the mind to cheer, + And a feast for eye and ear. + At my feet a river flows, + And its broad face richly glows + With the glory of the sun, + Whose proud race is nearly run + + Ne'er before did sea or stream + Kindle thus beneath his beam, + Ne'er did miser's eye behold + Such a glittering mass of gold + 'Gainst the gorgeous radiance float + Darkly, many a sloop and boat, + While in each the figures seem + Like the shadows of a dream + Swiftly, passively, they glide + As sliders on a frozen tide. + + Sinks the sun--the sudden night + Falls, yet still the scene is bright + Now the fire-fly's living spark + Glances through the foliage dark, + And along the dusky stream + Myriad lamps with ruddy gleam + On the small waves float and quiver, + As if upon the favored river, + And to mark the sacred hour, + Stars had fallen in a shower. + + For many a mile is either shore + Illumined with a countless store + Of lustres ranged in glittering rows, + Each a golden column throws + To light the dim depths of the tide, + And the moon in all her pride + Though beauteously her regions glow, + Views a scene as fair below +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>Mrs. Carshore alludes, I suppose to the above lines, or the following +sonnet, or both perhaps, when she speaks of my erroneous Orientalism--</p> + +<p>SCENE ON THE GANGES.</p> + +<pre> + The shades of evening veil the lofty spires + Of proud Benares' fanes! A thickening haze + Hangs o'er the stream. The weary boatmen raise + Along the dusky shore their crimson fires + That tinge the circling groups. Now hope inspires + Yon Hindu maid, whose heart true passion sways, + To launch on Gungas flood the glimmering rays + Of Love's frail lamp,--but, lo the light expires! + Alas! what sudden sorrow fills her breast! + No charm of life remains. Her tears deplore + A lover lost and never, never more + Shall hope's sweet vision yield her spirit rest! + The cold wave quenched the flame--an omen dread + That telleth of the faithless--<i>or the dead</i>! +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>Horace Hayman Wilson, a high authority on all Oriental customs, clearly +alludes in the following lines to the launching of floating lamps by +<i>Hindu</i> females.</p> + +<pre> + Grave in the tide the Brahmin stands, + And folds his cord or twists his hands, + And tells his beads, and all unheard + Mutters a solemn mystic word + With reverence the Sudra dips, + And fervently the current sips, + That to his humbler hope conveys + A future life of happier days. + But chief do India's simple daughters + Assemble in these hallowed waters, + With vase of classic model laden + Like Grecian girl or Tuscan maiden, + Collecting thus their urns to fill + From gushing fount or trickling rill, + And still with pious fervour they + To Gunga veneration pay + And with pretenceless rite prefer, + The wishes of their hearts to her + The maid or matron, as she throws + <i>Champae</i> or lotus, <i>Bel</i> or rose, + Or sends the quivering light afloat + In shallow cup or paper boat, + Prays for a parent's peace and wealth + Prays for a child's success and health, + For a fond husband breathes a prayer, + For progeny their loves to share, + For what of good on earth is given + To lowly life, or hoped in heaven, +</pre> + +<div>H.H.W.</div> + +<p>On seeing Miss Carshore's criticism I referred the subject to an +intelligent Hindu friend from whom I received the following answer:--</p> + +<pre> + My dear Sir, + + The <i>Beara</i>, strictly speaking, is a Mahomedan festival. Some of + the lower orders of the Hindus of the NW Provinces, who have + borrowed many of their customs from the Mahomedans, celebrate + the <i>Beara</i>. But it is not observed by the Hindus of Bengal, who + have a festival of their own, similar to the <i>Beara</i>. It takes + place on the evening of the <i>Saraswati Poojah</i>, when a small + piece of the bark of the Plantain Tree is fitted out with all + the necessary accompaniments of a boat, and is launched in a + private tank with a lamp. The custom is confined to the women + who follow it in their own house or in the same neighbourhood. + It is called the <i>Sooa Dooa Breta</i>. + + Yours truly, +</pre> + +<hr> + +<p>Mrs. Carshore it would seem is partly right and partly wrong. She is +right in calling the <i>Beara</i> a <i>Moslem</i> Festival. It is so; but we have +the testimony of Horace Hayman Wilson to the fact that <i>Hindu maids and +matrons also launch their lamps upon the river</i>. My Hindu friend +acknowledges that his countrymen in the North West Provinces have +borrowed many of their customs from the Mahomedans, and though he is not +aware of it, it may yet be the case, that some of the Hindus of +<i>Bengal</i>, as elsewhere, have done the same, and that they set lamps +afloat upon the stream to discover by their continued burning or sudden +extinction the fate of some absent friend or lover. I find very few +Natives who are able to give me any exact and positive information +concerning their own national customs. In their explanations of such +matters they differ in the most extraordinary manner amongst themselves. +Two most respectable and intelligent Native gentlemen who were proposing +to lay out their grounds under my directions, told me that I must not +cut down a single cocoa-nut tree, as it would be dreadful sacrilege-- +equal to cutting the throats of seven brahmins! Another equally +respectable and intelligent Native friend, when I mentioned the fact, +threw himself back in his chair to give vent to a hearty laugh. When he +had recovered himself a little from this risible convulsion he observed +that his father and his grandfather had cut down cocoa-nut trees in +considerable numbers without the slightest remorse or fear. And yet +again, I afterwards heard that one of the richest Hindu families in +Calcutta, rather than suffer so sacred an object to be injured, piously +submit to a very serious inconvenience occasioned by a cocoa-nut tree +standing in the centre of the carriage road that leads to the portico of +their large town palace. I am told that there are other sacred trees +which must not be removed by the hands of Hindus of inferior caste, +though in this case there is a way of getting over the difficulty, for +it is allowable or even meritorious to make presents of these trees to +Brahmins, who cut them down for their own fire-wood. But the cocoa-nut +tree is said to be too sacred even for the axe of a Brahmin.</p> + +<p>I have been running away again from my subject;--I was discoursing upon +May-day in England. The season there is still a lovely and a merry one, +though the most picturesque and romantic of its ancient observances, now +live but in the memory of the "oldest inhabitants," or on the page of +history.<a href="#note055">[055]</a></p> + +<pre> + See where, amidst the sun and showers, + The Lady of the vernal hours, + Sweet May, comes forth again with all her flowers. +</pre> + +<div><i>Barry Cornwall</i>.</div> + +<p>The <i>May-pole</i> on these days is rarely seen to rise up in English towns +with its proper floral decorations<a href="#note056">[056]</a>. In remote rural districts a +solitary May-pole is still, however, occasionally discovered. "A May- +pole," says Washington Irving, "gave a glow to my feelings and spread a +charm over the country for the rest of the day: and as I traversed a +part of the fair plains of Cheshire, and the beautiful borders of Wales +and looked from among swelling hills down a long green valley, through +which the Deva wound its wizard stream, my imagination turned all into a +perfect Arcadia. One can readily imagine what a gay scene old London +must have been when the doors were decked with hawthorn; and Robin Hood, +Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, Morris dancers, and all the other fantastic +dancers and revellers were performing their antics about the May-pole in +every part of the city. I value every custom which tends to infuse +poetical feeling into the common people, and to sweeten and soften the +rudeness of rustic manners without destroying their simplicity."</p> + +<p>Another American writer--a poet--has expressed his due appreciation of +the pleasures of the season. He thus addresses the merrie month of +MAY.<a href="#note057">[057]</a></p> + +<p>MAY.</p> + +<pre> + Would that thou couldst laugh for aye, + Merry, ever merry May! + Made of sun gleams, shade and showers + Bursting buds, and breathing flowers, + Dripping locked, and rosy vested, + Violet slippered, rainbow crested; + Girdled with the eglantine, + Festooned with the dewy vine + Merry, ever Merry May, + Would that thou could laugh for aye! +</pre> + +<div><i>W.D. Gallagher.</i></div> + +<p>I must give a dainty bit of description from the poet of the poets--our +own romantic Spenser.</p> + +<pre> + Then comes fair May, the fayrest mayde on ground, + Decked with all dainties of the season's pryde, + And throwing flowres out of her lap around. + Upon two brethren's shoulders she did ride, + The twins of Leda, which, on eyther side, + Supported her like to their Sovereign queene + Lord! how all creatures laught when her they spide, + And leapt and danced as they had ravisht beene! + And Cupid's self about her fluttred all in greene. +</pre> + +<p>Here are a few lines from Herrick.</p> + +<pre> + Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appeare + Re-clothed in freshe and verdant diaper; + Thawed are the snowes, and now the lusty spring + Gives to each mead a neat enameling, + The palmes<a href="#note058">[058]</a> put forth their gemmes, and every tree + Now swaggers in her leavy gallantry. +</pre> + +<p>The Queen of May--Lady Flora--was the British representative of the +Heathen Goddess Flora. May still returns and ever will return at her +proper season, with all her bright leaves and fragrant blossoms, but men +cease to make the same use of them as of yore. England is waxing +utilitarian and prosaic.</p> + +<p>The poets, let others neglect her as they will, must ever do fitting +observance, in songs as lovely and fresh as the flowers of the hawthorn,</p> + +<pre> + To the lady of the vernal hours. +</pre> + +<p>Poor Keats, who was passionately fond of flowers, and everything +beautiful or romantic or picturesque, complains, with a true poet's +earnestness, that in <i>his</i> day in England there were</p> + +<pre> + No crowds of nymphs, soft-voiced and young and gay + In woven baskets, bringing ears of corn, + Roses and pinks and violets, to adorn + The shrine of Flora in her early May. +</pre> + +<p>The Floral Games--<i>Jeux Floraux</i>--of Toulouse--first celebrated at the +commencement of the fourteenth century, are still kept up annually with +great pomp and spirit. Clemence Isaure, a French lady, bequeathed to the +Academy of Toulouse a large sum of money for the annual celebration of +these games. A sort of College Council is formed, which not only confers +degrees on those poets who do most honor to the Goddess Flora, but +sometimes grants them more substantial favors. In 1324 the poets were +encouraged to compete for a golden violet and a silver eglantine and +pansy. A century later the prizes offered were an amaranthus of gold of +the value of 400 livres, for the best ode, a violet of silver, valued at +250 livres, for an essay in prose, a silver pansy, worth 200 livres, for +an eclogue, elegy or idyl, and a silver lily of the value of sixty +livres, for the best sonnet or hymn in honor of the Virgin Mary,--for +religion is mixed up with merriment, and heathen with Christian rites. +He who gained a prize three times was honored with the title of Doctor +<i>en gaye science</i>, the name given to the poetry of the Provençal +troubadours. A mass, a sermon, and alms-giving, commence the ceremonies. +The French poet, Ronsard who had gained a prize in the floral games, so +delighted Mary Queen of Scots with his verses on the Rose that she +presented him with a silver rose worth £500, with this inscription--"<i>A +Ronsard, l'Apollon de la source des Muses</i>."</p> + +<p>At Ghent floral festivals are held twice a year when amateur and +professional florists assemble together and contribute each his share of +flowers to the grand general exhibition which is under the direct +patronage of the public authorities. Honorary medals are awarded to the +possessors of the finest flowers.</p> + +<p>The chief floral festival of the Chinese is on their new year's day, +when their rivers are covered with boats laden with flowers, and gay +flags streaming from every mast. Their homes and temples are richly hung +with festoons of flowers. Boughs of the peach and plum trees in blossom, +enkíanthus quinque-flòra, camelias, cockscombs, magnolias, jonquils are +then exposed for sale in all the streets of Canton. Even the Chinese +ladies, who are visible at no other season, are seen on this occasion in +flower-boats on the river or in the public gardens on the shore.</p> + +<p>The Italians, it is said, still have artificers called <i>Festaroli</i>, +whose business it is to prepare festoons and garlands. The ancient +Romans were very tasteful in their nosegays and chaplets. Pliny tells us +that the Sicyonians were especially celebrated for the graceful art +exhibited in the arrangement of the varied colors of their garlands, and +he gives us the story of Glycera who, to please her lover Pausias, the +painter of Sicyon, used to send him the most exquisite chaplets of her +own braiding, which he regularly copied on his canvas. He became very +eminent as a flower-painter. The last work of his pencil, and his +master-piece, was a picture of his mistress in the act of arranging a +chaplet. The picture was called the <i>Garland Twiner</i>. It is related that +Antony for some time mistrusting Cleopatra made her taste in the first +instance every thing presented to him at her banquets. One day "the +Serpent of old Nile" after dipping her own coronet of flowers into her +goblet drank up the wine and then directed him to follow her example. He +was off his guard. He dipped his chaplet in his cup. The leaves had been +touched with poison. He was just raising the cup to his lips when she +seized his arm, and said "Cease your jealous doubts, for know, that if +I had desired your death or wished to live without you, I could easily +have destroyed you." The Queen then ordered a prisoner to be brought +into their presence, who being made to drink from the cup, instantly +expired.<a href="#note059">[059]</a></p> + +<p>Some of the nosegays made up by "flower-girls" in London and its +neighbourhood are sold at such extravagant prices that none but the very +wealthy are in the habit of purchasing them, though sometimes a poor +lover is tempted to present his mistress on a ball-night with a bouquet +that he can purchase only at the cost of a good many more leaves of +bread or substantial meals than he can well spare. He has to make every +day a banian-day for perhaps half a month that his mistress may wear a +nosegay for a few hours. However, a lover is often like a cameleon and +can almost live on air--<i>for a time</i>--"promise-crammed." 'You cannot +feed capons so.'</p> + +<p>At Covent Garden Market, (in London) and the first-rate Flower-shops, a +single wreath or nosegay is often made up for the head or hand at a +price that would support a poor labourer and his family for a month. The +colors of the wreaths are artfully arranged, so as to suit different +complexions, and so also as to exhibit the most rare and costly flowers +to the greatest possible advantage.</p> + +<p>All true poets</p> + +<pre> + --The sages + Who have left streaks of light athwart their pages-- +</pre> + +<p>have contemplated flowers--with a passionate love, an ardent admiration; +none more so than the sweet-souled Shakespeare. They are regarded by the +imaginative as the fairies of the vegetable world--the physical +personifications of etherial beauty. In <i>The Winter's Tale</i> our great +dramatic bard has some delightful floral allusions that cannot be too +often quoted.</p> + +<pre> + Here's flowers for you, + Hot lavender, mint, savory, majoram, + The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun, + And with him rises weeping these are flowers + Of middle summer, and I think they are given + To men of middle age. + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + O, Proserpina, + For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lett'st fall + From Dis's waggon! Daffodils, + That come before the swallow dares, and take + The winds of March with beauty, violets dim, + But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, + Or Cytherea's breath, pale primroses, + That die unmarried ere they can behold + Great Phoebus in his strength,--a malady + Most incident to maids, bold oxlips and + The crown imperial, lilies of all kinds, + The flower de luce being one +</pre> + +<p>Shakespeare here, as elsewhere, speaks of "<i>pale</i> primroses." The poets +almost always allude to the primrose as a <i>pale</i> and interesting +invalid. Milton tells us of</p> + +<pre> + The yellow cowslip and the <i>pale</i> primrose<a href="#note060">[060]</a> +</pre> + +<p>The poet in the manuscript of his <i>Lycidas</i> had at first made the +primrose "<i>die unwedded</i>," which was a pretty close copy of Shakespeare. +Milton afterwards struck out the word "<i>unwedded</i>," and substituted the +word "<i>forsaken</i>." The reason why the primrose was said to "die +unmarried," is, according to Warton, because it grows in the shade +uncherished or unseen by the sun, who was supposed to be in love with +certain sorts of flowers. Ben Jonson, however, describes the primrose as +<i>a wedded lady</i>--"the Spring's own <i>Spouse</i>"--though she is certainly +more commonly regarded as the daughter of Spring not the wife. J +Fletcher gives her the true parentage:--</p> + +<pre> + Primrose, first born child of Ver +</pre> + +<p>There are some kinds of primroses, that are not <i>pale</i>. There is a +species in Scotland, which is of a deep purple. And even in England (in +some of the northern counties) there is a primrose, the bird's-eye +primrose, (Primula farinosa,) of which the blossom is lilac colored and +the leaves musk-scented.</p> + +<p>In Sweden they call the Primrose <i>The key of May</i>.</p> + +<p>The primrose is always a great favorite with imaginative and sensitive +observers, but there are too many people who look upon the beautiful +with a utilitarian eye, or like Wordsworth's Peter Bell regard it with +perfect indifference.</p> + +<pre> + A primrose by the river's brim + A yellow primrose was to him. + And it was nothing more. +</pre> + +<p>I have already given one anecdote of a utilitarian; but I may as well +give two more anecdotes of a similar character. Mrs. Wordsworth was in a +grove, listening to the cooing of the stock-doves, and associating their +music with the remembrance of her husband's verses to a stock-dove, when +a farmer's wife passing by exclaimed, "Oh, I do like stock-doves!" The +woman won the heart of the poet's wife at once; but she did not long +retain it. "Some people," continued the speaker, "like 'em in a pie; for +my part I think there's nothing like 'em stewed in inions." This was a +rustic utilitarian. Here is an instance of a very different sort of +utilitarianism--the utilitarianism of men who lead a gay town life. Sir +W.H. listened, patiently for some time to a poetical-minded friend who +was rapturously expatiating upon the delicious perfume of a bed of +violets; "Oh yes," said Sir W. at last, "its all very well, but for my +part I very much prefer the smell of a flambeau at the theatre." But +intellects far more capacious than that of Sir W.H. have exhibited the +same indifference to the beautiful in nature. Locke and Jeremy Bentham +and even Sir Isaac Newton despised all poetry. And yet God never meant +man to be insensible to the beautiful or the poetical. "Poetry, like +truth," says Ebenezer Elliot, "is a common flower: God has sown it over +the earth, like the daisies sprinkled with tears or glowing in the sun, +even as he places the crocus and the March frosts together and +beautifully mingles life and death." If the finer and more spiritual +faculties of men were as well cultivated or exercised as are their +colder and coarser faculties there would be fewer utilitarians. But the +highest part of our nature is too much neglected in all our systems of +education. Of the beauty and fragrance of flowers all earthly creatures +except man are apparently meant to be unconscious. The cattle tread down +or masticate the fairest flowers without a single "compunctious visiting +of nature." This excites no surprize. It is no more than natural. But it +is truly painful and humiliating to see any human being as insensible as +the beasts of the field to that poetry of the world which God seems to +have addressed exclusively to the heart and soul of man.</p> + +<p>In South Wales the custom of strewing all kinds of flowers over the +graves of departed friends, is preserved to the present day. +Shakespeare, it appears, knew something of the customs of that part of +his native country and puts the following <i>flowery</i> speech into the +mouth of the young Prince, Arviragus, who was educated there.</p> + +<pre> + With fairest flowers, + While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, + I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack + The flower that's like thy face, pale Primrose, nor + The azured Harebell, like thy veins; no, nor + The leaf of Eglantine; whom not to slander, + Out-sweetened not thy breath. +</pre> + +<div><i>Cymbeline</i>.</div> + +<p>Here are two more flower-passages from Shakespeare.</p> + +<pre> + Here's a few flowers; but about midnight more; + The herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night + Are strewings fitt'st for graves.--Upon their faces:-- + You were as flowers; now withered; even so + These herblets shall, which we upon you strow. +</pre> + +<div><i>Cymbeline</i>.</div> + +<pre> + Sweets to the sweet. Farewell! + I hoped thou shoulds't have been my Hamlet's wife; + I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, + And not t' have strewed thy grave. +</pre> + +<div><i>Hamlet</i>.</div> + +<p>Flowers are peculiarly suitable ornaments for the grave, for as Evelyn +truly says, "they are just emblems of the life of man, which has been +compared in Holy Scripture to those fading creatures, whose roots being +buried in dishonor rise again in glory."<a href="#note061">[061]</a></p> + +<p>This thought is natural and just. It is indeed a most impressive sight, +a most instructive pleasure, to behold some "bright consummate flower" +rise up like a radiant exhalation or a beautiful vision--like good from +evil--with such stainless purity and such dainty loveliness, from the +hot-bed of corruption.</p> + +<p>Milton turns his acquaintance with flowers to divine account in his +Lycidas.</p> + +<pre> + Return; Sicilian Muse, + And call the vales, and bid them hither cast + Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. + Ye vallies low, where the mild whispers use + Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, + On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks; + Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, + That on the green turf suck the honied showers. + And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. + Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. + The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, + The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, + The glowing violet, + The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine, + With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,<a href="#note062">[062]</a> + And every flower that sad embroidery wears; + Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, + And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, + To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies, + For, so to interpose a little ease, + Let our frail thoughts dally with faint surmise +</pre> + +<p>Here is a nosegay of spring-flowers from the hand of Thomson:--</p> + +<pre> + Fair handed Spring unbosoms every grace, + Throws out the snow drop and the crocus first, + the daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue, + And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes, + The yellow wall flower, stained with iron brown, + And lavish stock that scents the garden round, + From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed, + Anemonies, auriculas, enriched + With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves + And full ranunculus of glowing red + Then comes the tulip race, where Beauty plays + Her idle freaks from family diffused + To family, as flies the father dust, + The varied colors run, and while they break + On the charmed eye, the exulting Florist marks + With secret pride, the wonders of his hand + Nor gradual bloom is wanting, from the bird, + First born of spring, to Summer's musky tribes + Nor hyacinth, of purest virgin white, + Low bent, and, blushing inward, nor jonquils, + Of potent fragrance, nor Narcissus fair, + As o'er the fabled fountain hanging still, + Nor broad carnations, nor gay spotted pinks; + Nor, showered from every bush, the damask rose. + Infinite varieties, delicacies, smells, + With hues on hues expression cannot paint, + The breath of Nature and her endless bloom. +</pre> + +<p>Here are two bouquets of flowers from the garden of Cowper</p> + +<pre> + Laburnum, rich + In streaming gold, syringa, ivory pure, + The scentless and the scented rose, this red, + And of an humbler growth, the other<a href="#note063">[063]</a> tall, + And throwing up into the darkest gloom + Of neighboring cypress, or more sable yew, + Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf + That the wind severs from the broken wave, + The lilac, various in array, now white, + Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set + With purple spikes pyramidal, as if + Studious of ornament yet unresolved + Which hue she most approved, she chose them all, + Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan, + But well compensating her sickly looks + With never cloying odours, early and late, + Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm + Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods, + That scarce a loaf appears, mezereon too, + Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset + With blushing wreaths, investing every spray, + Althaea with the purple eye, the broom + Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy'd, + Her blossoms, and luxuriant above all + The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, + The deep dark green of whose unvarnish'd leaf + Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more, + The bright profusion of her scatter'd stars + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + Th' amomum there<a href="#note064">[064]</a> with intermingling flowers + And cherries hangs her twigs. Geranium boasts + Her crimson honors, and the spangled beau + Ficoides, glitters bright the winter long + All plants, of every leaf, that can endure + The winter's frown, if screened from his shrewd bite, + Live their and prosper. Those Ausonia claims, + Levantine regions those, the Azores send + Their jessamine, her jessamine remote + Caffraia, foreigners from many lands, + They form one social shade as if convened + By magic summons of the Orphean lyre +</pre> + +<p>Here is a bunch of flowers laid before the public eye by Mr. Proctor--</p> + +<pre> + There the rose unveils + Her breast of beauty, and each delicate bud + O' the season comes in turn to bloom and perish, + But first of all the violet, with an eye + Blue as the midnight heavens, the frail snowdrop, + Born of the breath of winter, and on his brow + Fixed like a full and solitary star + The languid hyacinth, and wild primrose + And daisy trodden down like modesty + The fox glove, in whose drooping bells the bee + Makes her sweet music, the Narcissus (named + From him who died for love) the tangled woodbine, + Lilacs, and flowering vines, and scented thorns, + And some from whom the voluptuous winds of June + Catch their perfumings +</pre> + +<div><i>Barry Cornwall</i></div> + +<p>I take a second supply of flowers from the same hand</p> + +<pre> + Here, this rose + (This one half blown) shall be my Maia's portion, + For that like it her blush is beautiful + And this deep violet, almost as blue + As Pallas' eye, or thine, Lycemnia, + I'll give to thee for like thyself it wears + Its sweetness, never obtruding. For this lily + Where can it hang but it Cyane's breast? + And yet twill wither on so white a bed, + If flowers have sense of envy.--It shall be + Amongst thy raven tresses, Cytheris, + Like one star on the bosom of the night + The cowslip and the yellow primrose,--they + Are gone, my sad Leontia, to their graves, + And April hath wept o'er them, and the voice + Of March hath sung, even before their deaths + The dirge of those young children of the year + But here is hearts ease for your woes. And now, + The honey suckle flower I give to thee, + And love it for my sake, my own Cyane + It hangs upon the stem it loves, as thou + Hast clung to me, through every joy and sorrow, + It flourishes with its guardian growth, as thou dost, + And if the woodman's axe should droop the tree, + The woodbine too must perish. +</pre> + +<div><i>Barry Cornwall</i></div> + +<p>Let me add to the above heap of floral beauty a basket of flowers from +Leigh Hunt.</p> + +<pre> + Then the flowers on all their beds-- + How the sparklers glance their heads, + Daisies with their pinky lashes + And the marigolds broad flashes, + Hyacinth with sapphire bell + Curling backward, and the swell + Of the rose, full lipped and warm, + Bound about whose riper form + Her slender virgin train are seen + In their close fit caps of green, + Lilacs then, and daffodillies, + And the nice leaved lesser lilies + Shading, like detected light, + Their little green-tipt lamps of white; + Blissful poppy, odorous pea, + With its wing up lightsomely; + Balsam with his shaft of amber, + Mignionette for lady's chamber, + And genteel geranium, + With a leaf for all that come; + And the tulip tricked out finest, + And the pink of smell divinest; + And as proud as all of them + Bound in one, the garden's gem + Hearts-ease, like a gallant bold + In his cloth of purple and gold. +</pre> + +<p>Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who introduced inoculation into England--a +practically useful boon to us,--had also the honor to be amongst the +first to bring from the East to the West an elegant amusement--the +Language of Flowers.<a href="#note065">[065]</a></p> + +<pre> + Then he took up his garland, and did show + What every flower, as country people hold, + Did signify; and how all, ordered thus, + Expressed his grief: and, to my thoughts, did read + The prettiest lecture of his country art + That could be wished. +</pre> + +<div><i>Beaumont's and Fletcher's "Philaster."</i></div> + +<hr> + +<pre> + There from richer banks + Culling out flowers, which in a learned order + Do become characters, whence they disclose + Their mutual meanings, garlands then and nosegays + Being framed into epistles. +</pre> + +<div><i>Cartwright's "Love's Covenant."</i></div> + +<hr> + +<pre> + An exquisite invention this, + Worthy of Love's most honied kiss, + This art of writing <i>billet-doux</i> + In buds and odours and bright hues, + In saying all one feels and thinks + In clever daffodils and pinks, + Uttering (as well as silence may,) + The sweetest words the sweetest way. +</pre> + +<div><i>Leigh Hunt</i>.</div> + +<hr> + +<pre> + Yet, no--not words, for they + But half can tell love's feeling; + Sweet flowers alone can say + What passion fears revealing.<a href="#note066">[066]</a> + A once bright rose's withered leaf-- + A towering lily broken-- + Oh, these may paint a grief + No words could e'er have spoken. +</pre> + +<div><i>Moore</i>.</div> + +<hr> + +<pre> + By all those token flowers that tell + What words can ne'er express so well. +</pre> + +<div><i>Byron</i>.</div> + +<hr> + +<pre> + A mystic language, perfect in each part. + Made up of bright hued thoughts and perfumed speeches. +</pre> + +<div><i>Adams</i>.</div> + +<p>If we are to believe Shakespeare it is not human beings only who use a +floral language:--</p> + +<pre> + Fairies use flowers for their charactery. +</pre> + +<p>Sir Walter Scott tells us that:--</p> + +<pre> + The myrtle bough bids lovers live-- +</pre> + +<p>A sprig of hawthorn has the same meaning as a sprig of myrtle: it gives +hope to the lover--the sweet heliotrope tells the depth of his +passion,--if he would charge his mistress with levity he presents the +larkspur,--and a leaf of nettle speaks her cruelty. Poor Ophelia (in +<i>Hamlet</i>) gives rosemary for remembrance, and pansies (<i>pensees</i>) for +thoughts. The laurel indicates victory in war or success with the Muses,</p> + +<pre> + "The meed of mighty conquerors and poets sage." +</pre> + +<p>The ivy wreathes the brows of criticism. The fresh vine-leaf cools the +hot forehead of the bacchanal. Bergamot and jessamine imply the +fragrance of friendship.</p> + +<p>The Olive is the emblem of peace--the Laurel, of glory--the Rue, of +grace or purification (Ophelia's <i>Herb of Grace O'Sundays</i>)--the +Primrose, of the spring of human life--the Bud of the White Rose, of +Girl-hood,--the full blossom of the Red Rose, of consummate beauty--the +Daisy, of innocence,--the Butter-cup, of gold--the Houstania, of +content--the Heliotrope, of devotion in love--the Cross of Jerusalem, of +devotion in religion--the Forget-me-not, of fidelity--the Myrrh, of +gladness--the Yew, of sorrow--the Michaelmas Daisy, of cheerfulness in +age--the Chinese Chrysanthemum, of cheerfulness in adversity--the Yellow +Carnation, of disdain--the Sweet Violet, of modesty--the white +Chrysanthemum, of truth--the Sweet Sultan, of felicity--the Sensitive +Plant, of maiden shyness--the Yellow Day Lily, of coquetry--the +Snapdragon, of presumption--the Broom, of humility--the Amaryllis, of +pride--the Grass, of submission--the Fuschia, of taste--the Verbena, of +sensibility--the Nasturtium, of splendour--the Heath, of solitude--the +Blue Periwinkle, of early friendship--the Honey-suckle, of the bond of +love--the Trumpet Flower, of fame--the Amaranth, of immortality--the +Adonis, of sorrowful remembrance,--and the Poppy, of oblivion.</p> + +<p>The Witch-hazel indicates a spell,--the Cape Jasmine says <i>I'm too +happy</i>--the Laurestine, <i>I die if I am neglected</i>--the American Cowslip, +<i>You are a divinity</i>--the Volkamenica Japonica, <i>May you be happy</i>--the +Rose-colored Chrysanthemum, <i>I love</i>,--and the Venus' Car, <i>Fly with +me</i>.</p> + +<p>For the following illustrations of the language of flowers I am indebted +to a useful and well conducted little periodical published in London and +entitled the <i>Family Friend</i>;--the work is a great favorite with the +fair sex.</p> + +<p>"Of the floral grammar, the first rule to be observed is, that the +pronoun <i>I</i> or <i>me</i> is expressed by inclining the symbol flower to the +<i>left</i>, and the pronoun <i>thou</i> or <i>thee</i> by inclining it to the <i>right</i>. +When, however, it is not a real flower offered, but a representation +upon paper, these positions must be reversed, so that the symbol leans +to the heart of the person whom it is to signify.</p> + +<p>The second rule is, that the opposite of a particular sentiment +expressed by a flower presented upright is denoted when the symbol is +reversed; thus a rose-bud sent upright, with its thorns and leaves, +means, "<i>I fear, but I hope</i>." If the bud is returned upside down, it +means, "<i>You must neither hope nor fear</i>." Should the thorns, however, +be stripped off, the signification is, "<i>There is everything to hope</i>;" +but if stript of its leaves, "<i>There is everything to fear</i>." By this it +will be seen that the expression of almost all flowers may be varied by +a change in their positions, or an alteration of their state or +condition. For example, the marigold flower placed in the hand signifies +"<i>trouble of spirits</i>;" on the heart, "<i>trouble or love</i>;" on the bosom, +"<i>weariness</i>." The pansy held upright denotes "<i>heart's ease</i>;" +reversed, it speaks the contrary. When presented upright, it says, +"<i>Think of me</i>;" and when pendent, "<i>Forget me</i>." So, too, the +amaryllis, which is the emblem of pride, may be made to express, "<i>My +pride is humbled</i>," or, "<i>Your pride is checked</i>," by holding it +downwards, and to the right or left, as the sense requires. Then, again, +the wallflower, which is the emblem of fidelity in misfortune, if +presented with the stalk upward, would intimate that the person to whom +it was turned was unfaithful in the time of trouble.</p> + +<p>The third rule has relation to the manner in which certain words may be +represented; as, for instance, the articles, by tendrils with single, +double, and treble branches, as under--</p> + +<div><img src="theana.png" alt="Illustration of The An & A."></div> + +<p>The numbers are represented by leaflets running from one to eleven, as +thus--</p> + +<div><img src="123456.png" alt="Illustration of '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', & '6'."></div> + +<p>From eleven to twenty, berries are added to the ten leaves thus--</p> + +<div><img src="1215.png" alt="Illustration of '12' & '15'."></div> + +<p>From twenty to one hundred, compound leaves are added to the other ten +for the decimals, and berries stand for the odd numbers so--</p> + +<div><img src="203456.png" alt="Illustration of '20', '34' & '56'."></div> + +<p>A hundred is represented by ten tens; and this may be increased by a +third leaflet and a branch of berries up to 999.</p> + +<div><img src="hundred.png" alt="Illustration of '100'."></div> + +<p>A thousand may be symbolized by a frond of fern, having ten or more +leaves, and to this a common leaflet may be added to increase the number +of thousands. In this way any given number may be represented in +foliage, such as the date of a year in which a birthday, or other event, +occurs, to which it is desirable to make allusion, in an emblematic +wreath or floral picture. Thus, if I presented my love with a mute yet +eloquent expression of good wishes on her eighteenth birthday, I should +probably do it in this wise:--Within an evergreen wreath (<i>lasting as my +affection</i>), consisting of ten leaflets and eight berries (<i>the age of +the beloved</i>), I would place a red rose bud (<i>pure and lovely</i>), or a +white lily (<i>pure and modest</i>), its spotless petals half concealing a +ripe strawberry (<i>perfect excellence</i>); and to this I might add a +blossom of the rose-scented geranium (<i>expressive of my preference</i>), a +peach blossom to say "<i>I am your captive</i>" fern for sincerity, and +perhaps bachelor's buttons for <i>hope in love</i>"--<i>Family Friend</i>.</p> + +<p>There are many anecdotes and legends and classical fables to illustrate +the history of shrubs and flowers, and as they add something to the +peculiar interest with which we regard individual plants, they ought not +to be quite passed over by the writers upon Floriculture.</p> + +<p>THE FLOS ADONIS.</p> + +<p>The Flos Adonis, a blood-red flower of the Anemone tribe, is one of the +many plants which, according to ancient story sprang from the tears of +Venus and the blood of her coy favorite.</p> + +<pre> + Rose cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase + Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn +</pre> + +<div><i>Shakespeare</i>.</div> + +<p>Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, the mother of Love, the Queen of Laughter, +the Mistress of the Graces and the Pleasures, could make no impression +on the heart of the beautiful son of Myrrha, (who was changed into a +myrrh tree,) though the passion-stricken charmer looked and spake with +the lip and eye of the fairest of the immortals. Shakespeare, in his +poem of <i>Venus and Adonis</i>, has done justice to her burning eloquence, +and the lustre of her unequalled loveliness. She had most earnestly, and +with all a true lover's care entreated Adonis to avoid the dangers of +the chase, but he slighted all her warnings just as he had slighted her +affections. He was killed by a wild boar. Shakespeare makes Venus thus +lament over the beautiful dead body as it lay on the blood-stained +grass.</p> + +<pre> + Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost! + What face remains alive that's worth the viewing? + Whose tongue is music now? What can'st thou boast + Of things long since, or any thing ensuing? + The flowers are sweet, their colors fresh and trim, + But true sweet beauty lived and died with him. +</pre> + +<p>In her ecstacy of grief she prophecies that henceforth all sorts of +sorrows shall be attendants upon love,--and alas! she was too correct an +oracle.</p> + +<pre> + The course of true love never does run smooth. +</pre> + +<p>Here is Shakespeare's version of the metamorphosis of Adonis into a +flower.</p> + +<pre> + By this the boy that by her side lay killed + Was melted into vapour from her sight, + And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled, + A purple flower sprang up, checquered with white, + Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood + Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood. + + She bows her head, the new sprung flower to smell, + Comparing it to her Adonis' breath, + And says, within her bosom it shall dwell + Since he himself is reft from her by death; + She crops the stalk, and in the branch appears + Green dropping sap which she compares to tears. +</pre> + +<p>The reader may like to contrast this account of the change from human +into floral beauty with the version of the same story in Ovid as +translated by Eusden.</p> + +<pre> + Then on the blood sweet nectar she bestows, + The scented blood in little bubbles rose; + Little as rainy drops, which fluttering fly, + Borne by the winds, along a lowering sky, + Short time ensued, till where the blood was shed, + A flower began to rear its purple head + + Such, as on Punic apples is revealed + Or in the filmy rind but half concealed, + Still here the fate of lonely forms we see, + <i>So sudden fades the sweet Anemone</i>. + The feeble stems to stormy blasts a prey + Their sickly beauties droop, and pine away + The winds forbid the flowers to flourish long + Which owe to winds their names in Grecian song. +</pre> + +<p>The concluding couplet alludes to the Grecian name of the flower +([Greek: anemos], <i>anemos</i>, the wind.)</p> + +<p>It is said of the Anemone that it never opens its lips until Zephyr +kisses them. Sir William Jones alludes to its short-lived beauty.</p> + +<pre> + Youth, like a thin anemone, displays + His silken leaf, and in a morn decays. +</pre> + +<p>Horace Smith speaks of</p> + +<pre> + The coy anemone that ne'er discloses + Her lips until they're blown on by the wind +</pre> + +<p>Plants open out their leaves to breathe the air just as eagerly as they +throw down their roots to suck up the moisture of the earth. Dr. Linley, +indeed says, "they feed more by their leaves than their roots." I lately +met with a curious illustration of the fact that plants draw a larger +proportion of their nourishment from light and air than is commonly +supposed. I had a beautiful convolvulus growing upon a trellis work in +an upper verandah with a south-western aspect. The root of the plant was +in pots. The convolvulus growing too luxuriantly and encroaching too +much upon the space devoted to a creeper of another kind, I separated +its upper branches from the root and left them to die. The leaves began +to fade the second day and most of them were quite dead the third or +fourth day, but two or three of the smallest retained a sickly life for +some days more. The buds or rather chalices outlived the leaves. The +chalices continued to expand every morning, for--I am afraid to say how +long a time--it might seem perfectly incredible. The convolvulus is a +plant of a rather delicate character and I was perfectly astonished at +its tenacity of life in this case. I should mention that this happened +in the rainy season and that the upper part of the creeper was partially +protected from the sun.</p> + +<p>The Anemone seems to have been a great favorite with Mrs. Hemans. She +thus addresses it.</p> + +<pre> + Flower! The laurel still may shed + Brightness round the victor's head, + And the rose in beauty's hair + Still its festal glory wear; + And the willow-leaves droop o'er + Brows which love sustains no more + But by living rays refined, + Thou the trembler of the wind, + Thou, the spiritual flower + Sentient of each breeze and shower,<a href="#note067">[067]</a> + Thou, rejoicing in the skies + And transpierced with all their dyes; + Breathing-vase with light o'erflowing, + Gem-like to thy centre flowing, + Thou the Poet's type shall be + Flower of soul, Anemone! +</pre> + +<p>The common anemone was known to the ancients but the finest kind was +introduced into France from the East Indies, by Monsieur Bachelier, an +eminent Florist. He seems to have been a person of a truly selfish +disposition, for he refused to share the possession of his floral +treasure with any of his countrymen. For ten years the new anemone from +the East was to be seen no where in Europe but in Monsieur Bachelier's +parterre. At last a counsellor of the French Parliament disgusted with +the florist's selfishness, artfully contrived when visiting the garden +to drop his robe upon the flower in such a manner as to sweep off some +of the seeds. The servant, who was in his master's secret, caught up the +robe and carried it away. The trick succeeded; and the counsellor shared +the spoils with all his friends through whose agency the plant was +multiplied in all parts of Europe.</p> + +<p>THE OLIVE.</p> + +<p>The OLIVE is generally regarded as an emblem of peace, and should have +none but pleasant associations connected with it, but Ovid alludes to a +wild species of this tree into which a rude and licentious fellow was +converted as a punishment for "banishing the fair," with indecent words +and gestures. The poet tells us of a secluded grotto surrounded by +trembling reeds once frequented by the wood-nymphs of the sylvan race:--</p> + +<pre> + Till Appulus with a dishonest air + And gross behaviour, banished thence the fair. + The bold buffoon, whene'er they tread the green, + Their motion mimics, but with jest obscene; + Loose language oft he utters; but ere long + A bark in filmy net-work binds his tongue; + Thus changed, a base wild olive he remains; + The shrub the coarseness of the clown retains. +</pre> + +<div><i>Garth's Ovid</i>.</div> + +<p>The mural of this is excellent. The sentiment reminds me of the Earl of +Roscommon's well-known couplet in his <i>Essay on Translated Verse</i>, a +poem now rarely read.</p> + +<pre> + Immodest words admit of no defense,<a href="#note068">[068]</a> + For want of decency is want of sense, +</pre> + +<p>THE HYACINTH.</p> + +<p>The HYACINTH has always been a great favorite with the poets, ancient +and modern. Homer mentions the Hyacinth as forming a portion of the +materials of the couch of Jove and Juno.</p> + +<pre> + Thick new-born Violets a soft carpet spread, + And clustering Lotos swelled the rising bed, + And sudden <i>Hyacinths</i><a href="#note069">[069]</a> the turf bestrow, + And flaming Crocus made the mountains glow +</pre> + +<div><i>Iliad, Book 14</i></div> + +<p>Milton gives a similar couch to Adam and Eve.</p> + +<pre> + Flowers were the couch + Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel + And <i>Hyacinth</i>, earth's freshest, softest lap +</pre> + +<p>With the exception of the lotus (so common in Hindustan,) all these +flowers, thus celebrated by the greatest of Grecian poets, and +represented as fit luxuries for the gods, are at the command of the +poorest peasant in England. The common Hyacinth is known to the +unlearned as the Harebell, so called from the bell shape of its flowers +and from its growing so abundantly in thickets frequented by hares. +Shakespeare, as we have seen, calls it the <i>Blue</i>-bell.</p> + +<p>The curling flowers of the Hyacinth, have suggested to our poets the +idea of clusters of curling tresses of hair.</p> + +<pre> + His fair large front and eye sublime declared + Absolute rule, and hyacinthine locks + Round from his parted forelock manly hung, + Clustering +</pre> + +<div><i>Milton</i></div> + +<pre> + The youths whose locks divinely spreading + Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue +</pre> + +<div><i>Collins</i></div> + +<p>Sir William Jones describes--</p> + +<pre> + The fragrant hyacinths of Azza's hair, + That wanton with the laughing summer air. +</pre> + +<p>A similar allusion may also be found in prose.</p> + +<p>"It was the exquisitely fair queen Helen, whose jacinth<a href="#note070">[070]</a> hair, +curled by nature, intercurled by art, like a brook through golden sands, +had a rope of fair pearl, which, now hidden by the hair, did, as it were +play at fast and loose each with the other, mutually giving and +receiving richness."--<i>Sir Philip Sidney</i></p> + +<p>"The ringlets so elegantly disposed round the fair countenances of these +fair Chiotes <a href="#note071">[071]</a> are such as Milton describes by 'hyacinthine locks' +crisped and curled like the blossoms of that flower"</p> + +<p><i>Dallaway</i></p> + +<p>The old fable about Hyacinthus is soon told. Apollo loved the youth and +not only instructed him in literature and the arts, but shared in his +pastimes. The divine teacher was one day playing with his pupil at +quoits. Some say that Zephyr (Ovid says it was Boreas) jealous of the +god's influence over young Hyacinthus, wafted the ponderous iron ring +from its right course and caused it to pitch upon the poor boy's head. +He fell to the ground a bleeding corpse. Apollo bade the scarlet +hyacinth spring from the blood and impressed upon its leaves the words +<i>Ai Ai</i>, (<i>alas! alas!</i>) the Greek funeral lamentation. Milton alludes +to the flower in <i>Lycidas</i>,</p> + +<pre> + Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. +</pre> + +<p>Drummond had before spoken of</p> + +<pre> + That sweet flower that bears + In sanguine spots the tenor of our woes +</pre> + +<p>Hurdis speaks of:</p> + +<pre> + The melancholy Hyacinth, that weeps + All night, and never lifts an eye all day. +</pre> + +<p>Ovid, after giving the old fable of Hyacinthus, tells us that "the time +shall come when a most valiant hero shall add his name to this flower." +"He alludes," says Mr. Riley, "to Ajax, from whose blood when he slew +himself, a similar flower<a href="#note072">[072]</a> was said to have arisen with the letters +<i>Ai Ai</i> on its leaves, expressive either of grief or denoting the first +two letters of his name [Greek: Aias]."</p> + +<pre> + As poets feigned from Ajax's streaming blood + Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower. +</pre> + +<div><i>Young</i>.</div> + +<p>Keats has the following allusion to the old story of Hyacinthus,</p> + +<pre> + Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent + On either side; pitying the sad death + Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath + Of Zephyr slew him,--Zephyr penitent, + Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament + Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. +</pre> + +<div><i>Endymion</i>.</div> + +<p>Our English Hyacinth, it is said, is not entitled to its legendary +honors. The words <i>Non Scriptus</i> were applied to this plant by +Dodonaeus, because it had not the <i>Ai Ai</i> upon its petals. Professor +Martyn says that the flower called <i>Lilium Martagon</i> or the <i>Scarlet +Turk's Cap</i> is the plant alluded to by the ancients.</p> + +<p>Alphonse Karr, the eloquent French writer, whose "<i>Tour Round my +Garden</i>" I recommend to the perusal of all who can sympathize with +reflections and emotions suggested by natural objects, has the following +interesting anecdote illustrative of the force of a floral +association:--</p> + +<p>"I had in a solitary corner of my garden <i>three hyacinths</i> which my +father had planted and which death did not allow him to see bloom. Every +year the period of their flowering was for me a solemnity, a funeral and +religious festival, it was a melancholy remembrance which revived and +reblossomed every year and exhaled certain thoughts with its perfume. +The roots are dead now and nothing lives of this dear association but in +my own heart. But what a dear yet sad privilege man possesses above all +created beings, while thus enabled by memory and thought to follow those +whom he loved to the tomb and there shut up the living with the dead. +What a melancholy privilege, and yet is there one amongst us who would +lose it? Who is he who would willingly forget all"</p> + +<p>Wordsworth, suddenly stopping before a little bunch of harebells, which +along with some parsley fern, grew out of a wall, he exclaimed, 'How +perfectly beautiful that is!</p> + +<pre> + Would that the little flowers that grow could live + Conscious of half the pleasure that they give +</pre> + +<p>The Hyacinth has been cultivated with great care and success in Holland, +where from two to three hundred pounds have been given for a single +bulb. A florist at Haarlem enumerates 800 kinds of double-flowered +Hyacinths, besides about 400 varieties of the single kind. It is said +that there are altogether upwards of 2000 varieties of the Hyacinth.</p> + +<p>The English are particularly fond of the Hyacinth. It is a domestic +flower--a sort of parlour pet. When in "close city pent" they transfer +the bulbs to glass vases (Hyacinth glasses) filled with water, and place +them in their windows in the winter.</p> + +<p>An annual solemnity, called Hyacinthia, was held in Laconia in honor of +Hyacinthus and Apollo. It lasted three days. So eagerly was this +festival honored, that the soldiers of Laconia even when they had taken +the field against an enemy would return home to celebrate it.</p> + +<p>THE NARCISSUS</p> + +<pre> + Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watery shore +</pre> + +<div><i>Spenser</i></div> + +<p>With respect to the NARCISSUS, whose name in the floral vocabulary is +the synonyme of <i>egotism</i>, there is a story that must be familiar enough +to most of my readers. Narcissus was a beautiful youth. Teresias, the +Soothsayer, foretold that he should enjoy felicity until he beheld his +own face but that the first sight of that would be fatal to him. Every +kind of mirror was kept carefully out of his way. Echo was enamoured of +him, but he slighted her love, and she pined and withered away until she +had nothing left her but her voice, and even that could only repeat the +last syllables of other people's sentences. He at last saw his own image +reflected in a fountain, and taking it for that of another, he fell +passionately in love with it. He attempted to embrace it. On seeing the +fruitlessness of all his efforts, he killed himself in despair. When the +nymphs raised a funeral pile to burn his body, they found nothing but a +flower. That flower (into which he had been changed) still bears his +name.</p> + +<p>Here is a little passage about the fable, from the <i>Two Noble Kinsmen</i> +of Beaumont and Fletcher.</p> + +<pre> + <i>Emilia</i>--This garden hath a world of pleasure in it, + What flower is this? + + <i>Servant</i>--'Tis called Narcissus, Madam. + + <i>Em.</i>--That was a fair boy certain, but a fool + To love himself, were there not maids, + Or are they all hard hearted? + + <i>Ser</i>--That could not be to one so fair. +</pre> + +<p>Ben Jonson touches the true moral of the fable very forcibly.</p> + +<pre> + 'Tis now the known disease + That beauty hath, to hear too deep a sense + Of her own self conceived excellence + Oh! had'st thou known the worth of Heaven's rich gift, + Thou would'st have turned it to a truer use, + And not (with starved and covetous ignorance) + Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem + The glance whereof to others had been more + Than to thy famished mind the wide world's store. +</pre> + +<p>Gay's version of the fable is as follows:</p> + +<pre> + Here young Narcissus o'er the fountain stood + And viewed his image in the crystal flood + The crystal flood reflects his lovely charms + And the pleased image strives to meet his arms. + No nymph his inexperienced breast subdued, + Echo in vain the flying boy pursued + Himself alone, the foolish youth admires + And with fond look the smiling shade desires, + O'er the smooth lake with fruitless tears he grieves, + His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves, + Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows, + And in a short lived flower his beauty glows +</pre> + +<p>Addison has given a full translation of the story of Narcissus from +Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book the third.</p> + +<p>The common daffodil of our English fields is of the genus Narcissus. +"Pray," said some one to Pope, "what is this <i>Asphodel</i> of Homer?" "Why, +I believe," said Pope "if one was to say the truth, 'twas nothing else +but that poor yellow flower that grows about our orchards, and, if so, +the verse might be thus translated in English</p> + +<pre> + --The stern Achilles + Stalked through a mead of daffodillies" +</pre> + +<p>THE LAUREL</p> + +<p>Daphne was a beautiful nymph beloved by that very amorous gentleman, +Apollo. The love was not reciprocal. She endeavored to escape his +godship's importunities by flight. Apollo overtook her. She at that +instant solicited aid from heaven, and was at once turned into a laurel. +Apollo gathered a wreath from the tree and placing it on his own +immortal brows, decreed that from that hour the laurel should be sacred +to his divinity.</p> + +<p>THE SUN-FLOWER</p> + +<pre> + Who can unpitying see the flowery race + Shed by the morn then newflushed bloom resign, + Before the parching beam? So fade the fair, + When fever revels in their azure veins + But one, <i>the lofty follower of the sun</i>, + Sad when he sits shuts up her yellow leaves, + Drooping all night, and when he warm return, + Points her enamoured bosom to his ray +</pre> + +<div><i>Thomson</i>.</div> + +<p>THE SUN-FLOWER (<i>Helianthus</i>) was once the fair nymph Clytia. Broken- +hearted at the falsehood of her lover, Apollo, (who has so many similar +sins to answer for) she pined away and died. When it was too late +Apollo's heart relented, and in honor of true affection he changed poor +Clytia into a <i>Sun-flower</i>.<a href="#note073">[073]</a> It is sometimes called <i>Tourne-sol</i>--a +word that signifies turning to the sun. Thomas Moore helps to keep the +old story in remembrance by the concluding couplet of one of his +sweetest ballads.</p> + +<pre> + Oh! the heart that has truly loved never forgets, + But as truly loves on to its close + As the sun flower turns on her god when he sets + The same look that she turned when he rose +</pre> + +<p>But Moore has here poetized a vulgar error. Most plants naturally turn +towards the light, but the sun-flower (in spite of its name) is perhaps +less apt to turn itself towards Apollo than the majority of other +flowers for it has a stiff stem and a number of heavy heads. At all +events it does not change its attitude in the course of the day. The +flower-disk that faces the morning sun has it back to it in the evening.</p> + +<p>Gerard calls the sun-flower "The Flower of the Sun or the Marigold of +Peru". Speaking of it in the year 1596 he tells us that he had some in +his own garden in Holborn that had grown to the height of fourteen feet.</p> + +<p>THE WALL-FLOWER</p> + +<pre> + The weed is green, when grey the wall, + And blossoms rise where turrets fall +</pre> + +<p>Herrick gives us a pretty version of the story of the WALL-FLOWER, +(<i>cheiranthus cheiri</i>)("the yellow wall-flower stained with iron brown")</p> + +<pre> + Why this flower is now called so + List sweet maids and you shall know + Understand this firstling was + Once a brisk and bonny lass + Kept as close as Danae was + Who a sprightly springal loved, + And to have it fully proved, + Up she got upon a wall + Tempting down to slide withal, + But the silken twist untied, + So she fell, and bruised and died + Love in pity of the deed + And her loving, luckless speed, + Turned her to the plant we call + Now, 'The Flower of the Wall' +</pre> + +<p>The wall-flower is the emblem of fidelity in misfortune, because it +attaches itself to fallen towers and gives a grace to ruin. David Moir +(the Delta of <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>) has a poem on this flower. I must +give one stanza of it.</p> + +<pre> + In the season of the tulip cup + When blossoms clothe the trees, + How sweet to throw the lattice up + And scent thee on the breeze; + The butterfly is then abroad, + The bee is on the wing, + And on the hawthorn by the road + The linnets sit and sing. +</pre> + +<p>Lord Bacon observes that wall-flowers are very delightful when set under +the parlour window or a lower chamber window. They are delightful, I +think, any where.</p> + +<p>THE JESSAMINE.</p> + +<pre> + The Jessamine, with which the Queen of flowers, + To charm her god<a href="#note074">[074]</a> adorns his favorite bowers, + Which brides, by the plain hand of neatness dressed-- + Unenvied rivals!--wear upon their breast; + Sweet as the incense of the morn, and chaste + As the pure zone which circles Dian's waist. +</pre> + +<div><i>Churchill.</i></div> + +<p>The elegant and fragrant JESSAMINE, or Jasmine, (<i>Jasmimum Officinale</i>) +with its "bright profusion of scattered stars," is said to have passed +from East to West. It was originally a native of Hindustan, but it is +now to be found in every clime, and is a favorite in all. There are +many varieties of it in Europe. In Italy it is woven into bridal wreaths +and is used on all festive occasions. There is a proverbial saying +there, that she who is worthy of being decorated with jessamine is rich +enough for any husband. Its first introduction into that sunny land is +thus told. A certain Duke of Tuscany, the first possessor of a plant of +this tribe, wished to preserve it as an unique, and forbade his gardener +to give away a single sprig of it. But the gardener was a more faithful +lover than servant and was more willing to please a young mistress than +an old master. He presented the young girl with a branch of jessamine on +her birth-day. She planted it in the ground; it took root, and grew and +blossomed. She multiplied the plant by cuttings, and by the sale of +these realized a little fortune, which her lover received as her +marriage dowry.</p> + +<p>In England the bride wears a coronet of intermingled orange blossom and +jessamine. Orange flowers indicate chastity, and the jessamine, elegance +and grace.</p> + +<p>THE ROSE.</p> + +<pre> + For here the rose expands + Her paradise of leaves. +</pre> + +<div><i>Southey.</i></div> + +<p>The ROSE, (<i>Rosa</i>) the Queen of Flowers, was given by Cupid to +Harpocrates, the God of Silence, as a bribe, to prevent him from +betraying the amours of Venus. A rose suspended from the ceiling +intimates that all is strictly confidential that passes under it. Hence +the phrase--<i>under the Rose</i><a href="#note075">[075]</a>.</p> + +<p>The rose was raised by Flora from the remains of a favorite nymph. Venus +and the Graces assisted in the transformation of the nymph into a +flower. Bacchus supplied streams of nectar to its root, and Vertumnus +showered his choicest perfumes on its head.</p> + +<p>The loves of the Nightingale and the Rose have been celebrated by the +Muses of many lands. An Eastern poet says "You may place a hundred +handfuls of fragrant herbs and flowers before the Nightingale; yet he +wishes not, in his constant heart, for more than the sweet breath of his +beloved Rose."</p> + +<p>The Turks say that the rose owes its origin to a drop of perspiration +that fell from the person of their prophet Mahommed.</p> + +<p>The classical legend runs that the rose was at first of a pure white, +but a rose-thorn piercing the foot of Venus when she was hastening to +protect Adonis from the rage of Mars, her blood dyed the flower. Spenser +alludes to this legend:</p> + +<pre> + White as the native rose, before the change + Which Venus' blood did on her leaves impress. +</pre> + +<div><i>Spenser</i>.</div> + +<p>Milton says that in Paradise were,</p> + +<pre> + Flowers of all hue, and <i>without thorns the rose</i>. +</pre> + +<p>According to Zoroaster there was no thorn on the rose until Ahriman (the +Evil One) entered the world.</p> + +<p>Here is Dr. Hooker's account of the origin of the red rose.</p> + +<pre> + To sinless Eve's admiring sight + The rose expanded snowy white, + When in the ecstacy of bliss + She gave the modest flower a kiss, + And instantaneous, lo! it drew + From her red lip its blushing hue; + While from her breath it sweetness found, + And spread new fragrance all around. +</pre> + +<p>This reminds me of a passage in Mrs. Barrett Browning's <i>Drama of Exile</i> +in which she makes Eve say--</p> + +<pre> + --For was I not + At that last sunset seen in Paradise, + When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs + Of sudden angel-faces, face by face, + All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God + Held them suspended,--was I not, that hour + The lady of the world, princess of life, + Mistress of feast and favour? <i>Could I touch + A Rose with my white hand, but it became + Redder at once?</i> +</pre> + +<p>Another poet. (Mr. C. Cooke) tells us that a species of red rose with +all her blushing honors full upon her, taking pity on a very pale +maiden, changed complexions with the invalid and became herself as white +as snow.</p> + +<p>Byron expressed a wish that all woman-kind had but one <i>rosy</i> mouth, +that he might kiss all woman-kind at once. This, as some one has rightly +observed, is better than Caligula's wish that all mankind had but one +head that he might cut it off at a single blow.</p> + +<p>Leigh Hunt has a pleasant line about the rose:</p> + +<pre> + And what a red mouth hath the rose, the woman of the flowers! +</pre> + +<p>In the Malay language the same word signifies <i>flowers</i> and <i>women</i>.</p> + +<p>Human beauty and the rose are ever suggesting images of each other to +the imagination of the poets. Shakespeare has a beautiful description of +the two little princes sleeping together in the Tower of London.</p> + +<pre> + Their lips were four red roses on a stalk + That in their summer beauty kissed each other. +</pre> + +<p>William Browne (our Devonshire Pastoral Poet) has a <i>rosy</i> description +of a kiss:--</p> + +<pre> + To her Amyntas + Came and saluted; never man before + More blest, nor like this kiss hath been another + But when two dangling cherries kist each other; + Nor ever beauties, like, met at such closes, + But in the kisses of two damask roses. +</pre> + +<p>Here is something in the same spirit from Crashaw.</p> + +<pre> + So have I seen + Two silken sister-flowers consult and lay + Their bashful cheeks together; newly they + Peeped from their buds, showed like the garden's eyes + Scarce waked, like was the crimson of their joys, + Like were the tears they wept, so like that one + Seemed but the other's kind reflection. +</pre> + +<p>Loudon says that there is a rose called the <i>York and Lancaster</i> which +when, it comes true has one half of the flower red and the other half +white. It was named in commemoration of the two houses at the marriage +of Henry VII. of Lancaster with Elizabeth of York.</p> + +<p>Anacreon devotes one of his longest and best odes to the laudation of +the Rose. Such innumerable translations have been made of it that it is +now too well known for quotation in this place. Thomas Moore in his +version of the ode gives in a foot-note the following translation of a +fragment of the Lesbian poetess.</p> + +<pre> + If Jove would give the leafy bowers + A queen for all their world of flowers + The Rose would be the choice of Jove, + And blush the queen of every grove + Sweetest child of weeping morning, + Gem the vest of earth adorning, + Eye of gardens, light of lawns, + Nursling of soft summer dawns + June's own earliest sigh it breathes, + Beauty's brow with lustre wreathes, + And to young Zephyr's warm caresses + Spreads abroad its verdant tresses, + Till blushing with the wanton's play + Its cheeks wear e'en a redder ray. +</pre> + +<p>From the idea of excellence attached to this Queen of Flowers arose, as +Thomas Moore observes, the pretty proverbial expression used by +Aristophanes--<i>you have spoken roses</i>, a phrase adds the English poet, +somewhat similar to the <i>dire des fleurettes</i> of the French.</p> + +<p>The Festival of the Rose is still kept up in many villages of France and +Switzerland. On a certain day of every year the young unmarried women +assemble and undergo a solemn trial before competent judges, the most +virtuous and industrious girl obtains a crown of roses. In the valley of +Engandine, in Switzerland, a man accused of a crime but proved to be not +guilty, is publicly presented by a young maiden with a white rose called +the Rose of Innocence.</p> + +<p>Of the truly elegant Moss Rose I need say nothing myself; it has been so +amply honored by far happier pens than mine. Here is a very ingenious +and graceful story of its origin. The lines are from the German.</p> + +<p>THE MOSS ROSE</p> + +<pre> + The Angel of the Flowers one day, + Beneath a rose tree sleeping lay, + The spirit to whom charge is given + To bathe young buds in dews of heaven, + Awaking from his light repose + The Angel whispered to the Rose + "O fondest object of my care + Still fairest found where all is fair, + For the sweet shade thou givest to me + Ask what thou wilt 'tis granted thee" + "Then" said the Rose, "with deepened glow + On me another grace bestow." + The spirit paused in silent thought + What grace was there the flower had not? + 'Twas but a moment--o'er the rose + A veil of moss the Angel throws, + And robed in Nature's simple weed, + Could there a flower that rose exceed? +</pre> + +<p>Madame de Genlis tells us that during her first visit to England she saw +a moss-rose for the first time in her life, and that when she took it +back to Paris it gave great delight to her fellow-citizens, who said it +was the first that had ever been seen in that city. Madame de Latour +says that Madame de Genlis was mistaken, for the moss-rose came +originally from Provence and had been known to the French for ages.</p> + +<p>The French are said to have cultivated the Rose with extraordinary care +and success. It was the favorite flower of the Empress Josephine, who +caused her own name to be traced in the parterres at Malmaison with a +plantation of the rarest roses. In the royal rosary at Versailles there +are standards eighteen feet high grafted with twenty different varieties +of the rose.</p> + +<p>With the Romans it was no metaphor but an allusion to a literal fact +when they talked of sleeping upon beds of roses. Cicero in his third +oration against Verres, when charging the proconsul with luxurious +habits, stated that he had made the tour of Sicily seated upon roses. +And Seneca says, of course jestingly, that a Sybarite of the name of +Smyrndiride was unable to sleep if one of the rose-petals on his bed +happened to be curled! At a feast which Cleopatra gave to Marc Antony +the floor of the hall was covered with fresh roses to the depth of +eighteen inches. At a fête given by Nero at Baiae the sum of four +millions of sesterces or about 20,000<i>l</i>. was incurred for roses. The +Natives of India are fond of the rose, and are lavish in their +expenditure at great festivals, but I suppose that no millionaire +amongst them ever spent such an amount of money as this upon flowers +alone.<a href="#note076">[076]</a></p> + +<p>I shall close the poetical quotations on the Rose with one of +Shakespeare's sonnets.</p> + +<pre> + O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, + By that sweet ornament which truth doth give. + The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem + For that sweet odour which doth in it live. + The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye + As the perfumed tincture of the roses, + Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly, + When summer's breath their masked buds discloses; + But for their virtue only is their show, + They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade; + Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so; + Of then sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: + And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, + When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth. +</pre> + +<p>There are many hundred acres of rose trees at Ghazeepore which are +cultivated for distillation, and making "attar." There are large fields +of roses in England also, for the manufacture of rose-water.</p> + +<p>There is a story about the origin of attar of Roses. The Princess +Nourmahal caused a large tank, on which she used to be rowed about with +the great Mogul, to be filled with rose-water. The heat of the sun +separating the water from the essential oil of the rose, the latter was +observed to be floating on the surface. The discovery was immediately +turned to good account. At Ghazeepoor, the <i>essence</i>, <i>atta</i> or <i>uttar</i> +or <i>otto</i>, or whatever it should be called, is obtained with great +simplicity and ease. After the rose water is prepared it is put into +large open vessels which are left out at night. Early in the morning the +oil that floats upon the surface is skimmed off, or sucked up with fine +dry cotton wool, put into bottles, and carefully sealed. Bishop Heber +says that to produce one rupee's weight of atta 200,000 well grown roses +are required, and that a rupee's weight sells from 80 to 100 rupees. The +atta sold in Calcutta is commonly adulterated with the oil of sandal +wood.</p> + +<p>LINNAEA BOREALIS</p> + +<p>The LINNAEA BOREALIS, or two horned Linnaea, though a simple Lapland +flower, is interesting to all botanists from its association with the +name of the Swedish Sage. It has pretty little bells and is very +fragrant. It is a wild, unobtrusive plant and is very averse to the +trim lawn and the gay flower-border. This little woodland beauty pines +away under too much notice. She prefers neglect, and would rather waste +her sweetness on the desert air, than be introduced into the fashionable +lists of Florist's flowers. She shrinks from exposure to the sun. A +gentleman after walking with Linnaeus on the shores of the lake near +Charlottendal on a lovely evening, writes thus "I gathered a small +flower and asked if it was the <i>Linnaea borealis</i>. 'Nay,' said the +philosopher, 'she lives not here, but in the middle of our largest +woods. She clings with her little arms to the moss, and seems to resist +very gently if you force her from it. She has a complexion like a +milkmaid, and ah! she is very, very sweet and agreeable!"</p> + +<p>THE FORGET-ME-NOT</p> + +<p>The dear little FORGET-ME-NOT, (<i>myosotis palustris</i>)<a href="#note077">[077]</a> with its eye +of blue, is said to have derived its touching appellation from a +sentimental German story. Two lovers were walking on the bank of a rapid +stream. The lady beheld the flower growing on a little island, and +expressed a passionate desire to possess it. He gallantly plunged into +the stream and obtained the flower, but exhausted by the force of the +tide, he had only sufficient strength left as he neared the shore to +fling the flower at the fair one's feet, and exclaim "<i>Forget-me-not!</i>" +(<i>Vergiss-mein-nicht</i>.) He was then carried away by the stream, out of +her sight for ever.</p> + +<p>THE PERIWINKLE.</p> + +<p>The PERIWINKLE (<i>vinca</i> or <i>pervinca</i>) has had its due share of poetical +distinction. In France the common people call it the Witch's violet. It +seems to have suggested to Wordsworth an idea of the consciousness of +flowers.</p> + +<pre> + Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, + The Periwinkle trailed its wreaths, + <i>And 'tis my faith that every flower + Enjoys the air it breathes.</i> +</pre> + +<p>Mr. J.L. Merritt, has some complimentary lines on this flower.</p> + +<pre> + The Periwinkle with its fan-like leaves + All nicely levelled, is a lovely flower + Whose dark wreath, myrtle like, young Flora weaves; + There's none more rare + Nor aught more meet to deck a fairy's bower + Or grace her hair. +</pre> + +<p>The little blue Periwinkle is rendered especially interesting to the +admirers of the genius of Rousseau by an anecdote that records his +emotion on meeting it in one of his botanical excursions. He had seen it +thirty years before in company with Madame de Warens. On meeting its +sweet face again, after so long and eventful an interim, he fell upon +his knees, crying out--<i>Ah! voila de la pervanche!</i> "It struck him," +says Hazlitt, "as the same little identical flower that he remembered so +well; and thirty years of sorrow and bitter regret were effaced from his +memory."</p> + +<p>The Periwinkle was once supposed to be a cure for many diseases. Lord +Bacon says that in his time people afflicted with cramp wore bands of +green periwinkle tied about their limbs. It had also its supposed moral +influences. According to Culpepper the leaves of the flower if eaten by +man and wife together would revive between them a lost affection.</p> + +<p>THE BASIL.</p> + +<pre> + Sweet marjoram, with her like, <i>sweet basil</i>, rare for smell. +</pre> + +<div><i>Drayton.</i></div> + +<p>The BASIL is a plant rendered poetical by the genius which has handled +it. Boccaccio and Keats have made the name of the <i>sweet basil</i> sound +pleasantly in the ears of many people who know nothing of botany. A +species of this plant (known in Europe under the botanical name of +<i>Ocymum villosum</i>, and in India as the <i>Toolsee</i>) is held sacred by the +Hindus. Toolsee was a disciple of Vishnu. Desiring to be his wife she +excited the jealousy of Lukshmee by whom she was transformed into the +herb named after her.<a href="#note078">[078]</a></p> + +<p>THE TULIP.</p> + +<pre> + Tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked. +</pre> + +<div><i>Southey</i>.</div> + +<p>The TULIP (<i>tulipa</i>) is the glory of the garden, as far as color without +fragrance can confer such distinction. Some suppose it to be 'The Lily +of the Field' alluded to in the Sermon on the Mount. It grows wild in +Syria.</p> + +<p>The name of the tulip is said to be of Turkish origin. It was called +Tulipa from its resemblance to the tulipan or turban.</p> + +<pre> + What crouds the rich Divan to-day + With turbaned heads, of every hue + Bowing before that veiled and awful face + Like Tulip-beds of different shapes and dyes, + Bending beneath the invisible west wind's sighs? +</pre> + +<div><i>Moore</i>.</div> + +<p>The reader has probably heard of the Tulipomania once carried to so +great an excess in Holland.</p> + +<pre> + With all his phlegm, it broke a Dutchman's heart, + At a vast price, with one loved root to part. +</pre> + +<div><i>Crabbe</i>.</div> + +<p>About the middle of the 17th century the city of Haarlem realized in +three years ten millions sterling by the sale of tulips. A single tulip +(the <i>Semper Augustus</i>) was sold for one thousand pounds. Twelve acres +of land were given for a single root and engagements to the amount of +£5,000 were made for a first-class tulip when the mania was at its +height. A gentleman, who possessed a tulip of great value, hearing that +some one was in possession of a second root of the same kind, eagerly +secured it at a most extravagant price. The moment he got possession of +it, he crushed it under his foot. "Now," he exclaimed, "my tulip is +unique!"</p> + +<p>A Dutch Merchant gave a sailor a herring for his breakfast. Jack seeing +on the Merchant's counter what he supposed to be a heap of onions, took +up a handful of them and ate them with his fish. The supposed onions +were tulip bulbs of such value that they would have paid the cost of a +thousand Royal feasts.<a href="#note079">[079]</a></p> + +<p>The tulip mania never leached so extravagant a height in England as in +Holland, but our country did not quite escape the contagion, and even so +late as the year 1836 at the sale of Mr. Clarke's tulips at Croydon, +seventy two pounds were given for a single bulb of the <i>Fanny Kemble</i>; +and a Florist in Chelsea in the same year, priced a bulb in his +catalogue at 200 guineas.</p> + +<p>The Tulip is not endeared to us by many poetical associations. We have +read, however, one pretty and romantic tale about it. A poor old woman +who lived amongst the wild hills of Dartmoor, in Devonshire, possessed a +beautiful bed of Tulips, the pride of her small garden. One fine +moonlight night her attention was arrested by the sweet music which +seemed to issue from a thousand Liliputian choristers. She found that +the sounds proceeded from her many colored bells of Tulips. After +watching the flowers intently she perceived that they were not swayed to +and fro by the wind, but by innumerable little beings that were climbing +on the stems and leaves. They were pixies. Each held in its arms an +elfin baby tinier than itself. She saw the babies laid in the bells of +the plant, which were thus used as cradles, and the music was formed of +many lullabies. When the babies were asleep the pixies or fairies left +them, and gamboled on the neighbouring sward on which the old lady +discovered the day after, several new green rings,--a certain evidence +that her fancy had not deceived her! At earliest dawn the fairies had +returned to the tulips and taken away their little ones. The good old +woman never permitted her tulip bed to be disturbed. She regarded it as +holy ground. But when she died, some Utilitarian gardener turned it into +a parsley bed! The parsley never flourished. The ground was now cursed. +In gratitude to the memory of the benevolent dame who had watched and +protected the floral nursery, every month, on the night before the full +moon, the fairies scattered flowers on her grave, and raised a sweet +musical dirge--heard only by poetic ears--or by maids and children who</p> + +<pre> + Hold each strange tale devoutly true. +</pre> + +<p>For as the poet says:</p> + +<pre> + What though no credit doubting wits may give, + The fair and innocent shall still believe. +</pre> + +<p>Men of genius are often as trustful as maids and children. Collins, +himself a lover of the wonderful, thus speaks of Tasso:--</p> + +<pre> + Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind + Believed the magic wonders that he sung. +</pre> + +<p>All nature indeed is full of mystery to the imaginative.</p> + +<pre> + And visions as poetic eyes avow + Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough. +</pre> + +<p>The Hindoos believe that the Peepul tree of which the foliage trembles +like that of the aspen, has a spirit in every leaf.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, Madam?" said Blake, the artist. +"Never Sir." "<i>I</i> have," continued that eccentric genius, "One night I +was walking alone in my garden. There was great stillness amongst the +branches and flowers and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard +a low and pleasant sound, and knew not whence it came: at last I +perceived <i>the broad leaf of a flower move</i>, and underneath I saw a +procession of creatures the size and color of green and gray +grasshoppers, <i>bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf</i>, which they +buried with song, and then disappeared."</p> + +<p>THE PINK.</p> + +<p>The PINK (<i>dianthus</i>) is a very elegant flower. I have but a short story +about it. The young Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis the Fifteenth, +was brought up in the midst of flatterers as fulsome as those rebuked by +Canute. The youthful prince was fond of cultivating pinks, and one of +his courtiers, by substituting a floral changeling, persuaded him that +one of those pinks planted by the royal hand had sprung up into bloom in +a single night! One night, being unable to sleep, he wished to rise, but +was told that it was midnight; he replied "<i>Well then, I desire it to be +morning</i>."</p> + +<p>The pink is one of the commonest of the flowers in English gardens. It +is a great favorite all over Europe. The botanists have enumerated about +400 varieties of it.</p> + +<p>THE PANSY OR HEARTS-EASE.</p> + +<p>The PANSY (<i>víola trîcolor</i>) commonly called <i>Hearts-ease</i>, or <i>Love-in- +idleness</i>, or <i>Herb-Trinity</i> (<i>Flos Trinitarium</i>), or <i>Three-faces- +under-a-hood</i>, or <i>Kit-run-about</i>, is one of the richest and loveliest +of flowers.</p> + +<p>The late Mrs. Siddons, the great actress, was so fond of this flower +that she thought she could never have enough of it. Besides round beds +of it she used it as an edging to all the flower borders in her garden. +She liked to plant a favorite flower in large masses of beauty. But such +beauty must soon fatigue the eye with its sameness. A round bed of one +sort of flowers only is like a nosegay composed of one sort of flowers +or of flowers of the same hue. She was also particularly fond of +evergreens because they gave her garden a pleasant aspect even in the +winter.</p> + +<p>"Do you hear him?"--(John Bunyan makes the guide enquire of Christiana +while a shepherd boy is singing beside his sheep)--"I will dare to say +this boy leads a merrier life, and wears more of the herb called +<i>hearts-ease</i> in his bosom, than he that is clothed in silk and purple."</p> + +<p>Shakespeare has connected this flower with a compliment to the maiden +Queen of England.</p> + +<pre> + That very time I saw (but thou couldst not) + Flying between the cold moon and the earth, + Cupid all armed, a certain aim he took + At a fair Vestal, throned by the west; + And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow + As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. + But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft + Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon-- + And the imperial votaress passed on + In maiden meditation fancy free, + Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell. + It fell upon <i>a little western flowers, + Before milk white, now purple with love's wound-- + And maidens call it</i> LOVE IN IDLENESS + Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once, + The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, + Will make or man or woman madly dote + Upon the next live creature that it sees. + Fetch me this herb and be thou here again, + Ere the leviathan can swim a league. +</pre> + +<div><i>Midsummer Night's Dream.</i></div> + +<p>The hearts-ease has been cultivated with great care and success by some +of the most zealous flower-fanciers amongst our countrymen in India. But +it is a delicate plant in this clime, and requires most assiduous +attention, and a close study of its habits. It always withers here under +ordinary hands.</p> + +<p>THE MIGNONETTE.</p> + +<p>The MIGNONETTE, (<i>reseda odorato</i>,) the Frenchman's <i>little darling</i>, +was not introduced into England until the middle of the 17th century. +The Mignonette or Sweet Reseda was once supposed capable of assuaging +pain, and of ridding men of many of the ills that flesh is heir to. It +was applied with an incantation. This flower has found a place in the +armorial bearings of an illustrious family of Saxony. I must tell the +story: The Count of Walsthim loved the fair and sprightly Amelia de +Nordbourg. She was a spoilt child and a coquette. She had an humble +companion whose christian name was Charlotte. One evening at a party, +all the ladies were called upon to choose a flower each, and the +gentlemen were to make verses on the selections. Amelia fixed upon the +flaunting rose, Charlotte the modest mignonette. In the course of the +evening Amelia coquetted so desperately with a dashing Colonel that the +Count could not suppress his vexation. On this he wrote a verse for the +Rose:</p> + +<pre> + Elle ne vit qu'un jour, et ne plait qu'un moment. + (She lives but for a day and pleases but for a moment) +</pre> + +<p>He then presented the following line on the Mignonette to the gentle +Charlotte:</p> + +<pre> + "Ses qualities surpassent ses charmes." +</pre> + +<p>The Count transferred his affections to Charlotte, and when he married +her, added a branch of the Sweet Reseda to the ancient arms of his +family, with the motto of</p> + +<pre> + Your qualities surpass your charms. +</pre> + +<p>VERVAIN.</p> + +<pre> + The vervain-- + That hind'reth witches of their will. +</pre> + +<div><i>Drayton</i></div> + +<p>VERVAIN (<i>verbena</i>) was called by the Greeks <i>the sacred herb</i>. It was +used to brush their altars. It was supposed to keep off evil spirits. It +was also used in the religious ceremonies of the Druids and is still +held sacred by the Persian Magi. The latter lay branches of it on the +altar of the sun.</p> + +<p>The ancients had their <i>Verbenalia</i> when the temples were strewed with +vervain, and no incantation or lustration was deemed perfect without the +aid of this plant. It was supposed to cure the bite of a serpent or a +mad dog.</p> + +<p>THE DAISY.</p> + +<p>The DAISY or day's eye (<i>bellis perennis</i>) has been the darling of the +British poets from Chaucer to Shelley. It is not, however, the darling +of poets only, but of princes and peasants. And it is not man's favorite +only, but, as Wordsworth says, Nature's favorite also. Yet it is "the +simplest flower that blows." Its seed is broadcast on the land. It is +the most familiar of flowers. It sprinkles every field and lane in the +country with its little mimic stars. Wordsworth pays it a beautiful +compliment in saying that</p> + +<pre> + Oft alone in nooks remote + <i>We meet it like a pleasant thought + When such is wanted.</i> +</pre> + +<p>But though this poet dearly loved the daisy, in some moods of mind he +seems to have loved the little celandine (common pilewort) even better. +He has addressed two poems to this humble little flower. One begins with +the following stanza.</p> + +<pre> + Pansies, Lilies, Kingcups, Daisies, + Let them live upon their praises; + Long as there's a sun that sets + Primroses will have their glory; + Long as there are Violets, + They will have a place in story: + There's a flower that shall be mine, + 'Tis the little Celandine. +</pre> + +<p>No flower is too lowly for the affections of Wordsworth. Hazlitt says, +"the daisy looks up to Wordsworth with sparkling eye as an old +acquaintance; a withered thorn is weighed down with a heap of +recollections; and even the lichens on the rocks have a life and being +in his thoughts."</p> + +<p>The Lesser Celandine, is an inodorous plant, but as Wordsworth possessed +not the sense of smell, to him a deficiency of fragrance in a flower +formed no objection to it. Miss Martineau alludes to a newspaper report +that on one occasion the poet suddenly found himself capable of enjoying +the fragrance of a flower, and gave way to an emotion of tumultuous +rapture. But I have seen this contradicted. Miss Martineau herself has +generally no sense of smell, but we have her own testimony to the fact +that a brief enjoyment of the faculty once actually occurred to her. In +her case there was a simultaneous awakening of two dormant faculties-- +the sense of smell and the sense of taste. Once and once only, she +enjoyed the scent of a bottle of Eau de Cologne and the taste of meat. +The two senses died away again almost in their birth.</p> + +<p>Shelley calls Daisies "those pearled Arcturi of the earth"--"the +constellated flower that never sets."</p> + +<p>The Father of English poets does high honor to this star of the meadow +in the "Prologue to the Legend of Goode Women."</p> + +<p>He tells us that in the merry month of May he was wont to quit even his +beloved books to look upon the fresh morning daisy.</p> + +<pre> + Of all the floures in the mede + Then love I most these floures white and red, + Such that men callen Daisies in our town, + To them I have so great affectión. + As I sayd erst, when comen is the Maie, + That in my bedde there dawneth me no daie + That I nam up and walking in the mede + To see this floure agenst the Sunne sprede, + When it up riseth early by the morrow + That blisfull sight softeneth all my sorrow. +</pre> + +<div><i>Chaucer</i>.</div> + +<p>The poet then goes on with his hearty laudation of this lilliputian +luminary of the fields, and hesitates not to describe it as "of all +floures the floure." The famous Scottish Peasant loved it just as truly, +and did it equal honor. Who that has once read, can ever forget his +harmonious and pathetic address to a mountain daisy on turning it up +with the plough? I must give the poem a place here, though it must be +familiar to every reader. But we can read it again and again, just as we +can look day after day with undiminished interest upon the flower that +it commemorates.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stowe (the American writer) observes that "the daisy with its wide +plaited ruff and yellow centre is not our (that is, an American's) +flower. The English flower is the</p> + +<pre> + Wee, modest, crimson tippéd flower +</pre> + +<p>which Burns celebrated. It is what we (in America) raise in green-houses +and call the Mountain Daisy. Its effect, growing profusely about fields +and grass-plats, is very beautiful."</p> + +<p>TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY.</p> + +<p>ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN APRIL, 1786</p> + +<pre> + Wee, modest, crimson tippéd flow'r, + Thou's met me in an evil hour, + For I maun<a href="#note080">[080]</a> crush amang the stoure<a href="#note081">[081]</a> + Thy slender stem, + To spare thee now is past my pow'r, + Thou bonnie gem. + + Alas! its no thy neobor sweet, + The bonnie lark, companion meet, + Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet<a href="#note082">[082]</a> + Wi' speckled breast, + When upward springing, blythe, to greet + The purpling east + + Cauld blew the bitter biting north + Upon thy early, humble, birth, + Yet cheerfully thou glinted<a href="#note083">[083]</a> forth + Amid the storm, + Scarce reared above the patient earth + Thy tender form + + The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, + High sheltering woods and wa's<a href="#note084">[084]</a> maun shield, + But thou beneath the random bield<a href="#note085">[085]</a> + O' clod or stane, + Adorns the histie<a href="#note086">[086]</a> stibble field<a href="#note087">[087]</a> + Unseen, alane. + + There, in thy scanty mantle clad, + Thy snawye bosom sun ward spread, + Thou lifts thy unassuming head + In humble guise, + But now the share up tears thy bed, + And low thou lies! + + Such is the fate of artless Maid, + Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade! + By love's simplicity betrayed, + And guileless trust, + Till she, like thee, all soiled is laid + Low i' the dust. + + Such is the fate of simple Bard, + On Life's rough ocean luckless starred! + Unskilful he to note the card + Of prudent lore, + Till billows rage, and gales blow hard + And whelm him o'er! + + Such fate to suffering worth is given + Who long with wants and woes has striven + By human pride or cunning driven + To misery's brink, + Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven, + He, ruined, sink! + + Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, + That fate is thine--no distant date; + Stern Ruin's plough-share drives elate, + Full on thy bloom; + Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight + Shall be thy doom. +</pre> + +<div><i>Burns.</i></div> + +<p>The following verses though they make no pretension to the strength and +pathos of the poem by the great Scottish Peasant, have a grace and +simplicity of their own, for which they have long been deservedly +popular.</p> + +<p>A FIELD FLOWER.</p> + +<p>ON FINDING ONE IN FULL BLOOM, ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1803.</p> + +<pre> + There is a flower, a little flower, + With silver crest and golden eye, + That welcomes every changing hour, + And weathers every sky. + + The prouder beauties of the field + In gay but quick succession shine, + Race after race their honours yield, + They flourish and decline. + + But this small flower, to Nature dear, + While moons and stars their courses run, + Wreathes the whole circle of the year, + Companion of the sun. + + It smiles upon the lap of May, + To sultry August spreads its charms, + Lights pale October on his way, + And twines December's arms. + + The purple heath and golden broom, + On moory mountains catch the gale, + O'er lawns the lily sheds perfume, + The violet in the vale. + + But this bold floweret climbs the hill, + Hides in the forest, haunts the glen, + Plays on the margin of the rill, + Peeps round the fox's den. + + Within the garden's cultured round + It shares the sweet carnation's bed; + And blooms on consecrated ground + In honour of the dead. + + The lambkin crops its crimson gem, + The wild-bee murmurs on its breast, + The blue-fly bends its pensile stem, + Light o'er the sky-lark's nest. + + 'Tis FLORA'S page,--in every place, + In every season fresh and fair; + It opens with perennial grace. + And blossoms everywhere. + + On waste and woodland, rock and plain, + Its humble buds unheeded rise; + The rose has but a summer-reign; + The DAISY never dies. +</pre> + +<div><i>James Montgomery</i>.</div> + +<p>Montgomery has another very pleasing poetical address to the daisy. The +poem was suggested by the first plant of the kind which had appeared in +India. The flower sprang up unexpectedly out of some English earth, sent +with other seeds in it, to this country. The amiable Dr. Carey of +Serampore was the lucky recipient of the living treasure, and the poem +is supposed to be addressed by him to the dear little flower of his +home, thus born under a foreign sky. Dr. Carey was a great lover of +flowers, and it was one of his last directions on his death-bed, as I +have already said, that his garden should be always protected from the +intrusion of Goths and Vandals in the form of Bengallee goats and cows. +I must give one stanza of Montgomery's second poetical tribute to the +small flower with "the silver crest and golden eye."</p> + +<pre> + Thrice-welcome, little English flower! + To this resplendent hemisphere + Where Flora's giant offsprings tower + In gorgeous liveries all the year; + Thou, only thou, art little here + Like worth unfriended and unknown, + Yet to my British heart more dear + Than all the torrid zone. +</pre> + +<p>It is difficult to exaggerate the feeling with which an exile welcomes a +home-flower. A year or two ago Dr. Ward informed the Royal Institution +of London, that a single primrose had been taken to Australia in a +glass-case and that when it arrived there in full bloom, the sensation +it excited was so great that even those who were in the hot pursuit of +gold, paused in their eager career to gaze for a moment upon the flower +of their native fields, and such immense crowds at last pressed around +it that it actually became necessary to protect it by a guard.</p> + +<p>My last poetical tribute to the Daisy shall be three stanzas from +Wordsworth, from two different addresses to the same flower.</p> + +<pre> + With little here to do or see + Of things that in the great world be, + Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee, + For thou art worthy, + Thou unassuming Common-place + Of Nature, with that homely face, + And yet with something of a grace, + Which Love makes for thee! + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + If stately passions in me burn, + And one chance look to Thee should turn, + I drink out of an humbler urn + A lowlier pleasure; + The homely sympathy that heeds + The common life, our nature breeds; + A wisdom fitted to the needs + Of hearts at leisure. + + When, smitten by the morning ray, + I see thee rise, alert and gay, + Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play + With kindred gladness; + And when, at dusk, by dews opprest + Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest + Hath often eased my pensive breast + Of careful sadness. +</pre> + +<p>It is peculiarly interesting to observe how the profoundest depths of +thought and feeling are sometimes stirred in the heart of genius by the +smallest of the works of Nature. Even more ordinarily gifted men are +similarly affected to the utmost extent of their intellect and +sensibility. We grow tired of the works of man. In the realms of art we +ever crave something unseen before. We demand new fashions, and when the +old are once laid aside, we wonder that they should ever have excited +even a moment's admiration. But Nature, though she is always the same, +never satiates us. The simple little Daisy which Burns has so sweetly +commemorated is the same flower that was "of all flowres the flowre," in +the estimation of the Patriarch of English poets, and which so delighted +Wordsworth in his childhood, in his middle life, and in his old age. He +gazed on it, at intervals, with unchanging affection for upwards of +fourscore years.</p> + +<p>The Daisy--the miniature sun with its tiny rays--is especially the +favorite of our earliest years. In our remembrances of the happy meadows +in which we played in childhood, the daisy's silver lustre is ever +connected with the deeper radiance of its gay companion, the butter-cup, +which when held against the dimple on the cheek or chin of beauty turns +it into a little golden dell. The thoughtful and sensitive frequenter of +rural scenes discovers beauty every where; though it is not always the +sort of beauty that would satisfy the taste of men who recognize no +gaiety or loveliness beyond the walls of cities. To the poet's eye even +the freckles on a milk-maid's brow are not without a grace, associated +as they are with health, and the open sunshine.</p> + +<p>Chaucer tells us that the French call the Daisy <i>La belle Marguerite</i>. +There is a little anecdote connected with the appellation. Marguerite of +Scotland, the Queen of Louis the Eleventh, presented Marguerite Clotilde +de Surville, a poetess, with a bouquet of daisies, with this +inscription; "Marguerite d'Ecosse à Marguerite (<i>the pearl</i>) d'Helicon."</p> + +<p>The country maidens in England practise a kind of sortilége with this +flower. They pluck off leaf by leaf, saying alternately "<i>He loves me</i>" +and "<i>He loves me not</i>." The omen or oracle is decided by the fall of +either sentence on the last leaf.</p> + +<p>It is extremely difficult to rear the daisy in India. It is accustomed +to all weathers in England, but the long continued sultriness of this +clime makes it as delicate as a languid English lady in a tropical +exile, and however carefully and skilfully nursed, it generally pines +for its native air and dies.<a href="#note088">[088]</a></p> + +<p>THE PRICKLY GORSE.</p> + +<pre> + --Yon swelling downs where the sweet air stirs + The harebells, and where prickly furze + Buds lavish gold. +</pre> + +<div><i>Keat's Endymion</i>.</div> + +<pre> + Fair maidens, I'll sing you a song, + I'll tell of the bonny wild flower, + Whose blossoms so yellow, and branches so long, + O'er moor and o'er rough rocky mountains are flung + Far away from trim garden and bower +</pre> + +<div><i>L.A. Tuamley</i>.</div> + +<p>The PRICKLY GORSE or Goss or Furze, (<i>ulex</i>)<a href="#note089">[089]</a> I cannot omit to +notice, because it was the plant which of all others most struck +Dillenius when he first trod on English ground. He threw himself on his +knees and thanked Heaven that he had lived to see the golden undulation +of acres of wind-waved gorse. Linnaeus lamented that he could scarcely +keep it alive in Sweden even in a greenhouse.</p> + +<p>I have the most delightful associations connected with this plant, and +never think of it without a summer feeling and a crowd of delightful +images and remembrances of rural quietude and blue skies and balmy +breezes. Cowper hardly does it justice:</p> + +<pre> + The common, over-grown with fern, and rough + With prickly gorse, that shapeless and deformed + And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom + And decks itself with ornaments of gold, + Yields no unpleasing ramble. +</pre> + +<p>The plant is indeed irregularly shaped, but it is not <i>deformed</i>, and if +it is dangerous to the touch, so also is the rose, unless it be of that +species which Milton places in Paradise--"<i>and without thorns the +rose</i>."</p> + +<p>Hurdis is more complimentary and more just to the richest ornament of +the swelling hill and the level moor.</p> + +<pre> + And what more noble than the vernal furze + With golden caskets hung? +</pre> + +<p>I have seen whole <i>cotees</i> or <i>coteaux</i> (sides of hills) in the sweet +little island of Jersey thickly mantled with the golden radiance of this +beautiful wildflower. The whole Vallée des Vaux (<i>the valley of +vallies</i>) is sometimes alive with its lustre.</p> + +<p>VALLEE DES VAUX.</p> + +<p>AIR--THE MEETING OF THE WATERS.</p> + +<pre> + If I dream of the past, at fair Fancy's command, + Up-floats from the blue sea thy small sunny land! + O'er thy green hills, sweet Jersey, the fresh breezes blow, + And silent and warm is the Vallée des Vaux! + + There alone have I loitered 'mid blossoms of gold, + And forgot that the great world was crowded and cold, + Nor believed that a land of enchantment could show + A vale more divine than the Vallée des Vaux. + + A few scattered cots, like white clouds in the sky, + Or like still sails at sea when the light breezes die, + And a mill with its wheel in the brook's silver glow, + Form thy beautiful hamlet, sweet Vallée des Vaux! + + As the brook prattled by like an infant at play, + And each wave as it passed stole a moment away, + I thought how serenely a long life would flow, + By the sweet little brook in the Vallée des Vaux. +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>Jersey is not the only one of the Channel Islands that is enriched with +"blossoms of gold." In the sister island of Guernsey the prickly gorse +is much used for hedges, and Sir George Head remarks that the premises +of a Guernsey farmer are thus as impregnably fortified and secured as if +his grounds were surrounded by a stone wall. In the Isle of Man the +furze grows so high that it is sometimes more like a fir tree than the +ordinary plant.</p> + +<p>There is an old proverb:--"When gorse is out of blossom, kissing is out +of fashion"--that is <i>never</i>. The gorse blooms all the year.</p> + +<p>FERN.</p> + +<pre> + I'll seek the shaggy fern-clad hill + And watch, 'mid murmurs muttering stern, + The seed departing from the fern + Ere wakeful demons can convey + The wonder-working charm away. +</pre> + +<div><i>Leyden</i>.</div> + +<p>"The green and graceful Fern" (<i>filices</i>) with its exquisite tracery +must not be overlooked. It recalls many noble home-scenes to British +eyes. Pliny says that "of ferns there are two kinds, and they bear +neither flowers nor seed." And this erroneous notion of the fern bearing +no seed was common amongst the English even so late as the time of +Addison who ridicules "a Doctor that had arrived at the knowledge of the +green and red dragon, <i>and had discovered the female fern-seed</i>." The +seed is very minute and might easily escape a careless eye. In the +present day every one knows that the seed of the fern lies on the under +side of the leaves, and a single leaf will often bear some millions of +seeds. Even those amongst the vulgar who believed the plant bore seed, +had an idea that the seeds were visible only at certain mysterious +seasons and to favored individuals who by carrying a quantity of it on +their person, were able, like those who wore the helmet of Pluto or the +ring of Gyges, to walk unseen amidst a crowd. The seed was supposed to +be best seen at a certain hour of the night on which St. John the +Baptist was born.</p> + +<pre> + We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible, +</pre> + +<div><i>Shakespeare's Henry IV. Part I</i>.</div> + +<p>In Beaumont's and Fletcher's <i>Fair Maid of the Inn</i>, is the following +allusion to the fern.</p> + +<pre> + --Had you Gyges' ring, + <i>Or the herb that gives invisibility</i>. +</pre> + +<p>Ben Jonson makes a similar allusion to it:</p> + +<pre> + I had + No medicine, sir, to go invisible, + <i>No fern-seed in my pocket</i>. +</pre> + +<p>Pope puts a branch of spleen-wort, a species of fern, (<i>Asplenium +trichomanes</i>) into the hand of a gnome as a protection from evil +influences in the Cave of Spleen.</p> + +<pre> + Safe passed the gnome through this fantastic band + A branch of healing spleen-wort in his hand. +</pre> + +<p>The fern forms a splendid ornament for shadowy nooks and grottoes, or +fragments of ruins, or heaps of stones, or the odd corners of a large +garden or pleasure-ground.</p> + +<p>I have had many delightful associations with this plant both at home and +abroad. When I visited the beautiful Island of Penang, Sir William +Norris, then the Recorder of the Island, and who was a most +indefatigable collector of ferns, obligingly presented me with a +specimen of every variety that he had discovered in the hills and +vallies of that small paradise; and I suppose that in no part of the +world could a finer collection of specimens of the fern be made for a +botanist's <i>herbarium</i>. Fern leaves will look almost as well ten years +after they are gathered as on the day on which they are transferred from +the dewy hillside to the dry pages of a book.</p> + +<p>Jersey and Penang are the two loveliest islands on a small scale that I +have yet seen: the latter is the most romantic of the two and has nobler +trees and a richer soil and a brighter sky--but they are both charming +retreats for the lovers of peace and nature. As I have devoted some +verses to Jersey I must have some also on</p> + +<p>THE ISLAND OF PENANG.</p> + +<pre> + I. + + I stand upon the mountain's brow-- + I drink the cool fresh, mountain breeze-- + I see thy little town below,<a href="#note090">[090]</a> + Thy villas, hedge-rows, fields and trees, + And hail thee with exultant glow, + GEM OF THE ORIENTAL SEAS! + + II. + + A cloud had settled on my heart-- + My frame had borne perpetual pain-- + I yearned and panted to depart + From dread Bengala's sultry plain-- + Fate smiled,--Disease withholds his dart-- + I breathe the breath of life again! + + III. + + With lightened heart, elastic tread, + Almost with youth's rekindled flame, + I roam where loveliest scenes outspread + Raise thoughts and visions none could name, + Save those on whom the Muses shed + A spell, a dower of deathless fame. + + IV. + + I <i>feel</i>, but oh! could ne'er <i>pourtray</i>, + Sweet Isle! thy charms of land and wave, + The bowers that own no winter day, + The brooks where timid wild birds lave, + The forest hills where insects gay<a href="#note091">[091]</a> + Mimic the music of the brave! + + V. + + I see from this proud airy height + A lovely Lilliput below! + Ships, roads, groves, gardens, mansions white, + And trees in trimly ordered row,<a href="#note092">[092]</a> + Present almost a toy like sight, + A miniature scene, a fairy show! + + VI. + + But lo! beyond the ocean stream, + That like a sheet of silver lies, + As glorious as a poet's dream + The grand Malayan mountains rise, + And while their sides in sunlight beam + Their dim heads mingle with the skies. + + VI. + + Men laugh at bards who live <i>in clouds</i>-- + The clouds <i>beneath</i> me gather now, + Or gliding slow in solemn crowds, + Or singly, touched with sunny glow, + Like mystic shapes in snowy shrouds, + Or lucid veils on Beauty's brow. + + VIII. + + While all around the wandering eye + Beholds enchantments rich and rare, + Of wood, and water, earth, and sky + A panoramic vision fair, + The dyal breathes his liquid sigh, + And magic floats upon the air! + + IX. + + Oh! lovely and romantic Isle! + How cold the heart thou couldst not please! + Thy very dwellings seem to smile + Like quiet nests mid summer trees! + I leave thy shores--but weep the while-- + GEM OF THE ORIENTAL SEAS! +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>HENNA.</p> + +<p>The henna or al hinna (<i>Lawsonia inermis</i>) is found in great abundance +in Egypt, India, Persia and Arabia. In Bengal it goes by the name of +<i>Mindee</i>. It is much used here for garden hedges. Hindu females rub it +on the palms of their hands, the tips of their fingers and the soles of +their feet to give them a red dye. The same red dye has been observed +upon the nails of Egyptian mummies. In Egypt sprigs of henna are hawked +about the streets for sale with the cry of "<i>O, odours of Paradise; O, +flowers of the henna!</i>" Thomas Moore alludes to one of the uses of the +henna:--</p> + +<pre> + Thus some bring leaves of henna to imbue + The fingers' ends of a bright roseate hue, + So bright, that in the mirror's depth they seem + Like tips of coral branches in the stream. +</pre> + +<p>MOSS.</p> + +<p>MOSSES (<i>musci</i>) are sometimes confounded with Lichens. True mosses are +green, and lichens are gray. All the mosses are of exquisitely delicate +structure. They are found in every part of the world where the +atmosphere is moist. They have a wonderful tenacity of life and can +often be restored to their original freshness after they have been dried +for years. It was the sight of a small moss in the interior of Africa +that suggested to Mungo Park such consolatory reflections as saved him +from despair. He had been stripped of all he had by banditti.</p> + +<p>"In this forlorn and almost helpless condition," he says, "when the +robbers had left me, I sat for some time looking around me with +amazement and terror. Whichever way I turned, nothing appeared but +danger and difficulty. I found myself in the midst of a vast wilderness, +in the depth of the rainy season--naked and alone,--surrounded by +savages. I was five hundred miles from any European settlement. All +these circumstances crowded at once upon my recollection; and I confess +that my spirits began to fail me. I considered my fate as certain, and +that I had no alternative, but to lie down and perish. The influence of +religion, however aided and supported me. I reflected that no human +prudence or foresight could possibly have averted my present sufferings. +I was indeed a stranger in a strange land, yet I was still under the eye +of that Providence who has condescended to call himself the stranger's +friend. At this moment, painful as my reflections were, the +extraordinary beauty of a small Moss irresistibly caught my eye; and +though the whole plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, +I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its roots, leaves, +and fruit, without admiration. Can that Being (thought I) who planted, +watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world, a +thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon the +situation and sufferings of creatures formed after his own image? Surely +not.--Reflections like these would not allow me to despair. I started +up; and disregarding both, hunger and fatigue, traveled forward, assured +that relief was at hand; and I was not disappointed."</p> + +<p>VICTORIA REGIA.</p> + +<p>On this Queen of Aquatic Plants the language of admiration has been +exhausted. It was discovered in the first year of the present century by +the botanist Haenke who was sent by the Spanish Government to +investigate the vegetable productions of Peru. When in a canoe on the +Rio Mamore, one of the great tributaries of the river Amazon, he came +suddenly upon the noblest and largest flower that he had ever seen. He +fell on his knees in a transport of admiration. It was the plant now +known as the Victoria Regia, or American Water-lily.</p> + +<p>It was not till February 1849, that Dr. Hugh Rodie and Mr. Lachie of +Demerara forwarded seeds of the plant to Sir W.T. Hooker in vials of +pure water. They were sown in earth, in pots immersed in water, and +enclosed in a glass case. They vegetated rapidly. The plants first came +to perfection at Chatsworth the seat of the Duke of Devonshire,<a href="#note093">[093]</a> and +subsequently at the Royal gardens at Kew.</p> + +<p>Early in November of the same year, (1849,) the leaves of the plant at +Chatsworth were 4 feet 8 inches in diameter. A child weighing forty two +pounds was placed upon one of the leaves which bore the weight well. The +largest leaf of the plant by the middle of the next month was five feet +in diameter with a turned up edge of from two to four inches. It then +bore up a person of 11 stone weight. The flat leaf of the Victoria Regia +as it floats on the surface of the water, resembles in point of form the +brass high edged platter in which Hindus eat their rice.</p> + +<p>The flowers in the middle of May 1850 measured one foot one inch in +diameter. The rapidity of the growth of this plant is one of its most +remarkable characteristics, its leaves often expanding eight inches in +diameter daily, and Mr. John Fisk Allen, who has published in America an +admirably illustrated work upon the subject, tells us that instances +under his own observation have occurred of the leaves increasing at the +rate of half an inch hourly.</p> + +<p>Not only is there an extraordinary variety in the colours of the several +specimens of this flower, but a singularly rapid succession of changes +of hue in the same individual flower as it progresses from bud to +blossom.</p> + +<p>This vegetable wonder was introduced into North America in 1851. It +grows to a larger size there than in England. Some of the leaves of the +plant cultivated in North America measure seventy-two inches in +diameter.</p> + +<p>This plant has been proved to be perennial. It grows best in from 4 to 6 +feet of water. Each plant generally sends but four or five leaves to the +surface.</p> + +<p>In addition to the other attractions of this noble Water Lily, is the +exquisite character of its perfume, which strongly resembles that of a +fresh pineapple just cut open.</p> + +<p>The Victoria Regia in the Calcutta Botanic Garden has from some cause or +other not flourished so well as it was expected to do. The largest leaf +is not more than four feet and three quarters in diameter. But there can +be little doubt that when the habits of the plant are better understood +it will be brought to great perfection in this country. I strongly +recommend my native friends to decorate their tanks with this the most +glorious of aquatic plants.</p> + +<p>THE FLY-ORCHIS--THE BEE-ORCHIS.</p> + +<p>Of these strange freaks of nature many strange stories are told. I +cannot repeat them all. I shall content myself with quoting the +following passage from D'Israeli's <i>Curiosities of Literature</i>:--</p> + +<p>"There is preserved in the British Museum, a black stone, on which +nature has sketched a resemblance of the portrait of Chaucer. Stones of +this kind, possessing a sufficient degree of resemblance, are rare; but +art appears not to have been used. Even in plants, we find this sort of +resemblance. There is a species of the orchis found in the mountainous +parts of Lincolnshire, Kent, &c. Nature has formed a bee, apparently +feeding on the breast of the flower, with so much exactness, that it is +impossible at a very small distance to distinguish the imposition. Hence +the plant derives its name, and is called, the <i>Bee-flower</i>. Langhorne +elegantly notices its appearance.</p> + +<pre> + See on that floweret's velvet breast, + How close the busy vagrant lies? + His thin-wrought plume, his downy breast, + Th' ambrosial gold that swells his thighs. + Perhaps his fragrant load may bind + His limbs;--we'll set the captive free-- + I sought the living bee to find, + And found the picture of a bee,' +</pre> + +<p>The late Mr. James of Exeter wrote to me on this subject: 'This orchis +is common near our sea-coasts; but instead of being exactly like a BEE, +<i>it is not like it at all</i>. It has a general resemblance to a <i>fly</i>, and +by the help of imagination, may be supposed to be a fly pitched upon the +flower. The mandrake very frequently has a forked root, which may be +fancied to resemble thighs and legs. I have seen it helped out with +nails on the toes.'</p> + +<p>An ingenious botanist, a stranger to me, after reading this article, was +so kind as to send me specimens of the <i>fly</i> orchis, <i>ophrys muscifera</i>, +and of the <i>bee</i> orchis, <i>ophrys apifera</i>. Their resemblance to these +insects when in full flower is the most perfect conceivable; they are +distinct plants. The poetical eye of Langhorne was equally correct and +fanciful; and that too of Jackson, who differed so positively. Many +controversies have been carried on, from a want of a little more +knowledge; like that of the BEE <i>orchis</i> and the FLY <i>orchis</i>; both +parties prove to be right."<a href="#note094">[094]</a></p> + +<p>THE FUCHSIA.</p> + +<p>The Fuchsia is decidedly the most <i>graceful</i> flower in the world. It +unfortunately wants fragrance or it would be the <i>beau ideal</i> of a +favorite of Flora. There is a story about its first introduction into +England which is worth reprinting here:</p> + +<p>'Old Mr. Lee, a nurseryman and gardener, near London, well known fifty +or sixty years ago, was one day showing his variegated treasures to a +friend, who suddenly turned to him, and declared, 'Well, you have not in +your collection a prettier flower than I saw this morning at +Wapping!'--'No! and pray what was this phoenix like?' 'Why, the plant +was elegant, and the flowers hung in rows like tassels from the pendant +branches; their colour the richest crimson; in the centre a fold of deep +purple,' and so forth. Particular directions being demanded and given, +Mr. Lee posted off to Wapping, where he at once perceived that the plant +was new in this part of the world. He saw and admired. Entering the +house, he said, 'My good woman, that is a nice plant. I should like to +buy it.'--'I could not sell it for any money, for it was brought me from +the West Indies by my husband, who has now left again, and I must keep +it for his sake.'--'But I must have it!'--'No sir!'--'Here,' emptying +his pockets; 'here are gold, silver, copper.' (His stock was something +more than eight guineas.)--'Well a-day! but this is a power of money, +sure and sure.'--''Tis yours, and the plant is mine; and, my good dame, +you shall have one of the first young ones I rear, to keep for your +husband's sake,'--'Alack, alack!'--'You shall.' A coach was called, in +which was safely deposited our florist and his seemingly dear purchase. +His first work was to pull off and utterly destroy every vestige of +blossom and bud. The plant was divided into cuttings, which were forced +in bark beds and hotbeds; were redivided and subdivided. Every effort +was used to multiply it. By the commencement of the next flowering +season, Mr. Lee was the delighted possessor of 300 Fuchsia plants, all +giving promise of blossom. The two which opened first were removed into +his show-house. A lady came:--'Why, Mr. Lee, my dear Mr. Lee, where did +you get this charming flower?'--'Hem! 'tis a new thing, my lady; pretty, +is it not?'--'Pretty! 'tis lovely. Its price?'--'A guinea: thank your +ladyship;' and one of the plants stood proudly in her ladyship's +boudoir. 'My dear Charlotte, where did you get?' &c.--'Oh! 'tis a new +thing; I saw it at old Lee's; pretty, is it not?'--'Pretty! 'tis +beautiful! Its price!'--'A guinea; there was another left.' The +visitor's horses smoked off to the suburb; a third flowering plant stood +on the spot whence the first had been taken. The second guinea was paid, +and the second chosen Fuchsia adorned the drawing-room of her second +ladyship The scene was repeated, as new-comers saw and were attracted by +the beauty of the plant. New chariots flew to the gates of old Lee's +nursery-ground. Two Fuchsias, young, graceful and bursting into healthy +flower, were constantly seen on the same spot in his repository. He +neglected not to gladden the faithful sailor's wife by the promised +gift; but, ere the flower season closed, 300 golden guineas clinked in +his purse, the produce of the single shrub of the widow of Wapping; the +reward of the taste, decision, skill, and perseverance of old Mr. Lee.'</p> + +<p>Whether this story about the fuchsia, be only partly fact and partly +fiction I shall not pretend to determine; but the best authorities +acknowledge that Mr. Lee, one of the founders of the Hammersmith +Nursery, was the first to make the plant generally known in England and +that he for some time got a guinea for each of the cuttings. The fuchsia +is a native of Mexico and Chili. I believe that most of the plants of +this genus introduced into India have flourished for a brief period and +then sickened and died.</p> + +<p>The poets of England have not yet sung the Fuschia's praise. Here are +three stanzas written for a gentleman who had been presented, by the +lady of his love with a superb plant of this kind.</p> + +<p>A FUCHSIA.</p> + +<pre> + I. + +A deed of grace--a graceful gift--and graceful too the giver! +Like ear-rings on thine own fair head, these long buds hang and quiver: +Each tremulous taper branch is thrilled--flutter the wing-like leaves-- +For thus to part from thee, sweet maid, the floral spirit grieves! + + II. + +Rude gods in brass or gold enchant an untaught devotee-- +Fair marble shapes, rich paintings old, are Art's idolatry; +But nought e'er charmed a human breast like this small tremulous flower, +Minute and delicate work divine of world-creative power! + + III. + +This flower's the Queen of all earth's flowers, and loveliest things appear +Linked by some secret sympathy, in this mysterious sphere; +The giver and the gift seem one, and thou thyself art nigh +When this glory of the garden greets thy lover's raptured eye. +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>"Do you know the proper name of this flower?" writes Jeremy Bentham to a +lady-friend, "and the signification of its name? Fuchsia from Fuchs, a +German botanist."</p> + +<p>ROSEMARY.</p> + +<pre> + There's rosemary--that's for remembrance: + Pray you, love, remember. +</pre> + +<div><i>Hamlet</i></div> + +<pre> + There's rosemarie; the Arabians Justifie + (Physitions of exceeding perfect skill) + It comforteth the brain and memory. +</pre> + +<div><i>Chester</i>.</div> + +<p>Bacon speaks of heaths of ROSEMARY (<i>Rosmarinus</i><a href="#note095">[095]</a>) that "will smell +a great way in the sea; perhaps twenty miles." This reminds us of +Milton's Paradise.</p> + +<pre> + So lovely seemed + That landscape, and of pure, now purer air, + Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires + Vernal delight and joy, able to drive + All sadness but despair. Now gentle gales + Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense + Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole + Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail + Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past + Mozambic, off at sea north east winds blow + Sabean odours from the spicy shore + Of Araby the blest, with such delay + Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league + Cheered with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles. +</pre> + +<p>Rosemary used to be carried at funerals, and worn as wedding favors.</p> + +<pre> + <i>Lewis</i> Pray take a piece of Rosemary + <i>Miramont</i> I'll wear it, + But for the lady's sake, and none of your's! +</pre> + +<div><i>Beaumont and Fletcher's "Elder Brother."</i></div> + +<p>Rosemary, says Malone, being supposed to strengthen the memory, was the +emblem of fidelity in lovers. So in <i>A Handfull of Pleasant Delites, +containing Sundrie New Sonets, 16mo</i>. 1854:</p> + +<pre> + Rosemary is for remembrance + Between us daie and night, + Wishing that I might alwaies have + You present in my sight. +</pre> + +<p>The poem in which these lines are found, is entitled, '<i>A Nosegay +alwaies sweet for Lovers to send for Tokens of Love</i>.'</p> + +<p>Roger Hochet in his sermon entitled <i>A Marriage Present</i> (1607) thus +speaks of the Rosemary;--"It overtoppeth all the flowers in the garden, +boasting man's rule. It helpeth the brain, strengtheneth the memorie, +and is very medicinable for the head. Another propertie of the rosemary +is, it affects the heart. Let this rosemarinus, this flower of men, +ensigne of your wisdom, love, and loyaltie, be carried not only in your +hands, but in your hearts and heads."</p> + +<p>"Hungary water" is made up chiefly from the oil distilled from this +shrub.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>I should talk on a little longer about other shrubs, herbs, and flowers, +(particularly of flowers) such as the "pink-eyed Pimpernel" (the poor +man's weather glass) and the fragrant Violet, ('the modest grace of the +vernal year,') the scarlet crested Geranium with its crimpled leaves, +and the yellow and purple Amaranth, powdered with gold,</p> + +<pre> + A flower which once + In Paradise, fast by the tree of life + Began to bloom, +</pre> + +<p>and the crisp and well-varnished Holly with "its rutilant berries," and +the white Lily, (the vestal Lady of the Vale,--"the flower of virgin +light") and the luscious Honeysuckle, and the chaste Snowdrop,</p> + +<pre> + Venturous harbinger of spring + And pensive monitor of fleeting years, +</pre> + +<p>and the sweet Heliotrope and the gay and elegant Nasturtium, and a great +many other "bonnie gems" upon the breast of our dear mother earth,--but +this gossipping book has already extended to so unconscionable a size +that I must quicken my progress towards a conclusion<a href="#note096">[096]</a>.</p> + +<p>I am indebted to the kindness of <a name="friend">Babu Kasiprasad Ghosh</a>, the first Hindu +gentlemen who ever published a volume of poems in the English +language<a href="#note097">[097]</a> for the following interesting list of Indian flowers used +in Hindu ceremonies. Many copies of the poems of Kasiprasad Ghosh, were +sent to the English public critics, several of whom spoke of the +author's talents with commendation. The late Miss Emma Roberts wrote a +brief biography of him for one of the London annuals, so that there must +be many of my readers at home who will not on this occasion hear of his +name for the first time.</p> + +<p>A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF INDIAN FLOWERS, COMMONLY USED IN HINDU +CEREMONIES.<a href="#note098">[098]</a></p> + +<p>A'KUNDA (<i>Calotropis Gigantea</i>).--A pretty purple coloured, and slightly +scented flower, having a sweet and agreeable smell. It is called <i>Arca</i> +in Sanscrit, and has two varieties, both of which are held to be sacred +to Shiva. It forms one of the five darts with which the Indian God of +Love is supposed to pierce the hearts of young mortals.<a href="#note099">[099]</a> Sir William +Jones refers to it in his Hymn to Kama Deva. It possesses medicinal +properties.<a href="#note100">[100]</a></p> + +<p>A'PARA'JITA (<i>Clitoria ternatea</i>).--A conically shaped flower, the upper +part of which is tinged with blue and the lower part is white. Some are +wholly white. It is held to be sacred to Durgá.</p> + +<p>ASOCA. (<i>Jonesia Asoca</i>).--A small yellow flower, which blooms in large +clusters in the month of April and gives a most beautiful appearance to +the tree. It is eaten by young females as a medicine. It smells like the +Saffron.</p> + +<p>A'TASHI.--A small yellowish or brown coloured flower without any smell. +It is supposed to be sacred to Shiva, and is very often alluded to by +the Indian poets. It resembles the flower of the flax or Linum +usitatissimum.<a href="#note101">[101]</a></p> + +<p>BAKA.--A kidney shaped flower, having several varieties, all of which +are held to be sacred to Vishnu, and are in consequence used in his +worship. It is supposed to possess medicinal virtues and is used by the +native doctors.</p> + +<p>BAKU'LA (<i>Mimusops Etengi</i>).--A very small, yellowish, and fragrant +flower. It is used in making garlands and other female ornaments. +Krishna is said to have fascinated the milkmaids of Brindabun by playing +on his celebrated flute under a <i>Baku'la</i> tree on the banks of the +Jumna, which is, therefore, invariably alluded to in all the Sanscrit +and vernacular poems relating to his amours with those young women.</p> + +<p>BA'KASHA (<i>Justicia Adhatoda</i>).--A white flower, having a slight smell. +It is used in certain native medicines.</p> + +<p>BELA (<i>Jasminum Zambac</i>).--A fragrant small white flower, in common use +among native females, who make garlands of it to wear in their braids of +hair. A kind of <i>uttar</i> is extracted from this flower, which is much +esteemed by natives. It is supposed to form one of the darts of Kama +Deva or the God of Love. European Botanists seem to have confounded this +flower with the Monika, which they also call the Jasminum Zambac.</p> + +<p>BHU'MI CHAMPAKA.--An oblong variegated flower, which shoots out from the +ground at the approach of spring. It has a slight smell, and is +considered to possess medicinal properties. The great peculiarity of +this flower is that it blooms when there is not apparently the slightest +trace of the existence of the shrub above ground. When the flower dies +away, the leaves make their appearance.</p> + +<p>CHAMPA' (<i>Michelia Champaka</i>).--A tulip shaped yellow flower possessing +a very strong smell.<a href="#note102">[102]</a> It forms one of the darts of Kama Deva, the +Indian Cupid. It is particularly sacred to Krishna.</p> + +<p>CHUNDRA MALLIKA' (<i>Chrysanthemum Indiana</i>).--A pretty round yellow +flower which blooms in winter. The plant is used in making hedges in +gardens and presents a beautiful appearance in the cold weather when the +blossoms appear.</p> + +<p>DHASTU'RA (<i>Datura Fastuosa</i>).--A large tulip shaped white flower, +sacred to Mahadeva, the third Godhead of the Hindu Trinity. The seeds of +this flower have narcotic properties.<a href="#note103">[103]</a></p> + +<p>DRONA.--A white flower with a very slight smell.</p> + +<p>DOPATI (<i>Impatiens Balsamina</i>).--A small flower having a slight smell. +There are several varieties of this flower. Some are red and some white, +while others are both white and red.</p> + +<p>GA'NDA' (<i>Tagetes erecta</i>).--A handsome yellow flower, which sometimes +grows very large. It is commonly used in making garlands, with which the +natives decorate their idols, and the Europeans in India their churches +and gates on Christmas Day and New Year's Day.</p> + +<p>GANDHA RA'J (<i>Gardenia Florida</i>).--A strongly scented white flower, +which blooms at night.</p> + +<p>GOLANCHA (<i>Menispermum Glabrum</i>).--A white flower. The plant is already +well known to Europeans as a febrifuge.</p> + +<p>JAVA' (<i>Hibiscus Rosa Sinensis</i>).--A large blood coloured flower held to +be especially sacred to Kali. There are two species of it, viz. the +ordinary Javá commonly seen in our gardens and parterres, and the +<i>Pancha Mukhi</i>, which, as its name imports, has five compartments and is +the largest of the two.<a href="#note104">[104]</a></p> + +<p>JAYANTI (<i>Aeschynomene Sesban</i>).--A small yellowish flower, held to be +sacred to Shiva.</p> + +<p>JHA'NTI.--A small white flower possessing medicinal properties. The +leaves of the plants are used in curing certain ulcers.</p> + +<p>JA'NTI (<i>Jasminum Grandiflorum</i>).--Also a small white flower having a +sweet smell. The <i>uttar</i> called <i>Chumeli</i> is extracted from it.</p> + +<p>JUYIN (<i>Jasminum Auriculatum</i>).--The Indian Jasmine. It is a very small +white flower remarkable for its sweetness. It is also used in making a +species of <i>uttar</i> which is highly prized by the natives, as also in +forming a great variety of imitation female ornaments.</p> + +<p>KADAMBA (<i>Nauclea Cadamba</i>).--A ball shaped yellow flower held to be +particularly sacred to Krishna, many of whose gambols with the milkmaids +of Brindabun are said to have been performed under the Kadamba tree, +which is in consequence very frequently alluded to in the vernacular +poems relating to his loves with those celebrated beauties.</p> + +<p>KINSUKA (<i>Butea Frondosa</i>).--A handsome but scentless white flower.</p> + +<p>KANAKA CHAMPA (<i>Pterospermum Acerifolium</i>).--A yellowish flower which +hangs down in form of a tassel. It has a strong smell, which is +perceived at a great distance when it is on the tree, but the moment it +is plucked off, it begins to lose its fragrance.</p> + +<p>KANCHANA (<i>Bauhinia Variegata</i>).--There are several varieties of this +flower. Some are white, some are purple, while others are red. It gives +a handsome appearance to the tree when the latter is in full blossom.</p> + +<p>KUNDA (<i>Jasminum pulescens</i>).--A very pretty white flower. Indian poets +frequently compare a set of handsome teeth, to this flower. It is held +to be especially sacred to Vishnu.</p> + +<p>KARABIRA (<i>Nerium Odosum</i>).--There are two species of this flower, viz. +the white and red, both of which are sacred to Shiva.</p> + +<p>KAMINI (<i>Murraya Exotica</i>).--A pretty small white flower having a strong +smell. It blooms at night and is very delicate to the touch. The +<i>kamini</i> tree is frequently used as a garden hedge.</p> + +<p>KRISHNA CHURA (<i>Poinciana Pulcherrima</i>).--A pretty small flower, which, +as its name imports resembles the head ornament of Krishna. When the +Krishna Chura tree is in full blossom, it has a very handsome +appearance.</p> + +<p>KRISHNA KELI (<i>Mirabilis Jalapa</i>.)<a href="#note105">[105]</a>--A small tulip shaped yellow +flower. The bulb of the plant has medicinal properties and is used by +the natives as a poultice.</p> + +<p>KUMADA (<i>Nymphaea Esculenta</i>)--A white flower, resembling the lotus, but +blooming at night, whence the Indian poets suppose that it is in love +with Chandra or the Moon, as the lotus is imagined by them to be in love +with the Sun.</p> + +<p>LAVANGA LATA' (<i>Limonia Scandens</i>.)--A very small red flower growing +upon a creeper, which has been celebrated by Jaya Deva in his famous +work called the <i>Gita Govinda</i>. This creeper is used in native gardens +for bowers.</p> + +<p>MALLIKA' (<i>Jasminum Zambac</i>.)--A white flower resembling the <i>Bela</i>. It +has a very sweet smell and is used by native females to make ornaments. +It is frequently alluded to by Indian poets.</p> + +<p>MUCHAKUNDA (<i>Pterospermum Suberifolia</i>).--A strongly scented flower, +which grows in clusters and is of a brown colour.</p> + +<p>MA'LATI (<i>Echites Caryophyllata</i>.)--The flower of a creeper which is +commonly used in native gardens. It has a slight smell and is of a white +colour.</p> + +<p>MA'DHAVI (<i>Gaertnera Racemosa</i>.)--The flower of another creeper which is +also to be seen in native gardens. It is likewise of a white colour.</p> + +<p>NA'GESWARA (<i>Mesua Ferrua</i>.)--A white flower with yellow filaments, +which are said to possess medicinal properties and are used by the +native physicians. It has a very sweet smell and is supposed by Indian +poets to form one of the darts of Kama Deva. See Sir William Jones's +Hymn to that deity.</p> + +<p>PADMA (<i>Nelumbium Speciosum</i>.)--The Indian lotus, which is held to be +sacred to Vishnu, Brama, Mahadava, Durga, Lakshami and Saraswati as well +as all the higher orders of Indian deities. It is a very elegant flower +and is highly esteemed by the natives, in consequence of which the +Indian poets frequently allude to it in their writings.</p> + +<p>PA'RIJATA (<i>Buchanania Latifolia</i>.)--A handsome white flower, with a +slight smell. In native poetry, it furnishes a simile for pretty eyes, +and is held to be sacred to Vishnu.</p> + +<p>PAREGATA (<i>Erythrina Fulgens</i>.)--A flower which is supposed to bloom in +the garden of Indra in heaven, and forms the subject of an interesting +episode in the <i>Puranas</i>, in which the two wives of Krisna, (Rukmini and +Satyabhama) are said to have quarrelled for the exclusive possession of +this flower, which their husband had stolen from the celestial garden +referred to. It is supposed to be identical with the flower of the +<i>Palta madar</i>.</p> + +<p>RAJANI GANDHA (<i>Polianthus Tuberosa</i>.)--A white tulip-shaped flower +which blooms at night, from which circumstance it is called "the Rajani +Gandha, (or night-fragrance giver)." It is the Indian tuberose.</p> + +<p>RANGANA.--A small and very pretty red flower which is used by native +females in ornamenting their betels.</p> + +<p>SEONTI. <i>Rosa Glandulefera</i>. A white flower resembling the rose in size +and appearance. It has a sweet smell.</p> + +<p>SEPHA'LIKA (<i>Nyctanthes Arbor-tristis</i>.)--A very pretty and delicate +flower which blooms at night, and drops down shortly after. It has a +sweet smell and is held to be sacred to Shiva. The juice of the leaves +of the Sephalika tree are used in curing both remittant and intermittent +fevers.</p> + +<p>SURYJA MUKHI (<i>Helianthus Annuus</i>).--A large and very handsome yellow +flower, which is said to turn itself to the Sun, as he goes from East to +West, whence it has derived its name.</p> + +<p>SURYJA MANI (<i>Hibiscus Phoeniceus</i>).--A small red flower.</p> + +<p>GOLAKA CHAMPA.--A large beautiful white tulip-shaped flower having a +sweet smell. It is externally white but internally orange-colored.</p> + +<p>TAGUR (<i>Tabernoemontana Coronaria</i>).--A white flower having a slight +smell.</p> + +<p>TARU LATA.--A beautiful creeper with small red flowers. It is used in +native gardens for making hedges.</p> + +<p>K.G.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>Pliny in his Natural History alludes to the marks of time exhibited in +the regular opening and closing of flowers. Linnaeus enumerates forty- +six flowers that might be used for the construction of a floral time- +piece. This great Swedish botanist invented a Floral horologe, "whose +wheels were the sun and earth and whose index-figures were flowers." +Perhaps his invention, however, was not wholly original. Andrew Marvell +in his "<i>Thoughts in a Garden</i>" mentions a sort of floral dial:--</p> + +<pre> + How well the skilful gardener drew + Of flowers and herbs this dial new! + Where, from above, the milder sun + Does through a fragrant zodiac run: + And, as it works, th'industrious bee + Computes its time as well as we: + How could such sweet and wholesome hours + Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers? +</pre> + +<div><i>Marvell</i><a href="#note106">[106]</a></div> + +<p>Milton's notation of time--"<i>at shut of evening flowers</i>," has a +beautiful simplicity, and though Shakespeare does not seem to have +marked his time on a floral clock, yet, like all true poets, he has made +very free use of other appearances of nature to indicate the +commencement and the close of day.</p> + +<pre> + The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch-- + Than we will ship him hence. +</pre> + +<div><i>Hamlet</i>.</div> + +<pre> + Fare thee well at once! + The glow-worm shows the matin to be near + And gins to pale his uneffectual fire. +</pre> + +<div><i>Hamlet</i>.</div> + +<pre> + But look! The morn, in russet mantle clad, + Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill:-- + Break we our watch up. +</pre> + +<div><i>Hamlet</i>.</div> + +<pre> + <i>Light thickens</i>, and the crow + Makes wing to the rooky wood. +</pre> + +<div><i>Macbeth</i>.</div> + +<p>Such picturesque notations of time as these, are in the works of +Shakespeare, as thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in +Valombrosa. In one of his Sonnets he thus counts the years of human life +by the succession of the seasons.</p> + +<pre> + To me, fair friend, you never can be old, + For as you were when first your eye I eyed, + Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold + Have from the forests shook three summers' pride; + Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned + In process of the seasons have I seen; + Three April's perfumes in three hot Junes burned + Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green. +</pre> + +<p>Grainger, a prosaic verse-writer who once commenced a paragraph of a +poem with "Now, Muse, let's sing of rats!" called upon the slave drivers +in the West Indies to time their imposition of cruel tasks by the +opening and closing of flowers.</p> + +<pre> + Till morning dawn and Lucifer withdraw + His beamy chariot, let not the loud bell + Call forth thy negroes from their rushy couch: + And ere the sun with mid-day fervor glow, + When every broom-bush opes her yellow flower, + Let thy black laborers from their toil desist: + Nor till the broom her every petal lock, + Let the loud bell recal them to the hoe, + But when the jalap her bright tint displays, + When the solanum fills her cup with dew, + And crickets, snakes and lizards gin their coil, + Let them find shelter in their cane-thatched huts. +</pre> + +<div><i>Sugar Cane</i>.<a href="#note107">[107]</a></div> + +<p>I shall here give (<i>from Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening</i>) the form +of a flower dial. It may be interesting to many of my readers:--</p> + +<pre> + 'Twas a lovely thought to mark the hours + As they floated in light away + By the opening and the folding flowers + That laugh to the summer day.<a href="#note108">[108]</a> +</pre> + +<div><i>Mr. Hemans</i>.</div> + +<table summary=""> +<COL ALIGN=LEFT> +<COL ALIGN=RIGHT> +<COL ALIGN=RIGHT> +<COL ALIGN=RIGHT> +<TR><TH COLSPAN=4 ALIGN=CENTER>A FLOWER DIAL.</TH></TR> +<TR><TD COLSPAN=4> </TD></TR> +<TR><TH>TIME OF OPENING.</TH><TH COLSPAN=3> </TH></TR> +<TR><TH> </TH><TH><a href="#note109">[109]</a></TH><TH>h.</TH><TH>m.</TH></TR> +<TR><TD>YELLOW GOAT'S BEARD </TD><TD> T.P.</TD><TD> 3</TD><TD> 5</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>LATE FLOWERING DANDELION </TD><TD>Leon.S.</TD><TD> 4</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>BRISTLY HELMINTHIA </TD><TD> H.B.</TD><TD> 4</TD><TD> 5</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>ALPINE BORKHAUSIA </TD><TD> B.A.</TD><TD> 4</TD><TD> 5</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>WILD SUCCORY </TD><TD> C.I.</TD><TD> 4</TD><TD> 5</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>NAKED STALKED POPPY </TD><TD> P.N.</TD><TD> 5</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>COPPER COLOURED DAY LILY </TD><TD> H.F.</TD><TD> 5</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>SMOOTH SOW THISTLE </TD><TD> S.L.</TD><TD> 5</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>ALPINE AGATHYRSUS </TD><TD> Ag.A.</TD><TD> 5</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>SMALL BIND WEED </TD><TD> Con.A.</TD><TD> 5</TD><TD> 6</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>COMMON NIPPLE WORT </TD><TD> L.C.</TD><TD> 5</TD><TD> 6</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>COMMON DANDELION </TD><TD> L.T.</TD><TD> 5</TD><TD> 6</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>SPORTED ACHYROPHORUS </TD><TD> A.M.</TD><TD> 6</TD><TD> 7</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>WHITE WATER LILY </TD><TD> N.A.</TD><TD> 7</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>GARDEN LETTUCE </TD><TD> Lec.S.</TD><TD> 7</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>AFRICAN MARIGOLD </TD><TD> T.E.</TD><TD> 7</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>COMMON PIMPERNEL </TD><TD> A.A.</TD><TD> 7</TD><TD> 8</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>MOUSE-EAR HAWKWEED </TD><TD> H.P.</TD><TD> 8</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>PROLIFEROUS PINK </TD><TD> D.P.</TD><TD> 8</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>FIELD MARIGOLD </TD><TD> Cal.A.</TD><TD> 9</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>PURPLE SANDWORT </TD><TD> A.P.</TD><TD> 9</TD><TD>10</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>SMALL PURSLANE </TD><TD> P.O.</TD><TD> 9</TD><TD>10</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>CREEPING MALLOW </TD><TD> M.C.</TD><TD> 9</TD><TD>10</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>CHICKWEED </TD><TD> S.M.</TD><TD> 9</TD><TD>10</TD></TR> +<TR><TD COLSPAN=4> </TD></TR> +<TR><TH>TIME OF CLOSING.</TH><TH COLSPAN=3> </TH></TR> +<TR><TH> </TH><TH> </TH><TH>h.</TH><TH>m.</TH></TR> +<TR><TD>HELMINTHIA ECHIOIDES </TD><TD> B.H.</TD><TD>12</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>AGATHYRSUS ALPINUS </TD><TD> A.B.</TD><TD>12</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>BORKHAUSIA ALPINA </TD><TD> A.B.</TD><TD>12</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>LEONTODON SEROTINUS </TD><TD> L.D.</TD><TD>12</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>MALVA CAROLINIANA </TD><TD> C.M.</TD><TD>12</TD><TD> 1</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>DAINTHUS PROLIFER </TD><TD> P.P.</TD><TD> 1</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>HIERACIUM PILOSELLA </TD><TD> M.H.</TD><TD> 0</TD><TD> 2</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>ANAGALLIS ARVENSIS </TD><TD> S.P.</TD><TD> 2</TD><TD> 3</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>ARENARIA PURPUREA </TD><TD> P.S.</TD><TD> 2</TD><TD> 4</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>CALENDULA ARVENSIS </TD><TD> F.M.</TD><TD> 3</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>TACETES ERECTA </TD><TD> A.M.</TD><TD> 3</TD><TD> 3</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>CONVOLVULUS ARVENSIS </TD><TD> S.B.</TD><TD> 4</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>ACHYROPHORUS MACULATUS </TD><TD> S.A.</TD><TD> 4</TD><TD> 5</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>NYMPHAEA ALBA </TD><TD> W.W.B.</TD><TD> 5</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>PAPAVER NUDICAULE </TD><TD> N.P.</TD><TD> 7</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>HEMEROCALLIS FULVA </TD><TD> C.D.L.</TD><TD> 7</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>CICHORIUM INTYBUS </TD><TD> W.S.</TD><TD> 8</TD><TD> 9</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>TRAGOPOGON PRATENSIS </TD><TD> Y.G.B.</TD><TD> 9</TD><TD>10</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>STELLARIA MEDIA </TD><TD> C.</TD><TD> 9</TD><TD>10</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>LAPSANA COMMUNIS </TD><TD> C.N.</TD><TD>10</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>LACTUCA SATIVA </TD><TD> G.L.</TD><TD>10</TD><TD> 0</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>SONCHUS LAEVIS </TD><TD> S.T.</TD><TD>11</TD><TD>10</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>PORTULACA OLERACEA </TD><TD> S.P.</TD><TD>11</TD><TD>12</TD></TR> +</TABLE> + +<p>Of course it will be necessary to adjust the <i>Horologium Florae</i> (or +Flower clock) to the nature of the climate. Flowers expand at a later +hour in a cold climate than in a warm one. "A flower," says Loudon, +"that opens at six o'clock in the morning at Senegal, will not open in +France or England till eight or nine, nor in Sweden till ten. A flower +that opens at ten o'clock at Senegal will not open in France or England +till noon or later, and in Sweden it will not open at all. And a flower +that does not open till noon or later at Senegal will not open at all in +France or England. This seems as if heat or its absence were also (as +well as light) an agent in the opening and shutting of flowers; though +the opening of such as blow only in the night cannot be attributed to +either light or heat."</p> + +<p>The seasons may be marked in a similar manner by their floral +representatives. Mary Howitt quotes as a motto to her poem on <i>Holy +Flowers</i> the following example of religious devotion timed by flowers:--</p> + +<p>"Mindful of the pious festivals which our church prescribes," (says a +Franciscan Friar) "I have sought to make these charming objects of +floral nature, the <i>time-pieces of my religious calendar</i>, and the +mementos of the hastening period of my mortality. Thus I can light the +taper to our Virgin Mother on the blowing of the white snow-drop which +opens its floweret at the time of Candlemas; the lady's smock and the +daffodil, remind me of the Annunciation; the blue harebell, of the +Festival of St George; the ranunculus, of the Invention of the Cross; +the scarlet lychnis, of St. John the Baptist's day; the white lily, of +the Visitation of our Lady, and the Virgin's bower, of her Assumption; +and Michaelmas, Martinmas, Holyrood, and Christmas, have all their +appropriate monitors. I learn the time of day from the shutting of the +blossoms of the Star of Jerusalem and the Dandelion, and the hour of the +night by the stars."</p> + +<p>Some flowers afford a certain means of determining the state of the +atmosphere. If I understand Mr. Tyas rightly he attributes the following +remarks to Hartley Coleridge.--</p> + +<p>"Many species of flowers are admirable barometers. Most of the bulbous- +rooted flowers contract, or close their petals entirely on the approach +of rain. The African marigold indicates rain, if the corolla is closed +after seven or eight in the morning. The common bind-weed closes its +flowers on the approach of rain; but the anagallis arvensis, or scarlet +pimpernel, is the most sure in its indications as the petals constantly +close on the least humidity of the atmosphere. Barley is also singularly +affected by the moisture or dryness of the air. The awns are furnished +with stiff points, all turning towards one end, which extend when moist, +and shorten when dry. The points, too, prevent their receding, so that +they are drawn up or forward; as moisture is returned, they advance and +so on; indeed they may be actually seen to travel forwards. The capsules +of the geranium furnish admirable barometers. Fasten the beard, when +fully ripe, upon a stand, and it will twist itself, or untwist, +according as the air is moist or dry. The flowers of the chick-weed, +convolvulus, and oxalis, or wood sorrel, close their petals on the +approach of rain."</p> + +<p>The famous German writer, Jean Paul Richter, describes what he calls <i>a +Human Clock</i>.</p> + +<p>A HUMAN CLOCK.</p> + +<p>"I believe" says Richter "the flower clock of Linnaeus, in Upsal +(<i>Horologium Florae</i>) whose wheels are the sun and earth, and whose +index-figures are flowers, of which one always awakens and opens later +than another, was what secretly suggested my conception of the human +clock.</p> + +<p>I formerly occupied two chambers in Scheeraw, in the middle of the +market place: from the front room I overlooked the whole market-place +and the royal buildings and from the back one, the botanical garden. +Whoever now dwells in these two rooms possesses an excellent harmony, +arranged to his hand, between the flower clock in the garden and the +human clock in the marketplace. At three o'clock in the morning, the +yellow meadow goats-beard opens; and brides awake, and the stable-boy +begins to rattle and feed the horses beneath the lodger. At four o'clock +the little hawk weed awakes, choristers going to the Cathedral who are +clocks with chimes, and the bakers. At five, kitchen maids, dairy maids, +and butter-cups awake. At six, the sow-thistle and cooks. At seven +o'clock many of the Ladies' maids are awake in the Palace, the Chicory +in my botanical garden, and some tradesmen. At eight o'clock all the +colleges awake and the little mouse-ear. At nine o'clock, the female +nobility already begin to stir; the marigold, and even many young +ladies, who have come from the country on a visit, begin to look out of +their windows. Between ten and eleven o'clock the Court Ladies and the +whole staff of Lords of the Bed-chamber, the green colewort and the +Alpine dandelion, and the reader of the Princess rouse themselves out of +their morning sleep; and the whole Palace, considering that the morning +sun gleams so brightly to-day from the lofty sky through the coloured +silk curtains, curtails a little of its slumber.</p> + +<p>At twelve o'clock, the Prince: at one, his wife and the carnation have +their eyes open in their flower vase. What awakes late in the afternoon +at four o'clock is only the red-hawkweed, and the night watchman as +cuckoo-clock, and these two only tell the time as evening-clocks and +moon-clocks.</p> + +<p>From the eyes of the unfortunate man, who like the jalap plant +(Mirabilia jalapa), first opens them at five o'clock, we will turn our +own in pity aside. It is a rich man who only exchanges the fever fancies +of being pinched with hot pincers for waking pains.</p> + +<p>I could never know when it was two o'clock, because at that time, +together with a thousand other stout gentlemen and the yellow mouse-ear, +I always fell asleep; but at three o'clock in the afternoon, and at +three in the morning, I awoke as regularly as though I was a repeater. +Thus we mortals may be a flower-clock for higher beings, when our +flower-leaves close upon our last bed; or sand clocks, when the sand of +our life is so run down that it is renewed in the other world; or +picture-clocks because, when our death-bell here below strikes and +rings, our image steps forth, from its case into the next world.</p> + +<p>On each event of the kind, when seventy years of human life have passed +away, they may perhaps say, what! another hour already gone! how the +time flies!"--<i>From Balfour's Phyto-Theology</i>.</p> + +<p>Some of the natives of India who possess extensive estates might think +it worth their while to plant a LABYRINTH for the amusement of their +friends. I therefore give a plan of one from London's <i>Arboretum et +Fruticetum Britannicum</i>. It would not be advisable to occupy much of a +limited estate in a toy of this nature; but where the ground required +for it can be easily spared or would otherwise be wasted, there could be +no objection to adding this sort of amusement to the very many others +that may be included in a pleasure ground. The plan here given, +resembles the labyrinth at Hampton Court. The hedges should be a little +above a man's height and the paths should be just wide enough for two +persons abreast. The ground should be kept scrupulously clean and well +rolled and the hedges well trimmed, or in this country the labyrinth +would soon be damp and unwholesome, especially in the rains. To prevent +its affording a place of refuge and concealment for snakes and other +reptiles, the gardener should cut off all young shoots and leaves within +half a foot of the ground. The centre building should be a tasteful +summer-house, in which people might read or smoke or take refreshments. +To make the <a name="labyrinth">labyrinth</a> still more intricate Mr. Loudon suggests that +stop-hedges might be introduced across the path, at different places, as +indicated in the figure by dotted lines.<a href="#note110">[110]</a></p> + +<div><img src="maze.png" alt="A GARDEN LABYRINTH with a scale in feet."></div> + +<p>Of strictly Oriental trees and shrubs and flowers, perhaps the majority +of Anglo Indians think with much less enthusiasm than of the common +weeds of England. The remembrance of the simplest wild flower of their +native fields will make them look with perfect indifference on the +decorations of an Indian Garden. This is in no degree surprizing. Yet +nature is lovely in all lands.</p> + +<p>Indian scenery has not been so much the subject of description in either +prose or verse as it deserves, but some two or three of our Anglo-Indian +authors have touched upon it. Here is a pleasant and truthful passage +from an article entitled "<i>A Morning Walk in India</i>," written by the +late Mr. Lawson, the Missionary, a truly good and a highly gifted man:--</p> + +<p>"The rounded clumps that afford the deepest shade, are formed by the +mangoe, the banian, and the cotton trees. At the verge of this deep- +green forest are to be seen the long and slender hosts of the betle and +cocoanut trees; and the grey bark of their trunks, as they catch the +light of the morning, is in clear relief from the richness of the back- +ground. These as they wave their feathery tops, add much to the +picturesque interest of the straw-built hovels beneath them, which are +variegated with every tinge to be found amongst the browns and yellows, +according to the respective periods of their construction. Some of them +are enveloped in blue smoke, which oozes through every interstice of the +thatch, and spreads itself, like a cloud hovering over these frail +habitations, or moves slowly along, like a strata of vapour not far from +the ground, as though too heavy to ascend, and loses itself in the thin +air, so inspiring to all who have courage to leave their beds and enjoy +it. The champa tree forms a beautiful object in this jungle. It may be +recognized immediately from the surrounding scenery. It has always been +a favourite with me. I suppose most persons, at times, have been +unaccountably attracted by an object comparatively trifling in itself. +There are also particular seasons, when the mind is susceptible of +peculiar impressions, and the moments of happy, careless youth, rush +upon the imagination with a thousand tender feelings. There are few that +do not recollect with what pleasure they have grasped a bunch of wild +flowers, when, in the days of their childhood, the languor of a +lingering fever has prevented them for some weary months from enjoying +that chief of all the pleasures of a robust English boy, a ramble +through the fields, where every tree, and bush, and hillock, and +blossom, are endeared to him, because, next to a mother's caresses, they +were the first things in the world upon which he opened his eyes, and, +doubtless, the first which gave him those indescribable feelings of +fairy pleasure, which even in his dreams were excited; while the +coloured clouds of heaven, the golden sunshine of a landscape, the fresh +nosegay of dog-roses and early daisies, and the sounds of busy +whispering trees and tinkling brooks presented to the sleeping child all +the pure pleasure of his waking moments. And who is there here that does +not sometimes recal some of those feelings which were his solace perhaps +thirty years ago? Should I be wrong, were I to say that even, at his +desk, amid all the excitements and anxieties of commercial pursuits, the +weary Calcutta merchant has been lulled into a sort of pensive +reminiscence of the past, and, with his pen placed between his lips and +his fevered forehead leaning upon his hand, has felt his heart bound at +some vivid picture rising upon his imagination. The forms of a fond +mother, and an almost angel-looking sister, have been so strongly +conjured up with the scenes of his boyish days, that the pen has been +unceremoniously dashed to the ground, and 'I will go home' was the sigh +that heaved from a bosom full of kindness and English feeling; while, as +the dream vanished, plain truth told its tale, and the man of commerce +is still to be seen at his desk, pale, and getting into years and +perhaps less desirous than ever of winding up his concern. No wonder! +because the dearest ties of his heart have been broken, and those who +were the charm of home have gone down to the cold grave, the home of +all. Why then should he revisit his native place? What is the cottage of +his birth to him? What charms has the village now for the gentleman just +arrived from India? Every well remembered object of nature, seen after a +lapse of twenty years, would only serve to renew a host of buried, +painful feelings. Every visit to the house of a surviving neighbour +would but bring to mind some melancholy incident; for into what house +could he enter, to idle away an hour, without seeing some wreck of his +own family, such as a venerable clock, once so loved for the painted +moon that waxed and waned to the astonishment of the gazer, or some +favorite ancient chair, edged so nobly with rows of brass nails,</p> + +<pre> + --but perforated sore, and dull'd in holes + By worms voracious, eating through and through. +</pre> + +<p>These are little things, but they are objects which will live in his +memory to the latest day of his life, and with which are associated in +his mind the dearest feelings and thoughts of his happiest hours."</p> + +<p>Here is an attempt at a description in verse of some of the most common</p> + +<p>TREES AND FLOWERS OF BENGAL</p> + +<pre> + This land is not my father land, + And yet I love it--for the hand + Of God hath left its mark sublime + On nature's face in every clime-- + + Though from home and friends we part, + Nature and the human heart + Still may soothe the wanderer's care-- + And his God is every where + + Beneath BENGALA'S azure skies, + No vallies sink, no green hills rise, + Like those the vast sea billows make-- + The land is level as a lake<a href="#note111">[111]</a> + But, oh, what giants of the wood + Wave their wide arms, or calmly brood + Each o'er his own deep rounded shade + When noon's fierce sun the breeze hath laid, + And all is still. On every plain + How green the sward, or rich the grain! + In jungle wild and garden trim, + And open lawn and covert dim, + What glorious shrubs and flowerets gay, + Bright buds, and lordly beasts of prey! + How prodigally Gunga pours + Her wealth of waves through verdant shores + O'er which the sacred peepul bends, + And oft its skeleton lines extends + Of twisted root, well laved and bare, + Half in water, half in air! + + Fair scenes! where breeze and sun diffuse + The sweetest odours, fairest hues-- + Where brightest the bright day god shows, + And where his gentle sister throws + Her softest spell on silent plain, + And stirless wood, and slumbering main-- + Where the lucid starry sky + Opens most to mortal eye + The wide and mystic dome serene + Meant for visitants unseen, + A dream like temple, air built hall, + Where spirits pure hold festival! + + Fair scenes! whence envious Art might steal + More charms than fancy's realms reveal-- + Where the tall palm to the sky + Lifts its wreath triumphantly-- + And the bambu's tapering bough + Loves its flexile arch to throw-- + Where sleeps the favored lotus white, + On the still lake's bosom bright-- + Where the champac's<a href="#note112">[112]</a> blossoms shine, + Offerings meet for Brahma's shrine, + While the fragrance floateth wide + O'er velvet lawn and glassy tide-- + Where the mangoe tope bestows + Night at noon day--cool repose, + Neath burning heavens--a hush profound + Breathing o'er the shaded ground-- + Where the medicinal neem, + Of palest foliage, softest gleam, + And the small leafed tamarind + Tremble at each whispering wind-- + And the long plumed cocoas stand + Like the princes of the land, + Near the betel's pillar slim, + With capital richly wrought and trim-- + And the neglected wild sonail + Drops her yellow ringlets pale-- + And light airs summer odours throw + From the bala's breast of snow-- + Where the Briarean banyan shades + The crowded ghat, while Indian maids, + Untouched by noon tide's scorching rays, + Lave the sleek limb, or fill the vase + With liquid life, or on the head + Replace it, and with graceful tread + And form erect, and movement slow, + Back to their simple dwellings go-- + [Walls of earth, that stoutly stand, + Neatly smoothed with wetted hand-- + Straw roofs, yellow once and gay, + Turned by time and tempest gray--] + Where the merry minahs crowd + Unbrageous haunts, and chirrup loud-- + And shrilly talk the parrots green + 'Midst the thick leaves dimly seen-- + And through the quivering foliage play, + Light as buds, the squirrels gay, + Quickly as the noontide beams + Dance upon the rippled streams-- + Where the pariah<a href="#note113">[113]</a> howls with fear, + If the white man passeth near-- + Where the beast that mocks our race + With taper finger, solemn face, + In the cool shade sits at ease + Calm and grave as Socrates-- + Where the sluggish buffaloe + Wallows in mud--and huge and slow, + Like massive cloud of sombre van, + Moves the land leviathan--<a href="#note114">[114]</a> + Where beneath the jungle's screen + Close enwoven, lurks unseen + The couchant tiger--and the snake + His sly and sinuous way doth make + Through the rich mead's grassy net, + Like a miniature rivulet-- + Where small white cattle, scattered wide, + Browse, from dawn to even tide-- + Where the river watered soil + Scarce demands the ryot's toil-- + And the rice field's emerald light + Out vies Italian meadows bright,-- + Where leaves of every shape and dye, + And blossoms varied as the sky, + The fancy kindle,--fingers fair + That never closed on aught but air-- + Hearts, that never heaved a sigh-- + Wings, that never learned to fly-- + Cups, that ne'er went table round-- + Bells, that never rang with sound-- + Golden crowns, of little worth-- + Silver stars, that strew the earth-- + Filagree fine and curious braid, + Breathed, not labored, grown, not made-- + Tresses like the beams of morn + Without a thought of triumph worn-- + Tongues that prate not--many an eye + Untaught midst hidden things to pry-- + Brazen trumpets, long and bright, + That never summoned to the fight-- + Shafts, that never pierced a side-- + And plumes that never waved with pride;-- + Scarcely Art a shape may know + But Nature here that shape can show. + + Through this soft air, o'er this warm sod, + Stern deadly Winter never trod; + The woods their pride for centuries wear, + And not a living branch is bare; + Each field for ever boasts its bowers, + And every season brings its flowers. +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p>We all "uphold Adam's profession": we are all gardeners, either +practically or theoretically. The love of trees and flowers, and shrubs +and the green sward, with a summer sky above them, is an almost +universal sentiment. It may be smothered for a time by some one or other +of the innumerable chances and occupations of busy life; but a painting +in oils by Claude or Gainsborough, or a picture in words by Spenser or +Shakespeare that shall for ever</p> + +<pre> + Live in description and look green in song, +</pre> + +<p>or the sight of a few flowers on a window-sill in the city, can fill the +eye with tears of tenderness, or make the secret passion for nature +burst out again in sudden gusts of tumultuous pleasure and lighten up +the soul with images of rural beauty. There are few, indeed, who, when +they have the good fortune to escape on a summer holiday from the +crowded and smoky city and find themselves in the heart of a delicious +garden, have not a secret consciousness within them that the scene +affords them a glimpse of a true paradise below. Rich foliage and gay +flowers and rural quiet and seclusion and a smiling sun are ever +associated with ideas of earthly felicity.</p> + +<pre> + And oh, if there be an Elysium on earth, + It is this, it is this! +</pre> + +<p>The princely merchant and the petty trader, the soldier and the sailor, +the politician and the lawyer, the artist and the artisan, when they +pause for a moment in the midst of their career, and dream of the +happiness of some future day, almost invariably fix their imaginary +palace or cottage of delight in a garden, amidst embowering trees and +fragrant flowers. This disposition, even in the busiest men, to indulge +occasionally in fond anticipations of rural bliss--</p> + +<pre> + In visions so profuse of pleasantness-- +</pre> + +<p>shows that God meant us to appreciate and enjoy the beauty of his works. +The taste for a garden is the one common feeling that unites us all.</p> + +<pre> + One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. +</pre> + +<p>There is this much of poetical sensibility--of a sense of natural +beauty--at the core of almost every human heart. The monarch shares it +with the peasant, and Nature takes care that as the thirst for her +society is the universal passion, the power of gratifying it shall be +more or less within the reach of all.<a href="#note115">[115]</a></p> + +<p>Our present Chief Justice, Sir Lawrence Peel, who has set so excellent +an example to his countrymen here in respect to Horticultural pursuits +and the tasteful embellishment of what we call our "<i>compounds</i>" and +who, like Sir William Jones and Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, sees no reason +why Themis should be hostile to the Muses, has obliged me with the +following stanzas on the moral or rather religious influence of a +garden. They form a highly appropriate and acceptable contribution to +this volume.</p> + +<p>I HEARD THY VOICE IN THE GARDEN.</p> + +<pre> + That voice yet speaketh, heed it well-- + But not in tones of wrath it chideth, + The moss rose, and the lily smell + Of God--in them his voice abideth. + + There is a blessing on the spot + The poor man decks--the sun delighteth + To smile upon each homely plot, + And why? The voice of God inviteth. + + God knows that he is worshipped there, + The chaliced cowslip's graceful bending + Is mute devotion, and the air + Is sweet with incense of her lending. + + The primrose, aye the children's pet, + Pale bride, yet proud of its uprooting, + The crocus, snowdrop, violet + And sweet-briar with its soft leaves shooting. + + There nestles each--a Preacher each-- + (Oh heart of man! be slow to harden) + Each cottage flower in sooth doth teach + God walketh with us in the garden. +</pre> + +<p>I am surprized that in this city (of Calcutta) where so many kinds of +experiments in education have been proposed, the directors of public +instruction have never thought of attaching tasteful Gardens to the +Government Colleges--especially where Botany is in the regular course of +Collegiate studies. The Company's Botanic Garden being on the other side +of the river and at an inconvenient distance from the city cannot be +much resorted to by any one whose time is precious. An attempt was made +not long ago to have the Garden of the Horticultural Society (now +forming part of the Company's Botanic Garden) on this side of the river, +but the public subscriptions that were called for to meet the necessary +expenses were so inadequate to the purpose that the money realized was +returned to the subscribers, and the idea relinquished, to the great +regret of many of the inhabitants of Calcutta who would have been +delighted to possess such a place of recreation and instruction within a +few minutes' drive.</p> + +<p>Hindu students, unlike English boys in general, remind us of Beattie's +Minstrel:--</p> + +<pre> + The exploit of strength, dexterity and speed + To him nor vanity, nor joy could bring. +</pre> + +<p>A sort of Garden Academy, therefore, full of pleasant shades, would be +peculiarly suited to the tastes and habits of our Indian Collegians. +They are not fond of cricket or leap-frog. They would rejoice to devote +a leisure hour to pensive letterings in a pleasure-garden, and on an +occasional holiday would gladly pursue even their severest studies, book +in hand, amidst verdant bowers. A stranger from Europe beholding them, +in their half-Grecian garments, thus wandering amidst the trees, would +be reminded of the disciples of Plato.</p> + +<p>"It is not easy," observes Lord Kames, "to suppress a degree of +enthusiasm, when we reflect on the advantages of gardening with respect +to virtuous education. In the beginning of life the deepest impressions +are made; and it is a sad truth, that the young student, familiarized to +the dirtiness and disorder of many colleges pent within narrow bounds in +populous cities, is rendered in a measure insensible to the elegant +beauties of art and nature. It seems to me far from an exaggeration, +that good professors are not more essential to a college, than a +spacious garden, sweetly ornamented, but without any thing glaring or +fantastic, is upon the whole to inspire our youth with a taste no less +for simplicity than for elegance. In this respect the University of +Oxford may justly be deemed a model."</p> + +<p>It may be expected that I should offer a few hints on the laying out of +gardens. Much has been said (by writers on ornamental and landscape +gardening) on <i>art</i> and <i>nature</i>, and almost always has it been implied +that these must necessarily be in direct opposition. I am far from being +of this opinion. If art and nature be not in some points of view almost +identical, they are at least very good friends, or may easily be made +so. They are not necessarily hostile. They admit of the most harmonious +combinations. In no place are such combinations more easy or more proper +than in a garden. Walter Scott very truly calls a garden the child of +Art. But is it not also the child of Nature?--of Nature and Art +together? To attempt to exclude art--or even, the appearance of art-- +from a small garden enclosure, is idle and absurd. He who objects to all +art in the arrangement of a flower-bed, ought, if consistent with +himself, to turn away with an expression of disgust from a well arranged +nosegay in a rich porcelain vase. But who would not loathe or laugh at +such manifest affectation or such thoroughly bad taste? As there is a +time for every thing, so also is there a place for every thing. No man +of true judgment would desire to trace the hand of human art on the form +of nature in remote and gigantic forests, and amidst vast mountains, as +irregular as the billows of a troubled sea. In such scenery there is a +sublime grace in wildness,--<i>there</i> "the very weeds are beautiful." But +what true judgment would be enchanted with weeds and wildness in the +small parterre. As Pope rightly says, we must</p> + +<pre> + Consult the genius of the place in all. +</pre> + +<p>It is pleasant to enter a rural lane overgrown with field-flowers, or to +behold an extensive common irregularly decorated with prickly gorse or +fern and thistle, but surely no man of taste would admire nature in this +wild and dishevelled state in a little suburban garden. Symmetry, +elegance and beauty, (--no <i>sublimity</i> or <i>grandeur</i>--) trimness, +snugness, privacy, cleanliness, comfort, and convenience--the results of +a happy conjunction of art and nature--are all that we can aim at within +a limited extent of ground. In a small parterre we either trace with +pleasure the marks of the gardener's attention or are disgusted with his +negligence. In a mere patch of earth around a domestic dwelling nature +ought not to be left entirely to herself.</p> + +<p>What is agreeable in one sphere of life is offensive in another. A dirty +smock frock and a soiled face in a ploughman's child who has been +swinging on rustic gates a long summer morning or rolling down the +slopes of hills, or grubbing in the soil of his small garden, may remind +us, not unpleasantly, of one of Gainsborough's pictures; but we look for +a different sort of nature on the canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds or Sir +Thomas Lawrence, or in the brilliant drawing-rooms of the nobility; and +yet an Earl's child looks and moves at least as <i>naturally</i> as a +peasant's.</p> + +<p>There is nature every where--in the palace as well as in the hut, in the +cultivated garden as well as in the wild wood. Civilized life is, after +all, as natural as savage life. All our faculties are natural, and +civilized man cultivates his mental powers and studies the arts of life +by as true an instinct as that which leads the savage to make the most +of his mud hut, and to improve himself or his child as a hunter, a +fisherman, or a warrior. The mind of man is the noblest work of its +Maker (--in this world--) and the movements of man's mind may be quite +as natural, and quite as poetical too, as the life that rises from the +ground. It is as natural for the mind, as it is for a tree or flower to +advance towards perfection. Nature suggests art, and art again imitates +and approximates to nature, and this principle of action and reaction +brings man by degrees towards that point of comparative excellence for +which God seems to have intended him. The mind of a Milton or a +Shakespeare is surely not in a more unnatural condition than that of an +ignorant rustic. We ought not then to decry refinement nor deem all +connection of art with nature an offensive incongruity. A noble mansion +in a spacious and well kept park is an object which even an observer who +has no share himself in the property may look upon with pleasure. It +makes him proud of his race.<a href="#note116">[116]</a> We cannot witness so harmonious a +conjunction of art and nature without feeling that man is something +better than a mere beast of the field or forest. We see him turn both +art and nature to his service, and we cannot contemplate the lordly +dwelling and the richly decorated land around it--and the neatness and +security and order of the whole scene--without associating them with the +high accomplishments and refined tastes that in all probability +distinguish the proprietor and his family. It is a strange mistake to +suppose that nothing is natural beyond savage ignorance--that all +refinement is unnatural--that there is only one sort of simplicity. For +the mind elevated by civilization is in a more natural state than a mind +that has scarcely passed the boundary of brutal instinct, and the +simplicity of a savage's hut, does not prevent there being a nobler +simplicity in a Grecian temple.</p> + +<p>Kent<a href="#note117">[117]</a> the famous landscape gardener, tells us that <i>nature</i> <i>abhors +a straight line</i>. And so she does--in some cases--but not in all. A ray +of light is a straight line, and so also is a Grecian nose, and so also +is the stem of the betel-nut tree. It must, indeed, be admitted that he +who should now lay out a large park or pleasure-ground on strictly +geometrical principles or in the old topiary style would exhibit a +deplorable want of taste and judgment. But the provinces of the +landscape gardener and the parterre gardener are perfectly distinct. The +landscape gardener demands a wide canvas. All his operations are on a +large scale. In a small garden we have chiefly to aim at the +<i>gardenesque</i> and in an extensive park at the <i>picturesque</i>. Even in the +latter case, however, though</p> + +<pre> + 'Tis Nature still, 'tis nature methodized: +</pre> + +<p>Or in other words:</p> + +<pre> + Nature to advantage dressed. +</pre> + +<p>for even in the largest parks or pleasure-grounds, an observer of true +taste is offended by an air of negligence or the absence of all traces +of human art or care. Such places ought to indicate the presence of +civilized life and security and order. We are not pleased to see weeds +and jungle--or litter of any sort--even dry leaves--upon the princely +domain, which should look like a portion of nature set apart or devoted +to the especial care and enjoyment of the owner and his friends:--a +strictly private property. The grass carpet should be trimly shorn and +well swept. The trees should be tastefully separated from each other at +irregular but judicious distances. They should have fine round heads of +foliage, clean stems, and no weeds or underwood below, nor a single dead +branch above. When we visit the finest estates of the nobility and +gentry in England it is impossible not to perceive in every case a +marked distinction between the wild nature of a wood and the civilized +nature of a park. In the latter you cannot overlook the fact that every +thing injurious to the health and growth and beauty of each individual +tree has been studiously removed, while on the other hand, light, air, +space, all things in fact that, if sentient, the tree could itself be +supposed to desire, are most liberally supplied. There is as great a +difference between the general aspect of the trees in a nobleman's +pleasure ground and those in a jungle, as between the rustics of a +village and the well bred gentry of a great city. Park trees have +generally a fine air of aristocracy about them.</p> + +<p>A Gainsborough or a Morland would seek his subjects in remote villages +and a Watteau or a Stothard in the well kept pleasure ground. The ruder +nature of woods and villages, of sturdy ploughmen and the healthy though +soiled and ragged children in rural neighbourhoods, affords a by no +means unpleasing contrast and introduction to the trim trees and +smoothly undulating lawns, and curved walks, and gay parterres, and fine +ladies and well dressed and graceful children on some old ancestral +estate. We look for rusticity in the village, and for elegance in the +park. The sleek and noble air of patrician trees, standing proudly on +the rich velvet sward, the order and grace and beauty of all that meets +the eye, lead us, as I have said already, to form a high opinion of the +owner. In this we may of course be sometimes disappointed; but a man's +character is generally to be traced in almost every object around him +over which he has the power of a proprietor, and in few things are a +man's taste and habits more distinctly marked than in his park and +garden. If we find the owner of a neatly kept garden and an elegant +mansion slovenly, rude and vulgar in appearance and manners, we +inevitably experience that shock of surprize which is excited by every +thing that is incongruous or out of keeping. On the other hand if the +garden be neglected and overgrown with weeds, or if every thing in its +arrangement indicate a want of taste, and a disregard of neatness and +order, we feel no astonishment whatever in discovering that the +proprietor is as negligent of his mind and person as of his shrubberies +and his lawns.</p> + +<p>A civilized country ought not to look like a savage one. We need not +have wild nature in front of our neatly finished porticos. Nothing can +be more strictly artificial than all architecture. It would be absurd to +erect an elegantly finished residence in the heart of a jungle. There +should be an harmonious gradation from the house to the grounds, and +true taste ought not to object to terraces of elegant design and +graceful urns and fine statues in the immediate neighbourhood of a noble +dwelling.</p> + +<p>Undoubtedly as a general rule, the undulating curve in garden scenery is +preferable to straight lines or abrupt turns or sharp angles, but if +there should happen to be only a few yards between the outer gateway and +the house, could anything be more fantastical or preposterous than an +attempt to give the ground between them a serpentine irregularity? Even +in the most spacious grounds the walks should not seem too studiously +winding, as if the short turns were meant for no other purpose than to +perplex or delay the walker.<a href="#note118">[118]</a> They should have a natural sweep, and +seem to meander rather in accordance with the nature of the ground and +the points to which they lead than in obedience to some idle sport of +fancy. They should not remind us of Gray's description of the divisions +of an old mansion:</p> + +<pre> + Long passages that lead to nothing. +</pre> + +<p>Foot-paths in small gardens need not be broader than will allow two +persons to walk abreast with ease. A spacious garden may have walks of +greater breadth. A path for one person only is inconvenient and has a +mean look.</p> + +<p>I have made most of the foregoing observations in something of a spirit +of opposition to those Landscape gardeners who I think once carried a +true principle to an absurd excess. I dislike, as much as any one can, +the old topiary style of our remote ancestors, but the talk about free +nature degenerated at last into downright cant, and sheer extravagance; +the reformers were for bringing weeds and jungle right under our parlour +windows, and applied to an acre of ground those rules of Landscape +gardening which required a whole county for their proper +exemplification. It is true that Milton's Paradise had "no nice art" in +it, but then it was not a little suburban pleasure ground but a world. +When Milton alluded to private gardens, he spoke of their trimness.</p> + +<pre> + Retired Leisure + That in <i>trim</i> gardens takes his pleasure. +</pre> + +<p>The larger an estate the less necessary is it to make it merely neat, +and symmetrical, especially in those parts of the ground that are +distant from the house; but near the architecture some degree of finish +and precision is always necessary, or at least advisable, to prevent the +too sudden contrast between the straight lines and artificial +construction of the dwelling and the flowing curves and wild but +beautiful irregularities of nature unmoulded by art. A garden adjacent +to the house should give the owner a sense of <i>home</i>. He should not feel +himself abroad at his own door. If it were only for the sake of variety +there should be some distinction between the private garden and the open +field. If the garden gradually blends itself with a spacious park or +chase, the more the ground recedes from the house the more it may +legitimately assume the aspect of a natural landscape. It will then be +necessary to appeal to the eye of a landscape gardener or a painter or a +poet before the owner, if ignorant of the principles of fine art, +attempt the completion of the general design.</p> + +<p>I should like to see my Native friends who have extensive grounds, vary +the shape of their tanks, but if they dislike a more natural form of +water, irregular or winding, and are determined to have them with four +sharp corners, let them at all events avoid the evil of several small +tanks in the same "compound." A large tank is more likely to have good +water and to retain it through the whole summer season than a smaller +one and is more easily kept clean and grassy to the water's edge. I do +not say that it would be proper to have a piece of winding water in a +small compound--that indeed would be impracticable. But even an oval or +round tank would be better than a square one.<a href="#note119">[119]</a></p> + +<p>If the Native gentry could obtain the aid of tasteful gardeners, I would +recommend that the level land should be varied with an occasional +artificial elevation, nicely sloped or graduated; but Native <i>malees</i> +would be sure to aim rather at the production of abrupt round knobs +resembling warts or excrescences than easy and natural undulations of +the surface.</p> + +<p>With respect to lawns, the late Mr. Speede recommended the use of the +<i>doob</i> grass, but it is so extremely difficult to keep it clear of any +intermixture of the <i>ooloo</i> grass, which, when it intrudes upon the +<i>doob</i> gives the lawn a patchwork and shabby look, that it is better to +use the <i>ooloo</i> grass only, for it is far more manageable; and if kept +well rolled and closely shorn it has a very neat, and indeed, beautiful +appearance. The lawns in the compound of the Government House in +Calcutta are formed of <i>ooloo</i> glass only, but as they have been very +carefully attended to they have really a most brilliant and agreeable +aspect. In fact, their beautiful bright green, in the hottest summer, +attracts even the notice and admiration of the stranger fresh from +England. The <i>ooloo</i> grass, however, on close inspection is found to be +extremely coarse, nor has even the finest <i>doob</i> the close texture and +velvet softness of the grass of English lawns.</p> + +<p>Flower beds should be well rounded. They should never have long narrow +necks or sharp angles in which no plant can have room to grow freely. +Nor should they be divided into compartments, too minute or numerous, +for so arranged they must always look petty and toy-like. A lawn should +be as open and spacious as the ground will fairly admit without too +greatly limiting the space for flowers. Nor should there be an +unnecessary multiplicity of walks. We should aim at a certain breadth of +style. Flower beds may be here and there distributed over the lawn, but +care should be taken that it be not too much broken up by them. A few +trees may be introduced upon the lawn, but they must not be placed so +close together as to prevent the growth of the grass by obstructing +either light or air. No large trees should be allowed to smother up the +house, particularly on the southern and western sides, for besides +impeding the circulation through the rooms of the most wholesome winds +of this country, they would attract mosquitoes, and give an air of +gloominess to the whole place.</p> + +<p>Natives are too fond of over-crowding their gardens with trees and +shrubs and flowers of all sorts, with no regard to individual or general +effects, with no eye to arrangement of size, form or color; and in this +hot and moist climate the consequent exclusion of free air and the +necessary degree of light has a most injurious influence not only upon +the health of the resident but upon vegetation itself. Neither the +finest blossoms nor the finest fruits can be expected from an +overstocked garden. The native malee generally plants his fruit trees so +close together that they impede each other's growth and strength. Every +Englishman when he enters a native's garden feels how much he could +improve its productiveness and beauty by a free use of the hatchet. Too +many trees and too much embellishment of a small garden make it look +still smaller, and even on a large piece of ground they produce confused +and disagreeable effects and indicate an absence of all true judgment. +This practice of over-filling a garden is an instance of bad taste, +analogous to that which is so conspicuously characteristic of our own +countrymen in India with respect to their apartments, which look more +like an upholsterer's show-rooms or splendid ornament-shops than +drawing-rooms or parlours. There is scarcely space enough to turn in +them without fracturing some frail and costly bauble. Where a garden is +over-planted the whole place is darkened, the ground is green and slimy, +the grass thin, sickly and straggling, and the trees and shrubs +deficient in freshness and vigor.</p> + +<p>Not only should the native gentry avoid having their flower-borders too +thickly filled,--they should take care also that they are not too broad. +We ought not to be obliged to leave the regular path and go across the +soft earth of the bed to obtain a sight of a particular shrub or flower. +Close and entangled foliage keeps the ground too damp, obstructs +wholesome air, and harbours snakes and a great variety of other noxious +reptiles. Similar objections suggest the propriety of having no shrubs +or flowers or even a grass-plot immediately under the windows and about +the doors of the house. A well exposed gravel or brick walk should be +laid down on all sides of the house, as a necessary safeguard against +both moisture and vermin.</p> + +<p>I have spoken already of the unrivalled beauty of English gravel. It +cannot be too much admired. <i>Kunkur</i><a href="#note120">[120]</a> looks extremely smart for a +few weeks while it preserves its solidity and freshness, but it is +rapidly ground into powder under carriage wheels or blackened by +occasional rain and the permanent moisture of low grounds when only +partially exposed to the sun and air. Why should not an opulent Rajah or +Nawaub send for a cargo of beautiful red gravel from the gravel pits at +Kensington? Any English House of Agency here would obtain it for him. It +would be cheap in the end, for it lasts at least five times as long as +the kunkur, and if of a proper depth admits of repeated turnings with +the spade, looking on every turn almost as fresh as the day on which it +was first laid down.</p> + +<p>Instead of brick-bat edgings, the wealthy Oriental nobleman might trim +all his flower-borders with the green box-plant of England, which would +flourish I suppose in this climate or in any other. Cobbett in his +<i>English Gardener</i> speaks with so much enthusiasm and so much to the +purpose on the subject of box as an edging, that I must here repeat his +eulogium on it.</p> + +<p>The box is at once the most efficient of all possible things, and the +prettiest plant that can possibly be conceived; the color of its leaf; +the form of its leaf; its docility as to height, width and shape; the +compactness of its little branches; its great durability as a plant; its +thriving in all sorts of soils and in all sorts of aspects; <i>its +freshness under the hottest sun</i>, and its defiance of all shade and +drip: these are the beauties and qualities which, for ages upon ages, +have marked it out as the chosen plant for this very important purpose.</p> + +<p>The edging ought to be clipped in the winter or very early in spring on +both sides and at top; a line ought to be used to regulate the movements +of the shears; it ought to be clipped again in the same manner about +midsummer; and if there be <i>a more neat and beautiful thing than this in +the world, all that I can say is, that I never saw that thing</i>.</p> + +<p>A small green edging for a flower bed can hardly be too <i>trim</i>; but +large hedges with tops and sides cut as flat as boards, and trees +fantastically shaped with the shears into an exhibition as full of +incongruities as the wildest dream, have deservedly gone out of fashion +in England. Poets and prose writers have agreed to ridicule all verdant +sculpture on a large scale. Here is a description of the old topiary +gardens.</p> + +<pre> + These likewise mote be seen on every side + The shapely box, of all its branching pride + Ungently shorn, and, with preposterous skill + To various beasts, and birds of sundry quill + Transformed, and human shapes of monstrous size. + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + Also other wonders of the sportive shears + Fair Nature misadorning; there were found + Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers + With spouting urns and budding statues crowned; + And horizontal dials on the ground + In living box, by cunning artists traced, + And galleys trim, or on long voyage bound, + But by their roots there ever anchored fast. +</pre> + +<div><i>G. West</i>.</div> + +<p>The same taste for torturing nature into artificial forms prevailed +amongst the ancients long after architecture and statuary had been +carried to such perfection that the finest British artists of these +times can do nothing but copy and repeat what was accomplished so many +ages ago by the people of another nation. Pliny, in his description of +his Tuscan villa, speaks of some of his trees having been cut into +letters and the forms of animals, and of others placed in such regular +order that they reminded the spectator of files of soldiers.<a href="#note121">[121]</a> The +Dutch therefore should not bear all the odium of the topiary style of +gardening which they are said to have introduced into England and other +countries of Europe. They were not the first sinners against natural +taste.</p> + +<p>The Hindus are very fond of formally cut hedges and trimmed trees. All +sorts of verdant hedges are in some degree objectionable in a hot moist +country, rife with deadly vermin. I would recommend ornamental iron +railings or neatly cut and well painted wooden pales, as more airy, +light, and cheerful, and less favorable to snakes and centipedes.</p> + +<p>This is the finest country in the world for making gardens speedily. In +the rainy season vegetation springs up at once, as at the stroke of an +Enchanter's wand. The Landscape gardeners in England used to grieve that +they could hardly expect to live long enough to see the effect of their +designs. Such artists would have less reason, to grieve on that account +in this country. Indeed even in England, the source of uneasiness +alluded to, is now removed. "The deliberation with which trees grow," +wrote Horace Walpole, in a letter to a friend, "is extremely +inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous +an age when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am +persuaded that 150 years hence it will be as common to remove oaks 150 +years old as it now is to plant tulip roots." The writer was not a bad +prophet. He has not yet been dead much more than half a century and his +expectations are already more than half realized. Shakespeare could not +have anticipated this triumph of art when he made Macbeth ask</p> + +<pre> + Who can impress the forest? Bid the tree + Unfix his earth-bound root? +</pre> + +<p>The gardeners have at last discovered that the largest (though not +perhaps the <i>oldest</i>) trees can be removed from one place to another +with comparative facility and safety. Sir H. Stewart moved several +hundred lofty trees without the least injury to any of them. And if +broad and lofty trees can be transplanted in England, how much more +easily and securely might such a process be effected in the rainy season +in this country. In half a year a new garden might be made to look like +a garden of half a century. Or an old and ill-arranged plantation might +thus be speedily re-adjusted to the taste of the owner. The main object +is to secure a good ball of earth round the root, and the main +difficulty is to raise the tree and remove it. Many most ingenious +machines for raising a tree from the ground, and trucks for removing it, +have been lately invented by scientific gardeners in England. A +Scotchman, Mr. McGlashen, has been amongst the most successful of late +transplanters. He exhibited one of his machines at Paris to the present +Emperor of the French, and lifted with it a fir tree thirty feet high. +The French ruler lavished the warmest commendations on the ingenious +artist and purchased his apparatus at a large price.<a href="#note122">[122]</a></p> + +<p>Bengal is enriched with a boundless variety of noble trees admirably +suited to parks and pleasure grounds. These should be scattered about a +spacious compound with a spirited and graceful irregularity, and so +disposed with reference to the dwelling as in some degree to vary the +view of it, and occasionally to conceal it from the visitor driving up +the winding road from the outer gate to the portico. The trees, I must +repeat, should be so divided as to give them a free growth and admit +sufficient light and air beneath them to allow the grass to flourish. +Grassless ground under park trees has a look of barrenness, discomfort +and neglect, and is out of keeping with the general character of the +scene.</p> + +<p>The Banyan (<i>Ficus Indica or Bengaliensis</i>)--</p> + +<pre> + The Indian tree, whose branches downward bent, + Take root again, a boundless canopy-- +</pre> + +<p>and the Peepul or Pippul (<i>Ficus Religiosa</i>) are amongst the finest +trees in this country--or perhaps in the world--and on a very spacious +pleasure ground or park they would present truly magnificent aspects. +Colonel Sykes alludes to a Banyan at the village of Nikow in Poonah with +68 stems descending from and supporting the branches. This tree is said +to be capable of affording shelter to 20,000 men. It is a tree of this +sort which Milton so well describes.</p> + +<pre> + The fig tree, not that kind for fruit renowned, + But such as at this day, to Indians known + In Malabar or Deccan, spreads her arms + Branching so broad and long, a pillared shade, + High over arched, and echoing walks between + There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat, + Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds + At loop holes cut through the thickest shade those leaves, + They gathered, broad as Amazonian taige; + And with what skill they had together sewed, + To gird their waste. +</pre> + +<p>Milton is mistaken as to the size of the leaves of this tree, though he +has given its general character with great exactness.<a href="#note123">[123]</a></p> + +<p>A remarkable banyan or buri tree, near Manjee, twenty miles west of +Patna, is 375 inches in diameter, the circumference of its shadow at +noon measuring 1116 feet. It has sixty stems, or dropped branches that +have taken root. Under this tree once sat a naked fakir who had occupied +that situation for 25 years; but he did not continue there the whole +year, for his vow obliged him to be during the four cold months up to +his neck in the water of the Ganges!<a href="#note124">[124]</a></p> + +<p>It is said that there is a banyan tree near Gombroon on the Persian +gulf, computed to cover nearly 1,700 yards.</p> + +<p>The Banyan tree in the Company's Botanic garden, is a fine tree, but it +is of small dimensions compared with those of the trees just +mentioned.<a href="#note125">[125]</a></p> + +<p>The cocoanut tree has a characteristically Oriental aspect and a natural +grace, but it is not well suited to the ornamental garden or the +princely villa. It is too suggestive of the rudest village scenery, and +perhaps also of utilitarian ideas of mere profit, as every poor man who +has half a dozen cocoanut trees on his ground disposes of the produce in +the bazar.</p> + +<p>I would recommend my native friends to confine their clumps of plaintain +trees to the kitchen garden, for though the leaf of the plaintain is a +proud specimen of oriental foliage when it is first opened out to the +sun, it soon gets torn to shreds by the lightest breeze. The tattered +leaves then dry up and the whole of the tree presents the most beggarly +aspect imaginable. The stem is as ragged and untidy as the leaves.</p> + +<p>The kitchen garden and the orchard should be in the rear of the house. +The former should not be too visible from the windows and the latter is +on many accounts better at the extremity of the grounds than close to +the house, as we too often find it. A native of high rank should keep as +much out of sight as possible every thing that would remind a visitor +that any portion of the ground was intended rather for pecuniary profit +than the immediate pleasure of the owner. The people of India do not +seem to be sufficiently aware that any sign of parsimony in the +management of a large park or pleasure ground produces in the mind of +the visitor an unfavorable impression of the character of the owner. I +have seen in Calcutta vast mansions of which every little niche and +corner towards the street was let out to very small traders at a few +annas a month. What would the people of England think of an opulent +English Nobleman who should try to squeeze a few pence from the poor by +dividing the street front of his palace into little pigeon-sheds of +petty shops for the retail of petty wares? Oh! Princes of India "reform +this altogether." This sordid saving, this widely published parsimony, +is not only not princely, it is not only not decorous, it is positively +disgusting to every passer-by who himself possesses any right thought or +feeling.</p> + +<p>The Natives seem every day more and more inclined to imitate European +fashions, and there are few European fashions, which could be borrowed +by the highest or lowest of the people of this country with a more +humanizing and delightful effect than that attention to the exterior +elegance and neatness of the dwelling-house, and that tasteful garniture +of the contiguous ground, which in England is a taste common to the +prince and the peasant, and which has made that noble country so full of +those beautiful homes which surprize and enchant its foreign visitors.</p> + +<p>The climate and soil of this country are peculiarly favorable to the +cultivation of trees and shrubs and flowers; and the garden here is at +no season of the year without its ornaments.</p> + +<p>The example of the Horticultural Society of India, and the attractions +of the Company's Botanic Garden ought to have created a more general +taste amongst us for the culture of flowers. Bishop Heber tells us that +the Botanic Garden here reminded hint more of Milton's description of +the Garden of Eden than any other public garden, that he had ever +seen.<a href="#note126">[126]</a></p> + +<p>There is a Botanic Garden at Serampore. In 1813 it was in charge of Dr. +Roxburgh. Subsequently came the amiable and able Dr. Wallich; then the +venerable Dr. Carey was for a time the Officiating Superintendent. Dr. +Voigt followed and then one of the greatest of our Anglo-Indian +botanists, Dr. Griffiths. After him came Dr. McLelland, who is at this +present time counting the teak trees in the forests of Pegu. He was +succeeded by Dr. Falconer who left this country but a few months ago. +The garden is now in charge of Dr. Thomson who is said to be an +enthusiast in his profession. He explored the region beyond the snowy +range I think with Captain Cunningham, some years ago. With the +exceptions of Voigt and Carey, all who have had charge of the garden at +Serampore have held at the same time the more important appointment of +Superintendent of the Company's Botanic Garden at Garden Beach.</p> + +<p>There is a Botanic Garden at Bhagulpore, which owes its origin to Major +Napleton. I have been unable to obtain any information regarding its +present condition. A good Botanic Garden has been already established in +the Punjab, where there is also an Agricultural and Horticultural +Society.</p> + +<p>I regret that it should have been deemed necessary to make stupid +pedants of Hindu malees by providing them with a classical nomenclature +for plants. Hindostanee names would have answered the purpose just as +well. The natives make a sad mess of our simplest English names, but +their Greek must be Greek indeed! A <i>Quarterly Reviewer</i> observes that +Miss Mitford has found it difficult to make the maurandias and +alstraemerias and eschxholtzias--the commonest flowers of our modern +garden--look passable even in prose. But what are these, he asks, to the +pollopostemonopetalae and eleutheroromacrostemones of Wachendorf, with +such daily additions as the native name of iztactepotzacuxochitl +icohueyo, or the more classical ponderosity of Erisymum Peroffskyanum.</p> + +<pre> + --like the verbum Graecum + Spermagoraiolekitholakanopolides, + Words that should only be said upon holidays, + When one has nothing else to do. +</pre> + +<p>If these names are unpronounceable even by Europeans, what would the +poor Hindu malee make of them? The pedantry of some of our scientific +Botanists is something marvellous. One would think that a love of +flowers must produce or imply a taste for simplicity and nature in all +things.<a href="#note127">[127]</a></p> + +<p>As by way of encouragement to the native gardeners--to enable them to +dispose of the floral produce of their gardens at a fair price--the +Horticultural Society has withdrawn from the public the indulgence of +gratuitous supplies of plants, it would be as well if some men of taste +were to instruct these native nursery-men how to lay out their grounds, +(as their fellow-traders do at home,) with some regard to neatness, +cleanliness and order. These flower-merchants, and even the common +<i>malees</i>, should also be instructed, I think, how to make up a decent +bouquet, for if it be possible to render the most elegant things in the +creation offensive to the eye of taste, that object is assuredly very +completely effected by these swarthy artists when they arrange, with +such worse than Dutch precision and formality, the ill-selected, ill- +arranged, and tightly bound treasures of the parterre for the classical +vases of their British masters. I am often vexed to observe the idleness +or apathy which suffers such atrocities as these specimens of Indian +taste to disgrace the drawing-rooms of the City of Palaces. This is +quite inexcusable in a family where there are feminine hands for the +truly graceful and congenial task of selecting and arranging the daily +supply of garden decorations. A young lady--"herself a fairer flower"-- +is rarely exhibited to a loving eye in a more delightful point of view +than when her delicate and dainty fingers are so employed.</p> + +<p>If a lovely woman arranging the nosegays and flower-vases, in her +parlour, is a sweet living picture, a still sweeter sight does she +present to us when she is in the garden itself. Milton thus represents +the fair mother of the fair in the first garden:--</p> + +<pre> + Eve separate he spies. + Veil'd in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood, + Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round + About her glow'd, oft stooping to support + Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay, + Carnation, purple, azure, or speck'd with gold, + Hung drooping unsustain'd; them she upstays + Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while + Herself, though fairest unsupported flower, + From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh. + Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed + Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm; + Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen, + Among thick woven arborets, and flowers + Imborder'd on each bank, the hand of Eve<a href="#note128">[128]</a> +</pre> + +<div><i>Paradise Lost. Book IX</i>.</div> + +<p>Chaucer (in "The Knight's Tale,") describes Emily in her garden as +fairer to be seen</p> + +<pre> + Than is the lily on his stalkie green; +</pre> + +<p>And Dryden, in his modernized version of the old poet, says,</p> + +<pre> + At every turn she made a little stand, + And thrust among the thorns her lily hand + To draw the rose. +</pre> + +<p>Eve's roses were without thorns--</p> + +<pre> + "And without thorn the rose,"<a href="#note129">[129]</a> +</pre> + +<p>It is pleasant to see flowers plucked by the fairest fingers for some +elegant or worthy purpose, but it is not pleasant to see them <i>wasted</i>. +Some people pluck them wantonly, and then fling them away and litter the +garden walks with them. Some idle coxcombs, vain</p> + +<pre> + Of the nice conduct of a clouded cane, +</pre> + +<p>amuse themselves with switching off their lovely heads. "That's +villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it." +Lander says</p> + +<pre> + And 'tis my wish, and over was my way, + To let all flowers live freely, and so die. +</pre> + +<p>Here is a poetical petitioner against a needless destruction of the +little tenants of the parterre.</p> + +<pre> + Oh, spare my flower, my gentle flower, + The slender creature of a day, + Let it bloom out its little hour, + And pass away. + + So soon its fleeting charms must lie + Decayed, unnoticed and o'erthrown, + Oh, hasten not its destiny, + Too like thine own. +</pre> + +<div><i>Lyte</i>.</div> + +<p>Those who pluck flowers needlessly and thoughtlessly should be told that +other people like to see them flourish, and that it is as well for every +one to bear in mind the beautiful remark of Lord Bacon that "the breath +of flowers is far sweeter in the air than in the hand; for in the air it +comes and goes like the warbling of music."</p> + +<p>The British portion of this community allow their exile to be much more +dull and dreary than it need be, by neglecting to cultivate their +gardens, and leaving them entirely to the taste and industry of the +<i>malee</i>. I never feel half so much inclined to envy the great men of +this now crowded city the possession of vast but gardenless mansions, +(partly blocked up by those of their neighbours,) as I do to felicitate +the owner of some humbler but more airy and wholesome dwelling in the +suburbs, when the well-sized grounds attached to it have been touched +into beauty by the tasteful hand of a lover of flowers.</p> + +<p>But generally speaking my countrymen in most parts of India allow their +grounds to remain in a state which I cannot help characterizing as +disreputable. It is amazing how men or women accustomed to English modes +of life can reconcile themselves to that air of neglect, disorder, and +discomfort which most of their "compounds" here exhibit.</p> + +<p>It would afford me peculiar gratification to find this book read with +interest by my Hindu friends, (for whom, chiefly, it has been written,) +and to hear that it has induced some of them to pay more attention to +the ornamental cultivation of their grounds; for it would be difficult +to confer upon them a greater blessing than a taste for the innocent and +elegant pleasures of the FLOWER-GARDEN.</p> + + + +<H3>SUPPLEMENT.</H3> + + +<p>SACRED TREES AND SHRUBS OF THE HINDUS.</p> + +<p>The following list of the trees and shrubs held sacred by the Hindus is +from the friend who furnished me with the list of Flowers used in Hindu +ceremonies.<a href="#note130">[130]</a> It was received too late to enable me to include it in +the body of the volume.</p> + +<p>AMALAKI (<i>Phyllanthus emblica</i>).--A tree held sacred to Shiva. It has no +flowers, and its leaves are in consequence used in worshipping that +deity as well as Durga, Kali, and others. The natives of Bengal do not +look upon it with any degree of religious veneration, but those of the +Upper Provinces annually worship it on the day of the <i>Shiva Ratri</i>, +which generally falls in the latter end of February or the beginning of +March, and on which all the public offices are closed.</p> + +<p>ASWATH-THA (<i>Ficus Religiosa</i>).--It is commonly called by Europeans the +Peepul tree, by which name, it is known to the natives of the Upper +Provinces. The <i>Bhagavat Gita</i> says that Krishna in giving an account of +his power and glory to Arjuna, before the commencement of the celebrated +battle between the <i>Kauravas</i> and <i>Pándavas</i> at <i>Kurukshetra</i>, +identified himself with the <i>Aswath-tha</i> whence the natives consider it +to be a sacred tree.<a href="#note131">[131]</a></p> + +<p>BILWA OR SREEFUL (<i>Aegle marmelos</i>).--It is the common wood-apple tree, +which is held sacred to Shiva, and its leaves are used in worshipping +him as well as Durga, Kali, and others. The <i>Mahabharat</i> says that when +Shiva at the request of Krishna and the Pandavas undertook the +protection of their camp at Kurukshetra on the night of the last day of +the battle, between them and the sons of Dhritarashtra, Aswathama, a +friend and follower of the latter, took up a Bilwa tree by its roots and +threw it upon the god, who considering it in the light of an offering +made to him, was so much pleased with Aswathama that he allowed him to +enter the camp, where he killed the five sons of the Pandavas and the +whole of the remnants of their army. Other similar stories are also told +of the Bilwa tree to prove its sacredness, but the one I have given +above, will be sufficient to shew in what estimation it is held by the +Hindus.</p> + +<p>BAT (<i>Ficus indica</i>).--Is the Indian Banian tree, supposed to be +immortal and coeval with the gods; whence it is venerated as one of +them. It is also supposed to be a male tree, while the Aswath-tha or +Peepul is looked upon as a female, whence the lower orders of the people +plant them side by side and perform the ceremony of matrimony with a +view to connect them as man and wife.<a href="#note132">[132]</a></p> + +<p>DURVA' (<i>Panicum dactylon</i>).--A grass held to be sacred to Vishnu, who +in his seventh <i>Avatara</i> or incarnation, as Rama, the son of Dasaratha, +king of Oude, assumed the colour of the grass, which is used in all +religious ceremonies of the Hindus. It has medicinal properties.</p> + +<p>KA'STA' (<i>Saccharum spontaneum</i>).--It is a large species of grass. In +those ceremonies which the Hindus perform after the death of a person, +or with a view to propitiate the Manes of their ancestors this grass is +used whenever the Kusa is not to be had. When it is in flower, the +natives look upon the circumstance as indicative of the close of the +rains.</p> + +<p>KU'SA (<i>Poa cynosuroides</i>).--The grass to which, reference has been made +above. It is used in all ceremonies performed in connection with the +death of a person or having for their object the propitiation of the +Manes of ancestors.</p> + +<p>MANSA-SHIJ (<i>Euphorbia ligularia</i>).--This plant is supposed by the +natives of Bengal to be sacred to <i>Mansa</i>, the goddess of snakes, and is +worshipped by them on certain days of the months of June, July, August, +and September, during which those reptiles lay their eggs and breed +their young. The festival of Arandhana, which is more especially +observed by the lower orders of the people, is in honor of the Goddess +Mansa.<a href="#note133">[133]</a></p> + +<p>NA'RIKELA (<i>Coccos nucifera</i>).--The Cocoanut tree, which is supposed to +possess the attributes of a Brahmin and is therefore held sacred.<a href="#note134">[134]</a></p> + +<p>NIMBA (<i>Melia azadirachta</i>).--A tree from the trunk of which the idol at +Pooree was manufactured, and which is in consequence identified with the +ribs of Vishnu.<a href="#note135">[135]</a></p> + +<p>TU'LSI (<i>Ocymum</i>).--The Indian Basil, of which there are several +species, such as the <i>Ram Tulsi</i> (ocymum gratissimum) the <i>Babooye +Tulsi</i> (ocymum pilosum) the <i>Krishna Tulsi</i> (osymum sanctum) and the +common <i>Tulsi</i> (ocymum villosum) all of which possess medicinal +properties, but the two latter are held to be sacred to Vishnu and used +in his worship. The <i>Puranas</i> say that Krishna assumed the form of +<i>Saukasura</i>, and seduced his wife Brinda. When he was discovered he +manifested his extreme regard for her by turning her into the <i>Tulsi</i> +and put the leaves upon his head.<a href="#note136">[136]</a></p> + + + +<H3>APPENDIX.</H3> + + +<hr> + +<p>THE FLOWER GARDEN IN INDIA.</p> + +<p>The following practical directions and useful information respecting the +Indian Flower-Garden, are extracted from the late Mr. Speede's <i>New +Indian Gardener</i>, with the kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. +Thacker Spink and Company of Calcutta.</p> + +<p>THE SOIL.</p> + +<p>So far as practicable, the soil should be renewed every year, by turning +in vegetable mould, river sand, and well rotted manure to the depth of +about a foot; and every second or third year the perennials should be +taken up, and reduced, when a greater proportion of manure may be added, +or what is yet better, the whole of the old earth removed, and new mould +substituted.</p> + +<p>It used to be supposed that the only time for sowing annuals or other +plants, (in Bengal) is the beginning of the cold weather, but although +this is the case with a great number of this class of plants, it is a +popular error to think it applies to all, since there are many that grow +more luxuriantly if sown at other periods. The Pink, for instance, may +be sown at any time, Sweet William thrives best if sown in March or +April, the variegated and light colored Larkspurs should not be put in +until December, the Dahlia germinates most successfully in the rains, +and the beautiful class of Zinnias are never seen to perfection unless +sown in June.</p> + +<p>This is the more deserving of attention, as it holds out the prospect of +maintaining our Indian flower gardens, in life and beauty, throughout +the whole year, instead of during the confined period hitherto +attempted.</p> + +<p>The several classes of flowering plants are divided into PERENNIAL, +BIENNIAL, and ANNUAL.</p> + +<p>PERENNIALS.</p> + +<p>The HERON'S BILL, Erodium; the STORK'S BILL, Pelargonium; and the +CRANE'S BILL, Geranium; all popularly known under the common designation +of Geranium, which gives name to the family, are well known, and are +favorite plants, of which but few of the numerous varieties are found +in this country.</p> + +<p>Of the first of these there are about five and twenty fixed species, +besides a vast number of varieties; of which there are here found only +the following:--</p> + +<p>The <i>Flesh-colored Heron's bill</i>, E. incarnatum, is a pretty plant of +about six inches high, flowering in the hot weather, with flesh-colored +blossoms, but apt to become rather straggling.</p> + +<p>Of the hundred and ninety species of the second class, independently of +their varieties, there are few indeed that have found their way here, +only thirteen, most of which are but rarely met with.</p> + +<p>The <i>Rose-colored Stork's bill</i>, P. roseum, is tuberous rooted, and in +April yields pretty pink flowers.</p> + +<p>The <i>Brick-colored Stork's bill</i>, P. lateritium, affords red flowers in +March and April.</p> + +<p>The <i>Botany Bay Stork's bill</i>, P. Australe, is rare, but may be made to +give a pretty red flower in March.</p> + +<p>The <i>Common horse-shoe Stork's bill</i>, P. zonale, is often seen, and +yields its scarlet blossoms freely in April.</p> + +<p>The <i>Scarlet-flowered Stork's bill</i>, P. inquinans, affords a very fine +flower towards the latter end of the cold weather, and approaching to +the hot; it requires protection from the rains, as it is naturally of a +succulent nature, and will rot at the joints if the roots become at all +sodden: many people lay the pots down on their sides to prevent this, +which is tolerably successful to their preservation.</p> + +<p>The <i>Sweet-Scented Stork's bill</i>, P. odoratissimum, with pink flowers, +but it does not blossom freely, and the branches are apt to grow long +and straggling.</p> + +<p>The <i>Cut-leaved Stork's bill</i>, P. incisum, has small flowers, the petals +being long and thin, and the flowers which appear in April are white, +marked with pink.</p> + +<p>The <i>Ivy-leaved Stork's bill</i>, P. lateripes, has not been known to yield +flowers in this country.</p> + +<p>The <i>Rose-scented Stork's bill</i>, P. capitatum, the odour of the leaves +is very pleasant, but it is very difficult to force into blossom.</p> + +<p>The <i>Ternate Stork's bill</i>, P. ternatum, has variegated pink flowers in +April.</p> + +<p>The <i>Oak-leaved Stork's bill</i>, P. quercifolium, is much esteemed for the +beauty of its leaves, but has not been known to blossom in this climate.</p> + +<p>The <i>Tooth-leaved Stork's bill</i>, P. denticulatum, is not a free +flowerer, but may with care be made to bloom in April.</p> + +<p>The <i>Lemon, or Citron-scented Stork's bill</i>, P. gratum, grows freely, +and has a pretty appearance, but does not blossom.</p> + +<p>Of the second class of these plants the forty-eight species have only +three representatives.</p> + +<p>The <i>Aconite-leaved Crane's bill</i>, G. aconiti-folium, is a pretty plant, +but rare, yielding its pale blue flowers with difficulty.</p> + +<p>The <i>Wallich's Crane's bill</i> G. Wallichianum, indigenous to Nepal, +having pale pink blossoms and rather pretty foliage, flowering in March +and April; but requiring protection in the succeeding hot weather, and +the beginning of the rains, as it is very susceptible of heat, or excess +of moisture.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>--may be effected by seed to multiply, or produce fresh +varieties, but the ordinary mode of increasing the different sorts is by +cuttings, no plant growing more readily by this mode. These should be +taken off at a joint where the wood is ripening, at which point the root +fibres are formed, and put into a pot with a compost of one part garden +mould, one part vegetable mould, and one part sand, and then kept +moderately moist, in the shade, until they have formed strong root +fibres, when they may be planted out. The best method is to plant each +cutting in a separate pot of the smallest size. The germinating of the +seeds will be greatly promoted by sinking the pots three parts of their +depth in a hot bed, keeping them moist and shaded and until they +germinate.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i> A rich garden mould, composed of light loam, rather sandy +than otherwise, with very rotten dung, is desirable for this shrub.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>. Most kinds are rapid and luxurious growers, and it is +necessary to pay them constant attention in pruning or nipping the +extremities of the shoots, or they will soon become ill-formed and +straggling. This is particularly requisite during the rains, when heat +and moisture combine to increase their growth to excess; allowing them +to enjoy the full influence of the sun during the whole of the cold +weather, and part of the hot. At the close of the rains, the plants had +better be put out into the open ground, and closely pruned, the shoots +taken off affording an ample supply of cuttings for multiplying the +plants; this putting out will cause them to throw up strong healthy +shoots and rich blossoms; but as the hot weather approaches, or in the +beginning of March, they must be re-placed in moderate sized pots, with +a compost similar to that required for cuttings and placed in the plant +shed, as before described. The earth in the pots should be covered with +pebbles, or pounded brick of moderate size, which prevents the +accumulation of moss or fungi. Geraniums should at no time be over +watered, and must at all seasons be allowed a free ventilation.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that if visitors from this to the Cape, would pay a +little attention to the subject, the varieties might be greatly +increased, and that without much trouble, as many kinds may be produced +freely by seed, if brought to the country fresh, and sown immediately on +arrival; young plants also in well glazed cases would not take up much +space in some of the large vessels coming from thence.</p> + +<p>The ANEMONE has numerous varieties, and is, in England, a very favorite +flower, but although A. cernua is a native of Japan, and many varieties +are indigenous to the Cape, it is very rare here.</p> + +<p>The <i>Double anemone</i> is the most prized, but there are several <i>Single</i> +and <i>Half double</i> kinds which are very handsome. The stem of a good +anemone should be eight or nine inches in height, with a strong upright +stalk. The flower ought not to be less than seven inches in +circumference, the outer row of petals being well rounded, flat, and +expanding at the base, turning up with a full rounded edge, so as to +form a well shaped cup, within which, in the double kinds, should arise +a large group of long small petals reverted from the centre, and +regularly overlapping each other; the colors clear, each shade being +distinct in such as are variegated.</p> + +<p>The <i>Garden, or Star Wind flower</i>, A. hortensis, <i>Boostan afrooz</i>, is +another variety, found in Persia, and brought thence to Upper India, of +a bright scarlet color; a blue variety has also blossomed in Calcutta, +and was exhibited at the Show of February, 1847, by Mrs. Macleod, to +whom Floriculture is indebted for the introduction of many beautiful +exotics heretofore new to India. But it is to be hoped this handsome +species of flowering plants will soon be more extensively found under +cultivation.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>. Seed can hardly be expected to succeed in this country, +as even in Europe it fails of germinating; for if not sown immediately +that it is ripe, the length of journey or voyage would inevitably +destroy its power of producing. Offsets of the tubers therefore are the +only means that are left, and these should not be replanted until they +have been a sufficient time out of the ground, say a month or so, to +become hardened, nor should they be put into the earth until they have +dried, or the whole offset will rot by exposure of the newly fractured +side to the moisture of the earth. The tubers should be selected which +are plump and firm, as well as of moderate size, the larger ones being +generally hollow; these may be obtained in good order from Hobart Town.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i> A strong rich loamy soil is preferable, having a +considerable portion of well rotted cow-dung, with a little leaf mould, +dug to a depth of two feet, and the beds not raised too high, as it is +desirable to preserve moisture in the subsoil; if in pots, this is +effected by keeping a saucer of water under them continually, the pot +must however be deep, or the fibres will have too much wet; an open airy +situation is desirable.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>. When the plant appears above ground the earth must be pressed +well down around the root, as the crowns and tubers are injured by +exposure to dry weather, and the plants should be sheltered from the +heat of the sun, but not so as to confine the air; they require the +morning and evening sun to shine on them, particularly the former.</p> + +<p>The IRIS is a handsome plant, attractive alike from the variety and the +beauty of its blossoms; some of them are also used medicinally. All +varieties produce abundance of seed, in which form the plant might with +great care be introduced into this country.</p> + +<p>The <i>Florence Iris</i>, I. florentina, <i>Ueersa</i>, is a large variety, +growing some two feet in height, the flower being white, and produced in +the hot weather.</p> + +<p>The <i>Persian Iris</i> I. persica, <i>Hoobur</i>, is esteemed not only for its +handsome blue and purple flowers, but also for its fragrance, blossoming +in the latter part of the cold weather; one variety has blue and yellow +blossoms.</p> + +<p>The <i>Chinese Iris</i>, I. chinensis, <i>Soosun peelgoosh</i>, in a small sized +variety, but has very pretty blue and purple flowers in the beginning of +the hot weather.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>. Besides seed, which should be sown in drills, at the +close of the rains, in a sandy soil, it may be produced by offsets.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i> Almost any kind of soil suits the Iris, but the best flowers +are obtained from a mixture of sandy loam, with leaf mould, the Persian +kind requiring a larger proportion of sand.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>. Little after culture is required, except keeping the beds +clear from weeds, and occasionally loosening the earth. But the roots +must be taken, up every two, or at most three years, and replanted, +after having been kept to harden for a month or six weeks; the proper +season for doing this being when the leaves decay after blossoming.</p> + +<p>The TUBEROSE, Polianthes, is well deserving of culture, but it is not by +any means a rare plant, and like many indigenous odoriferous flowers, +has rather too strong an odour to be borne near at hand, and it is +considered unwholesome in a room.</p> + +<p>The <i>Common Tuberose</i>, P. tuberosa, <i>Chubugulshubboo</i>, being a native of +India thrives in almost any soil, and requires no cultivation: it is +multiplied by dividing the roots. It flowers at all times of the year in +bunches of white flowers with long sepals.</p> + +<p>The <i>Double Tuberose</i>, P. florepleno, is very rich in appearance, and of +more delicate fragrance, although still too powerful for the room. Crows +are great destroyers of the blossoms, which they appear fond of pecking. +This variety is more rare, and the best specimens have been obtained +from Hobart Town. It is rather more delicate and requires more attention +in culture than the indigenous variety, and should be earthed up, so as +to prevent water lodging around the stem.</p> + +<p>The LOBELIA is a brilliant class of flowers which may be greatly +improved by careful cultivation.</p> + +<p>The <i>Splendid Lobelia</i>, L. splendens, is found in many gardens, and is a +showy scarlet flower, well worthy of culture.</p> + +<p>The <i>Pyramidal Lobelia</i>, L. pyramidalis, is a native of Nepal, and is a +modest pretty flower, of a purple color.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>--is best performed by offsets, suckers, or cuttings, but +seeds produce good strong plants, which may with care, be made to +improve.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--A moist, sandy soil is requisite for them, the small +varieties especially delighting in wet ground. Some few of this family +are annuals, and the roots of no varieties should remain more than three +years without renewal, as the blossoms are apt to deteriorate; they all +flower during the rains.</p> + +<p>The PITCAIRNIA is a very handsome species, having long narrow leaves, +with, spined edges and throwing up blossoms in upright spines.</p> + +<p>The <i>Long Stamened Pitcairnia</i>, P. staminea, is a splendid scarlet +flower, lasting long in blossom, which, appears in July or August, and +continues till December.</p> + +<p>The <i>Scarlet Pitcairnia</i>, P. bromeliaefolia, is also a fine rich scarlet +flower, but blossoming somewhat sooner, and may be made to continue +about a month later.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>--is by dividing the roots, or by suckers, which is best +performed at the close of the rains.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i> A sandy peat is the favorite soil of this plant, which +should be kept very moist.</p> + +<p>The DAHLIA, Dahlia; a few years since an attempt was made to rename this +beautiful and extensive family and to call it Georgina, but it failed, +and it is still better known throughout the world by its old name than +the new. It was long supposed that the Dahlia was only found indigenous +in Mexico, but Captain Kirke some few years back brought to the notice +of the Horticultural Society, that it was to be met with in great +abundance in Dheyra Dhoon, producing many varieties both single and +double; and he has from time to time sent down quantities of seed, which +have greatly assisted its increase in all parts of India. It has also +been found in Nagpore.</p> + +<p>A good Dahlia is judged of by its form, size, and color. In respect to +the first of these its <i>form</i> should be perfectly round, without any +inequalities of projecting points of the petals, or being notched, or +irregular. These should also be so far revolute that the side view +should exhibit a perfect semicircle in its outline, and the eye or +prolific disc, in the centre should be entirely concealed. There has +been recently introduced into this country a new variety, all the petals +of which are quilled, which has a very handsome appearance.</p> + +<p>In <i>size</i> although of small estimation if the other qualities are +defective, it is yet of some consideration, but the larger flowers are +apt to be wanting in that perfect hemispherical form that is so much +admired.</p> + +<p>The <i>color</i> is of great importance to the perfection of the flower; of +those that are of one color this should be clear, unbroken, and +distinct; but when mixed hues are sought, each color should be clearly +and distinctly defined without any mingling of shades, or running into +each other. Further, the flowers ought to be erect so as to exhibit the +blossom in the fullest manner to the view. The most usual colors of the +imported double Dahlias, met with in India, are crimson, scarlet, +orange, purple, and white. Amongst those raised from seed from. Dheyra +Dhoon<a href="#note137">[137]</a> of the double kind, there are of single colors, crimson, deep +crimson approaching to maroon, deep lilac, pale lilac, violet, pink, +light purple, canary color, yellow, red, and white; and of mixed colors, +white and pink, red and yellow, and orange and white: the single ones of +good star shaped flowers and even petals being of crimson, puce, lilac, +pale lilac, white, and orange. Those from Nagpore seed have yielded, +double flowers of deep crimson, lilac, and pale purple, amongst single +colors; lilac and blue, and red and yellow of mixed shades; and single +flowered, crimson, and orange, with mixed colors of lilac and yellow, +and lilac and white.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>--is by dividing the roots, by cuttings, by suckers, or by +seed; the latter is generally resorted to, where new varieties are +desired. Mr. George A. Lake, in an article on this subject (<i>Gardeners' +Magazine</i>, 1833) says: "I speak advisedly, and from, experience, when I +assert that plants raised from cuttings do not produce equally perfect +flowers, in regard to size, form, and fulness, with those produced by +plants grown from division of tubers;" and he more fully shews in +another part of the same paper, that this appears altogether conformable +to reason, as the cutting must necessarily for a long period want that +store of starch, which is heaped up in the full grown tuber for the +nutriment of the plant. This objection however might be met by not +allowing the cuttings to flower in the season when they are struck.</p> + +<p>To those who are curious in the <a name="pollinate">cultivation</a> of this handsome species, it +may be well to know how to secure varieties, especially of mixed colors; +for this purpose it is necessary to cover the blossoms intended for +fecundation with fine gauze tied firmly to the foot stalk, and when it +expands take the pollen from the male flowers with a camel's hair +pencil, and touch with it each floret of the intended bearing flower, +tying the gauze again over it, and keeping it on until the petals are +withered. The operation requires to be performed two or three successive +days, as the florets do not expand together.</p> + +<p><i>Soil &c.</i> They thrive best in a rich loam, mixed with sand; but should +not be repeated too often on the same spot, as they exhaust the soil +considerably.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>. The Dahlia requires an open, airy position unsheltered by +trees or walls, the plants should be put out where they are to blossom, +immediately on the cessation of the rains, at a distance of three feet +apart, either in rows or in clumps, as they make a handsome show in a +mass; and as they grow should be trimmed from the lower shoots, to about +a foot in height, and either tied carefully to a stake, or, what is +better, surrounded by a square or circular trellis, about five feet in +height. As the buds form they should be trimmed off, so as to leave but +one on each stalk, this being the only method by which full, large, and +perfectly shaped blossoms are obtained. Some people take up the tubers +every year in February or March, but this is unnecessary. The plants +blossom in November and December in the greatest perfection, but may +with attention be continued from the beginning of October to the end of +February.</p> + +<p>Those plants which are left in the ground during the whole year should +have their roots opened immediately on the close of the rains, the +superabundant or decayed tubers, and all suckers being removed, and +fresh earth filled in. The earth should always be heaped up high around +the stems, and it is a good plan to surround each plant with a small +trench to be filled daily with water so as to keep the stem and leaves +dry.</p> + +<p>The PINK, Dianthus, <i>Kurunful</i>, is a well known species of great +variety, and acknowledged beauty.</p> + +<p>The <i>Carnation</i>, D. caryophyilus, <i>Gul kurunful</i>, is by this time +naturalized in India, adding both beauty and fragrance to the parterre; +the only variety however that has yet appeared in the country is the +clove, or deep crimson colored: but the success attending the culture of +this beautiful flower is surely an encouragement to the introduction of +other sorts, there being above four hundred kinds, especially as they +may be obtained from seed or pipings sent packed in moss, which will +remain in good condition for two or three months, provided no moisture +beyond what is natural to the moss, have access to them.</p> + +<p>The distinguishing marks of a good carnation may be thus described: the +stem should be tall and straight, strong, elastic, and having rather +short foot stalks, the flower should be fully three inches in diameter +with large well formed petals, round and uncut, long and broad, so as to +stand out well, rising about half an inch above the calyx, and then the +outer ones turned off in a horizontal direction, supporting those of the +centre, decreasing gradually in size, the whole forming a near approach +to a hemisphere. It flowers in April and May.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>--is performed either by seed, by layers, or by pipings; +the best time for making the two latter is when the plant is in full +blossom, as they then root more strongly. In this operation the lower +leaves should be trimmed off, and an incision made with a sharp knife, +by entering the knife about a quarter of an inch below the joint, +passing it through its centre; it must then be pegged down with a hooked +peg, and covered with about a quarter of an inch of light rich mould; if +kept regularly moist, the layers will root in about a month's time: they +may then be taken off and planted out into pots in a sheltered +situation, neither exposed to excessive rain, nor sun, until they shoot +out freely.</p> + +<p>Pipings (or cuttings as they are called in other plants) must be taken +off from a healthy, free growing plant, and should have two complete +joints, being cut off horizontally close under the second one; the +extremities of the leaves must also be shortened, leaving the whole +length of each piping two inches; they should be thrown into a basin of +soft water for a few minutes to plump them, and then planted out in +moist rich mould, not more than an inch being inserted therein, and +slightly watered to settle the earth close around them; after this the +soil should be kept moderately moist, and never exposed to the sun. Seed +is seldom resorted to except to introduce new varieties.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--A mixture of old well rotted stable manure, with one-third +the quantity of good fine loamy earth, and a small portion of sand, is +the best soil for carnations.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>.--The plants should be sheltered from too heavy a fall of +rain, although they require to be kept moderately moist, and desire an +airy situation. When the flower stalks are about six or eight inches in +height, they must be supported by sticks, and, if large full blossoms be +sought for, all the buds, except the leading one, must be removed with a +pair of scissors; the calyx must also be frequently examined, as it is +apt to burst, and if any disposition to this should appear, it will be +well to assist the uniform expansion by cutting the angles with a sharp +penknife. If, despite all precautions the calyx burst and let out the +petals, it should be carefully tied with thread, or a circular piece of +card having a hole in the centre should be drawn over the bud so as to +hold the petals together, and display them to advantage by the contrast +of the white color.</p> + +<p><i>Insects, &c.</i>--The most destructive are the red, and the large black +ant, which attack, and frequently entirely destroy the roots before you +can be aware of its approach; powdered turmeric should therefore be +constantly kept strewed around this flower.</p> + +<p>The <i>Common Pink</i>, Dianthus Chinensis, <i>Kurunful</i>, and the <i>Sweet +William</i>, D: barbatus, are pretty, ornamental plants, and may be +propagated and cultivated in the same way as the carnation, save that +they do not require so much care, or so good a soil, any garden mould +sufficing; they are also more easily produced from seed.</p> + +<p>The VIOLET, Viola, <i>Puroos</i>, is a class containing many beautiful +flowers, some highly ornamental and others odoriferous.</p> + +<p>The <i>Sweet Violet</i>, V. odorata, <i>Bunufsh'eh</i>, truly the poet's flower. +It is a deserved favorite for its delightful fragrance as well as its +delicate and retiring purple flowers; there is also a white variety, but +it is rare in this country, as is also the double kind. This blossoms in +the latter part of the cold weather.</p> + +<p>The <i>Shrubby Violet</i>, V. arborescens, or suffruticosa, <i>Rutunpuroos</i>, +grows wild in the hills, and is a pretty blue flower, but wants the +fragrance of the foregoing.</p> + +<p>The <i>Dog's Violet</i>, V. canina, is also indigenous in the hills.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>.--All varieties may be propagated by seed, but the most +usual method is by dividing the roots, or taking off the runners.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--The natural <i>habitat</i> of the indigenous varieties is the +sides and interstices of the rocks, where leaf mould, and micaceous +sand, has accumulated and moisture been retained, indicating that the +kind of soil favorable to the growth of this interesting little plant is +a rich vegetable mould, with an admixture of sand, somewhat moist, but +having a dry subsoil.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>.--It would not be safe to trust this plant in the open ground +except during a very short period of the early part of the cold weather, +when the so doing will give it strength to form blossoms. In January, +however, it should be re-potted, filling the pots about half-full of +pebbles or stone-mason's cuttings, over which should be placed good rich +vegetable mould, mixed with a large proportion of sand, covering with a +thin layer of the same material as has been put into the bottom of the +pot; a top dressing of ground bones is said to improve the fineness of +the blossoms. They should not be kept too dry, but at the same time +watered cautiously, as too much of either heat or moisture destroys the +plants.</p> + +<p>The <i>Pansy</i> or <i>Heart's-ease</i>, V. tricolor, <i>Kheeroo, kheearee</i>, derives +its first name from the French <i>Pensée</i>. It was known amongst the early +Christians by the name of <i>Flos Trinitatis</i>, and worn as a symbol of +their faith. The high estimation which it has of late years attained in +Great Britain as a florist's flower has, in the last two or three years, +extended itself to this country. There are nearly four hundred +varieties, a few of which only have been found here.</p> + +<p><i>The characters of a fine Heart's-ease</i> are, the flower being well +expanded, offering a flat, or if any thing, rather a revolute surface, +and the petals so overlapping each other as to form a circle without any +break in the outline. These should be as nearly as possible of a size, +and the greater length of the two upper ones concealed by the covering +of those at the side in such manner as to preserve the appearance of +just proportion: the bottom petal being broad and two-lobed, and well +expanded, not curving inwards. The eye should be of moderate, or rather +small size, and much additional beauty is afforded, if the pencilling is +so arranged as to give the appearance of a dark angular spot. The colors +must also be clear, bright, and even, not clouded or indistinct. +Undoubtedly the handsomest kinds are those in which the two upper petals +are of deep purple and the triade of a shade less: in all, the flower +stalk should be long and stiff. The plant blossoms in this country in +February and March, although it is elsewhere a summer flower.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>.--In England the moat usual methods are dividing the +roots, layers, or cuttings from the stem, and these are certainly the +only sure means of preserving a good variety; but it is almost +impossible in India to preserve the plant through the hot weather, and +therefore it is more generally treated as an annual, and raised every +year from seed, which should be sown at the close of the rains; as +however their growth, in India is as yet little known, most people put +the imported seed into pots as soon as it arrives, lest the climate +should deteriorate its germinating power, as it is well known, that even +in Europe the seed should be sown as soon as possible after ripening. It +will be well also to assist its sprouting with a little bottom heat, by +plunging the pot up to its rim in a hot bed. American seed should be +avoided as the blossoms are little to be depended on, and generally +yield small, ill-formed flowers, clouded and run in color.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--This should be moist, and the best compost is formed of +one-sixth of well rotted dung from an old hot bed, and five-sixth of +loam, or one-fourth of leaf mould and the remainder loam, but in either +case well incorporated and exposed for some time previous to use to the +action of the sun and air by frequent turning.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>.--A shady situation is to be preferred, especially for the +dark varieties which assume a deeper hue if so placed. But it has been +observed by Mackintosh, that "the light varieties bloomed lighter in the +shade, and darker in the sunshine--a very remarkable effect, for which I +cannot account." The plants must at all times be kept moist, never being +allowed to become dry, and should be so placed as to receive only the +morning sun before ten o'clock. Under good management the plants will +extend a foot or more in height, and have a handsome appearance if +trained over a circular trellis of rattan twisted. When they rise too +high, or it is desirable to fill out with side shoots, the tops must be +pinched off, and larger flowers will be obtained if the flower buds are +thinned out where they appear crowded.</p> + +<p>These plants look very handsome when grown in large masses of several +varieties, but the seeds of those grown in this manner should not be +made use of, as they are sure to sport; to prevent which it is also +necessary that the plants which it is desired to perpetuate in this +manner should be isolated at a distance from any other kind, and it +would be advisable to cover them with thin gauze to prevent impregnation +from others by means of the bees and other insects. For show flowers the +branches should be kept down, and not suffered to straggle out or +multiply; these will also be improved by pegging the longer branches +down under the soil, and thereby increasing the number of the root +fibres, hence adding to their power of accumulating nourishment, and not +allowing them to expand beyond a limited number of blossoms, and those +retained should be as nearly equal in age as possible.</p> + +<p>The HYDRANGEA is a hardy plant requiring a good deal of moisture, being +by nature an inhabitant of the marshes.</p> + +<p>The <i>Changeable Hydrangea</i>, H. hortensis, is of Chinese origin and a +pretty growing plant that deserves to be a favorite; it blossoms in +bunches of flowers at the extremities of the branches which are +naturally pink, but in old peat earth, or having a mixture of alum, or +iron filings, the color changes to blue. It blooms in March and April.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i> may be effected by cuttings, which root freely, or by +layers.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--Loam and old leaf mould, or peat with a very small +admixture of sand suits this plant. Their growth is much promoted by +being turned out, for a month or two in the rains, into the open ground, +and then re-potted with new soil, the old being entirely removed from +the roots: and to make it flower well it must not be encumbered with too +many branches.</p> + +<p>The HOYA is properly a trailing plant, rooting at the joints, but have +been generally cultivated here as a twiner.</p> + +<p>The <i>Fleshy-leaved Hoya</i>, H. carnosa, is vulgarly called the wax flower +from its singular star shaped-whitish pink blossoms, with a deep colored +varnished centre, having more the appearance of a wax model than a +production of nature. The flowers appear in globular groups and have a +very handsome appearance from the beginning of April to the close of the +rains.</p> + +<p>The <i>Green flowered Hoya</i>, H. viridiflora, <i>Nukchukoree, teel kunga</i>, +with its green flowers in numerous groups, is also an interesting plant, +it is esteemed also for its medicinal properties.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>.--Every morsel of these plants, even a piece of the leaf, +will form roots if put in the ground, cuttings therefore strike very +freely, as do layers, the joints naturally throwing out root-fibres +although not in the earth.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--A light loam moderately dry is the best for these plants, +which look well if trained round a circular trellis in the open border.</p> + +<p>The STAPELIA is an extensive genus of low succulent plants without +leaves, but yielding singularly handsome star-shaped flowers; they are +of African origin growing in the sandy deserts, but in a natural state +very diminutive being increased to their present condition and numerous +varieties by cultivation, they mostly have an offensive smell whence +some people call them the carrion plant. They deserve more attention +than has hitherto been shown to them in India.</p> + +<p>The <i>Variegated Stapelia</i>, S. variegata, yields a flower in November, +the thick petals of which are yellowish green with brown irregular +spots, it is the simplest of the family.</p> + +<p>The <i>Revolute-flowered Stapelia</i>, S. revoluta, has a green blossom very +fully sprinkled with deep purple, it flowers at the close of the rains.</p> + +<p>The <i>Toad Stapelia</i>, S. bufonia, as its name implies, is marked like the +back of the reptile from whence it has its name; it flowers in December +and January.</p> + +<p>The <i>Hairy Stapelia</i>, S. hirsuta, is a very handsome variety, being, +like the rest, of green and brown, but the entire flower covered with +fine filaments or hairs of a light purple, at various periods of the +year.</p> + +<p>The <i>Starry Stapelia</i>, S. stellaris, is perhaps the most beautiful of +the whole, being like the last covered with hairs, but they are of a +bright pinkish blue color; there appears to be no fixed period for +flowering.</p> + +<p>The HAIRY CARRULLUMA, C. crinalata, belongs to the same family as the +foregoing species, which it much resembles, except that it blossoms in +good sized globular groups of small star-shaped flowers of green, +studded and streaked with brown.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i> is exceedingly easy with each of the last named two +species; as the smallest piece put in any soil that is moist, without +being saturated, will throw out root fibres.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--This should consist of one-half sand, one-fourth garden +mould, and one-fourth well rotted stable manure. The pots in which they +are planted should have on the top a layer of pebbles, or broken brick. +All the after culture they require is to keep them within bounds, +removing decayed portions as they appear and avoiding their having too +much moisture.</p> + +<p>The perennial border plants, besides those included above, are very +numerous; the directions for cultivation admitting, from their +similarity, of the following general rules:--</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>.--Although some few will admit of other modes of +multiplication, the most usually successful are by seed, by suckers, or +by offsets, and by division of the root, the last being applicable to +nine-tenths of the hardy herbaceous plants, and performed either by +taking up the whole plant and gently separating it by the hand, or by +opening the ground near the one to be divided, and cutting off a part of +the roots and crown to make new the sections being either at once +planted where they are to stand, or placed for a short period in a +nursery; the best time for this operation is the beginning of the rains. +Offsets or suckers being rapidly produced during the rains, will be best +removed towards their close, at which period, also, seed should be sown +to benefit by the moisture remaining in the soil. The depth at which +seeds are buried in the earth varies with their magnitude, all the pea +or vetch kind will bear being put at a depth of from half an inch to one +inch; but with the smallest seeds it will be sufficient to scatter them, +on the sifted soil, beating them down with, the palm of the hand.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>.--Transplanting this description of plants will be performed +to best advantage during the rains. The general management is +comprehended in stirring the soil occasionally in the immediate vicinity +of the roots; taking up overgrown plants, reducing and replanting them, +for which the rains is the best time; renewing the soil around the +roots; sticking the weak plants; pruning and trimming others, so as to +remove all weakly or decayed parts.</p> + +<p>Once a year, before the rains, the whole border should be dug one or two +spits deep, adding soil from the bottom of a tank or river; and again, +in the cold weather, giving a moderate supply of well rotted stable +manure, and leaf mould in equal portions.</p> + +<p>Crossing is considered as yet in its infancy even in England, and has, +except with the Marvel of Peru, hardly even been attempted in this +country. The <a href="#pollinate">principles under which this is effected</a> are fully explained +at page 27 of the former part of this work; but it may also be done in +the more woody kinds by grafting one or more of the same genus on the +stock of another, the seed of which would give a new variety.</p> + +<p>Saving seed requires great attention in India, as it should be taken +during the hot weather if possible; to effect which the earliest +blossoms must be preserved for this purpose. With some kinds it will be +advisable to assist nature by artificial impregnation with a camel hair +pencil, carefully placing the pollen on the point of the stigma. The +seeds should be carefully dried in some open, airy place, but not +exposed to the sun, care being afterwards taken that they shall be +deposited in a dry place, not close or damp, whence the usual plan of +storing the seeds in bottles is not advisable.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>BULBS.</p> + +<p>Bulbs have not as yet received that degree of attention in this country +(India) that they deserve, and they may be considered to form a separate +class, requiring a mode of culture differing from that of others. Their +slow progress has discouraged many and a supposition that they will only +thrive in the Upper Provinces, has deterred others from attempting to +grow them, an idea which has also been somewhat fostered by the +Horticultural Society, when they received a supply from England, having +sent the larger portion of them to their subscribers in the North West +Provinces.</p> + +<p>The NARCISSUS will thrive with care, in all parts of India, and it is a +matter of surprise that it is not more frequently met with. A good +Narcissus should have the six petals well formed, regularly and evenly +disposed, with a cup of good form, the colors distinct and clear, raised +on strong erect stems, and flowering together.</p> + +<p>The <i>Polyanthes Narcissus</i>, N. tazetta, <i>Narjus, hur'huft nusreen</i>, is +of two classes, white and sulphur colored, but these have sported into +almost endless varieties, especially amongst the Dutch, with whom this +and most other bulbs are great favorites. It flowers in February and +March.</p> + +<p>The <i>Poet's Narcissus</i>, N. poeticus, <i>Moozhan, zureenkuda</i> is the +favorite, alike for its fragrance and its delicate and graceful +appearance, the petals being white and the cup a deep yellow: it flowers +from the beginning of January to the end of March and thrives well. The +first within the recollection of the author, in Bengal, was at Patna, +nearly twelve years since, in possession of a lady there under whose +care it blossomed freely in the shade, in the month of February.</p> + +<p>The <i>Daffodil</i>, N. pseudo-narcissus, <i>Khumsee buroonk</i>, is of pale +yellow, and some of the double varieties are very handsome.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i> is by offsets, pulled off after the bulbs are taken out of +the ground, and sufficiently hardened.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--The best is a fresh, light loam with some well rotted cow +dung for the root fibres to strike into, and the bottom of the pot to +the height of one-third filled with pebbles or broken brick. They will +not blossom until the fifth year, and to secure strong flowers the bulbs +should only be taken up every third year. An eastern aspect where they +get only the morning sun, is to be preferred. The PANCRATIUM is a +handsome species that thrives well, some varieties being indigenous, and +others fully acclimated, generally flowering about May or June.</p> + +<p>The <i>One-flowered Pancratium</i>, P. zeylanicum, is rather later than the +rest in flowering and bears a curiously formed white flower.</p> + +<p>The <i>Two-flowered Pancratium</i>, P. triflorum, <i>Sada kunool</i>, was so named +by Roxburg, and gives a white flower in groups of threes, as its name +implies.</p> + +<p>The <i>Oval leaved pancratium</i>, P. ovatum, although of West Indian origin, +is so thoroughly acclimated as to be quite common in the Indian Garden.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>.--The best method is by suckers or offsets which are +thrown out very freely by all the varieties.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--Any common garden soil will suit this plant, but they +thrive best with a good admixture of rich vegetable mould.</p> + +<p>The HYACINTH, Hyacinthus, is an elegant flower, especially the double +kind. The first bloomed in Calcutta was exhibited at the flower show +some three years since, but proved an imperfect blossom and not clear +colored; a very handsome one, however, was shown by Mrs. Macleod in +February 1847, and was raised from a stock originally obtained at +Simlah. The Dutch florists have nearly two thousand varieties.</p> + +<p>The distinguishing marks of a good hyacinth are clear bright colors, +free from clouding or sporting, broad bold petals, full, large and +perfectly doubled, sufficiently revolute to give the whole mass a degree +of convexity: the stem strong and erect and the foot stalks horizontal +at the base, gradually taking an angle upwards as they approach the +crown, so as to place the flowers in a pyramidical form, occupying about +one-half the length of the stem.</p> + +<p>The <i>Amethyst colored Hyacinth</i>, H. amethystimus, is a fine handsome +flower, varying in shade from pale blue to purple, and having bell +shaped flowers, but the foot stalks are generally not strong and they +are apt to become pendulous.</p> + +<p>The <i>Garden Hyacinth</i>, H. orientalis, <i>Sumbul, abrood</i>, is the handsomer +variety, the flowers being trumpet shaped, very double and of varying +colors--pink, red, blue, white, or yellow, and originally of eastern +growth. It flowers in February and has considerable fragrance.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>.--In Europe this is sometimes performed by seed, but as +this requires to be put into the ground as soon as possible after +ripening, and moreover takes a long time to germinate, this method would +hardly answer in this country, which must therefore, at least for the +present, depend upon imported bulbs and offsets.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--This, as well as its after culture, is the same as for the +Narcissus. They will not show flowers until the second year, and not in +good bloom before the fifth or sixth of their planting out.</p> + +<p>The CROCUS, Crocus lutens, having no native name, has yet, it is +believed, been hardly ever known to flower here, even with the utmost +care. A good crocus has its colors clear, brilliant, and distinctly +marked.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>--must be effected, for new varieties, by seeds, but the +species are multiplied by offsets of the bulb.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i> Any fair garden soil is good for the crocus, but it prefers +that which is somewhat sandy.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>. The small bulbs should be planted in clumps at the depth of +two inches; the leaves should not be cut off after the plant has done +blossoming, as the nourishment for the future season's flower is +gathered by them.</p> + +<p>The IXIA, is originally from the Cape, and belongs to the class of +Iridae: the Ixia Chinensis, more properly Morea Chinensis, is a native +of India and China, and common in most gardens.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>--is by offsets.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i> The best is of peat and sand, it thrives however in good +garden soil, if not too stiff, and requires no particular cultivation.</p> + +<p>The LILY, Lilium, <i>Soosun</i>, the latter derived from the Hebrew, is a +handsome species that deserves more care than it has yet received in +India, where some of the varieties are indigenous.</p> + +<p>The <i>Japan Lily</i>, L. japonicum, is a very tall growing plant, reaching +about 5 feet in height with broad handsome flowers of pure white, and a +small streak of blue, in the rains.</p> + +<p>The <i>Daunan Lily</i>, L. dauricum, <i>Rufeef, soosun</i>, gives an erect, light +orange flower in the rains.</p> + +<p>The <i>Canadian lily</i>, L. Canadense <i>B'uhmutan</i>, flowers in the rains in +pairs of drooping reflexed blossoms of a rather darker orange, sometimes +spotted with a deeper shade.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>--is effected by offsets, which however will not flower +until the third or fourth year.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i> This is the same as for the Narcissus, but they do not +require taking up more frequently than once in three years, and that +only for about a month at the close of the rains, the Japan lily will +thrive even under the shade of trees.</p> + +<p>The AMARYLLIS is a very handsome flower, which has been found to thrive +well in this country, and has a great variety, all of which possess much +beauty, some kinds are very hardy, and will grow freely in the open +ground.</p> + +<p>The <i>Mexican Lily</i>, A. regina Mexicanae, is a common hardy variety found +in most gardens, yielding an orange red flower in the months of March +and April, and will thrive even under the shades of trees.</p> + +<p>The <i>Ceylonese Amaryllis</i>, A: zeylanica, <i>Suk'h dursun</i>, gives a pretty +flower about the same period.</p> + +<p>The <i>Jacoboean Lily</i>, A, formosissima, has a handsome dark red flower of +singular form, having three petals well expanded above, and three others +downwards rolled over the fructile organs on the base, so as to give the +idea of its being the model whence the Bourbon <i>fleur de lis</i> was taken, +the stem is shorter than the two previous kinds, blossoming in April or +May.</p> + +<p>The <i>Noble Amaryllis</i>, A: insignia, is a tall variety, having pink +flowers in March or April.</p> + +<p>The <i>Broad-leaved Amaryllis</i>, A: latifolia, is a native of India with +pinkish white flowers about the same period of the year.</p> + +<p>The <i>Belladonna Lily</i>. A: belladonna is of moderately high stem, +supporting a pink flower of the same singular form as the Jacoboean +lily, in May and June.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>--is by offsets of the bulb, which most kinds throw out +very freely, sometimes to the extent of ten, or a dozen in the season.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--For the choice kinds is the same as is required for the +narcissus, and water should on no account be given over the leaves or +upper part of the bulb.</p> + +<p>The common kinds look well in masses, and a good form of planting them +is in a series of raised circles, so as for the whole to form a round +bed.</p> + +<p>The DOG'S TOOTH VIOLET, Erythronium, is a pretty flowering bulb and a +great favorite with florists in Europe.</p> + +<p>The <i>Common Dog's tooth Violet</i>, E. dens canis, is ordinarily found of +reddish purple, there is also a white variety, but it is rare, neither +of them grow above three or four inches in height, and flower in March +or April.</p> + +<p>The <i>Indian Dog's tooth Violet</i>, E. indicum, <i>junglee kanda</i>, is found +in the hills, and flowers at about the same time, with a pink blossom.</p> + +<p>The SUPERB GLORIOSA, Gloriosa superba, <i>Kareearee, eeskooee langula</i>, is +a very beautiful species of climbing bulb, a native of this country, and +on that account neglected, although highly esteemed as a stove plant in +England; the leaves bear tendrils at the points, and the flower, which +is pendulous, when first expanded, throws its petals nearly erect of +yellowish green, which gradually changes to yellow at the base and +bright scarlet at the point; the pistil which shoots from the seed +vessel horizontally possesses the singular property of making an entire +circuit between sun-rise and sun-set each day that the flower continues, +which is generally for some time, receiving impregnation from every +author as it visits them in succession. It blooms in the latter part of +the rains.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i> is in India sometimes from seed, but in Europe it is +confined to division of the offsets.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, &c.</i>--Most garden soils will suit this plant, but it affords the +handsomest, and richest colored flowers in fresh loam mixed with peat or +leaf mould, without dung. It should not have too much water when first +commencing its growth, and it requires the support of a trellis over +which it will bear training to a considerable extent, growing to the +height of from five to six feet.</p> + +<p>MANY OTHER BULBS, there is no doubt, might be successfully grown in +India where every thing is favorable to their growth, and so much +facility presents itself for procuring them from the Cape of Good Hope; +the natural <i>habitat</i> of so many varieties of the handsomest species, +nearly all of them flowering between the end of the cold weather and the +close of the rains.</p> + +<p>Some of these being hardy, thrive in the open ground with but little +care or trouble, others requiring very great attention, protection from +exposure, and shelter from the heat of the sun, and the intensity of its +rays; which should therefore have a particular portion of the plant-shed +assigned to them, such being inhabitants of the green house in colder +climates, and the reason of assigning them such separated part of the +chief house, or what is better perhaps, a small house to themselves, is +that in culture, treatment, and other respects they do not associate +with plants of a different character.</p> + +<p>One great obstacle which the more extensive culture of bulbs has had to +contend against, may be found in that impatience that refuses to give +attention to what requires from three to five years to perfect, +generally speaking people in India prefer therefore to cultivate such +plants only as afford an immediate result, especially with relation to +the ornamental classes.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>.--The bulb after the formation of the first floral core is +instigated by nature to continue its species, as immediately the flower +fades the portion of bulb that gave it birth dies, for which purpose it +each year forms embryo bulbs on each side of the blossoming one, and +which although continued in the same external coat, are each perfect and +complete plants in themselves, rising from the crown of the root fibres: +in some kinds this is more distinctly exhibited by being as it were, +altogether outside and distinct from, the main, or original bulb. These +being separated for what are called offsets, and should be taken off +only when the parent bulb has been taken up and hardened, or the young +plant will suffer.</p> + +<p>Some species of bulbous rooted plants produce seeds, but this method of +reproduction, can seldom be resorted to in this country, and certainly +not to obtain new kinds, as the seeds require to be sown as soon as +ripe.</p> + +<p><i>Soil, Culture, &c</i>.--For the delicate and rare bulbs, it is advisable +to have pots purposely made of some fifteen inches in height with a +diameter of about seven or eight inches at the top, tapering down to +five, with a hole at the bottom as in ordinary flower pots, and for this +to stand in, another pot should be made without any hole, of a height of +about four inches, sufficient size to leave the space of about an inch +all round between the outer side of the plant pot and the inner side of +the smaller pot or saucer.</p> + +<p>This will allow the plant pot to be filled with crocks, pebbles, or +stone chippings to the height of five inches, or about an inch higher +than the level of the water in the saucer, above which may be placed +eight inches in depth of soil and one inch on the top of that, pebbles +or small broken brick. By this arrangement, the saucer being kept +filled, or partly filled, as the plant may require, with water, the +fibres of the root obtain a sufficiency of moisture for the maintenance +and advancement of the plant without chance of injury to the bulb or +stem, by applying water to the upper earth which is also in this +prevented from becoming too much saturated. Light rich sandy loam, with +a portion of sufficiently decomposed leaf mould, is the best soil for +the early stages of growing bulbs.</p> + +<p>So soon as the leaves change color and wither, then all moisture must be +withheld, but as the repose obtained by this means is not sufficient to +secure health to the plant, and ensure its giving strong blossoms, +something more is required to effect this purpose. This being rendered +the more necessary because in those that form offsets by the sides of +the old bulbs, they would otherwise become crowded and degenerate, the +same occurring also with those forming under the old ones, which will +get down so deep that they cease to appear.</p> + +<p>The time to take up the bulb is when the flower-stem and leaves have +commenced decay; taking dry weather for the purpose, if the bulbs are +hardy, or if in pots having reduced the moisture as above shown, but it +must be left to individual experience to discover how long the different +varieties should remain out of the ground, some requiring one month's +rest, and others enduring three or four, with advantage; more than that +is likely to be injurious. When out of the ground, during the first part +of the period they are so kept, it should be, say for a fortnight at +least, in any room where no glare exists, with free circulation of air, +after which the off-sets may be removed, and the whole exposed to dry on +a table in the verandah, or any other place that is open to the air, but +protected from the sunshine, which would destroy them.</p> + +<p>Little peculiarity of after treatment is requisite, except perhaps that +the bulbs which are to flower in the season should have a rather larger +proportion of leaf mould in the compost, and that if handsome flowers +are required, it will be well to examine the bulb every week at least by +gently taking the mould from around them, and removing all off-sets that +appear on the old bulb. For the securing strength to the plant also, it +will be well to pinch off the flower so soon as it shews symptoms of +decay.</p> + +<p>The wire worm is a great enemy to bulbs, and whenever it appears they +should be taken up, cleaned, and re-planted. It is hardly necessary to +say that all other vermin and insects must be watched, and immediately +removed.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>THE BIENNIAL BORDER PLANTS.</p> + +<p>It is only necessary to mention a few of these, as the curious in +floriculture will always make their own selection, the following will +therefore suffice.--</p> + +<p>The SPEEDWELL-LEAVED HEDGE HYSSOP, Gratiola veronicifolia, <i>Bhoomee, +sooél chumnee</i>, seldom cultivated, though deserving to be so, has a +small blue flower.</p> + +<p>The SIMPLE-STALKED LOBELIA, Lobelia simplex, introduced from the Cape, +yields a pretty blue flower.</p> + +<p>The EVENING PRIMROSE, Oenothera mutabilis, a pretty white flower that +blossoms in the evening, its petals becoming pink by morning.</p> + +<p>The FLAX-LEAVED PIMPERNEL, Anagallis linifolia, a rare plant, giving a +blue flower in the rains; introduced from Portugal.</p> + +<p>The BROWALLIA, of two lauds, both pretty and interesting plants; +originally from South America.</p> + +<p>The <i>Spreading Browallia</i>, B. demissa is the smallest of these, and +blossoms in single flowers of bright blue, at the beginning of the cold +weather.</p> + +<p>The <i>Upright Browallia</i>, B. alata, gives bloom in groups, of a bright +blue; there is also a white variety, both growing to the height of +nearly two feet.</p> + +<p>The SMALL-FLOWERED TURNSOLE, Heliotropium parviflorum, <i>B'hoo roodee</i>, +differs from the rest of this family which are mostly perennials; it +yields groups of white flowers, which are fragrant.</p> + +<p>The FLAX-LEAVED CANDYTUFT, Iberis linifolia, with its purple blossoms, +is very rare, but it has been sometimes grown with, success.</p> + +<p>The STOCK, Mathiola, is a very popular plant, and deserves more +extensive cultivation in this country.</p> + +<p>The <i>Great Sea Stock</i>, M sinuata, is rare and somewhat difficult to +bring into bloom, it possesses some fragrance and its violet colored +groups of flowers have rather a handsome appearance about May.</p> + +<p>The <i>Ten weeks' Stock</i>, M annua, is also a pleasing flower about the +same time. In England this is an annual, but here it is not found to +bloom freely until the second year, its color is scarlet, and it has +some fragrance.</p> + +<p>The <i>Purple Gilly flower</i>, M incana, is a pretty flower of purple color, +and fragrant. There are some varieties of it such as the <i>Double</i>, +multiplex, the <i>Brompton</i>, coccinea, and the <i>White</i>, alba, varying in +color and blossoming in April.</p> + +<p>The STARWORT, Aster, is a hardy flowering plant not very attractive, +except as it yields blossoms at all seasons, if the foot stalks are cut +off as soon as the flower has faded, there are very numerous varieties +of this plant which is, in Europe a perennial, but it is preferable to +treat it here as only biennial, otherwise it degenerates.</p> + +<p>The <i>Bushy Starwort</i>, A dumosus, is a free blossoming plant in the +rains, with white flowers.</p> + +<p>The <i>Silky leaved Starwort</i>, A. sericeus, is Indigenous in the hills, +putting forth its blue blossoms during the rains.</p> + +<p>The <i>Hairy Starwort</i>, A pilosus, is of very pale blue, and may, with +care, be made to blossom throughout the year.</p> + +<p>The <i>Chinese Starwort,</i> A chinensis, is of dark purple and very prolific +of blossoms at all times.</p> + +<p>The BEAUTIFUL JUSTICIA, J speciosa, although, described by Roxburgh as a +perennial, degenerates very much after the second year, it affords +bright carmine colored flowers at the end of the cold weather.</p> + +<p>The COMMON MARVEL OF PERU, Mirabilis Jalapa <i>Gul abas, krushna kelee</i>, +is vulgarly called the Four o'clock from its blossoms expanding in the +afternoon. There are several varieties distinguished only by difference +of color, lilac, red, yellow, orange, and white, which hybridize +naturally, and may easily be obliged to do so artificially, if any +particular shades are desired.</p> + +<p>The HAIRY INDIGO, Indigofera hirsuta, yields an ornamental flower with +abundance of purple blossoms.</p> + +<p>The HIBISCUS This class numbers many ornamental plants, the blossoms of +which all maintain the same character of having a darkened spot at the +base of each petal.</p> + +<p>The <i>Althaea frutex</i>, H syriacus, <i>Gurhul,</i> yields a handsome purple +flower in the latter part of the rains, there are also a white, and a +red variety.</p> + +<p>The <i>Stinging Hibiscus</i> H pruriens, has a yellow flower at the same +season.</p> + +<p>The <i>Hemp leaved Hibiscus</i>, H cannabinus, <i>Anbaree</i>, is much the same as +the last.</p> + +<p>The <i>Bladder Ketmia</i>, H trionum, is a dwarf species, yellow, with a +brown spot at the base of the petal.</p> + +<p>The <i>African Hibiscus</i> H africanus, is a very handsome flower growing to +a considerable height, expanding to the diameter of six to seven inches, +of a bright canary color, the dark blown spots at the base of the petals +very distinctly marked, the seeds were considered a great acquisition +when first obtained from Hobarton, but the plant has since been seen in +great perfection growing wild in the <i>Turaee</i> at the foot of the +Darjeeling range of hills, blooming in great perfection at the close of +the rains.</p> + +<p>The <i>Chinese Hibiscus</i>, H rosa sinensis, <i>Jooua, jasoon, jupa</i>, +although, really a perennial flower, is in greatest perfection if kept +as a biennial, it flowers during the greater part of the season a dark +red flower with a darker hued spot, there are also some other varieties +of different colors yellow, scarlet, and purple.</p> + +<p>The TREE MALLOW, Lavatera arborea, has of late years been introduced +from Europe, and may now be found in many gardens in India yielding +handsome purple flowers in the latter part of the rains.</p> + +<p>But it is unnecessary to continue such a mere catalogue, the character +and general cultivation of which require no distinct rules, but may all +be resolved into one general method, of which the following is a sketch.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>--They are all raised from seed, but the finest double +varieties require to be continued by cuttings. The seed should be sown +as soon as it can after opening, but if this occur during the rains, the +beds, or pots, perhaps better, must be sheltered, removing the plants +when they are few inches high to the spot where they are to remain, care +being at the same time taken in removing those that have tap roots, such +as Hollyhock, Lavatera, &c not to injure them, as it will check their +flowering strongly, the best mode is to sow those in pots and transplant +them, with balls of earth entire, into the borders, at the close of the +rains. Cuttings of such as are multiplied by that method, are taken +either from the flower stalks, or root-shoots, early in the rains, and +rooted either in pots, under shelter, or in beds, protected from the +heavy showers.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>--Cultivation after the plants are put into the borders, is the +same as for perennial plants. But the duration and beauty of the flowers +is greatly improved by cutting off the buds that shew the earliest, so +as to retard the bloom--and for the same reason the footstalk should be +cut off when the flowers fade, for as soon as the plant begins to form +seed, the blossoms deteriorate.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>THE ANNUAL BORDER PLANTS.</p> + +<p>These are generally known to every one, and many of them are so common +as hardly to need notice, a few of the most usual are however mentioned, +rather to recal the scattered thoughts of the many, than as a list of +annuals.</p> + +<p>The MIGNIONETTE, Resoda odorata, is too great a favorite both on account +of its fragrance and delicate flowers not to be well known, and by +repeated sowings it may be made under care to give flowers throughout +the year but it is advisable to renew the seed occasionally by fresh +importations from Europe, the Cape, or Hobarton.</p> + +<p>The PROLIFIC PINK, Dianthus prolifer <i>Kurumful</i>, is a pretty variety; +that blossoms freely throughout the year, sowing to keep up succession, +the shades and net work marks on them are much varied, and they make a +very pretty group together.</p> + +<p>The LUPINE, Lupinus, is a very handsome class of annuals, many of which +grow well in India, all of them flowering in the cold season.</p> + +<p>The <i>Small blue Lupine</i>, L. varius, was introduced from the Cape and is +the only one noticed by Roxburgh.</p> + +<p>The <i>Rose, and great blue Lupine</i>, L. pilosus and hirsutus, are both +good sized handsome flowers.</p> + +<p>The <i>Egyptian, or African Lupins</i>, L. thermis, <i>Turmus</i>, is the only one +named in the native language, and has a white flower.</p> + +<p>The <i>Tree Lupine</i>, L. arboreus, is a shrubby plant with a profusion of +yellow flowers which has been successfully cultivated from Hobarton +seed.</p> + +<p>The CATCHFLY, Silene, the only one known here is the small red, S. +rubella, having a very pretty pink flower appearing in the cold weather.</p> + +<p>The LARKSPUR, Delphinum, has not yet received any native name, and +deserves to be much more extensively cultivated, especially the +Neapolitan and variegated sorts. The common purple, D. Bhinensis, being +the one usually met with; it should be sown in succession from September +to December, but the rarer kinds must not be put in sooner than the +middle of November, as these do not blossom well before February, March, +or April.</p> + +<p>The SWEET PEA, Lathyrus odoralus, is not usually cultivated with +success, because it has been generally sown too late in the season, to +give a sufficient advance to secure blossoming. The seeds should be put +in about the middle of the rains in pots and afterwards planted out when +these cease, and carefully cultivated to obtain blossoms in February or +March.</p> + +<p>The ZINNIA, has only of late years been introduced, but by a mistake it +has generally been sown too late in the year to produce good flowers, +whereas if the seed is put into the ground about June, fine handsome +flowers will be the result, in the cold weather.</p> + +<p>The CENTAURY, Centaurea, is a very pretty class of annuals which grows, +and blossoms freely in this country.</p> + +<p>The <i>Woolly Centaury</i>, C. lanata, is mentioned by Roxburgh as indigenous +to the country, but the flowers are very small, of a purple color, +blossoming in December.</p> + +<p>The <i>Blue bottle</i> O. cyanus, <i>Azeez</i>, flowers in December and January, +of pink and blue.</p> + +<p>The <i>Sweet Sultan</i>, C. moschata, <i>Shah pusund</i> is known by its fragrant +and delicate lilac blossoms in January and February.</p> + +<p>The BALSAM, Impatiens, <i>Gulmu'hudee, doopatee</i> is not cultivated, or +encouraged as it should be in India, where some of the varieties are +indigenous. A very rich soil should be used.</p> + +<p>Dr. R. Wight observes, that Balsams of the colder Hymalayas, like those +of Europe, split from the base, rolling the segment towards the apex, +whilst those of the hotter regions do the reverse.</p> + +<p>All annuals require the same, or nearly the same treatment, of which the +following may be considered a fair sketch.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>.--These plants are all raised from seed put in the earth +generally on the close of the rains, although some plants, such as +nasturtium, sweet pea, scabious, wall-flower, and stock, are better to +be sown in pots about June or July, and then put out into the border as +soon as the rains cease. The seed must be sown in patches, rings, or +small beds according to taste, the ground being previously stirred, and +made quite fine, the earth sifted over them to a depth proportioned to +the size of the seed, and then gently pressed down, so as closely to +embrace every part of the seed. When the plants are an inch high they +must be thinned out to a distance of two, three, five, seven, or more +inches apart, according to their kind, whether spreading, or upright, +having reference also to their size; the plants thinned out, if +carefully taken up, may generally be transplanted to fill up any parts +of the border where the seed may have failed.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>. Weeding and occasionally stirring the soil, and sticking such +as require support, is all the cultivation necessary for annuals. If it +be desired to save seed, some of the earliest and most perfect blossoms +should be preserved for this purpose, so as to secure the best possible +seed for the ensuing year, not leaving it to chance to gather seed from +such plants as may remain after the flowers have been taken, as is +generally the case with native gardeners, if left to themselves.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>FLOWERS THAT GROW UNDER THE SHADE OF TREES.</p> + +<p>It is of some value to know what these are, but at the same time it must +be observed that no plant will grow under trees of the fir tribe, and it +would be a great risk to place any under the <i>Deodar</i>--with all others +also it must not be expected that any trees having their foliage so low +as to affect the circulation of air under their branches, can do +otherwise than destroy the plants placed beneath them.</p> + +<p>Those which may be so planted are;--Wood Anemone.--Common Arum.--Deadly +Nightshade--Indian ditto.--Chinese Clematis--Upright ditto--Woody +Strawberry--Woody Geranium.--Green Hellebore.--Hairy St. John's Wort.-- +Dog's Violet.--Imperial Fritillaria--The common Oxalis, and some other +bulbs.--Common Hound's Tongue.--Common Antirrhinum.--Common Balsam.-To +these may be added many of the orchidaceous plants.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>ROSES.</p> + +<p>THE ROSE, ROSA, <i>Gul</i> or <i>gulab</i>: as the most universally admired, +stands first amongst shrubs. The London catalogues of this beautiful +plant contain upwards of two thousand names: Mr. Loudon, in his +"<i>Encyclopaedia of Plants</i>" enumerates five hundred and twenty-two, of +which he describes three species, viz. Macrophylla, Brunonii, and +Moschata Nepalensis, as natives of Nepal; two, viz. Involucrata, and +Microphylla, as indigenous to India, and Berberifolia, and Moschata +arborea, as of Persian origin, whilst twelve appear to have come from +China. Dr. Roxburgh describes the following eleven species as +inhabitants of these regions:--</p> + +<table summary=""> +<COL ALIGN=CENTER> +<COL ALIGN=LEFT> +<TR><TD>Rosa</TD><TD> </TD><TD>involucrata,</TD></TR> +<TR><TD> -- </TD><TD> </TD><TD>Chinensis,</TD></TR> +<TR><TD> -- </TD><TD> </TD><TD>semperflorens,</TD></TR> +<TR><TD> -- </TD><TD> </TD><TD>recurva,</TD></TR> +<TR><TD> -- </TD><TD> </TD><TD>microphylla,</TD></TR> +<TR><TD> -- </TD><TD> </TD><TD>inermis,</TD></TR> +<TR><TD>Rosa</TD><TD> </TD><TD>centiflora,</TD></TR> +<TR><TD> -- </TD><TD> </TD><TD>glandulifera,</TD></TR> +<TR><TD> -- </TD><TD> </TD><TD>pubescens,</TD></TR> +<TR><TD> -- </TD><TD> </TD><TD>diffusa,</TD></TR> +<TR><TD> -- </TD><TD> </TD><TD>triphylla,</TD></TR> +</TABLE> + +<p>most of which, however, he represents to have been of Chinese origin.</p> + +<p>The varieties cultivated generally in gardens are, however, all that +will be here described.</p> + +<p>These are--</p> + +<p>1. The <i>Madras rose,</i> or <i>Rose Edward</i>, a variety of R centifolia, <i>Gul +ssudburul</i>, is the most common, and has multiplied so fast within a few +years, that no garden is without it, it blossoms all the year round, +producing large bunches of buds at the extremities of its shoots of the +year, but, if handsome, well-shaped flowers are desired, these must be +thinned out on their first appearance, to one or two, or at the most +three on each stalk. It is a pretty flower, but has little fragrance. +This and the other double sorts require a rich loam rather inclining to +clay, and they must be kept moist.<a href="#note138">[138]</a></p> + +<p>2. The <i>Bussorah Rose</i>, R gallica, <i>Gulsooree</i>, red, and white, the +latter seldom met with, is one of a species containing an immense number +of varieties. The fragrance of this rose is its greatest recommendation, +for if not kept down, and constantly looked to, it soon gets straggling, +and unsightly, like the preceding species too, the buds issue from the +ends of the branches in great clusters, which must be thinned, if well +formed fragrant blossoms are desired. The same soil is required as for +the preceding, with alternating periods of rest by opening the roots, +and of excitement by stimulating manure.</p> + +<p>3. The <i>Persian rose</i>, apparently R collina, <i>Gul eeran</i> bears a very +full-petaled blossom, assuming a darker shade as these approach nearer +to the centre, but, it is difficult to obtain a perfect flower, the +calyx being so apt to burst with excess of fulness, that if perfect +flowers are required a thread should be tied gently round the bud, it +has no fragrance. A more sandy soil will suit this kind, with less +moisture.</p> + +<p>4. The <i>Sweet briar</i> R rubiginosa, <i>Gul nusreen usturoon</i>, grows to a +large size, and blossoms freely in India, but is apt to become +straggling, although, if carefully clipped, it may be raised as a hedge +the same as in England, it is so universally a favorite as to need no +description.</p> + +<p>5. The <i>China blush rose</i>, R Indica (R Chinensis of Roxburgh), <i>Kut'h +gulab</i>, forms a pretty hedge, if carefully clipped, but is chiefly +usefully as a stock for grafting on. It has no odour.</p> + +<p>6 The <i>China ever-blowing rose</i>, R damascena of Roxburgh, <i>Adnee gula, +gulsurkh</i>, bearing handsome dark crimson blossoms during the whole of +the year, it is branching and bushy, but rather delicate, and wants +odour.</p> + +<p> 7 The <i>Moss Rose</i>, R muscosa, having no native name is found to exist, +but has only been known to have once blossomed in India; good plants may +be obtained from Hobart Town without much trouble.</p> + +<p>8 The <i>Indian dog-rose</i>, R arvensis, R involucrata of Roxburgh, <i>Gul bé +furman</i>, is found to glow wild in some parts of Nepal and Bengal, as +well as in the province of Buhar, flowering in February, the blossoms +large, white, and very fragrant, its cultivation extending is improving +the blossoms, particularly in causing the petals to be multiplied.</p> + +<p>9. The <i>Bramble-flowered rose</i> R multiflora, <i>Gul rana</i>, naturally a +trailer, may be trained to great advantage, when it will give beautiful +bunches of small many petaled flowers in February and March, of +delightful fragrance.</p> + +<p>10. The <i>Due de Berri rose</i>, a variety of R damascena, but having the +petals more rounded and more regular, it is a low rather drooping shrub +with delicately small branches.</p> + +<p><i>Propagation</i>.--All the species may be multiplied by seed, by layers, by +cuttings, by suckers, or from grafts, almost indiscriminately. Layering +is the easiest, and most certain mode of propagating this most beautiful +shrub.</p> + +<p>The roots that branch, out and throw up distinct shoots may be divided, +or cut off from the main root, and even an eye thus taken off may be +made to produce a good plant.</p> + +<p>Suckers, when they have pushed through the soil, may be taken up by +digging down, and gently detaching them from the roots.</p> + +<p>Grafting or budding is used for the more delicate kinds, especially the +sweet briar, and, by the curious, to produce two or more varieties on +one stem, the best stocks being obtained from the China, or the Dog +Rose.</p> + +<p><i>Soil &c.</i>--Any good loamy garden soil without much sand, suits the +rose, but to produce it in perfection the ground can hardly be too rich.</p> + +<p><i>Culture</i>.--Immediately at the close of the rains, the branches of most +kinds of roses, especially the double ones, should be cut down to not +more than six inches in length, removing at the same time, all old and +decayed wood, as well as all stools that have branched out from the main +one, and which will form new plants; the knife being at the same time +freely exercised in the removal of sickly and crowded fibres from the +roots; these should likewise be laid open, cleaned and pinned, and +allowed to remain exposed until blossom buds begin to appear at the end +of the first shoots; the hole must then be filled with good strong +stable manure, and slightly earthed over. About a month after, a basket +of stable dung, with the litter, should be heaped up round the stems, +and broken brick or turf placed over it to relieve the unsightly +appearance.</p> + +<p>While flowering, too, it will be well to water with liquid manure at +least once a week. If it be desired to continue the trees in blossom, +each shoot should be removed as soon as it has ceased flowering. To +secure full large blossoms, all the buds from a shoot should be cut off, +when quite young, except one.</p> + +<p>The <i>Sweet briar rose</i> strikes its root low, and prefers shade, the best +soil being a deep rich loam with very little sand, rather strong than +otherwise; it will be well to place a heap of manure round the stem, +above ground, covering over with turf, but it is not requisite to open +the roots, or give them so much manure as for other varieties. The sweet +briar must not be much pruned, overgrowth being checked rather by +pinching the young shoots, or it will not blossom, and it is rather +slower in throwing out shoots than other roses. In this country the best +mode of multiplying this shrub is by grafting on a China rose stock, as +layers do not strike freely, and cuttings cannot be made to root at all.</p> + +<p>The <i>Bramble-flowered rose</i> is a climber, and though not needing so +strong a soil as other kinds, requires it to be rich, and frequently +renewed, by taking away the soil from about the roots and supplying its +place with a good compost of loam, leaf mould, and well rotted dung, +pruning the root. The plants require shelter from the cold wind from the +North, or West, this, however, if carefully trained, they will form for +themselves, but until they do so, it is impossible to make them blossom +freely, the higher branches should be allowed to droop, and if growing +luxuriantly, with the shoots not shortened, they will the following +season, produce bunches of flowers at the end of every one, and have a +very beautiful effect, no pruning should be given, except what is just +enough to keep the plants within bounds, as they invariably suffer from +the use of the knife. This rose is easily propagated by cuttings or +layers, both of which root readily.</p> + +<p>The <i>China rose</i> thrives almost anywhere, but is best in a soil of loam +and peat, a moderate supply of water being given daily during the hot +weather. They will require frequent thinning out of the branches, and +are propagated by cuttings, which strike freely.<a href="#note139">[139]</a></p> + +<p>As before mentioned, Rose trees look well in a parterre by themselves, +but a few may be dispersed along the borders of the garden.</p> + +<p><i>Insects, &c.</i> The green, and the black plant louse are great enemies to +the rose tree, and, whenever they appear, it is advisable to cut out at +once the shoot attacked, the green caterpillar too, often makes +skeletons of the leaves in a short time, the ladybird, as it is commonly +called, is an useful insect, and worthy of encouragement, as it is a +destroyer of the plant louse.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>CREEPERS AND CLIMBERS</p> + +<p>The CLIMBING, and TWINING SHRUBS offer a numerous family, highly +deserving of cultivation, the following being a few of the most +desirable.</p> + +<p>The HONEY-SUCKLE, Caprifolium, having no native name, is too well known, +and too closely connected with the home associations of all to need +particularizing. It is remarkable that they always twine from east to +west, and rather die than submit to a change.</p> + +<p>The TRUMPET FLOWER, Bignonia, are an eminently handsome family, chiefly +considered stove plants in Europe, but here growing freely in the open +ground, and flowering in loose spikes.</p> + +<p>The MOUNTAIN EBONY, Bauhinia, the distinguishing mark of the class being +its two lobed leaves, most of them are indigenous, and in their native +woods attain an immense size, far beyond what botanists in Europe appear +to give them credit for.</p> + +<p>The VIRGIN'S BOWER, Clematis, finds some indigenous representatives in +this country, although unnamed in the native language; the odour however +is rather too powerful, and of some kinds even offensive, except +immediately after a shower of rain. They are all climbers, requiring the +same treatment as the honey suckle.</p> + +<p>The PASSION FLOWER, Passiflora, is a very large family of twining +shrubs, many of them really beautiful, and generally of easy +cultivation, this country being of the same temperature with their +indigenous localities.</p> + +<p>The RACEMOSE ASPARAGUS, A. racemosus, <i>Sadabooree, sutmoolee</i>, is a +native of India, and by nature a trailing plant, but better cultivated +as a climber on a trellis, in which way its delicate setaceous foliage +makes it at all times ornamental, and at the close of the rains it sends +forth abundant bunches of long erect spires of greenish white color, and +of delicious fragrance, shedding perfume all around to a great distance.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>KALENDAR WORK TO BE PERFORMED.</p> + + +<p>JANUARY.</p> + +<p>Thin out seeding annuals wherever they appear too thick. Water freely, +especially such plants as are in bloom, and keep all clean from weeds. +Cut off the footstalks of flowers, except such as are reserved for seed, +as soon as the petals fade. Collect the seeds of early annuals as they +ripen.</p> + + +<p>FEBRUARY.</p> + +<p>Continue as directed in last month. Prepare stocks for roses to be +grafted on, R. bengalensis, and R. canina are the best. Great care must +be paid to thinning out the buds of roses to insure perfect blossoms, as +well as to rubbing off the succulent upright shoots and suckers that are +apt to spring up at this period. Collect seeds as they ripen, to be +dried, or hardened in the shade.</p> + +<p>Collect seeds as they ripen, drying them carefully, for a few days in +the pods, and subsequently when freed from them in the shade, to put +them in the sun being highly injurious. Give a plentiful supply of water +in saucers to Narcissus, or other bulbs when flowering.</p> + + +<p>MARCH.</p> + +<p>Cut down the flower stalks of Narcissus that have ceased flowering, and +lessen the supply of water. Take up the tubers of Dahlias, and dry +gradually in an open place in the shade, but do not remove the offsets +for some days. Pot any of the species of Geranium that have been put out +after the rains, provided they are not in bloom. Give water freely to +the roots of all flowers that are in blossom. Mignionette that is in +blossom should have the seed pods clipped off with a pair of scissors +every day to continue it. Convolvulus in flower should be shaded early +in the morning, or it will quickly fade. The Evening Primrose should be +freely watered to increase the number of blossoms. Look to the +Carnations that are coming into bloom, give support to the flower stem, +cutting off all side shoots and buds, except the one intended to give a +handsome flower.</p> + + +<p>APRIL.</p> + +<p>Careful watering, avoiding any wetting of the leaves is necessary at +this period, and the saucers of all bulbs not yet flowered should be +kept constantly full, to promote blossoming--the saucers should however +be kept clean, and washed out every third day at least. Frequent weeding +must be attended to, with occasional watering all grass plots, or paths. +Wherever any part of the garden becomes empty by the clearing off of +annuals, it should be well dug to a depth of at least eighteen inches, +and after laying exposed in clods for a week or two, manured with tank +or road mud; leaf mould, or other good well rotted manure.</p> + + +<p>MAY.</p> + +<p>This is the time to make layers of Honeysuckle, Bauhinia, and other +climbing and twining shrubs.</p> + +<p>Mignionette must be very carefully treated, kept moist, and every seed- +pod clipped off as soon as the flower fades, or it will not be +preserved. Continue to dig, and manure the borders, not leaving the +manure exposed, or it will lose power. Make pipings and layers of +Carnations.</p> + + +<p>JUNE.</p> + +<p>Thin out the multitudinous buds of the Madras rose, also examine the +buds of the Persian rose, to prevent the bursting of the calyx by tying +with thread, or with a piece of parchment, or cardboard as directed for +Carnations.</p> + +<p>Watch Carnations to prevent the bursting of the calyx, and to remove +superfluous buds. Re pot Geraniums that are in sheds, or verandahs, so +soon as they have done flowering, also take up, and pot any that may yet +remain in the borders. Prune off also all superfluous, or straggling +branches. Continue digging over and manuring the flowering borders. Sow +Zinnias, also make cuttings of perennials and biennials that are +propagated by that means, and put in seeds of biennials under shelter, +as well as a few of the early annuals, particularly Stock and Sweet-pea.</p> + + +<p>JULY.</p> + +<p>Make cuttings and layers of hardy shrubs, and of the Fragrant Olive; put +in cuttings of the Willow, and some other trees. Plant out Pines, and +Casuarina, Cypress, Large-leaved fig, and the Laurel tribe. Transplant +young shrubs of a hardy nature.</p> + +<p>Divide the roots, and plant out suckers, or offsets of perennial border +plants. Make cuttings and sow seeds of biennials, as required; also a +few annuals to be hereafter transplanted. Sow also Geraniums. Continue +making pipings of Carnation, plant out, or transplant hardy perennials +into the borders.</p> + + +<p>AUGUST.</p> + +<p>This may be considered the best time for sowing the seeds of hardy +shrubs. Plant out Aralia, Canella, Magnolia, and other ornamental trees. +Transplant delicate and exotic shrubs. Remove, and plant out suckers, +and layers of hardy shrubs. Prune all shrubs freely.</p> + +<p>Divide, and plant out suckers, and offsets of hardy perennials, that +have formed during the rains. Plant out tender perennial plants, in the +borders, also biennials. Prune, and thin out perennial plants in the +borders. Put out in the borders such annuals as were sown in June, +protecting them from the heat of the sun in the afternoon. Sow a few +early annuals. Plant out Dahlia tubers where they are intended to +blossom, keeping them as much as possible in classes of colors. Make +pipings of Carnations.</p> + + +<p>SEPTEMBER.</p> + +<p>Prick out the cuttings of hardy shrubs that have been made before, or +during the rains, in beds for growing. Prune all flowering shrubs, +having due regard to the character of each, as bearing flowers on the +end of the shoots, or from the side exits, give the annual dressing of +manure to the entire shrubbery, with new upper soil.</p> + +<p>Remove the top soil from the borders, and renew with addition of a +moderate quantity of manure. Put out Geraniums into the borders, and set +rooted cuttings singly in pots. Plant out biennials in the borders, also +such annuals as have been sown in pots. Re-pot and give fresh earth to +plants in the shed.</p> + + +<p>OCTOBER.</p> + +<p>Open out the roots of a few Bussorah roses for early flowering, pruning +down all the branches to a height of six inches, removing all decayed, +and superannuated wood, dividing the roots, and pruning them freely. The +Madras roses should be treated in the same manner, not all at the same +time, but at intervals of a week between each cutting down, so as to +secure a succession for blossoming. Plant out rooted cuttings in beds, +to increase in size.</p> + +<p>Sow annuals freely, and thin out those put in last month, so as to leave +sufficient space for growing, at the same time transplanting the most +healthy to other parts of the border.</p> + + +<p>NOVEMBER.</p> + +<p>Continue opening the roots of Bussorah roses, as well as the Rose +Edward, and Madras roses, for succession to those on which this +operation was performed last month. Prune, and trim the Sweetbriar, and +Many-flowered rose.</p> + +<p><i>Flower-Garden</i>--Divide, and plant bulbs of all kinds, both, for border, +and pot flowering. Continue to sow annuals.</p> + + +<p>DECEMBER</p> + +<p>Continue opening the roots, and cutting down the branches of Bussorah, +and other roses for late flowering. Prune, and thin out also the China +and Persian roses, as well as the Many-flowered rose, if not done last +month. Train carefully all climbing and twining shrubs.</p> + +<p>Weed beds of annuals, and thin out, where necessary. Sow Nepolitan, and +other fine descriptions of Larkspur, as well as all other annuals for a +late show. Dahlias are now blooming in perfection, and should be closely +watched that every side-bud, or more than one on each stalk may be cut +off close, with a pair of scissors to secure full, distinctly colored, +and handsome flowers.</p> + +<p>[For further instructions respecting the culture of flowers in India I +must refer my readers to the late Mr. Speede's works, where they will +find a great deal of useful information not only respecting the flower- +garden, but the kitchen-garden and the orchard.]</p> + +<hr> + +<p>MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.</p> + +<p>THE TREE-MIGNONETTE.--This plant does not appear to be a distinct +variety, for the common mignonette, properly trained becomes shrubby. It +may be propagated by either seed or cuttings. When it has put forth four +leaves or is about an inch high, take it from the bed and put it by +itself into a moderate sized pot. As it advances in growth, carefully +pick off all the side shoots, leaving the leaf at the base of each shoot +to assist the growth of the plant. When it has reached a foot in height +it will show flower. But every flower must be nipped off carefully. +Support the stem with a stick to make it grow straight. Even when it has +attained its proper height of two feet again cut off the bloom for a few +days.</p> + +<p>It is said that Miss Mitford, the admired authoress, was the first to +discover that the common mignonette could be induced to adopt tree-like +habits. The experiment has been tried in India, but it has sometimes +failed from its being made at the wrong season. The seed should be sown +at the end of the rains.</p> + +<p>GRAFTING.--Take care to unite exactly the inner bark of the scion with +the inner bark of the stock in order to facilitate the free course of +the sap. Almost any scion will take to almost any sort of tree or plant +provided there be a resemblance in their barks. The Chinese are fond of +making fantastic experiments in grafting and sometimes succeed in the +most heterogeneous combinations, such as grafting flowers upon fruit +trees. Plants growing near each other can sometimes be grafted by the +roots, or on the living root of a tree cut down another tree can be +grafted. The scions are those shoots which united with the stock form +the graft. It is desirable that the sap of the stock should be in brisk +and healthy motion at the time of grafting. The graft should be +surrounded with good stiff clay with a little horse or cow manure in it +and a portion of cut hay. Mix the materials with a little water and then +beat them up with a stick until the compound is quite ductile. When +applied it may be bandaged with a cloth. The best season for grafting in +India is the rains.</p> + +<p>MANURE.--Almost any thing that rots quickly is a good manure. It is +possible to manure too highly. A plant sometimes dies from too much +richness of soil as well as from too barren a one.</p> + +<p>WATERING.--Keep up a regular moisture, but do not deluge your plants +until the roots rot. Avoid giving very cold water in the heat of the day +or in the sunshine. Even in England some gardeners in a hot summer use +luke-warm water for delicate plants. But do not in your fear of +overwatering only wet the surface. The earth all round and below the +root should be equally moist, and not one part wet and the other dry. If +the plant requires but little water, water it seldom, but let the water +reach all parts of the root equally when you water at all.</p> + +<p>GATHERING AND PRESERVING FLOWERS.--Always use the knife, and prefer such +as are coming into flower rather than such as are fully expanded. If +possible gather from crowded plants, or parts of plants, so that every +gathering may operate at the same time as a judicious pruning and +thinning. Flowers may be preserved when gathered, by inserting their +ends in winter, in moist earth, or moss; and may be freshened, when +withered, by sprinkling them with water, and putting them in a close +vessel, as under a bellglass, handglass, flowerpot or in a botanic box; +if this will not do, sprinkle them with warm water heated to 80° or 90°, +and cover them with a glass.--<i>Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening</i>.</p> + +<p>PIPING---is a mode of propagation by cuttings and is adopted in plants +having joined tubular stems, as the dianthus tribe. When the shoot has +nearly done growing (soon after its blossom has fallen) its extremity is +to be separated at a part of the stem where it is hard and ripe. This is +done by holding the root with one hand and with the other pulling the +top part above the pair of leaves so as to separate it from the root +part of the stem at the socket, formed by the axillae of the leaves, +leaving the stem to remain with a tubular or pipe-looking termination. +The piping is inserted in finely sifted earth to the depth of the first +joint or pipe and its future management regulated on the same general +principles as cuttings.--<i>From the same</i>.</p> + +<p>BUDDING.--This is performed when the leaves of plants have grown to +their full size and the bud is to be seen at the base of it. The +relative nature of the bud and the stock is the same as in grafting. +Make a slit in the bark of the stock, to reach from half an inch to an +inch and a half down the stock, according to the size of the plant; then +make another short slit across, that you may easily raise the bark from +the wood, then take a very thin slice of the bark from the tree or plant +to be budded, a little below a leaf, and bring the knife out a little +above it, so that you remove the leaf and the bud at its base, with the +little slice you have taken. You will perhaps have removed a small bit +of the wood with the bark, which you must take carefully out with the +sharp point of your knife and your thumb; then tuck the bark and bud +under the bark of the stock which you carefully bind over, letting the +bud come at the part where the slits cross each other. No part of the +stock should be allowed to grow after it is budded, except a little +shoot or so, above the bud, just to draw the sap past the +bud.--<i>Gleenny's Hand Book of Gardening</i>.</p> + +<p>ON PYRAMIDS OF ROSES.--The standard Roses give a fine effect to a bed of +Roses by being planted in the middle, forming a pyramidal bed, or alone +on grass lawns; but the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of a pyramid of Roses is that +formed of from one, two, or three plants, forming a pyramid by being +trained up three strong stakes, to any length from 10 to 25 feet high +(as may suit situation or taste), placed about two feet apart at the +bottom; three forming an angle on the ground, and meeting close together +at the top; the plant, or plants to be planted inside the stakes. In two +or three years, they will form a pyramid of Roses which baffles all +description. When gardens are small, and the owners are desirous of +having <i>multum in parvo</i>, three or four may be planted to form one +pyramid; and this is not the only object of planting more sorts than one +together, but the beauty is also much increased by the mingled hues of +the varieties planted. For instance, plant together a white Boursault, a +purple Noisette, a Stadtholder, Sinensis (fine pink), and a Moschata +scandens and such a variety may be obtained, that twenty pyramids may +have each, three or four kinds, and no two sorts alike on the whole +twenty pyramids. A temple of Roses, planted in the same way, has a +beautiful appearance in a flower garden--that is, eight, ten, or twelve +stout peeled Larch poles, well painted, set in the ground, with a light +iron rafter from each, meeting at the top and forming a dome. An old +cable, or other old rope, twisted round the pillar and iron, gives an +additional beauty to the whole. Then plant against the pillars with two +or three varieties, each of which will soon run up the pillars, and form +a pretty mass of Roses, which amply repays the trouble and expense, by +the elegance it gives to the garden--<i>Floricultural Cabinet</i>.</p> + +<p>How TO MAKE ROSE WATER, &c--Take an earthen pot or jar well glazed +inside, wide in the month, narrow at the bottom, about 15 inches high, +and place over the mouth a strainer of clean coarse muslin, to contain a +considerable quantity of rose leaves, of some highly fragrant kind. +Cover them with a second strainer of the same material, and close the +mouth of the jar with an iron lid, or tin cover, hermetically sealed. On +this lid place hot embers, either of coal or charcoal, that the heat may +reach the rose-leaves without scorching or burning them.</p> + +<p>The aromatic oil will fall drop by drop to the bottom with the water +contained in the petals. When time has been allowed for extracting the +whole, the embers must be removed, and the vase placed in a cool spot.</p> + +<p>Rose-water obtained in this mode is not so durable as that obtained in +the regular way by a still but it serves all ordinary purposes. Small +alembics of copper with a glass capital, may be used in three different +ways.</p> + +<p>In the first process, the still or alembic must be mounted on a small +brick furnace, and furnished with a worm long enough to pass through a +pan of cold water. The petals of the rose being carefully picked so as +to leave no extraneous parts, should be thrown into the boiler of the +still with a little water.</p> + +<p>The great point is to keep up a moderate fire in the furnace, such as +will cause the vapour to rise without imparting a burnt smell to the +rose water.</p> + +<p>The operation is ended when the rose water, which falls drop by drop in +the tube, ceases to be fragrant. That which is first condensed has very +little scent, that which is next obtained is the best, and the third and +last portion is generally a little burnt in smell, and bitter in taste. +In a very small still, having no worm, the condensation must be produced +by linen, wetted in cold water, applied round the capital. A third +method consists in plunging the boiler of the still into a larger vessel +of boiling water placed over a fire, when the rose-water never acquires +the burnt flavour to which we have alluded. By another process, the +still is placed in a boiler filled with sand instead of water, and +heated to the necessary temperature.</p> + +<p>But this requires alteration, or it is apt to communicate a baked +flavour.</p> + +<p>SYRUP OF ROSES--May be obtained from Belgian or monthly roses, picked +over, one by one, and the base of the petal removed. In a China Jar +prepared with a layer of powdered sugar, place a layer of rose-leaves +about half an inch thick; then of sugar, then of leaves, till the vessel +is full.</p> + +<p>On the top, place a fresh wooden cover, pressed down with a weight. By +degrees, the rose-leaves produce a highly-coloured, highly-scented +syrup; and the leaves form a colouring-matter for liqueurs.</p> + +<p>PASTILLES DU SERAIL.--Sold in France as Turkish, in rosaries and other +ornaments, are made of the petals of the Belgian or Puteem Rose, ground +to powder and formed into a paste by means of liquid gum.</p> + +<p>Ivory-black is mixed with the gum to produce a black colour; and +cinnabar or vermilion, to render the paste either brown or red.</p> + +<p>It may be modelled by hand or in a mould, and when dried in the sun, or +a moderate oven, attains sufficient hardness to be mounted in gold or +silver.--<i>Mrs. Gore's Rose Fancier's Manual</i>.</p> + +<p>OF FORMING AND PRESERVING HERBARIUMS.--The most exact descriptions, +accompanied with the most perfect figures, leave still something to be +desired by him who wishes to know completely a natural being. This +nothing can supply but the autopsy or view of the object itself. Hence +the advantage of being able to see plants at pleasure, by forming dried +collections of them, in what are called herbariums.</p> + +<p>A good practical botanist, Sir J.E. Smith observes, must be educated +among the wild scenes of nature, while a finished theoretical one +requires the additional assistance of gardens and books, to which must +be superadded the frequent use of a good herbarium. When plants are well +dried, the original forms and positions of even their minutest parts, +though not their colours, may at any time be restored by immersion in +hot water. By this means the productions of the most distant and various +countries, such as no garden could possibly supply, are brought together +at once under our eyes, at any season of the year. If these be assisted +with drawings and descriptions, nothing less than an actual survey of +the whole vegetable world in a state of nature, could excel such a store +of information.</p> + +<p>With regard to the mode or state in which plants are preserved, +desiccation, accompanied by pressing, is the most generally used. Some +persons, Sir J.E. Smith observes, recommend the preservation of +specimens in weak spirits of wine, and this mode is by far the most +eligible for such as are very juicy: but it totally destroys their +colours, and often renders their parts less fit for examination than by +the process of drying. It is, besides, incommodious for frequent study, +and a very expensive and bulky way of making an herbarium.</p> + +<p>The greater part of plants dry with facility between the leaves of +books, or other paper, the smoother the better. If there be plenty of +paper, they often dry best without shifting; but if the specimens are +crowded, they must be taken out frequently, and the paper dried before +they are replaced. The great point to be attended to is, that the +process should meet with no check. Several vegetables are so tenacious +of their vital principle, that they will grow between papers; the +consequence of which is, a destruction of their proper habit and colors. +It is necessary to destroy the life of such, either by immersion in +boiling water or by the application of a hot iron, such as is used for +linen, after which they are easily dried. The practice of applying such +an iron, as some persons do, with great labor and perseverance, till the +plants are quite dry, and all their parts incorporated into a smooth +flat mass is not approved of. This renders them unfit for subsequent +examination, and destroys their natural habit, the most important thing +to be preserved. Even in spreading plants between papers, we should +refrain from that practice and artificial disposition of their branches, +leaves, and other parts, which takes away from their natural aspect, +except for the purpose of displaying the internal parts of some one or +two of their flowers, for ready observation. The most approved method of +pressing is by a box or frame, with a bottom of cloth or leather, like a +square sieve. In this, coarse sand or small shot may be placed; in any +quantity very little pressing is required in drying specimens; what is +found necessary should be applied equally to every part of the bundle +under the operation.</p> + +<p>Hot-pressing, by means of steel net-work heated, and placed in alternate +layers with the papers, in the manner of hot pressing paper, and the +whole covered with the equalizing press, above described, would probably +be an improvement, but we have not heard of its being tried. At all +events, pressing by screw presses, or weighty non-elastic bodies, must +be avoided, as tending to bruise the stalks and other protuberant parts +of plants.</p> + +<p>"After all we can do," Sir J.E. Smith observes, "plants dry very +variously. The blue colours of their flowers generally fade, nor are +reds always permanent. Yellows are much more so, but very few white +flowers retain their natural aspect. The snowdrop and parnassia, if well +dried, continue white. Some greens are much more permanent than others; +for there are some natural families whose leaves, as well as flowers, +turn almost black by drying, as melampyrum, bartsia, and their allies, +several willows, and most of the orchideae. The heaths and firs in +general cast off their leaves between papers, which appears to be an +effort of the living principle, for it is prevented by immersion of the +fresh specimen in boiling water."</p> + +<p>The specimens being dried, are sometimes kept loose between leaves of +paper; at other times wholly gummed or glued to paper, but most +generally attached by one or more transverse slips of paper, glued on +one end and pinned at the other, so that such specimens can readily be +taken out, examined, and replaced. On account of the aptitude of the +leaves and other parts of dried plants to drop off, many glue them +entirely, and such seems to be the method adopted by Linnaeus, and +recommended by Sir J.E. Smith. "Dried specimens," the professor +observes, "are best preserved by being fastened, with weak carpenter's +glue, to paper, so that they may be turned over without damage. Thick +and heavy stalks require the additional support of a few transverse +strips of paper, to bind them more firmly down. A half sheet, of a +convenient folio size, should be allotted to each species, and all the +species of a genus may be placed in one or more whole sheets or folios. +On the latter outside should be written the name of the genus, while the +name of every species, with its place of growth, time of gathering, the +finder's name, or any other concise piece of information, may be +inscribed on its appropriate paper. This is the plan of the Linnaean +herbarium."--<i>Loudon</i>.</p> + +<H3>THE END.</H3> + + + +<H3>FOOTNOTES.</H3> +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="note001"><b>[001]</b></a> Some of the finest <i>Florists flowers</i> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note002"><b>[002]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note003"><b>[003]</b></a> "That which peculiarly distinguishes the gardens of England," says +Repton, "is the beauty of English verdure: <i>the grass of the mown lawn</i>, +uniting with, the grass of the adjoining pastures, and presenting <i>that +permanent verdure</i> 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 <i>of close +green turf</i>, 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, (<i>Panicum Dactylon</i>,) 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 (<i>Saccharum cylindricum</i>) 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note004"><b>[004]</b></a> 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 <i>politically free</i>, +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: "<i>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</i>."</p> + +<p><a name="note005"><b>[005]</b></a> <i>Literary Recreations</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note006"><b>[006]</b></a> 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.--<i>Literary Recreations</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note007"><b>[007]</b></a> 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.--<i>D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note008"><b>[008]</b></a> <i>Crisped knots</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare makes mention of garden <i>knots</i> in his <i>Richard the Second</i>, +where he compares an ill governed state to a neglected garden.</p> + +<pre> + 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 <i>knots</i> disordered, and her wholesome herbs + Swarming with caterpillars. +</pre> + +<p>There is an allusion to garden <i>knots</i> in <i>Holinshed's Chronicle</i>. In +1512 the Earl of Northumberland "had but one gardener who attended +hourly in the garden for setting of erbis and <i>chipping of knottis</i> and +sweeping the said garden clean."</p> + +<p><a name="note009"><b>[009]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note010"><b>[010]</b></a> <i>Revived Adonis</i>,--for, according to tradition he died every year +and revived again. <i>Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son</i>,--that is, of +Ulysses, whom he entertained on his return from Troy. <i>Or that, not +mystic</i>--not fabulous as the rest, but a real garden which Solomon made +for his wife, the daughter of Pharoah, king of Egypt--WARBURTON</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p><a name="note011"><b>[011]</b></a> "We are unwilling to diminish or lose the credit of Paradise, or +only pass it over with [the Hebrew word for] <i>Eden</i>, 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."--<i>Sir Thomas Browne.--Bohn's Edition of Sir +Thomas Browne's Works, vol. 2, page</i> 498.</p> + +<p><a name="note012"><b>[012]</b></a> 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, <i>Agricultura proxima sapientiae</i>. 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 <i>tales anima +concordes</i> be our motto and our epitaph."</p> + +<p><a name="note013"><b>[013]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note014"><b>[014]</b></a> See Mr. Loudon's most interesting and valuable work entitled +<i>Arboretum et Fruticetum Britanicum</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note015"><b>[015]</b></a> 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<a href="#note140">[140]</a> (after my manner, in very little +compass), which are in imitation of Horace's--<i>Omne tulit punctum. +Pope.--Spence's Anecdotes</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note016"><b>[016]</b></a> 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 <i>all</i> plain, +and nothing can please without variety. <i>Pope--Spence's Anecdotes</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note017"><b>[017]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<pre> + 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. +</pre> + +<p><a name="note018"><b>[018]</b></a> 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 <i>Loudon's</i> excellent +<i>Encyclopaedia of Gardening</i>. 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."</p> + +<p><a name="note019"><b>[019]</b></a> 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:</p> + +<pre> + Pope came clean off with Homer, but they say, + Broome went before, and kindly swept the way. +</pre> + +<p>Fenton was another of Pope's auxiliaries. He translated the 1st, 4th, +19th and 20th books (of the Odyssey). Pope himself translated the rest.</p> + +<p><a name="note020"><b>[020]</b></a> Stowe</p> + +<p><a name="note021"><b>[021]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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</p> + +<pre> + Dorset, the grace of courts, the Muse's pride. +</pre> + +<p>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>I +promise to pay Mr. John Dryden, on demand, the sum of £500. Dorset</i>."</p> + +<p><a name="note022"><b>[022]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note023"><b>[023]</b></a> It has been said that in laying out the grounds at Hagley, Lord +Lyttelton received some valuable hints from the author of <i>The Seasons</i>, +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.</p> + +<pre> + 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. +</pre> + +<p>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.</p> + +<pre> + 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. +</pre> + +<p>There is also at Hagley a complimentary inscription on an urn to +Alexander Pope; and, on an octagonal building called <i>Thomson's Seat</i>, +there is an inscription to the author of <i>The Seasons</i>. 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note024"><b>[024]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note025"><b>[025]</b></a> 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--"<i>This table was the property of James Thomson, and always +stood in this seat.</i>"</p> + +<p><a name="note026"><b>[026]</b></a> Shene or Sheen: the old name of Richmond, signifying in Saxon +<i>shining</i> or <i>splendour</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note027"><b>[027]</b></a> Highgate and Hamstead.</p> + +<p><a name="note028"><b>[028]</b></a> In his last sickness</p> + +<p><a name="note029"><b>[029]</b></a> On looking back at page 36 I find that I have said in the <a href="#note010">foot +note</a> that it is only within <i>the present century</i> that gardening has +been elevated into <i>a fine art</i>. I did not mean within the 55 years of +this 19th century, but <i>within a hundred years</i>. 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note030"><b>[030]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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:--</p> + +<p>"Our readers"--says the <i>Banffshire Journal</i>--"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."</p> + +<p><a name="note031"><b>[031]</b></a> Brown succeeded to the popularity of Kent. He was nicknamed, +<i>Capability Brown</i>, because when he had to examine grounds previous to +proposed alterations and improvements he talked much of their +<i>capabilities</i>. 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.</p> + +<pre> + Here universal Pan, + Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, + Leads on the eternal Spring. +</pre> + +<p>It is said that the <i>gardens</i> at Nuneham were laid out by Mason, the +poet.</p> + +<p><a name="note032"><b>[032]</b></a> 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."</p> + +<p><a name="note033"><b>[033]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note034"><b>[034]</b></a> Addison in the 477th number of the <i>Spectator</i> 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."</p> + +<p><a name="note035"><b>[035]</b></a> Lord Bathurst, says London, informed Daines Barrington, that <i>he</i> +(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:</p> + +<pre> + The river wanders at its own sweet will. +</pre> + +<p>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: "<i>The gentle stream was taught to +serpentize at its pleasure."</i></p> + +<p><a name="note036"><b>[036]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Look here," says <i>Rosalind</i>, "what I found on a <a name="palms">palm tree</a>." "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 <i>plane tree</i>. +"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 <i>salix caprea</i>, 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:--</p> + +<pre> + "Ye leaning palms, that seem to look + Pleased o'er your image in the brook." +</pre> + +<p>That Shakespeare included the willow in his forest scenery is certain, +from another passage in the same play:--</p> + +<pre> + "West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom. + The <i>rank of osiers</i> by the murmuring stream, + Left on your right hand brings you to the place." +</pre> + +<p>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.--<i>Miss Baker's "Glossary of +Northamptonshire Words." (Quoted by the London Athenaeum</i>.)</p> + +<p><a name="note037"><b>[037]</b></a> 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 <i>Dove's Nest</i>, 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 '<i>This house to let</i>' 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!'"</p> + +<p>The beautiful grounds of the late Professor Wilson at Elleray, we are +told by Mr. Howitt in his interesting "<i>Homes and Haunts of the British +Poets</i>" 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note038"><b>[038]</b></a> In Churton's <i>Rail Book of England</i>, 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 <a href="#twickenham">earlier page</a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note039"><b>[039]</b></a> <i>One would have thought &c.</i> See the garden of Armida, as +described by Tasso, C. xvi. 9, &c.</p> + +<pre> + "In lieto aspetto il bel giardin s'aperse &c." +</pre> + +<p>Here was all that variety, which constitutes the nature of beauty: hill +and dale, lawns and crystal rivers, &c.</p> + +<pre> + "And, that which all faire works doth most aggrace, + "The art, which all that wrought, appearéd in no place." +</pre> + +<p>Which is literally from Tasso, C, xvi 9.</p> + +<pre> + "E quel, che'l bello, e'l caro accresce à l'opre, + "L'arte, che tutto fa, nulla si scopre." +</pre> + +<p>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, <i>Il fonte del riso</i>. UPTON.</p> + +<p><a name="note040"><b>[040]</b></a> Cowper was evidently here thinking rather of Milton than of Homer.</p> + +<pre> + <i>Flowers of all hue</i>, and without thorns the rose. +</pre> + +<div><i>Paradise Lost</i>.</div> + +<p>Pope translates the passage thus;</p> + +<pre> + Beds of all various <i>herbs</i>, for ever green, + In beauteous order terminate the scene. +</pre> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><a name="note041"><b>[041]</b></a></p> +<pre> + <i>And over him, art stryving to compayre + With nature, did an arber greene dispied</i> +</pre> + +<p>This whole episode is taken from Tasso, C. 16, where Rinaldo is +described in dalliance with Armida. The bower of bliss is her garden</p> + +<pre> + "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." +</pre> + +<p>See also Ovid, <i>Met</i> iii. 157</p> + +<pre> + "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" +</pre> + +<div>UPTON</div> + +<p>If this passage may be compared with Tasso's elegant description of +Armida's garden, Milton's <i>pleasant grove</i> may vie with both.<a href="#note141">[141]</a> 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.<a href="#note142">[142]</a> 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.</p> + +<pre> + <i>And fast beside these trickled softly downe. + A gentle stream, &c.</i> +</pre> + +<p>Compare the following stanza in the continuation of the <i>Orlando +Innamorato</i>, by Nilcolo degli Agostinti, Lib. iv, C. 9.</p> + +<pre> + "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," +</pre> + +<p>Spenser's obligations to this poem seem to have escaped the notice of +his commentators. J.C. WALKER.</p> + +<p><a name="note042"><b>[042]</b></a> The oak was dedicated to Jupiter, and the poplar to Hercules.</p> + +<p><a name="note043"><b>[043]</b></a> <i>Sicker</i>, surely; Chaucer spells it <i>siker</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note044"><b>[044]</b></a> <i>Yode</i>, went.</p> + +<p><a name="note045"><b>[045]</b></a> <i>Tabreret</i>, a tabourer.</p> + +<p><a name="note046"><b>[046]</b></a> <i>Tho</i>, then</p> + +<p><a name="note047"><b>[047]</b></a> <i>Attone</i>, at once--with him.</p> + +<p><a name="note048"><b>[048]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note049"><b>[049]</b></a> 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 <i>Cave of Spleen</i>.</p> + +<pre> + No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows, + The dreaded east is all the wind that blows. +</pre> + +<div><i>Rape of the Lock</i>.</div> + +<p><a name="note050"><b>[050]</b></a> One sweet scene of early pleasures in my native land I have +commemorated in the following sonnet:--</p> + +<p>NETLEY ABBEY.</p> + +<pre> + 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! +</pre> + +<div>D.L.R.</div> + +<p><a name="note051"><b>[051]</b></a> "I was ever more disposed," says Hume, "to see the favourable than +the unfavourable side of things; <i>a turn of mind which it is more happy +to possess, than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year</i>."</p> + +<p><a name="note052"><b>[052]</b></a> So called, because the grounds were laid out in a tasteful style, +under the direction of Lord Auckland's sister, the Honorable Miss Eden.</p> + +<p><a name="note053"><b>[053]</b></a> <i>Songs of the East by Mrs. W.S. Carshore. D'Rozario & Co, +Calcutta</i> 1854.</p> + +<p><a name="note054"><b>[054]</b></a> The lines form a portion of a poem published in <i>Literary Leaves</i> +in the year 1840.</p> + +<p><a name="note055"><b>[055]</b></a> Perhaps some formal or fashionable wiseacres may pronounce such +simple ceremonies <i>vulgar</i>. 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, <i>it's low life</i>." And yet the merrie makings on May- +day which are now deemed <i>ungenteel</i> by chimney-sweepers were once the +delight of Princes:--</p> + +<pre> + 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. +</pre> + +<div><i>Chaucer</i>.</div> + +<p><a name="note056"><b>[056]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<pre> + The <i>hawthorn bush</i>, with seats beneath the shade, + For talking age and whispering lovers made. +</pre> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<pre> + '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 + <i>No blossomed hawthorn shields the cottage dear</i>: + 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.' +</pre> + +<p><a name="note057"><b>[057]</b></a> On May-day, the Ancient Romans used to go in procession to the +grotto of Egeria.</p> + +<p><a name="note058"><b>[058]</b></a> See what is said of <a href="#palms">palms</a> in a note on page 81.</p> + +<p><a name="note059"><b>[059]</b></a> Phillips's <i>Flora Historica</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note060"><b>[060]</b></a> The word primrose is supposed to be a compound of <i>prime</i> and +<i>rose</i>, and Spenser spells it prime rose</p> + +<pre> + The pride and prime rose of the rest + Made by the maker's self to be admired +</pre> + +<p>The Rev. George Croly characterizes Bengal as a mountainous country--</p> + +<pre> + There's glory on thy <i>mountains</i>, proud Bengal-- +</pre> + +<p>and Dr. Johnson in his <i>Journey of a day</i>, (Rambler No. 65) charms the +traveller in Hindustan with a sight of the primrose and the oak.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Primula</i>--Primula denticula--Stuartii--rotundifolia--with +the names in the Mawar or Nepaulese dialect.</p> + +<p><a name="note061"><b>[061]</b></a> 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. <i>Sir Thomas Browne</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note062"><b>[062]</b></a> The allusion to the cowslip in Shakespeare's description of +Imogene must not be passed over here.--</p> + +<pre> + On her left breast + A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drop + I' the bottom of the cowslip. +</pre> + +<p><a name="note063"><b>[063]</b></a> 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--<i>Glenny</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note064"><b>[064]</b></a> In a greenhouse</p> + +<p><a name="note065"><b>[065]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note066"><b>[066]</b></a> 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!)</p> + +<p><a name="note067"><b>[067]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note068"><b>[068]</b></a> It has been observed that the defense is supplied in the following +line--<i>want of sense</i>--a stupidity that "errs in ignorance and not in +cunning."</p> + +<p><a name="note069"><b>[069]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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. <i>Phillips' +Flora Historica</i>.</p> + +<p>A doubt hangs over the poetical history of the modern, as well as of the +ancient flower, owing to the appellation <i>Harebell</i> being, +indiscriminately applied both to <i>Scilla</i> wild Hyacinth, and also to +<i>Campanula rotundifolia, Blue Bell</i>. Though the Southern bards have +occasionally misapplied the word <i>Harebell</i> 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 <i>Campanula</i>, and the +Bluebell, so celebrated in Scottish song, is the wild Hyacinth or +<i>Scilla</i> while in England the same names are used conversely, the +<i>Campanula</i> being the Bluebell and the wild Hyacinth the Harebell. <i>Eden +Warwick</i>.</p> + +<p>The Hyacinth of the ancient fabulists appears to have been the corn- +flag, (<i>Gladiolus communis</i> 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 <i>Ai Ai</i>, and to the hyacinth of +modern times.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Hyacinthus non-scriptus</i>-- +but as the true hyacinth equally wants the inscription, the name is +singularly inappropriate. The botanical name of the hyacinth is +<i>Hyacinthus orientalis</i> which applies equally to all the varieties of +colour, size and fulness.--<i>W. Hinks</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note070"><b>[070]</b></a> Old Gerard calls it Blew Harebel or English <i>Jacint</i>, from the +French <i>Jacinthe</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note071"><b>[071]</b></a> Inhabitants of the Island of Chios</p> + +<p><a name="note072"><b>[072]</b></a> Supposed by some to be Delphinium Ajacis or Larkspur. But no one +can discover any letters on the Larkspur.</p> + +<p><a name="note073"><b>[073]</b></a> Some <i>savants</i> say that it was not the <i>sunflower</i> into which the +lovelorn lass was transformed, but the <i>Heliotrope</i> with its sweet odour +of vanilla. Heliotrope signifies <i>I turn towards the sun</i>. 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note074"><b>[074]</b></a> Zephyrus.</p> + +<p><a name="note075"><b>[075]</b></a> "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 <i>under the rose</i>."--<i>Punch</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note076"><b>[076]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note077"><b>[077]</b></a> The learned dry the flower of the Forget me not and flatten it +down in their herbals, and call it, <i>Myosotis Scorpioides--Scorpion +shaped mouse's ear</i>! 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.--<i>Alphonse Karr</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note078"><b>[078]</b></a> The Abbé Molina in his History of Chili mentions a species of +basil which he calls <i>ocymum salinum</i>: 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.--<i>Notes to Darwin's Loves of the Plants</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note079"><b>[079]</b></a> 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."</p> + +<p><a name="note080"><b>[080]</b></a> <i>Maun</i>, must</p> + +<p><a name="note081"><b>[081]</b></a> <i>Stoure</i>, dust</p> + +<p><a name="note082"><b>[082]</b></a> <i>Weet</i>, wetness, rain</p> + +<p><a name="note083"><b>[083]</b></a> <i>Glinted</i>, peeped</p> + +<p><a name="note084"><b>[084]</b></a> <i>Wa's</i>, walls.</p> + +<p><a name="note085"><b>[085]</b></a> <i>Bield</i>, shelter</p> + +<p><a name="note086"><b>[086]</b></a> <i>Histie</i>, dry</p> + +<p><a name="note087"><b>[087]</b></a> <i>Stibble field</i>, a field covered with stubble--the stalks of corn +left by the reaper.</p> + +<p><a name="note088"><b>[088]</b></a> <i>The origin of the Daisy</i>--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--<i>Colshorn's Deutsche Mythologie furs +Deutsche Volk</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note089"><b>[089]</b></a> 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,--<i>Mrs. Stowe</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note090"><b>[090]</b></a> George Town.</p> + +<p><a name="note091"><b>[091]</b></a> The hill trumpeter.</p> + +<p><a name="note092"><b>[092]</b></a> Nutmeg and Clove plantations.</p> + +<p><a name="note093"><b>[093]</b></a> Leigh Hunt, in the dedication of his <i>Stories in Verse</i> 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."</p> + +<p><a name="note094"><b>[094]</b></a> 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,"--<i>Panama +Star</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note095"><b>[095]</b></a> Signifying the <i>dew of the sea</i>. 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note096"><b>[096]</b></a> Perhaps it is not known to <i>all</i> 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 <i>Loves of the Plants</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p><a name="note097"><b>[097]</b></a> The Shan and other Poems</p> + +<p><a name="note098"><b>[098]</b></a> My Hindu friend is not answerable for the following notes.</p> + +<p><a name="note099"><b>[099]</b></a></p> +<pre> + And infants winged, who mirthful throw + Shafts rose-tipped from nectareous bow. +</pre> + +<p>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.--<i>Tales of the Forest</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note100"><b>[100]</b></a> 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.--<i>Dr. Voight's Hortus Suburbanus +Calcuttensis</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note101"><b>[101]</b></a> It is perhaps of the Flax tribe. Mr. Piddington gives it the +Sanscrit name of <i>Atasi</i> and the Botanical name <i>Linum usitatissimum</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note102"><b>[102]</b></a> Roxburgh calls it "intensely fragrant."</p> + +<p><a name="note103"><b>[103]</b></a> Sometimes employed by robbers to deprive their victims of the +power of resistance. In a strong dose it is poison.</p> + +<p><a name="note104"><b>[104]</b></a> It is said to be used by the Chinese to blacken their eyebrows and +their shoes.</p> + +<p><a name="note105"><b>[105]</b></a> <i>Mirábilis jálapa</i>, or Marvel of Peru, is called by the country +people in England <i>the four o'clock flower</i>, 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note106"><b>[106]</b></a> Marvell died in 1678; Linnaeus died just a hundred years later.</p> + +<p><a name="note107"><b>[107]</b></a> This poem (<i>The Sugar Cane</i>) 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.--</p> + +<pre> + "Now, Muse, let's sing of rats." +</pre> + +<p>And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company who slyly +overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally +<i>mice</i> and had been altered to <i>rats</i> as more dignified.--<i>Boswell's +Life of Johnson</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note108"><b>[108]</b></a> Hazlitt has a pleasant essay on a garden <i>Sun-dial</i>, from which I +take the following passage:--</p> + +<p><i>Horas non numero nisi serenas</i>--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.</p> + +<p><a name="note109"><b>[109]</b></a> These are the initial letters of the Latin names of the plants, +they will be found at length on the lower column.</p> + +<p><a name="note110"><b>[110]</b></a> 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.--<i>Loudon</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note111"><b>[111]</b></a> The lower part of Bengal, not far from Calcutta, is here described</p> + +<p><a name="note112"><b>[112]</b></a> Sir William Jones states that the Brahmins believe that the <i>blue</i> +champac flowers only in Paradise, it being yellow every where else.</p> + +<p><a name="note113"><b>[113]</b></a> The wild dog of Bengal</p> + +<p><a name="note114"><b>[114]</b></a> The elephant.</p> + +<p><a name="note115"><b>[115]</b></a> 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>I was +passionately fond of flowers from my youth, and the passion has never +left me.</i>" In praise of botany he would sometimes observe, "<i>We cannot +propagate stones</i>:" 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note116"><b>[116]</b></a> 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, <i>and often feels a greater +satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in +the possession</i>.--<i>Spectator</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note117"><b>[117]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<pre> + In Esher's peaceful grove, + Where Kent and nature strove for Pelham's love, +</pre> + +<p>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<a href="#note143">[143]</a>. 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."--<i>On +Modern Gardening</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note118"><b>[118]</b></a> 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 <i>zig</i> and the other upon <i>zag</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note119"><b>[119]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note120"><b>[120]</b></a> Broken brick is called <i>kunkur</i>, 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note121"><b>[121]</b></a> Pope in his well known paper in the <i>Guardian</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p><a name="note122"><b>[122]</b></a> In England it costs upon the average about 12 shillings or six +rupees to have a tree of 30 feet high transplanted.</p> + +<p><a name="note123"><b>[123]</b></a> 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 +<i>Sylvan Sketches</i>, "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."</p> + +<p><a name="note124"><b>[124]</b></a> Southey's Common-Place Book.</p> + +<p><a name="note125"><b>[125]</b></a> 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.--<i>Oriental Field Sports</i>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.--<i>Sylvan Sketches</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note126"><b>[126]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note127"><b>[127]</b></a> Alphonse Karr, bitterly ridicules the Botanical <i>Savants</i> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note128"><b>[128]</b></a> <i>The Hand of Eve</i>--the handiwork of Eve.</p> + +<p><a name="note129"><b>[129]</b></a> <i>Without thorn the rose</i>: 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. <i>Gen.</i> iii. 18. Hence the general opinion has +prevailed, that there were <i>no thorns</i> before; which is enough to +justify a poet, in saying "<i>the rose was without thorn</i>."--NEWTON.</p> + +<p><a name="note130"><b>[130]</b></a> See <a href="#friend">page 188</a>. My Hindu friend is not responsible for the selection +of the following notes.</p> + +<p><a name="note131"><b>[131]</b></a> 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.--<i>Voight</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note132"><b>[132]</b></a> The ancient Greeks and Romans also married trees together in a +similar manner.--<i>R.</i></p> + +<p><a name="note133"><b>[133]</b></a> The root of this plant, (<i>Euphorbia ligularia</i>,) mixed up with +black pepper, is used by the Natives against snake bites.--<i>Roxburgh</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note134"><b>[134]</b></a> Coccos nucifera, the <i>root</i> is sometimes masticated instead of the +Betle-nut. In Brazil, baskets are made of the <i>small fibres</i>. The <i>hard +case of the stem</i> 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 +<i>unexpanded terminal bud</i> is a delicate article of food. The <i>leaves</i> +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 <i>midrib of the</i> leaf +serves for oars. The <i>juice of the flower and stems</i> 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 +<i>milk</i> it yields, but for the <i>kernel</i> of its fruit, used both as food +and for culinary purposes, and as affording a large proportion of <i>oil</i> +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, (<i>Koir</i>) 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.--<i>Voigt's Suburbanus Calcuttensis</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note135"><b>[135]</b></a> The root is bitter, nauseous, and used in North America as +anthelmintic. <i>A. Richard</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note136"><b>[136]</b></a> Of one species of tulsi (<i>Babooi-tulsi</i>) 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--<i>Voigt</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note137"><b>[137]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note138"><b>[138]</b></a> 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.</p> + +<p><a name="note139"><b>[139]</b></a> I may add to Mr. Speede's list of Roses the <i>Banksian Rose</i>. The +flowers are yellow, in clusters, and scentless. Mrs. Gore says it was +imported into England from the Calcutta Botanical Garden, it is called +<i>Wong moue heong</i>. There is another rose also called the <i>Banksian Rose</i> +extremely small, very double, white, expanding from March till May, +highly scented with violets. The <i>Rosa Brownii</i> was brought from Nepaul +by Dr. Wallich. A very sweet rose has been brought into Bengal from +England. It is called <i>Rosa Peeliana</i> 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 +"<i>Yellow Rose</i>". Amongst the flowers introduced here since Mr. Speede's +book appeared, is the beautiful blue heliotrope which the natives call +<i>kala heliotrope</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="note140"><b>[140]</b></a></p> +<pre> + He gains all points who pleasingly confounds, + Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds. +</pre> + +<p><a name="note141"><b>[141]</b></a> The following is the passage alluded to by Todd</p> + +<pre> + 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. +</pre> + +<div><i>Paradise Regained, Book II</i></div> + +<p><a name="note142"><b>[142]</b></a> The following stanzas are almost as direct translations from Tasso +as the <a href="#fairfax">two last stanzas</a> in the words of Fairfax on page 111:--</p> + +<pre> + 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<a href="#note144">[144]</a> +</pre> + +<div><i>Fairie Queene, Book II. Canto XII.</i></div> + +<p><a name="note143"><b>[143]</b></a> 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 <i>Ha! Ha's!</i>/ +to express their astonishment when the edge of the fosse brought them to +an unexpected stop.</p> + +<p>Horace Walpole's History of Modern Gardening is now so little read that +authors think they may steal from it with safety. In the <i>Encyclopaedia +Britannica</i> the article on Gardening is taken almost verbatim from it, +with one or two deceptive allusions such as--"<i>As Mr. Walpole +observes</i>"--"<i>Says Mr. Walpole</i>," &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 <i>History of Modern Gardening</i> is given piece-meal as an +original contribution to <i>Harrrison's Floricultural Cabinet</i>, each +portion being signed CLERICUS.</p> + +<p><a name="note144"><b>[144]</b></a> Perhaps Robert Herrick had these stanzas in his mind's ear when he +wrote his song of</p> + +<pre> + 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. + +</pre><hr class="short"><pre> + + 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. +</pre> +</div> + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Flowers and Flower-Gardens +by David Lester Richardson + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS *** + +***** This file should be named 12286-h.htm or 12286-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/2/8/12286/ + +Produced by Tony Browne and PG Distributed Proofreaders. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Flowers and Flower-Gardens + With an Appendix of Practical Instructions and Useful Information + Respecting the Anglo-Indian Flower-Garden + + +Author: David Lester Richardson + +Release Date: May 7, 2004 [EBook #12286] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS *** + + + + +Produced by Tony Browne and PG Distributed Proofreaders. Produced +from images provided by the Million Book Project. + + + + + + + + + +FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS. + +BY + +DAVID LESTER RICHARDSON, + +PRINCIPAL OF THE HINDU METROPOLITAN COLLEGE, AND AUTHOR OF "LITERARY +LEAVES," "LITERARY RECREATIONS," &C. + +WITH AN APPENDIX OF + +PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS AND USEFUL INFORMATION RESPECTING THE +ANGLO-INDIAN FLOWER-GARDEN. + + + + +CALCUTTA: + + + +MDCCCLV. + + + +PREFACE. + + + In every work regard the writer's end, + Since none can compass more than they intend. + +_Pope_. + + + +This volume is far indeed from being a scientific treatise _On Flowers +and Flower-Gardens_:--it is mere gossip in print upon a pleasant +subject. But I hope it will not be altogether useless. If I succeed in +my object I shall consider that I have gossipped to some purpose. On +several points--such as that of the mythology and language of flowers--I +have said a good deal more than I should have done had I been writing +for a different community. I beg the London critics to bear this in +mind. I wished to make the subject as attractive as possible to some +classes of people here who might not have been disposed to pay any +attention to it whatever if I had not studied their amusement as much as +their instruction. I have tried to sweeten the edge of the cup. + +I did not at first intend the book to exceed fifty pages: but I was +almost insensibly carried on further and further from the proposed limit +by the attractive nature of the materials that pressed upon my notice. +As by far the largest portion, of it has been written hurriedly, amidst +other avocations, and bit by bit; just as the Press demanded an +additional supply of "_copy_," I have but too much reason to apprehend +that it will seem to many of my readers, fragmentary and ill-connected. +Then again, in a city like Calcutta, it is not easy to prepare any thing +satisfactorily that demands much literary or scientific research. There +are very many volumes in all the London Catalogues, but not immediately +obtainable in Calcutta, that I should have been most eager to refer to +for interesting and valuable information, if they had been at hand. The +mere titles of these books have often tantalized me with visions of +riches beyond my reach. I might indeed have sent for some of these from +England, but I had announced this volume, and commenced the printing of +it, before it occurred to me that it would be advisable to extend the +matter beyond the limits I had originally contemplated. I must now send +it forth, "with all its imperfections on its head;" but not without the +hope that in spite of these, it will be found calculated to increase the +taste amongst my brother exiles here for flowers and flower-gardens, and +lead many of my Native friends--(particularly those who have been +educated at the Government Colleges,--who have imbibed some English +thoughts and feelings--and who are so fortunate as to be in possession +of landed property)--to improve their parterres,--and set an example to +their poorer countrymen of that neatness and care and cleanliness and +order which may make even the peasant's cottage and the smallest plot of +ground assume an aspect of comfort, and afford a favorable indication of +the character of the possessor. + +D.L.R. + +_Calcutta, September 21st_ 1855. + + + +ERRATA. + + +A friend tells me that the allusion to the Acanthus on the first page of +this book is obscurely expressed, that it was not the _root_ but the +_leaves_ of the plant that suggested the idea of the Corinthian capital. +The root of the Acanthus produced the leaves which overhanging the sides +of the basket struck the fancy of the Architect. This was, indeed, what +I _meant_ to say, and though I have not very lucidly expressed myself, I +still think that some readers might have understood me rightly even +without the aid of this explanation, which, however, it is as well for +me to give, as I wish to be intelligible to _all_. A writer should +endeavor to make it impossible for any one to misapprehend his meaning, +though there are some writers of high name both in England and America +who seem to delight in puzzling their readers. + +At the bottom of page 200, allusion is made to the dotted lines at some +of the open turns in the engraved labyrinth. By some accident or mistake +the dots have been omitted, but any one can understand where the stop +hedges which the dotted lines indicated might be placed so as to give +the wanderer in the maze, additional trouble to find his way out of it. + + + + +[Illustration of a garden.] + + + + +ON FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS, + + + + For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the + flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is + come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. + +_The Song of Solomon_. + + * * * * * + + These are thy glorious works, Parent of good! + Almighty, Thine this universal frame, + Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then! + +_Milton_. + + * * * * * + + Soft roll your incense, herbs and fruits and flowers, + In mingled clouds to HIM whose sun exalts + Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints. + +_Thomson_. + +A taste for floriculture is spreading amongst Anglo-Indians. It is a +good sign. It would be gratifying to learn that the same refining taste +had reached the Natives also--even the lower classes of them. It is a +cheap enjoyment. A mere palm of ground may be glorified by a few radiant +blossoms. A single clay jar of the rudest form may be so enriched and +beautified with leaves and blossoms as to fascinate the eye of taste. An +old basket, with a broken tile at the top of it, and the root of the +acanthus within, produced an effect which seemed to Calimachus, the +architect, "the work of the Graces." It suggested the idea of the +capital of the Corinthian column, the most elegant architectural +ornament that Art has yet conceived. + +Flowers are the poor man's luxury; a refinement for the uneducated. It +has been prettily said that the melody of birds is the poor man's music, +and that flowers are the poor man's poetry. They are "a discipline of +humanity," and may sometimes ameliorate even a coarse and vulgar nature, +just as the cherub faces of innocent and happy children are sometimes +found to soften and purify the corrupted heart. It would be a delightful +thing to see the swarthy cottagers of India throwing a cheerful grace on +their humble sheds and small plots of ground with those natural +embellishments which no productions of human skill can rival. + +The peasant who is fond of flowers--if he begin with but a dozen little +pots of geraniums and double daisies upon his window sills, or with a +honeysuckle over his humble porch--gradually acquires a habit, not only +of decorating the outside of his dwelling and of cultivating with care +his small plot of ground, but of setting his house in order within, and +making every thing around him agreeable to the eye. A love of +cleanliness and neatness and simple ornament is a moral feeling. The +country laborer, or the industrious mechanic, who has a little garden to +be proud of, the work of his own hand, becomes attached to his place of +residence, and is perhaps not only a better subject on that account, but +a better neighbour--a better man. A taste for flowers is, at all events, +infinitely preferable to a taste for the excitements of the pot-house or +the tavern or the turf or the gaming table, or even the festal board, +especially for people of feeble health--and above all, for the poor--who +should endeavor to satisfy themselves with inexpensive pleasures.[001] + +In all countries, civilized or savage, and on all occasions, whether of +grief or rejoicing, a natural fondness for flowers has been exhibited, +with more or less tenderness or enthusiasm. They beautify religious +rites. They are national emblems: they find a place in the blazonry of +heraldic devices. They are the gifts and the language of friendship and +of love. + +Flowers gleam in original hues from graceful vases in almost every +domicile where Taste presides; and the hand of "nice Art" charms us with +"counterfeit presentments" of their forms and colors, not only on the +living canvas, but even on our domestic China-ware, and our mahogany +furniture, and our wall-papers and hangings and carpets, and on our +richest apparel for holiday occasions and our simplest garments for +daily wear. Even human Beauty, the Queen of all loveliness on earth, +engages Flora as her handmaid at the toilet, in spite of the dictum of +the poet of 'The Seasons,' that "Beauty when unadorned is adorned the +most." + +Flowers are hung in graceful festoons both in churches and in ball-rooms. +They decorate the altar, the bride-bed, the cradle, and the bier. +They grace festivals, and triumphs, and processions; and cast a glory on +gala days; and are amongst the last sad honors we pay to the objects of +our love. + +I remember the death of a sweet little English girl of but a year old, +over whom, in her small coffin, a young and lovely mother sprinkled the +freshest and fairest flowers. The task seemed to soften--perhaps to +sweeten--her maternal grief. I shall never forget the sight. The +bright-hued blossoms seemed to make her oblivious for a moment of the +darkness and corruption to which she was so soon to consign her priceless +treasure. The child's sweet face, even in death, reminded me that the +flowers of the field and garden, however lovely, are all outshone by +human beauty. What floral glory of the wild-wood, or what queen of the +parterre, in all the pride of bloom, laughing in the sun-light or +dancing in the breeze, hath a charm that could vie for a single moment +with the soft and holy lustre of that motionless and faded human lily? I +never more deeply felt the force of Milton's noble phrase "_the human +face divine_" than when gazing on that sleeping child. The fixed placid +smile, the smoothly closed eye with its transparent lid, the air of +profound tranquillity, the simple purity (elevated into an aspect of +bright intelligence, as if the little cherub already experienced the +beatitude of another and a better world,) were perfectly angelic--and +mocked all attempt at description. "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!" + +O flower of an earthly spring! destined to blossom in the eternal +summer of another and more genial region! Loveliest of lovely +children--loveliest to the last! More beautiful in death than aught +still living! Thou seemest now to all who miss and mourn thee but a sweet +name--a fair vision--a precious memory;--but in reality thou art a more +truly living thing than thou wert before or than aught thou hast left +behind. Thou hast come early into a rich inheritance. Thou hast now a +substantial existence, a genuine glory, an everlasting possession, beyond +the sky. Thou hast exchanged the frail flowers that decked thy bier for +amaranthine hues and fragrance, and the brief and uncertain delights of +mortal being for the eternal and perfect felicity of angels! + +I never behold elsewhere any of the specimens of the several varieties +of flowers which the afflicted parent consigned to the hallowed little +coffin without recalling to memory the sainted child taking her last +rest on earth. The mother was a woman of taste and sensibility, of high +mind and gentle heart, with the liveliest sense of the loveliness of all +lovely things; and it is hardly necessary to remind the reader how much +refinement such as hers may sometimes alleviate the severity of sorrow. + +Byron tells us that the stars are + + A beauty and a mystery, and create + In us such love and reverence from afar + That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves _a star_. + +But might we not with equal justice say that every thing excellent and +beautiful and precious has named itself _a flower_? + +If stars teach as well as shine--so do flowers. In "still small accents" +they charm "the nice and delicate ear of thought" and sweetly whisper +that "the hand that made them is divine." + +The stars are the poetry of heaven--the clouds are the poetry of the +middle sky--the flowers are the poetry of the earth. The last is the +loveliest to the eye and the nearest to the heart. It is incomparably +the sweetest external poetry that Nature provides for man. Its +attractions are the most popular; its language is the most intelligible. +It is of all others the best adapted to every variety and degree of +mind. It is the most endearing, the most familiar, the most homefelt, +and congenial. The stars are for the meditation of poets and +philosophers; but flowers are not exclusively for the gifted or the +scientific; they are the property of all. They address themselves to our +common nature. They are equally the delight of the innocent little +prattler and the thoughtful sage. Even the rude unlettered rustic +betrays some feeling for the beautiful in the presence of the lovely +little community of the field and garden. He has no sympathy for the +stars: they are too mystical and remote. But the flowers as they blush +and smile beneath his eye may stir the often deeply hidden lovingness +and gentleness of his nature. They have a social and domestic aspect to +which no one with a human heart can be quite indifferent. Few can doat +upon the distant flowers of the sky as many of us doat upon the flowers +at our feet. The stars are wholly independent of man: not so the sweet +children of Flora. We tend upon and cherish them with a parental pride. +They seem especially meant for man and man for them. They often need his +kindest nursing. We place them with guardian hand in the brightest light +and the most wholesome air. We quench with liquid life their sun-raised +thirst, or shelter them from the wintry blast, or prepare and enrich +their nutritious beds. As they pine or prosper they agitate us with +tender anxieties, or thrill us with exultation and delight. In the +little plot of ground that fronts an English cottage the flowers are +like members of the household. They are of the same family. They are +almost as lovely as the children that play with them--though their happy +human associates may be amongst + + The sweetest things that ever grew + Beside a human door. + +The Greeks called flowers the _Festival of the eye_: and so they are: +but they are something else, and something better. + + A flower is not a flower alone, + A thousand sanctities invest it. + +Flowers not only touch the heart; they also elevate the soul. They bind +us not entirely to earth; though they make earth delightful. They +attract our thoughts downward to the richly embroidered ground only to +raise them up again to heaven. If the stars are the scriptures of the +sky, the flowers are the scriptures of the earth. If the stars are a +more glorious revelation of the Creator's majesty and might, the flowers +are at least as sweet a revelation of his gentler attributes. It has +been observed that + + An undevout astronomer is mad. + +The same thing may be said of an irreverent floriculturist, and with +equal truth--perhaps indeed with greater. For the astronomer, in some +cases, may be hard and cold, from indulging in habits of thought too +exclusively mathematical. But the true lover of flowers has always +something gentle and genial in his nature. He never looks upon his +floral-family without a sweetened smile upon his face and a softened +feeling in his heart; unless his temperament be strangely changed and +his mind disordered. The poets, who, speaking generally, are +constitutionally religious, are always delighted readers of the +flower-illumined pages of the book of nature. One of these disciples of +Flora earnestly exclaims: + + Were I, O God, in churchless lands remaining + Far from all voice of teachers and divines, + My soul would find in flowers of thy ordaining + Priests, sermons, shrines + +The popular little preachers of the field and garden, with their lovely +faces, and angelic language--sending the while such ambrosial incense up +to heaven--insinuate the sweetest truths into the human heart. They lead +us to the delightful conclusion that beauty is in the list of +the _utilities_--that the Divine Artist himself is _a lover of +loveliness_--that he has communicated a taste for it to his creatures +and most lavishly provided for its gratification. + + Not a flower + But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain, + Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires + Their balmy odours, and imparts then hues, + And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes + In grains as countless as the sea side sands + The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth. + +_Cowper_. + +In the eye of Utilitarianism the flowers are but idle shows. God might +indeed have made this world as plain as a Quaker's garment, without +retrenching one actual necessary of physical existence; but He has +chosen otherwise; and no earthly potentate was ever so richly clad as +his mother earth. "Behold the lilies of the field, they spin not, +neither do they toil, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like +one of these!" We are thus instructed that man was not meant to live by +bread alone, and that the gratification of a sense of beauty is equally +innocent and natural and refining. The rose is permitted to spread its +sweet leaves to the air and dedicate its beauty to the sun, in a way +that is quite perplexing to bigots and stoics and political economists. +Yet God has made nothing in vain! The Great Artist of the Universe must +have scattered his living hues and his forms of grace over the surface +of the earth for some especial and worthy purpose. When Voltaire was +congratulated on the rapid growth of his plants, he observed that "_they +had nothing else to do_." Oh, yes--they had something else to do,--they +had to adorn the earth, and to charm the human eye, and through the eye +to soften and cheer the heart and elevate the soul! + +I have often wished that Lecturers on Botany, instead of confining their +instructions to the mere physiology, or anatomy, or classification or +nomenclature of their favorite science, would go more into the poetry +of it, and teach young people to appreciate the moral influences of the +floral tribes--to draw honey for the human heart from the sweet breasts +of flowers--to sip from their radiant chalices a delicious medicine for +the soul. + +Flowers are frequently hallowed by associations far sweeter than their +sweetest perfume. "I am no botanist:" says Southey in a letter to Walter +Savage Landor, "but like you, my earliest and best recollections are +connected with flowers, and they always carry me back to other days. +Perhaps this is because they are the only things which affect our senses +precisely as they did in our childhood. The sweetness of the violet is +always the same; and when you rifle a rose and drink, as it were, its +fragrance, the refreshment is the same to the old man as to the boy. +Sounds recal the past in the same manner, but they do not bring with +them individual scenes like the cowslip field, or the corner of the +garden to which we have transplanted field-flowers." + +George Wither has well said in commendation of his Muse: + + Her divine skill taught me this; + That from every thing I saw + I could some instruction draw, + And raise pleasure to the height + By the meanest object's sight, + By the murmur of a spring + _Or the least bough's rustelling; + By a daisy whose leaves spread + Shut, when Titan goes to bed; + Or a shady bush or tree_, + She could more infuse in me + Than all Nature's beauties can + In some other wiser man. + +We must not interpret the epithet _wiser_ too literally. Perhaps the +poet speaks ironically, or means by some other _wiser man_, one allied +in character and temperament to a modern utilitarian Philosopher. +Wordsworth seems to have had the lines of George Wither in his mind when +he said + + Thanks to the human heart by which we live, + Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, + To me the meanest flower that blows can give + Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. + +Thomas Campbell, with a poet's natural gallantry, has exclaimed, + + Without the smile from partial Beauty won, + Oh! what were man?--a world without a sun! + +Let a similar compliment be presented to the "painted populace that +dwell in fields and lead ambrosial lives." What a desert were this scene +without its flowers--it would be like the sky of night without its +stars! "The disenchanted earth" would "lose her lustre." Stars of the +day! Beautifiers of the world! Ministrants of delight! Inspirers of +kindly emotions and the holiest meditations! Sweet teachers of the +serenest wisdom! So beautiful and bright, and graceful, and fragrant--it +is no marvel that ye are equally the favorites of the rich and the poor, +of the young and the old, of the playful and the pensive! + +Our country, though originally but sparingly endowed with the living +jewelry of nature, is now rich in the choicest flowers of all other +countries. + + Foreigners of many lands, + They form one social shade, as if convened + By magic summons of the Orphean lyre. + +_Cowper_. + +These little "foreigners of many lands" have been so skilfully +acclimatized and multiplied and rendered common, that for a few +shillings an English peasant may have a parterre more magnificent than +any ever gazed upon by the Median Queen in the hanging gardens of +Babylon. There is no reason, indeed, to suppose that even the first +parents of mankind looked on finer flowers in Paradise itself than are +to be found in the cottage gardens that are so thickly distributed over +the hills and plains and vallies of our native land. + + The red rose, is the red rose still, and from the lily's cup + An odor fragrant as at first, like frankincense goes up. + +_Mary Howitt_. + +Our neat little gardens and white cottages give to dear old England that +lovely and cheerful aspect, which is so striking and attractive to her +foreign visitors. These beautiful signs of a happy political security +and individual independence and domestic peace and a love of order and a +homely refinement, are scattered all over the land, from sea to sea. +When Miss Sedgwick, the American authoress, visited England, nothing so +much surprised and delighted her as the gay flower-filled gardens of our +cottagers. Many other travellers, from almost all parts of the world, +have experienced and expressed the same sensations on visiting our +shores, and it would be easy to compile a voluminous collection of their +published tributes of admiration. To a foreign visitor the whole country +seems a garden--in the words of Shakespeare--"a _sea-walled garden_." + +In the year 1843, on a temporary return to England after a long Indian +exile, I travelled by railway for the first time in my life. As I glided +on, as smoothly as in a sledge, over the level iron road, with such +magical rapidity--from the pretty and cheerful town of Southampton to +the greatest city of the civilized world--every thing was new to me, and +I gave way to child-like wonder and child-like exultation.[002] What a +quick succession of lovely landscapes greeted the eye on either side? +What a garden-like air of universal cultivation! What beautiful smooth +slopes! What green, quiet meadows! What rich round trees, brooding over +their silent shadows! What exquisite dark nooks and romantic lanes! What +an aspect of unpretending happiness in the clean cottages, with their +little trim gardens! What tranquil grandeur and rural luxury in the +noble mansions and glorious parks of the British aristocracy! How the +love of nature thrilled my heart with a gentle and delicious agitation, +and how proud I felt of my dear native land! It is, indeed, a fine thing +to be an Englishman. Whether at home or abroad, he is made conscious of +the claims of his country to respect and admiration. As I fed my eyes on +the loveliness of Nature, or turned to the miracles of Art and Science +on every hand, I had always in my mind a secret reference to the effect +which a visit to England must produce upon an intelligent and observant +foreigner. + + Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around + Of hills and dales and woods and lawns and spires, + And glittering towns and gilded streams, 'till all + The stretching landscape into smoke decays! + Happy Brittannia! where the Queen of Arts, + Inspiring vigor, Liberty, abroad + Walks unconfined, even to thy farthest cots, + And scatters plenty with unsparing hand. + +_Thomson_. + +And here let me put in a word in favor of the much-abused English +climate. I cannot echo the unpatriotic discontent of Byron when he +speaks of + + The cold and cloudy clime + Where he was born, but where he would not die. + +Rather let me say with the author of "_The Seasons_," in his address to +England. + + Rich is thy soil and merciful thy clime. + +King Charles the Second when he heard some foreigners condemning our +climate and exulting in their own, observed that in his opinion that was +the best climate in which a man could be out in the open air with +pleasure, or at least without trouble and inconvenience, the most days +of the year and the most hours of the day; and this he held was the case +with the climate of England more than that of any other country in +Europe. To say nothing of the lovely and noble specimens of human nature +to which it seems so congenial, I may safely assert that it is +peculiarly favorable, with, rare exceptions, to the sweet children of +Flora. There is no country in the world in which there are at this day +such innumerable tribes of flowers. There are in England two thousand +varieties of the rose alone, and I venture to express a doubt whether +the richest gardens of Persia or Cashmere could produce finer specimens +of that universal favorite than are to be found in some of the small but +highly cultivated enclosures of respectable English rustics. + +The actual beauty of some of the commonest flowers in our gardens can be +in no degree exaggerated--even in the daydreams of the most inspired +poet. And when the author of Lalla Rookh talks so musically and +pleasantly of the fragrant bowers of Amberabad, the country of Delight, +a Province in Jinnistan or Fairy Land, he is only thinking of the +shrubberies and flower-beds at Sloperton Cottage, and the green hills +and vales of Wiltshire. + +Sir William Temple observes that "besides the temper of our climate +there are two things particular to us, that contribute much to the +beauty and elegance of our gardens--which are, _the gravel of our walks +and the fineness and almost perpetual greenness of our turf_." + +"The face of England is so beautiful," says Horace Walpole, "that I do +not believe that Tempe or Arcadia was half so rural; for both lying in +hot climates must have wanted _the moss of our gardens_." Meyer, a +German, a scientific practical gardener, who was also a writer on +gardening, and had studied his art in the Royal Gardens at Paris, and +afterwards visited England, was a great admirer of English Gardens, but +despaired of introducing our style of gardening into Germany, _chiefly +on account of its inferior turf for lawns_. "Lawns and gravel walks," +says a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, "are the pride of English +Gardens," "The smoothness and verdure of our lawns," continues the same +writer, "is the first thing in our gardens that catches the eye of a +foreigner; the next is the fineness and firmness of our gravel walks." +Mr. Charles Mackintosh makes the same observation. "In no other country +in the world," he says, "do such things exist." Mrs. Stowe, whose _Uncle +Tom_ has done such service to the cause of liberty in America, on her +visit to England seems to have been quite as much enchanted with our +scenery, as was her countrywoman, Miss Sedgwick. I am pleased to find +Mrs. Stowe recognize the superiority of English landscape-gardening and +of our English verdure. She speaks of, "the princely art of +landscape-gardening, for which England is so famous," and of "_vistas of +verdure and wide sweeps of grass, short, thick, and vividly green_ as the +velvet moss sometimes seen growing on rocks in new England." "Grass," she +observes, "is an art and a science in England--it is an institution. The +pains that are taken in sowing, tending, cutting, clipping, rolling and +otherwise nursing and coaxing it, being seconded by the often-falling +tears of the climate, produce results which must be seen to be +appreciated." This is literally true: any sight more inexpressibly +exquisite than that of an English lawn in fine order is what I am quite +unable to conceive.[003] + +I recollect that in one of my visits to England, (in 1827) I attempted +to describe the scenery of India to William Hazlitt--not the living son +but the dead father. Would that he were still in the land of the living +by the side of his friend Leigh Hunt, who has been pensioned by the +Government for his support of that cause for which they were both so +bitterly persecuted by the ruling powers in days gone by. I flattered +myself into the belief that Hazlitt was interested in some of my +descriptions of Oriental scenes. What moved him most was an account of +the dry, dusty, burning, grassless plains of Bundelcund in the hot +season. I told him how once while gasping for breath in a hot verandah +and leaning over the rails I looked down upon the sun-baked ground. + + "A change came o'er the spirit of my dream." + +I suddenly beheld with all the distinctness of reality the rich, cool, +green, unrivalled meads of England. But the vision soon melted away, and +I was again in exile. I wept like a child. It was like a beautiful +mirage of the desert, or one of those waking dreams of home which have +sometimes driven the long-voyaging seaman to distraction and urged him +by an irresistible impulse to plunge headlong into the ocean. + +When I had once more crossed the wide Atlantic--and (not by the +necromancy of imagination but by a longer and more tedious transit) +found myself in an English meadow,--I exclaimed with the poet, + + Thou art free + My country! and 'tis joy enough and pride + For one hour's perfect bliss, _to tread the grass + Of England once again_. + +I felt my childhood for a time renewed, and was by no means disposed to +second the assertion that + + "Nothing can bring back the hour + Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower." + +I have never beheld any thing more lovely than scenery +characteristically English; and Goldsmith, who was something of a +traveller, and had gazed on several beautiful countries, was justified +in speaking with such affectionate admiration of our still more +beautiful England, + + Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride. + +It is impossible to put into any form of words the faintest +representation of that delightful summer feeling which, is excited in +fine weather by the sight of the mossy turf of our country. It is sweet +indeed to go, + + Musing through the _lawny_ vale: + +alluded to by Warton, or over Milton's "level downs," or to climb up +Thomson's + + Stupendous rocks + That from the sun-redoubling valley lift + Cool to the middle air their _lawny_ tops. + +It gives the Anglo-Indian Exile the heart-ache to think of these +ramblings over English scenes. + +ENGLAND. + + Bengala's plains are richly green, + Her azure skies of dazzling sheen, + Her rivers vast, her forests grand. + Her bowers brilliant,--but the land, + Though dear to countless eyes it be, + And fair to mine, hath not for me + The charm ineffable of _home_; + For still I yearn to see the foam + Of wild waves on thy pebbled shore, + Dear Albion! to ascend once more + Thy snow-white cliffs; to hear again + The murmur of thy circling main-- + To stroll down each romantic dale + Beloved in boyhood--to inhale + Fresh life on green and breezy hills-- + To trace the coy retreating rills-- + To see the clouds at summer-tide + Dappling all the landscape wide-- + To mark the varying gloom and glow + As the seasons come and go-- + Again the green meads to behold + Thick strewn with silvery gems and gold, + Where kine, bright-spotted, large, and sleek, + Browse silently, with aspect meek, + Or motionless, in shallow stream + Stand mirror'd, till their twin shapes seem, + Feet linked to feet, forbid to sever, + By some strange magic fixed for ever. + + And oh! once more I fain would see + (Here never seen) a poor man _free_,[004] + And valuing more an humble name, + But stainless, than a guilty fame, + How sacred is the simplest cot, + Where Freedom dwells!--where she is not + How mean the palace! Where's the spot + She loveth more than thy small isle, + Queen of the sea? Where hath her smile + So stirred man's inmost nature? Where + Are courage firm, and virtue fair, + And manly pride, so often found + As in rude huts on English ground, + Where e'en the serf who slaves for hire + May kindle with a freeman's fire? + + How proud a sight to English eyes + Are England's village families! + The patriarch, with his silver hair, + The matron grave, the maiden fair. + The rose-cheeked boy, the sturdy lad, + On Sabbath day all neatly clad:-- + Methinks I see them wend their way + On some refulgent morn of May, + By hedgerows trim, of fragrance rare, + Towards the hallowed House of Prayer! + + I can love _all_ lovely lands, + But England _most_; for she commands. + As if she bore a parent's part, + The dearest movements of my heart; + And here I may not breathe her name. + Without a thrill through all my frame. + + Never shall this heart be cold + To thee, my country! till the mould + (Or _thine_ or _this_) be o'er it spread. + And form its dark and silent bed. + I never think of bliss below + But thy sweet hills their green heads show, + Of love and beauty never dream. + But English faces round me gleam! + +D.L.R. + +I have often observed that children never wear a more charming aspect +than when playing in fields and gardens. In another volume I have +recorded some of my impressions respecting the prominent interest +excited by these little flowers of humanity in an English landscape. + + * * * * * + +THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. + +When I re-visited my dear native country, after an absence of many weary +years, and a long dull voyage, my heart was filled with unutterable +delight and admiration. The land seemed a perfect paradise. It was in +the spring of the year. The blue vault of heaven--the clear +atmosphere--the balmy vernal breeze--the quiet and picturesque cattle, +browsing on luxuriant verdure, or standing knee deep in a crystal +lake--the hills sprinkled with snow-white sheep and sometimes partially +shadowed by a wandering cloud--the meadows glowing with golden butter-cups +and be-dropped with daisies--the trim hedges of crisp and sparkling +holly--the sound of near but unseen rivulets, and the songs of +foliage-hidden birds--the white cottages almost buried amidst trees, like +happy human nests--the ivy-covered church, with its old grey spire +"pointing up to heaven," and its gilded vane gleaming in the light--the +sturdy peasants with their instruments of healthy toil--the white-capped +matrons bleaching their newly-washed garments in the sun, and throwing +them like snow-patches on green slopes, or glossy garden shrubs--the +sun-browned village girls, resting idly on their round elbows at small +open casements, their faces in sweet keeping with the trellised +flowers:--all formed a combination of enchantments that would mock the +happiest imitative efforts of human art. But though the bare enumeration +of the details of this English picture, will, perhaps, awaken many dear +recollections in the reader's mind, I have omitted by far the most +interesting feature of the whole scene--_the rosy children, loitering +about the cottage gates, or tumbling gaily on the warm grass_.[005][006] + +Two scraps of verse of a similar tendency shall follow this prose +description:-- + +AN ENGLISH LANDSCAPE. + + I stood, upon an English hill, + And saw the far meandering rill, + A vein of liquid silver, run + Sparkling in the summer sun; + While adown that green hill's side, + And along the valley wide, + Sheep, like small clouds touched with light, + Or like little breakers bright, + Sprinkled o'er a smiling sea, + Seemed to float at liberty. + + Scattered all around were seen, + White cots on the meadows green. + Open to the sky and breeze, + Or peeping through the sheltering trees, + On a light gate, loosely hung, + Laughing children gaily swung; + Oft their glad shouts, shrill and clear, + Came upon the startled ear. + Blended with the tremulous bleat, + Of truant lambs, or voices sweet, + Of birds, that take us by surprise, + And mock the quickly-searching eyes. + + Nearer sat a fair-haired boy, + Whistling with a thoughtless joy; + A shepherd's crook was in his hand, + Emblem of a mild command; + And upon his rounded cheek + Were hues that ripened apples streak. + Disease, nor pain, nor sorrowing, + Touched that small Arcadian king; + His sinless subjects wandered free-- + Confusion without anarchy. + Happier he upon his throne. + The breezy hill--though all alone-- + Than the grandest monarchs proud + Who mistrust the kneeling crowd. + + On a gently rising ground, + The lovely valley's farthest bound, + Bordered by an ancient wood, + The cots in thicker clusters stood; + And a church, uprose between, + Hallowing the peaceful scene. + Distance o'er its old walls threw + A soft and dim cerulean hue, + While the sun-lit gilded spire + Gleamed as with celestial fire! + + I have crossed the ocean wave, + Haply for a foreign grave; + Haply never more to look + On a British hill or brook; + Haply never more to hear + Sounds unto my childhood dear; + Yet if sometimes on my soul + Bitter thoughts beyond controul + Throw a shade more dark than night, + Soon upon the mental sight + Flashes forth a pleasant ray + Brighter, holier than the day; + And unto that happy mood + All seems beautiful and good. + +D.L.R. + +LINES TO A LADY, + +WHO PRESENTED THE AUTHOR WITH SOME ENGLISH FRUITS AND FLOWERS. + + Green herbs and gushing springs in some hot waste + Though, grateful to the traveller's sight and taste, + Seem far less sweet and fair than fruits and flowers + That breathe, in foreign lands, of English bowers. + + Thy gracious gift, dear lady, well recalls + Sweet scenes of home,--the white cot's trellised walls-- + The trim red garden path--the rustic seat-- + The jasmine-covered arbour, fit retreat + For hearts that love repose. Each spot displays + Some long-remembered charm. In sweet amaze + I feel as one who from a weary dream + Of exile wakes, and sees the morning beam + Illume the glorious clouds of every hue + That float o'er scenes his happy childhood knew. + + How small a spark may kindle fancy's flame + And light up all the past! The very same + Glad sounds and sights that charmed my heart of old + Arrest me now--I hear them and behold. + + Ah! yonder is the happy circle seated + Within, the favorite bower! I am greeted + With joyous shouts; my rosy boys have heard + A father's voice--their little hearts are stirred + With eager hope of some new toy or treat + And on they rush, with never-resting feet! + + * * * * * + + Gone is the sweet illusion--like a scene + Formed by the western vapors, when between + The dusky earth, and day's departing light + The curtain falls of India's sudden night. + +D.L.R. + +The verdant carpet embroidered with little stars of gold and silver--the +short-grown, smooth, and close-woven, but most delicate and elastic +fresh sward--so soothing to the dazzled eye, so welcome to the wearied +limbs--so suggestive of innocent and happy thoughts,--so refreshing to +the freed visitor, long pent up in the smoky city--is surely no where to +be seen in such exquisite perfection as on the broad meadows and +softly-swelling hills of England. And perhaps in no country in the world +could _pic-nic_ holiday-makers or playful children with more perfect +security of life and health stroll about or rest upon Earth's richly +enamelled floor from sunrise to sunset on a summer's day. No Englishman +would dare to stretch himself at full length and address himself to sleep +upon an Oriental meadow unless he were perfectly indifferent to life +itself and could see nothing terrible in the hostility of the deadliest +reptiles. When wading through the long grass and thick jungles of Bengal, +he is made to acknowledge the full force of the true and beautiful +expression--"_In the midst of life we are in death_." The British Indian +exile on his return home is delighted with the "sweet security" of his +native fields. He may then feel with Wordsworth how + + Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head. + And dear _the velvet greensward_ to his tread. + +Or he may exclaim in the words of poor Keats--now slumbering under a +foreign turf-- + + Happy is England! I could be content + To see no other verdure than her own. + +It is a pleasing proof of the fine moral influence of natural scenery +that the most ceremonious strangers can hardly be long seated together +in the open air on the "velvet greensward" without casting off for a +while the cold formalities of artificial life, and becoming as frank and +social as ingenuous school-boys. Nature breathes peace and geniality +into almost every human heart. + +"John Thelwall," says Coleridge, "had something very good about him. We +were sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks when I said to him +'Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in!' 'Nay, Citizen +Samuel,' replied he, 'it is rather a place to make us forget that there +is any necessity for treason!'" + +Leigh Hunt, who always looks on nature with the eye of a true painter +and the imagination of a true poet, has represented with delightful +force and vividness some of those accidents of light and shade that +diversify an English meadow. + +RAIN AND SUNSHINE IN MAY. + +"Can any thing be more lovely, than the meadows between the rains of +May, when the sun smites them on the sudden like a painter, and they +laugh up at him, as if he had lighted a loving cheek! + +I speak of a season when the returning threats of cold and the resisting +warmth of summer time, make robust mirth in the air; when the winds +imitate on a sudden the vehemence of winter; and silver-white clouds are +abrupt in their coming down and shadows on the grass chase one another, +panting, over the fields, like a pursuit of spirits. With undulating +necks they pant forward, like hounds or the leopard. + +See! the cloud is after the light, gliding over the country like the +shadow of a god; and now the meadows are lit up here and there with +sunshine, as if the soul of Titian were standing in heaven, and playing +his fancies on them. Green are the trees in shadow; but the trees in the +sun how twenty-fold green _they_ are--rich and variegated with gold!" + +One of the many exquisite out-of-doors enjoyments for the observers of +nature, is the sight of an English harvest. How cheering it is to behold +the sickles flashing in the sun, as the reapers with well sinewed arm, +and with a sweeping movement, mow down the close-arrayed ranks of the +harvest field! What are "the rapture of the strife" and all the "pomp, +pride and circumstance of glorious war," that bring death to some and +agony and grief to others, compared with the green and golden trophies +of the honest Husbandman whose bloodless blade makes no wife a widow, no +child an orphan,--whose office is not to spread horror and desolation +through shrieking cities, but to multiply and distribute the riches of +nature over a smiling land. + +But let us quit the open fields for a time, and turn again to the +flowery retreats of + + Retired Leisure + That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. + +In all ages, in all countries, in all creeds, a garden is represented as +the scene not only of earthly but of celestial enjoyment. The ancients +had their Elysian Fields and the garden of the Hesperides, the Christian +has his Garden of Eden, the Mahommedan his Paradise of groves and +flowers and crystal fountains and black eyed Houries. + +"God Almighty," says Lord Bacon, "first planted a garden; and indeed it +is the purest of all pleasures: it is the greatest refreshment to the +spirits of man." Bacon, though a utilitarian philosopher, was such a +lover of flowers that he was never satisfied unless he saw them in +almost every room of his house, and when he came to discourse of them in +his Essays, his thoughts involuntarily moved harmonious numbers. How +naturally the following prose sentence in Bacon's Essay on Gardens +almost resolves itself into verse. + +"For the heath which was the first part of our plot, I wish it to be +framed as much as may be to a natural wildness. Trees I would have none +in it, but some thickets made only of sweet briar and honeysuckle, and +some wild vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, strawberries +and primroses; for these are sweet, and prosper in the shade." + + "For the heath which was the third part of our plot-- + I wish it to be framed + As much as may be to a natural wildness. + Trees I'd have none in't, but some thickets made + Only of sweet-briar and honey-suckle, + And some wild vine amongst; and the ground set + With violets, strawberries, and primroses; + For these are sweet and prosper in the shade." + +It has been observed that the love of gardens is the only passion which +increases with age. It is generally the most indulged in the two +extremes of life. In middle age men are often too much involved in the +affairs of the busy world fully to appreciate the tranquil pleasures in +the gift of Flora. Flowers are the toys of the young and a source of the +sweetest and serenest enjoyments for the old. But there is no season of +life for which they are unfitted and of which they cannot increase the +charm. + +"Give me," says the poet Rogers, "a garden well kept, however small, two +or three spreading trees and a mind at ease, and I defy the world." The +poet adds that he would not have his garden, too much extended. He seems +to think it possible to have too much of a good thing. "Three acres of +flowers and a regiment of gardeners," he says, "bring no more pleasure +than a sufficiency." "A hundred thousand roses," he adds, "which we look +at _en masse_, do not identify themselves in the same manner as even a +very small border; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly +attuned, the little cottage-garden may give him more real delight than +belongs to the owner of a thousand acres." In a smaller garden "we +become acquainted, as it were," says the same poet, "and even form +friendships with, individual flowers." It is delightful to observe how +nature thus adjusts the inequalities of fortune and puts the poor man, +in point of innocent happiness, on a level with the rich. The man of the +most moderate means may cultivate many elegant tastes, and may have +flowers in his little garden that the greatest sovereign in the world +might enthusiastically admire. Flowers are never vulgar. A rose from a +peasant's patch of ground is as fresh and elegant and fragrant as if it +had been nurtured in a Royal parterre, and it would not be out of place +in the richest porcelain vase of the most aristocratical drawing-room in +Europe. The poor man's flower is a present for a princess, and of all +gifts it is the one least liable to be rejected even by the haughty. It +might he worn on the fair brow or bosom of Queen Victoria with a nobler +grace than the costliest or most elaborate production of the goldsmith +or the milliner. + +The majority of mankind, in the most active spheres of life, have +moments in which they sigh for rural retirement, and seldom dream of +such a retreat without making a garden the leading charm of it. Sir +Henry Wotton says that Lord Bacon's garden was one of the best that he +had seen either at home or abroad. Evelyn, the author of "Sylva, or a +Discourse of Forest Trees," dwells with fond admiration, and a pleasing +egotism, on the charms of his own beautiful and highly cultivated estate +at Wooton in the county of Surrey. He tells us that the house is large +and ancient and is "sweetly environed with delicious streams and +venerable woods." "I will say nothing," he continues, "of the air, +because the pre-eminence is universally given to Surrey, the soil being +dry and sandy; but I should speak much of the gardens, fountains and +groves that adorn it, were they not generally known to be amongst the +most natural, and (till this later and universal luxury of the whole +nation, since abounding in such expenses) the most magnificent that +England afforded, and which indeed gave one of the first examples to +that elegancy, since so much in vogue and followed, for the managing of +their waters and other elegancies of that nature." Before he came into +the possession of his paternal estate he resided at _Say's Court_, near +Deptford, an estate which he possessed by purchase, and where he had a +superb holly hedge four hundred feet long, nine feet high and five feet +broad. Of this hedge, he was particularly proud, and he exultantly asks, +"Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the +kind?" When the Czar of Muscovy visited England in 1698 to instruct +himself in the art of ship-building, he had the use of Evelyn's house +and garden, at _Say's Court_, and while there did so much damage to the +latter that the owner loudly and bitterly complained. At last the +Government gave Evelyn L150 as an indemnification. Czar Peter's favorite +amusement was to ride in a wheel barrow through what its owner had once +called the "impregnable hedge of holly." Evelyn was passionately fond of +gardening. "The life and felicity of an excellent gardener," he +observes, "is preferable to all other diversions." His faith in the art +of Landscape-gardening was unwavering. It could _remove mountains_. Here +is an extract from his Diary. + + "Gave his brother some directions about his garden" (at Wooton + Surrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, for + which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and + thickets and a moat within ten yards of the house." + +No sooner said than done. His brother dug down the mountain and +"flinging it into a rapid stream (which carried away the sand) filled up +the moat and levelled that noble area where now the garden and fountain +is." + +Though Evelyn dearly loved a garden, his chief delight was not in +flowers but in forest trees, and he was more anxious to improve the +growth of plants indigenous to the soil than to introduce exotics.[007] + +Sir William Temple was so attached to his garden, that he left +directions in his will that his heart should be buried there. It was +enclosed in a silver box and placed under a sun-dial. + +Dr. Thomson Reid, the eminent Scottish metaphysician, used to be found +working in his garden in his eighty-seventh year. + +The name of Chatham is in the long list of eminent men who have enjoyed +a garden. We are told that "he loved the country: took peculiar pleasure +in gardening; and had an extremely happy taste in laying out grounds." +What a delightful thing it must have been for that great statesman, thus +to relieve his mind from the weight of public care in the midst of quiet +bowers planted and trained by his own hand! + +Burton, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, notices the attractions of a +garden as amongst the finest remedies for depression of the mind. I must +give the following extracts from his quaint but interesting pages. + + "To see the pleasant fields, the crystal fountains, + And take the gentle air amongst the mountains. + +"To walk amongst orchards, gardens, bowers, mounts, and arbours, +artificial wildernesses, green thickets, arches, groves, lawns, +rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, (like that +Antiochian Daphne,) brooks, pools, fishponds, between wood and water, in +a fair meadow, by a river side, _ubi variae avium cantationes, florum +colores, pratorum frutices_, &c. to disport in some pleasant plain, or +park, run up a steep hill sometimes, or sit in a shady seat, must needs +be a delectable recreation. _Hortus principis et domus ad delectationem +facta, cum sylva, monte et piscina, vulgo la montagna_: the prince's +garden at Ferrara, Schottus highly magnifies, with the groves, +mountains, ponds, for a delectable prospect; he was much affected with +it; a Persian paradise, or pleasant park, could not be more delectable +in his sight. St. Bernard, in the description of his monastery, is +almost ravished with the pleasures of it. "A sick man (saith he) sits +upon a green bank, and when the dog-star parcheth the plains, and dries +up rivers, he lies in a shady bower," _Fronde sub arborea ferventia +temperat astra_, "and feeds his eyes with variety of objects, herbs, +trees, to comfort his misery; he receives many delightsome smells, and +fills his ears with that sweet and various harmony of birds; _good God_, +(saith he), _what a company of pleasures hast thou made for man!_" + + * * * * * + +"The country hath his recreations, the city his several gymnics and +exercises, May games, feasts, wakes, and merry meetings to solace +themselves; the very being in the country; that life itself is a +sufficient recreation to some men, to enjoy such pleasures, as those old +patriarchs did. Dioclesian, the emperor, was so much affected with it, +that he gave over his sceptre, and turned gardener. Constantine wrote +twenty books of husbandry. Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him, +bragged of nothing more than of his orchard, _hi sunt ordines mei_. What +shall I say of Cincinnatus, Cato, Tully, and many such? how they have +been pleased with it, to prune, plant, inoculate and graft, to show so +many several kinds of pears, apples, plums, peaches, &c." + +The Romans of all ranks made use of flowers as ornaments and emblems, +but they were not generally so fond of directing or assisting the +gardener, or taking the spade or hoe into their own hands, as are the +British peasantry, gentry and nobility of the present day. They were not +amateur Florists. They prized highly their fruit trees and pastures and +cool grottoes and umbrageous groves; but they expended comparatively +little time, skill or taste upon the flower-garden. Even their love of +nature, though thoroughly genuine as far as it went, did not imply that +minute and exact knowledge of her charms which characterizes some of our +best British poets. They had no Thompson or Cowper. Their country seats +were richer in architectural than floral beauty. Tully's Tuscan Villa, +so fondly and minutely described by the proprietor himself, would appear +to little advantage in the eyes of a true worshipper of Flora, if +compared with Pope's retreat at Twickenham. The ancients had a taste for +the _rural_, not for the _gardenesque_, nor perhaps even for the +_picturesque_. The English have a taste for all three. Hence they have +good landscape-gardeners and first-rate landscape-painters. The old +Romans had neither. But though, some of our Spitalfields weavers have +shown a deeper love, and perhaps even a finer taste, for flowers, than +were exhibited by the citizens of Rome, abundant evidence is furnished +to us by the poets in all ages and in all countries that nature, in some +form or another has ever charmed the eye and the heart of man. The +following version of a famous passage in Virgil, especially the lines in +Italics, may give the English reader some idea of a Roman's dream of + +RURAL HAPPINESS. + + Ah! happy Swains! if they their bliss but knew, + Whom, far from boisterous war, Earth's bosom true + With easy food supplies. If they behold + No lofty dome its gorgeous gates unfold + And pour at morn from all its chambers wide + Of flattering visitants the mighty tide; + Nor gaze on beauteous columns richly wrought, + Or tissued robes, or busts from Corinth brought; + Nor their white wool with Tyrian poison soil, + Nor taint with Cassia's bark their native oil; + _Yet peace is theirs; a life true bliss that yields; + And various wealth; leisure mid ample fields, + Grottoes, and living lakes, and vallies green, + And lowing herds; and 'neath a sylvan screen, + Delicious slumbers. There the lawn and cave + With beasts of chase abound._ The young ne'er crave + A prouder lot; their patient toil is cheered; + Their Gods are worshipped and their sires revered; + And there when Justice passed from earth away + She left the latest traces of her sway. + +D.L.R. + +Lord Bacon was perhaps the first Englishman who endeavored to reform the +old system of English gardening, and to show that it was contrary to +good taste and an insult to nature. "As for making knots or figures," he +says, "with divers colored earths, that may lie under the windows of the +house on that side on which the garden stands, they be but toys: you may +see as good sights many times in tarts." Bacon here alludes, I suppose, +to the old Dutch fashion of dividing flowerbeds into many compartments, +and instead of filling them with flowers, covering one with red brick +dust, another with charcoal, a third with yellow sand, a fourth with +chalk, a fifth with broken China, and others with green glass, or with +spars and ores. But Milton, in his exquisite description of the garden +of Eden, does not allude to the same absurd fashion when he speaks of +"curious knots," + + Which not nice art, + In beds and _curious knots_, but nature boon + Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain. + +By these _curious knots_ the poet seems to allude, not to figures of +"divers colored earth," but to the artificial and complicated +arrangements and divisions of flowers and flower-beds. + +Though Bacon went not quite so freely to nature as our latest +landscape-gardeners have done, he made the _first step_ in the right +direction and deserves therefore the compliment which Mason has paid him +in his poem of _The English Garden_. + + On thy realm + Philosophy his sovereign lustre spread; + Yet did he deign to light with casual glance + The wilds of Taste, Yes, sagest Verulam, + 'Twas thine to banish from the royal groves + Each childish vanity of crisped knot[008] + + And sculptured foliage; to the lawn restore + Its ample space, and bid it feast the sight + With verdure pure, unbroken, unabridged; + For verdure soothes the eye, as roseate sweets + The smell, or music's melting strains the ear. + +Yes--"_verdure soothes the eye_:"--and the mind too. Bacon himself +observes, that "nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass +kept finely shorn." Mason slightly qualifies his commendation of "the +sage" by admitting that he had not quite completed his emancipation from +the bad taste of his day. + + Witness his high arched hedge + In pillored state by carpentry upborn, + With colored mirrors decked and prisoned birds. + But, when our step has paced the proud parterre, + And reached the heath, then Nature glads our eye + Sporting in all her lovely carelessness, + There smiles in varied tufts the velvet rose, + There flaunts the gadding woodbine, swells the ground + In gentle hillocks, and around its sides + Through blossomed shades the secret pathway steals. + +_The English Garden_. + +In one of the notes to _The English Garden_ it is stated that "Bacon was +the prophet, Milton the herald of modern Gardening; and Addison, Pope, +and Kent the champions of true taste." Kent was by profession both a +Painter and a Landscape-Gardener. Addison who had a pretty little +retreat at Bilton, near Rugby, evinces in most of his occasional +allusions to gardens a correct judgment. He complains that even in _his_ +time our British gardeners, instead of humouring nature, loved to +deviate from it as much as possible. The system of verdant sculpture had +not gone out of fashion. Our trees still rose in cones, globes, and +pyramids. The work of the scissors was on every plant and bush. It was +Pope, however, who did most to bring the topiary style into contempt and +to encourage a more natural taste, by his humorous paper in the +_Guardian_ and his poetical Epistle to the Earl of Burlington. Gray, the +poet, observes in one of his letters, that "our skill in gardening, or +rather laying out grounds, is the only taste we can call our own; the +only proof of original talent in matters of pleasure. This is no small +honor to us;" he continues, "since neither France nor Italy, has ever +had the least notion of it." "Whatever may have been reported, whether +truly or falsely" (says a contributor to _The World_) "of the Chinese +gardens, it is certain that we are the first of the Europeans who have +founded this taste; and we have been so fortunate in the genius of those +who have had the direction of some of the finest spots of ground, that +we may now boast a success equal to that profusion of expense which has +been destined to promote the rapid progress of this happy enthusiasm. +Our gardens are already the astonishment of foreigners, and, in +proportion as they accustom themselves to consider and understand them +will become their admiration." The periodical from which this is taken +was published exactly a century ago, and the writer's prophecy has been +long verified. Foreigners send to us for gardeners to help them to lay +out their grounds in the English fashion. And we are told by the writer +of an interesting article on gardens, in the _Quarterly Review_, that +"the lawns at Paris, to say nothing of Naples, are regularly irrigated +to keep up even the semblance of English verdure; and at the gardens of +Versailles, and Caserta, near Naples, the walks have been supplied from +the Kensington gravel-pits." "It is not probably known," adds the same +writer, "that among our exportations every year is a large quantity of +evergreens for the markets of France and Germany, and that there are +some nurserymen almost wholly engaged in this branch of trade." + +Pomfret, a poet of small powers, if a poet at all, has yet contrived to +produce a popular composition in verse--_The Choice_--because he has +touched with great good fortune on some of the sweetest domestic hopes +and enjoyments of his countrymen. + + If Heaven the grateful liberty would give + That I might choose my method how to live; + And all those hours propitious Fate should lend + In blissful ease and satisfaction spend; + Near some fair town I'd have a private seat + Built uniform; not little; nor too great: + Better if on a rising ground it stood, + On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood. + +_The Choice_. + +Pomfret perhaps illustrates the general taste when he places his garden +"_near some fair town_." Our present laureate, though a truly inspired +poet, and a genuine lover of Nature even in her remotest retreats, has +the garden of his preference, "_not quite beyond the busy world_." + + Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite + Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love, + News from the humming city comes to it + In sound of funeral or of marriage bells; + And sitting muffled in dark leaves you hear + The windy clanging of the minster clock; + Although between it and the garden lies + A league of grass. + +Even "sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh" are often pleasing +when mellowed by the space of air through which they pass. + + 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the _sound_. + +Shelley, in one of his sweetest poems, speaking of a scene in the +neighbourhood of Naples, beautifully says:-- + + Like many a voice of one delight, + The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, + _The city's voice itself is soft_, like solitude's. + +No doubt the feeling that we are _near_ the crowd but not _in_ it, may +deepen the sense of our own happy rural seclusion and doubly endear that +pensive leisure in which we can "think down hours to moments," and in + + This our life, exempt from public haunt, + Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, + Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. + +_Shakespeare_. + +Besides, to speak truly, few men, however studious or philosophical, +desire a total isolation from the world. It is pleasant to be able to +take a sort of side glance at humanity, even when we are most in love +with nature, and to feel that we can join our fellow creatures again +when the social feeling returns upon us. Man was not made to live alone. +Cowper, though he clearly loved retirement and a garden, did not desire +to have the pleasure entirely to himself. "Grant me," he says, "a friend +in my retreat." + + To whom to whisper solitude is sweet. + +Cowper lived and died a bachelor. In the case of a married man and a +father, garden delights are doubled by the presence of the family and +friends, if wife and children happen to be what they should be, and the +friends are genuine and genial. + +All true poets delight in gardens. The truest that ever lived spent his +latter days at New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. He had a spacious and +beautiful garden. Charles Knight tells us that "the Avon washed its +banks; and within its enclosures it had its sunny terraces and green +lawns, its pleached alleys and honeysuckle bowers," In this garden +Shakespeare planted with his own hands his celebrated Mulberry tree. It +was a noble specimen of the black Mulberry introduced into England in +1548[009]. In 1605, James I. issued a Royal edict recommending the +cultivation of silkworms and offering packets of mulberry seeds to those +amongst his subjects who were willing to sow them. Shakespeare's tree +was planted in 1609. Mr. Loudon, observes that the black Mulberry has +been known from the earliest records of antiquity and that it is twice +mentioned in the Bible: namely, in the second Book of Samuel and in the +Psalms. When New Place was in the possession of Sir Hough Clopton, who +was proud of its interesting association with the history of our great +poet, not only were Garrick and Macklin most hospitably entertained +under the Mulberry tree, but all strangers on a proper application were +admitted to a sight of it. But when Sir Hough Clopton was succeeded by +the Reverend Francis Gastrell, that gentleman, to save himself the +trouble of showing the tree to visitors, had "the gothic barbarity" to +cut down and root up that interesting--indeed _sacred_ memorial--of the +Pride of the British Isles. The people of Stratford were so enraged at +this sacrilege that they broke Mr. Gastrell's windows. That prosaic +personage at last found the place too hot for him, and took his +departure from a town whose inhabitants "doated on his very absence;" +but before he went he completed the fall sum of his sins against good +taste and good feeling by pulling to the ground the house in which +Shakespeare had lived and died. This was done, it is said, out of sheer +spite to the towns-people, with some of whom Mr. Gastrell had had a +dispute about the rate at which the house was taxed. His change of +residence was no great relief to him, for the whole British public felt +sorely aggrieved, and wherever he went he was peppered with all sorts of +squibs and satires. He "slid into verse," and "hitched in a rhyme." + + Sacred to ridicule his whole life long, + And the sad burden of a merry song. + +Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker, got possession of the fragments of +Shakespeare's Mulberry tree, and worked them into all sorts of elegant +ornaments and toys, and disposed of them at great prices. The +corporation of Stratford presented Garrick with the freedom of the town +in a box made of the wood of this famous tree, and the compliment seems +to have suggested to him his public festival or pageant in honor of the +poet. This Jubilee, which was got up with great zeal, and at great +expense and trouble, was attended by vast throngs of the admirers of +Shakespeare from all parts of the kingdom. It was repeated on the stage +and became so popular as a theatrical exhibition that it was represented +night after night for more than half a season to crowded audiences. + +Upon the subject of gardens, let us hear what has been said by the +self-styled "melancholy Cowley." When in the smoky city pent, amidst the +busy hum of men, he sighed unceasingly for some green retreat. As he paced +the crowded thorough-fares of London, he thought of the velvet turf and +the pure air of the country. His imagination carried him into secluded +groves or to the bank of a murmuring river, or into some trim and quiet +garden. "I never," he says, "had any other desire so strong and so like +to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be +master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate +conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life +only to the culture of them and the study of nature," The late Miss +Mitford, whose writings breathe so freshly of the nature that she loved +so dearly, realized for herself a similar desire. It is said that she +had the cottage of a peasant with the garden of a Duchess. Cowley is not +contented with expressing in plain prose his appreciation of garden +enjoyments. He repeatedly alludes to them in verse. + + Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil's praise) + The old Corycian yeoman passed his days; + Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent; + Th' ambassadors, which the great emperor sent + To offer him a crown, with wonder found + The reverend gardener, hoeing of his ground; + Unwillingly and slow and discontent + From his loved cottage to a throne he went; + And oft he stopped, on his triumphant way: + And oft looked back: and oft was heard to say + Not without sighs, Alas! I there forsake + A happier kingdom than I go to take. + +_Lib. IV. Plantarum_. + +Here is a similar allusion by the same poet to the delights which great +men amongst the ancients have taken in a rural retirement. + + Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walk + In the Salonian garden's noble shade + Which by his own imperial hands was made, + I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk + With the ambassadors, who come in vain + To entice him to a throne again. + + "If I, my friends," said he, "should to you show + All the delights which in these gardens grow, + 'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay, + Than 'tis that you should carry me away: + And trust me not, my friends, if every day + I walk not here with more delight, + + Than ever, after the most happy sight + In triumph to the Capitol I rode, + To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god," + +_The Garden_. + +Cowley does not omit the important moral which a garden furnishes. + + Where does the wisdom and the power divine + In a more bright and sweet reflection shine? + Where do we finer strokes and colors see + Of the Creator's real poetry. + Than when we with attention look + Upon the third day's volume of the book? + If we could open and intend our eye + _We all, like Moses, might espy, + E'en in a bush, the radiant Deity_. + +In Leigh Hunt's charming book entitled _The Town_, I find the following +notice of the partiality of poets for houses with gardens attached to +them:-- + +"It is not surprizing that _garden-houses_ as they were called; should +have formerly abounded in Holborn, in Bunhill Row, and other (at that +time) suburban places. We notice the fact, in order to observe _how fond +the poets were of occupying houses of this description. Milton seems to +have made a point of having one_. The only London residence of Chapman +which is known, was in Old Street Road; doubtless at that time a rural +suburb. Beaumont and Fletcher's house, on the Surrey side of the Thames, +(for they lived as well as wrote together,) most probably had a garden; +and Dryden's house in Gerard Street looked into the garden of the +mansion built by the Earls of Leicester. A tree, or even a flower, put +in a window in the streets of a great city, (and the London citizens, to +their credit, are fond of flowers,) affects the eye something in the +same way as the hand-organs, which bring unexpected music to the ear. +They refresh the common-places of life, shed a harmony through the busy +discord, and appeal to those first sources of emotion, which are +associated with the remembrance of all that is young and innocent." + +Milton must have been a passionate lover of flowers and flower-gardens +or he could never have exhibited the exquisite taste and genial feeling +which characterize all the floral allusions and descriptions with which +so much of his poetry is embellished. He lived for some time in a house +in Westminster over-looking the Park. The same house was tenanted by +Jeremy Bentham for forty years. It would be difficult to meet with any +two individuals of more opposite temperaments than the author of +_Paradise Lost_ and the Utilitarian Philosopher. There is or was a stone +in the wall at the end of the garden inscribed TO THE PRINCE OF POETS. +Two beautiful cotton trees overarched the inscription, "and to show" +says Hazlitt, (who subsequently lived in the same house himself,) "how +little the refinements of taste or fancy entered Bentham's system, he +proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the +garden, where he had breathed an air of truth and heaven for near half a +century, into a paltry Chreistomathic School, and to make Milton's house +(the cradle of _Paradise Lost_) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled +stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and +forwards to it with their cloven hoofs!" + +No poet, ancient or modern, has described a garden on a large scale in +so noble a style as Milton. He has anticipated the finest conceptions of +the latest landscape-gardeners, and infinitely surpassed all the +accounts we have met with of the gardens of the olden time before us. +His Paradise is a + + Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned + Or of revived Adonis or renowned + Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son + Or that, not mystic, where the sapient King + Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse[010] + +The description is too long to quote entire, but I must make room for a +delightful extract. Familiar as it must be to all lovers of poetry, who +will object to read it again and again? Genuine poetry is like a +masterpiece of the painter's art:--we can gaze with admiration for the +hundredth time on a noble picture. The mind and the eye are never +satiated with the truly beautiful. "A thing of beauty is a joy for +ever." + +PARADISE.[011] + + So on he fares, and to the border comes + Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, + Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, + As with a rural mound, the champaign head + Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides + With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, + Access denied: and overhead up grew + Insuperable height of loftiest shade, + Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm, + A sylvan scene; and as, the ranks ascend + Shade above shade, a woody theatre + Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops, + The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung: + Which to our general sire gave prospect large + Into his nether empire neighbouring round; + And higher than that wall a circling row + Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit, + Blossoms and fruits at once, of golden hue, + Appear'd, with gay enamell'd colours mix'd; + On which the sun more glad impress'd his beams, + Than on fair evening cloud, or humid bow. + When God hath shower'd the earth; so lovely seem'd + That landscape: and of pure now purer air + Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires + Vernal delight and joy, able to drive + All sadness but despair: now gentle gales, + Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense + Native perfumes and whisper whence they stole + Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail + Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past + Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow + Sabean odours from the spicy shore + Of Araby the Blest; with such delay + Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league + Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles. + + * * * * * + + Southward through Eden went a river large, + Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill + Pass'd underneath ingulf'd; for God had thrown + That mountain as his garden mould, high raised + Upon the rapid current, which through veins + Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn, + Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill + Water'd the garden; thence united fell + Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, + Which from his darksome passage now appears; + And now, divided into four main streams, + Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm + And country, whereof here needs no account; + But rather to tell how, if art could tell, + How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, + Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, + With mazy error under pendent shades, + Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed + Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art + In beds and curious knots, but nature boon + Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, + Both where the morning sun first warmly smote + The open field, and where the unpierced shade + Imbrown'd the noontide bowers; thus was this place + A happy rural seat of various view; + Groves whose rich, trees wept odorous gums and balm; + Others whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind, + Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, + If true, here only, and of delicious taste: + Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks + Grazing the tender herb, were interposed; + Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap + Of some irriguous valley spread her store, + Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose: + Another side, umbrageous grots and caves + Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine + Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps + Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall + Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake, + That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd + Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams. + The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs, + Breathing the smell of field and grove attune, + The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, + Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, + Led on the eternal Spring. + +Pope in his grounds at Twickenham, and Shenstone in his garden farm of +the Leasowes, taught their countrymen to understand how much taste and +refinement of soul may be connected with the laying out of gardens and +the cultivation of flowers. I am sorry to learn that the famous retreats +of these poets are not now what they were. The lovely nest of the little +Nightingale of Twickenham has fallen into vulgar hands. And when Mr. +Loudon visited (in 1831) the once beautiful grounds of Shenstone, he +"found them in a state of indescribable neglect and ruin." + +Pope said that of all his works that of which he was proudest was his +garden. It was of but five acres, or perhaps less, but to this he is +said to have given a charming variety. He enumerates amongst the friends +who assisted him in the improvement of his grounds, the gallant Earl of +Peterborough "whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines." + + Know, all the distant din that world can keep, + Rolls o'er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep. + There my retreat the best companions grace + Chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place. + There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl + The feast of reason and the flow of soul; + And he whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines + Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines; + Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain + Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain. + +Frederick Prince of Wales took a lively interest in Pope's tasteful +Tusculanum and made him a present of some urns or vases either for his +"laurel circus or to terminate his points." His famous grotto, which he +is so fond of alluding to, was excavated to avoid an inconvenience. His +property lying on both sides of the public highway, he contrived his +highly ornamented passage under the road to preserve privacy and to +connect the two portions of his estate. + +The poet has given us in one of his letters a long and lively +description of his subterranean embellishments. But his verse will live +longer than his prose. He has immortalized this grotto, so radiant with +spars and ores and shells, in the following poetical inscription:-- + + Thou, who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent wave + Shines a broad mirror through the shadowy cave, + Where lingering drops from mineral roofs distil, + And pointed crystals break the sparkling rill, + Unpolished gems no ray on pride bestow, + And latent metals innocently glow, + Approach! Great Nature studiously behold, + And eye the mine without a wish for gold + Approach--but awful! Lo, the Egerian grot, + Where, nobly pensive, ST JOHN sat and thought, + Where British sighs from dying WYNDHAM stole, + And the bright flame was shot thro' MARCHMONT'S soul; + Let such, such only, tread this sacred floor + Who dare to love their country, and be poor. + +Horace Walpole, speaking of the poet's garden, tells us that "the +passing through the gloom from the grotto to the opening day, the +retiring and again assembling shades, the dusky groves, the larger lawn, +and the solemnity at the cypresses that led up to his mother's tomb, +were managed with exquisite judgment." + + Cliveden's proud alcove, + The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love, + +alluded to by Pope in his sketch of the character of Villiers, Duke of +Buckingham, though laid out by Kent, was probably improved by the poet's +suggestions. Walpole seems to think that the beautiful grounds at +Rousham, laid out for General Dormer, were planned on the model of the +garden at Twickenham, at least the opening and retiring "shades of +Venus's Vale." And these grounds at Rousham were pronounced "the most +engaging of all Kent's works." It is said that the design of the garden +at Carlton House, was borrowed from that of Pope. + +Wordsworth was correct in his observation that "Landscape gardening is a +liberal art akin to the arts of poetry and painting." Walpole describes +it as "an art that realizes painting and improves nature." "Mahomet," he +adds, "imagined an Elysium, but Kent created many." + +Pope's mansion was not a very spacious one, but it was large enough for +a private gentleman of inexpensive habits. After the poet's death it was +purchased by Sir William Stanhope who enlarged both the house and +garden.[012] A bust of Pope, in white marble, has been placed over an +arched way with the following inscription from the pen of Lord Nugent: + + The humble roof, the garden's scanty line, + Ill suit the genius of the bard divine; + But fancy now displays a fairer scope + And Stanhope's plans unfold the soul of Pope. + +I have not heard who set up this bust with its impudent inscription. I +hope it was not Stanhope himself. I cannot help thinking that it would +have been a truer compliment to the memory of Pope if the house and +grounds had been kept up exactly as he had left them. Most people, I +suspect, would greatly have preferred the poet's own "unfolding of his +soul" to that "_unfolding_" attempted for him by a Stanhope and +commemorated by a Nugent. Pope exhibited as much taste in laying out his +grounds as in constructing his poems. Sir William, after his attempt to +make the garden more worthy of the original designer, might just as +modestly have undertaken to enlarge and improve the poetry of Pope on +the plea that it did not sufficiently _unfold his soul_. A line of Lord +Nugent's might in that case have been transferred from the marble bust +to the printed volume: + + His fancy now displays a fairer scope. + +Or the enlarger and improver might have taken his motto from +Shakespeare: + + To my _unfolding_ lend a gracious ear. + +This would have been an appropriate motto for the title-page of "_The +Poems of Pope: enlarged and improved: or The Soul of the Poet +Unfolded_." + +But in sober truth, Pope, whether as a gardener or as a poet, required +no enlarger or improver of his works. After Sir William Stanhope had +left Pope's villa it came into the possession of Lord Mendip, who +exhibited a proper respect for the poet's memory; but when in 1807 it +was sold to the Baroness Howe, that lady pulled down the house and built +another. The place subsequently came into the possession of a Mr. Young. +The grounds have now no resemblance to what the taste of Pope had once +made them. Even his mother's monument has been removed! Few things would +have more deeply touched the heart of the poet than the anticipation of +this insult to the memory of so revered a parent. His filial piety was +as remarkable as his poetical genius. No passages in his works do him +more honor both as a man and as a poet than those which are mellowed +into a deeper tenderness of sentiment and a softer and sweeter music by +his domestic affections. There are probably few readers of English +poetry who have not the following lines by heart, + + Me, let the tender office long engage + To rock the cradle of reposing age; + With lenient arts extend a mother's breath; + Make langour smile, and smooth the bed of death; + Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, + And keep at least one parent from the sky. + +In a letter to Swift (dated March 29, 1731) begun by Lord Bolingbroke +and concluded by Pope, the latter speaks thus touchingly of his dear old +parent: + +"My Lord has spoken justly of his lady; why not I of my mother? +Yesterday was her birth-day, now entering on the ninety-first year of +her age; her memory much diminished, but her senses very little hurt, +her sight and hearing good; she sleeps not ill, eats moderately, drinks +water, says her prayers; this is all she does. I have reason to thank +God for continuing so long to me a very good and tender parent, and for +allowing me to exercise for some years those cares which are now as +necessary to her, as hers have been to me." + +Pope lost his mother two years, two months, and a few days after the +date of this letter. Three days after her death he entreated Richardson, +the painter, to take a sketch of her face, as she lay in her coffin: and +for this purpose Pope somewhat delayed her interment. "I thank God," he +says, "her death was as easy as her life was innocent; and as it cost +her not a groan, nor even a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such +an expression of tranquillity, nay almost of pleasure, that it is even +amiable to behold it. It would afford the finest image of a saint +expired, that ever painting drew, and it would be the greatest +obligation which even that obliging art could ever bestow upon a friend +if you would come and sketch it for me." The writer adds, "I shall hope +to see you this evening, as late as you will, or to-morrow morning as +early, _before this winter flower is faded_." + +On the small obelisk in the garden, erected by Pope to the memory of his +mother, he placed the following simple and pathetic inscription. + + AH! EDITHA! + MATRUM OPTIMA! + MULIERUM AMANTISSIMA! + VALE! + +I wonder that any one could have had the heart to remove or to destroy +so interesting a memorial. + +It is said that Pope planted his celebrated weeping willow at Twickenham +with his own hands, and that it was the first of its particular species +introduced into England. Happening to be with Lady Suffolk when she +received a parcel from Spain, he observed that it was bound with green +twigs which looked as if they might vegetate. "Perhaps," said he, "these +may produce something that we have not yet in England." He tried a +cutting, and it succeeded. The tree was removed by some person as +barbarous as the reverend gentleman who cut down Shakespeare's Mulberry +Tree. The Willow was destroyed for the same reason, as the Mulberry +Tree--because the owner was annoyed at persons asking to see it. The +Weeping Willow + + That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,[013] + +has had its interest with people in general much increased by its +association with the history of Napoleon in the Island of St. Helena. +The tree whose boughs seemed to hang so fondly over his remains has now +its scions in all parts of the world. Few travellers visited the tomb +without taking a small cutting of the Napoleon Willow for cultivation in +their own land. Slips of the Willow at Twickenham, like those of the +Willow at St. Helena, have also found their way into many countries. In +1789 the Empress of Russia had some of them planted in her garden at St. +Petersburgh. + +Mr. Loudon tells us that there is an old _oak_ in Binfield Wood, Windsor +Forest, which is called _Pope's Oak_, and which bears the inscription +"HERE POPE SANG:"[014] but according to general tradition it was a +_beech_ tree, under which Pope wrote his "Windsor Forest." It is said +that as that tree was decayed, Lady Gower had the inscription alluded to +carved upon another tree near it. Perhaps the substituted tree was an +oak. + +I may here mention that in the Vale of Avoca there is a tree celebrated +as that under which Thomas Moore wrote the verses entitled "The meeting +of the Waters." + +The allusion to _Pope's Oak_ reminds me that Chaucer is said to have +planted three oak trees in Donnington Park near Newbury. Not one of them +is now, I believe, in existence. There is an oak tree in Windsor Forest +above 1000 years old. In the hollow of this tree twenty people might be +accommodated with standing room. It is called _King's Oak_: it was +William the Conqueror's favorite tree. _Herne's Oak_ in Windsor Park, is +said by some to be still standing, but it is described as a mere +anatomy. + + ----An old oak whose boughs are mossed with age, + And high top bald with dry antiquity. + +_As You Like it_. + +"It stretches out its bare and sapless branches," says Mr. Jesse, "like +the skeleton arms of some enormous giant, and is almost fearful in its +decay." _Herne's Oak_, as every one knows, is immortalised by +Shakespeare, who has spread its fame over many lands. + + There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter, + Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, + Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, + Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns, + And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle; + And makes milch cows yield blood, and shakes a chain + In a most hideous and dreadful manner. + You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know, + The superstitious, idle-headed eld + Received, and did deliver to our age, + This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth. + +_Merry Wives of Windsor_. + +"Herne, the hunter" is said to have hung himself upon one of the +branches of this tree, and even, + + ----Yet there want not many that do fear, + In deep of night to walk by this Herne's Oak. + +_Merry Wives of Windsor_. + +It was not long ago visited by the King of Prussia to whom Shakespeare +had rendered it an object of great interest. + +It is unpleasant to add that there is considerable doubt and dispute as +to its identity. Charles Knight and a Quarterly Reviewer both maintain +that _Herne's Oak_ was cut down with a number of other old trees in +obedience to an order from George the Third when he was not in his right +mind, and that his Majesty deeply regretted the order he had given when +he found that the most interesting tree in his Park had been destroyed. +Mr. Jesse, in his _Gleanings in Natural History_, says that after some +pains to ascertain the truth, he is convinced that this story is not +correct, and that the famous old tree is still standing. He adds that +George the Fourth often alluded to the story and said that though one of +the trees cut down was supposed to have been _Herne's Oak_, it was not +so in reality. George the Third, it is said, once called the attention +of Mr. Ingalt, the manager of Windsor Home Park to a particular tree, +and said "I brought you here to point out this tree to you. I commit it +to your especial charge; and take care that no damage is ever done to +it. I had rather that every tree in the park should be cut down than +that this tree should be hurt. _This is Hernes Oak_." + +Sir Philip Sidney's Oak at Penshurst mentioned by Ben Jonson-- + + That taller tree, of which the nut was set + At his great birth, where all the Muses met-- + +is still in existence. It is thirty feet in circumference. Waller also +alludes to + + Yonder tree which stands the sacred mark + Of noble Sidney's birth. + +Yardley Oak, immortalized by Cowper, is now in a state of decay. + + Time made thee what thou wert--king of the woods! + And time hath made thee what thou art--a cave + For owls to roost in. + +_Cowper_. + +The tree is said to be at least fifteen hundred years old. It cannot +hold its present place much longer; but for many centuries to come it +will + + Live in description and look green in song. + +It stands on the grounds of the Marquis of Northampton; and to prevent +people from cutting off and carrying away pieces of it as relics, the +following notice has been painted on a board and nailed to the +tree:--"_Out of respect to the memory of the poet Cowper, the Marquis of +Northampton is particularly desirous of preserving this Oak_." + +Lord Byron, in early life, planted an oak in the garden at Newstead and +indulged the fancy, that as that flourished so should he. The oak has +survived the poet, but it will not outlive the memory of its planter or +even the boyish verses which he addressed to it. + +Pope observes, that "a tree is a nobler object than a prince in his +coronation robes." Yet probably the poet had never seen any tree larger +than a British oak. What would he have thought of the Baobab tree in +Abyssinia, which measures from 80 to 120 feet in girth, and sometimes +reaches the age of five thousand years. We have no such sylvan patriarch +in Europe. The oldest British tree I have heard of, is a yew tree of +Fortingall in Scotland, of which the age is said to be two thousand five +hundred years. If trees had long memories and could converse with man, +what interesting chapters these survivors of centuries might add to the +history of the world! + +Pope was not always happy in his Twickenham Paradise. His rural delights +were interrupted for a time by an unrequited passion for the beautiful +and highly-gifted but eccentric Lady Mary Wortley Montague. + + Ah! friend, 'tis true--this truth you lovers know; + In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow; + In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes + Of hanging mountains and of sloping greens; + Joy lives not here, to happier seats it flies, + And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes. + + What are the gay parterre, the chequered shade, + The morning bower, the evening colonnade, + But soft recesses of uneasy minds, + To sigh unheard in to the passing winds? + + So the struck deer, in some sequestered part, + Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart; + He, stretched unseen, in coverts hid from day, + Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away. + +These are exquisite lines, and have given delight to innumerable +readers, but they gave no delight to Lady Mary. In writing to her +sister, the Countess of Mar, then at Paris, she says in allusion to +these "most musical, most melancholy" verses--"_I stifled them here; and +I beg they may die the same death at Paris_." It is not, however, quite +so easy a thing as Lady Mary seemed to think, to "stifle" such poetry as +Pope's. + +Pope's notions respecting the laying out of gardens are well expressed +in the following extract from the fourth Epistle of his Moral +Essays.[015] This fourth Epistle was addressed, as most readers will +remember, to the accomplished Lord Burlington, who, as Walpole says, +"had every quality of a genius and an artist, except envy. Though his +own designs were more chaste and classic than Kent's, he entertained him +in his house till his death, and was more studious to extend his +friend's fame than his own." + + Something there is more needful than expense, + And something previous e'en to taste--'tis sense; + Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, + And though no science fairly worth the seven; + A light, which in yourself you must perceive; + Jones and Le Notre have it not to give. + To build, or plant, whatever you intend, + To rear the column or the arch to bend; + To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot; + In all let Nature never be forgot. + But treat the goddess like a modest fair, + Nor over dress nor leave her wholly bare; + Let not each beauty every where be spied, + Where half the skill is decently to hide. + He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds, + Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds. + _Consult the genius of the place in all_;[016] + That tells the waters or to rise or fall; + Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale, + Or scoops in circling theatres the vale; + Calls in the country, catches opening glades, + Joins willing woods and varies shades from shades; + Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines; + Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs. + Still follow sense, of every art the soul; + Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole, + Spontaneous beauties all around advance, + Start e'en from difficulty, strike from chance; + Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow + A work to wonder at--perhaps a STOWE.[017] + Without it proud Versailles![018] Thy glory falls; + And Nero's terraces desert their walls. + The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make, + Lo! Cobham comes and floats them with a lake; + Or cut wide views through mountains to the plain, + You'll wish your hill or sheltered seat again. + +Pope is in most instances singularly happy in his compliments, but the +allusion to STOWE--as "_a work to wonder at_"--has rather an equivocal +appearance, and so also has the mention of Lord Cobham, the proprietor +of the place. In the first draught of the poem, the name of Bridgeman +was inserted where Cobham's now stands, but as Bridgeman mistook the +compliment for a sneer, the poet thought the landscape-gardener had +proved himself undeserving of the intended honor, and presented the +second-hand compliment to the peer. The grounds at Stowe, more praised +by poets than any other private estate in England, extend to 400 acres. +There are many other fine estates in our country of far greater extent, +but of less celebrity. Some of them are much too extensive, perhaps, for +true enjoyment. The Earl of Leicester, when he had completed his seat at +Holkham, observed, that "It was a melancholy thing to stand alone in +one's country. I look round; not a house is to be seen but mine. I am +the Giant of Giant-castle and have ate up all my neighbours." The Earl +must have felt that the political economy of Goldsmith in his _Deserted +Village_ was not wholly the work of imagination. + + Sweet smiling village! Loveliest of the lawn, + Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn; + Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen + And desolation saddens all the green,-- + _One only master grasps thy whole domain_. + + * * * * * + + Where then, ah! where shall poverty reside, + To scape the pressure of contiguous pride? + +"Hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton," as Lamb calls him, describes Stowe as a +Paradise. + +ON LORD COBHAM'S GARDEN. + + It puzzles much the sage's brains + Where Eden stood of yore, + Some place it in Arabia's plains, + Some say it is no more. + + But Cobham can these tales confute, + As all the curious know; + For he hath proved beyond dispute, + That Paradise is STOWE. + +Thomson also calls the place a paradise: + + Ye Powers + That o'er the garden and the rural seat + Preside, which shining through the cheerful land + In countless numbers blest Britannia sees; + O, lead me to the wide-extended walks, + _The fair majestic paradise of Stowe!_ + Not Persian Cyrus on Ionia's shore + E'er saw such sylvan scenes; such various art + By genius fired, such ardent genius tamed + By cool judicious art, that in the strife + All-beauteous Nature fears to be out-done. + +The poet somewhat mars the effect of this compliment to the charms of +Stowe, by making it a matter of regret that the owner + + His verdant files + Of ordered trees should here inglorious range, + Instead of squadrons flaming o'er the field, + And long embattled hosts. + +This representation of rural pursuits as inglorious, a sentiment so out +of keeping with his subject, is soon after followed rather +inconsistently, by a sort of paraphrase of Virgil's celebrated picture +of rural felicity, and some of Thomson's own thoughts on the advantages +of a retreat from active life. + + Oh, knew he but his happiness, of men + The happiest he! Who far from public rage + Deep in the vale, with a choice few retired + Drinks the pure pleasures of the rural life, &c. + +Then again:-- + + Let others brave the flood in quest of gain + And beat for joyless months, the gloomy wave. + _Let such as deem it glory to destroy, + Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek; + Unpierced, exulting in the widow's wail, + The virgin's shriek and infant's trembling cry._ + + * * * * * + + While he, from all the stormy passions free + That restless men involve, hears and _but_ hears, + At distance safe, the human tempest roar, + Wrapt close in conscious peace. The fall of kings, + The rage of nations, and the crush of states, + Move not the man, who from the world escaped, + In still retreats and flowery solitudes, + To nature's voice attends, from month to month, + And day to day, through the revolving year; + Admiring sees her in her every shape; + Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart; + Takes what she liberal gives, nor asks for more. + He, when young Spring, protudes the bursting gems + Marks the first bud, and sucks the healthful gale + Into his freshened soul; her genial hour + He full enjoys, and not a beauty blows + And not an opening blossom breathes in vain. + +Thomson in his description of Lord Townshend's seat of Rainham--another +English estate once much celebrated and still much admired--exclaims: + + Such are thy beauties, Rainham, such the haunts + Of angels, in primeval guiltless days + When man, imparadised, conversed with God. + +And Broome after quoting the whole description in his dedication of his +own poems to Lord Townshend, observes, in the old fashioned fulsome +strain, "This, my lord, is but a faint picture of the place of your +retirement which no one ever enjoyed more elegantly."[019] "A faint +picture!" What more would the dedicator have wished Thomson to say? +Broome, if not contented with his patron's seat being described as an +earthly Paradise, must have desired it to be compared with Heaven +itself, and thus have left his Lordship no hope of the enjoyment of a +better place than he already possessed. + +Samuel Boyse, who when without a shirt to his back sat up in his bed to +write verses, with his arms through two holes in his blanket, and when +he went into the streets wore paper collars to conceal the sad +deficiency of linen, has a poem of considerable length entitled _The +Triumphs of Nature_. It is wholly devoted to a description of this +magnificent garden,[020] in which, amongst other architectural +ornaments, was a temple dedicated to British worthies, where the busts +of Pope and Congreve held conspicuous places. I may as well give a +specimen of the lines of poor Boyse. Here is his description of that +part of Lord Cobham's grounds in which is erected to the Goddess of +Love, a Temple containing a statue of the Venus de Medicis. + + Next to the fair ascent our steps we traced, + Where shines afar the bold rotunda placed; + The artful dome Ionic columns bear + Light as the fabric swells in ambient air. + Beneath enshrined the Tuscan Venus stands + And beauty's queen the beauteous scene commands: + The fond beholder sees with glad surprize, + Streams glisten, lawns appear, and forests rise-- + Here through thick shades alternate buildings break, + There through the borders steals the silver lake, + A soft variety delights the soul, + And harmony resulting crowns the whole. + +Congreve in his Letter in verse addressed to Lord Cobham asks him to + + Tell how his pleasing Stowe employs his time. + +It would seem that the proprietor of Stowe took particular interest in +the disposition of the water on his grounds. Congreve enquires + + Or dost thou give the winds afar to blow + Each vexing thought, and heart-devouring woe, + And fix thy mind alone on rural scenes, + _To turn the level lawns to liquid plains_? + To raise the creeping rills from humble beds + And force the latent spring to lift their heads, + On watery columns, capitals to rear, + That mix their flowing curls with upper air? + + * * * * * + + Or slowly walk along the mazy wood + To meditate on all that's wise and good. + +The line:-- + + To turn the level lawn to liquid plains-- + +Will remind the reader of Pope's + + Lo! Cobham comes and floats them with a lake-- + +And it might be thought that Congreve had taken the hint from the bard +of Twickenham if Congreve's poem had not preceded that of Pope. The one +was published in 1729, the other in 1731. + +Cowper is in the list of poets who have alluded to "Cobham's groves" and +Pope's commemoration of them. + + And _Cobham's groves_ and Windsor's green retreats + When Pope describes them have a thousand sweets. + +"Magnificence and splendour," says Mr. Whately, the author of +_Observations on Modern Gardening_, "are the characteristics of Stowe. +It is like one of those places celebrated in antiquity which were +devoted to the purposes of religion, and filled with sacred groves, +hallowed fountains, and temples dedicated to several deities; the resort +of distant nations and the object of veneration to half the heathen +world: the pomp is, at Stowe, blended with beauty; and the place is +equally distinguished by its amenity and grandeur." Horace Walpole +speaks of its "visionary enchantment." "I have been strolling about in +Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, from garden to garden," says Pope in +one of his letters, "but still returning to Lord Cobham's with fresh +satisfaction."[021] + +The grounds at Stowe, until the year 1714, were laid out in the old +formal style. Bridgeman then commenced the improvements and Kent +subsequently completed them. + +Stowe is now, I believe, in the possession of the Marquis of Chandos, +son of the Duke of Buckingham. It is melancholy to state that the +library, the statues, the furniture, and even some of the timber on the +estate, were sold in 1848 to satisfy the creditors of the Duke. + +Pope was never tired of improving his own grounds. "I pity you, Sir," +said a friend to him, "because you have now completed every thing +belonging to your gardens."[022] "Why," replied Pope, "I really shall be +at a loss for the diversion I used to take in carrying out and finishing +things: I have now nothing left me to do but to add a little ornament or +two along the line of the Thames." I dare say Pope was by no means so +near the end of his improvements as he and his friend imagined. One +little change in a garden is sure to suggest or be followed by another. +Garden-improvements are "never ending, still beginning." The late Dr. +Arnold, the famous schoolmaster, writing to a friend, says--"The garden +is a constant source of amusement to us both (self and wife); there are +always some little alterations to be made, some few spots where an +additional shrub or two would be ornamental, something coming into +blossom; so that I can always delight to go round and see how things are +going on." A garden is indeed a scene of continual change. Nature, even +without the aid of the gardener, has "infinite variety," and supplies "a +perpetual feast of nectared sweets where no crude surfeit reigns." + +Spence reports Pope to have said: "I have sometimes had an idea of +planting an old gothic cathedral in trees. Good large poplars, with +their white stems, cleared of boughs to a proper height would serve very +well for the columns, and might form the different aisles or +peristilliums, by their different distances and heights. These would +look very well near, and the dome rising all in a proper tuft in the +middle would look well at a distance." This sort of verdant architecture +would perhaps have a pleasing effect, but it is rather too much in the +artificial style, to be quite consistent with Pope's own idea of +landscape-gardening. And there are other trees that would form a nobler +natural cathedral than the formal poplar. Cowper did not think of the +poplar, when he described a green temple-roof. + + How airy and how light the graceful arch, + Yet awful as the consecrated roof + Re-echoing pious anthems. + +Almost the only traces of Pope's garden that now remain are the splendid +Spanish chesnut-trees and some elms and cedars planted by the poet +himself. A space once laid out in winding walks and beautiful +shrubberies is now a potatoe field! The present proprietor, Mr. Young, +is a wholesale tea-dealer. Even the bones of the poet, it is said, have +been disturbed. The skull of Pope, according to William Howitt, is now +in the private collection of a phrenologist! The manner in which it was +obtained, he says, is this:--On some occasion of alteration in the +church at Twickenham, or burial of some one in the same spot, the coffin +of Pope was disinterred, and opened to see the state of the remains. By +a bribe of L50 to the Sexton, possession of the skull was obtained for +one night; another skull was then returned instead of the poet's. + +It has been stated that the French term _Ferme Ornee_ was first used in +England by Shenstone. It exactly expressed the character of his grounds. +Mr. Repton said that he never strolled over the scenery of the Leasowes +without lamenting the constant disappointment to which Shenstone exposed +himself by a vain attempt to unite the incompatible objects of ornament +and profit. "Thus," continued Mr. Repton, "the poet lived under the +continual mortification of disappointed hope, and with a mind +exquisitely sensible, he felt equally the sneer of the great man at the +magnificence of his attempt and the ridicule of the farmer at the +misapplication of his paternal acres." The "sneer of the great man." is +perhaps an allusion to what Dr. Johnson says of Lord Lyttelton:--that he +"looked with disdain" on "the petty State" of his neighbour. "For a +while," says Dr. Johnson, "the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell +their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself +admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, +they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress, by +conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, +and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; +injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain." Mr. Graves, the +zealous friend of Shenstone, indignantly denies that any of the +Lyttelton family had evinced so ungenerous a feeling towards the +proprietor of the Leasowes who though his "empire" was less "spacious +and opulent" had probably a larger share of true taste than even the +proprietor of Hagley, the Lyttelton domain--though Hagley has been much, +and I doubt not, deservedly, admired.[023] + +Dr. Johnson states that Shenstone's expenses were beyond his means,-- +that he spent his estate in adorning it--that at last the clamours of +creditors "overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and that +his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns and +fairies." But this is gross exaggeration. Shenstone was occasionally, +indeed, in slight pecuniary difficulties, but he could always have +protected himself from the intrusion of the myrmidons of the law by +raising money on his estate; for it appears that after the payment of +all his debts, he left legacies to his friends and annuities to his +servants. + +Johnson himself is the most scornful of the critics upon Shenstone's +rural pursuits. "The pleasure of Shenstone," says the Doctor, "was all +in his eye: he valued what he valued merely for its looks. Nothing +raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his +water." Dr. Johnson would have seen no use in the loveliest piece of +running water in the world if it had contained nothing that he could +masticate! Mrs. Piozzi says of him, "The truth is, he hated to hear +about prospects and views, and laying out grounds and taste in +gardening." "That was the best garden," he said, "which produced most +roots and fruits; and that water was most to be prized which contained +most fish." On this principle of the valuelessness of those pleasures +which enter the mind through the eye, Dr. Johnson should have blamed the +lovers of painting for dwelling with such fond admiration on the canvas +of his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds. In point of fact, Dr. Johnson had no +more sympathy with the genius of the painter or the musician than with +that of the Landscape gardener, for he had neither an eye nor an ear for +Art. He wondered how any man could be such a fool as to be moved to +tears by music, and observed, that, "one could not fill one's belly with +hearing soft murmurs or looking at rough cascades." No; the loveliness +of nature does not satisfy the thirst and hunger of the body, but it +_does_ satisfy the thirst and hunger of the soul. No one can find +wheaten bread or wine or venison or beef or plum-pudding or turtle-soup +in mere sounds and sights, however exquisite--neither can any one find +such substantial diet within the boards of a book--no not even on the +pages of Shakespeare, or even those of the Bible itself,--but men can +find in sweet music and lovely scenery and good books something +infinitely more precious than all the wine, venison, beef, or +plum-pudding, or turtle-soup that could be swallowed during a long life by +the most craving and capacious alderman of London! Man is of a dual +nature: he is not all body. He has other and far higher wants and +enjoyments than the purely physical--and these nobler appetites are +gratified by the charms of nature and the creations of inspired genius. + +Dr. Johnson's gastronomic allusions to nature recal the old story of a +poet pointing out to a utilitarian friend some white lambs frolicking in +a meadow. "Aye," said, the other, "only think of a quarter of one of +them with asparagus and mint sauce!" The story is by some supposed to +have had a Scottish origin, and a prosaic North Briton is made to say +that the pretty little lambs, sporting amidst the daisies and +buttercups, would "_mak braw pies_." + +A profound feeling for the beautiful is generally held to be an +essential quality in the poet. It is a curious fact, however, that there +are some who aspire to the rank of poet, and have their claims allowed, +who yet cannot be said to be poetical in their nature--for how can that +nature be, strictly speaking, _poetical_ which denies the sentiment of +Keats, that + + A thing of beauty is a joy for ever? + +Both Scott and Byron very earnestly admired Dr. Johnson's "_London_" and +"_The Vanity of Human Wishes_." Yet the sentiments just quoted from the +author of those productions are far more characteristic of a utilitarian +philosopher than of one who has been endowed by nature with + + The vision and the faculty divine, + +and made capable, like some mysterious enchanter, of + + Clothing the palpable and the familiar + With golden exhalations of the dawn. + +Crabbe, also a prime favorite with the authors of the _Lay of the Last +Minstrel_, and _Childe Harold_, is recorded by his biographer--his own +son--to have exhibited "a remarkable indifference to all the proper +objects of taste;" to have had "no real love for painting, or music, or +architecture or for what a painter's eye considers as the beauties of +landscape." "In botany, grasses, the most _useful_ but the least +ornamental, were his favorites." "He never seemed to be captivated with +the mere beauty of natural objects or even to catch any taste for the +arrangement of his specimens. Within, the house was a kind of scientific +confusion; in the garden the usual showy foreigners gave place to the +most scarce flowers, especially to the rarer weeds, of Britain; and were +scattered here and there only for preservation. In fact he neither loved +order for its own sake nor had any very high opinion of that passion in +others."[024] Lord Byron described Crabbe to be + + Though nature's sternest painter, yet _the best_. + +What! was he a better painter of nature than Shakespeare? The truth is +that Byron was a wretched critic, though a powerful poet. His praises +and his censures were alike unmeasured. + + His generous ardor no cold medium knew. + +He seemed to recognize no great general principles of criticism, but to +found all his judgments on mere prejudice and passion. He thought Cowper +"no poet," pronounced Spenser "a dull fellow," and placed Pope above +Shakespeare. Byron's line on Crabbe is inscribed on the poet's tombstone +at Trowbridge. Perhaps some foreign visitor on reading the inscription +may be surprized at his own ignorance when he learns that it is not the +author of _Macbeth_ and _Othello_ that he is to regard as the best +painter of nature that England has produced, but the author of the +_Parish Register_ and the _Tales of the Hall_. Absurd and indiscriminate +laudations of this kind confound all intellectual distinctions and make +criticism ridiculous. Crabbe is unquestionably a vigorous and truthful +writer, but he is not the _best_ we have, in any sense of the word. + +Though Dr. Johnson speaks so contemptuously of Shenstone's rural +pursuits, he could not help acknowledging that when the poet began "to +point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks and +to wind his waters," he did all this with such judgment and fancy as +"made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the +skilful; a place to be visited by travellers, and copied by designers." + +Mason, in his _English Garden_, a poem once greatly admired, but now +rarely read, and never perhaps with much delight, does justice to the +taste of the Poet of the Leasowes. + + Nor, Shenstone, thou + Shalt pass without thy meed, thou son of peace! + Who knew'st, perchance, to harmonize thy shades + Still softer than thy song; yet was that song + Nor rude nor inharmonious when attuned + To pastoral plaint, or tale of slighted love. + +English pleasure-gardens have been much imitated by the French. Viscomte +Girardin, at his estate of Ermenonville, dedicated an inscription in +amusing French-English to the proprietor of the Leasowes-- + + THIS PLAIN STONE + TO WILLIAM SHENSTONE; + IN HIS WRITINGS HE DISPLAYED + A MIND NATURAL; + AT LEASOWES HE LAID + ARCADIAN GREENS RURAL. + +The Viscomte, though his English composition was so quaint and +imperfect, was an elegant writer in his own language, and showed great +taste and skill in laying out his grounds. He had visited England, and +carefully studied our modern style of gardening. He had personally +consulted Shenstone, Mason, Whateley and other English authors on +subjects of rural taste. He published an eloquent description of his own +estate. His famous friend Rousseau wrote the preface to it. The book was +translated into English. Rousseau spent his last days at Ermenonville +and was buried there in what is called _The Isle of Poplars_. The garden +is now in a neglected state, but the tomb of Rousseau remains uninjured, +and is frequently visited by the admirers of his genius. + +"Dr. Warton," says Bowles, "mentions Milton and Pope as the poets to +whom English Landscape is indebted, but _he forgot poor Shenstone_." A +later writer, however, whose sympathy for genius communicates such a +charm to all his anecdotes and comments in illustration of the literary +character, has devoted a chapter of his _Curiosities of Literature_ to a +notice of the rural tastes of the proprietor of the Leasowes. I must +give a brief extract from it. + +"When we consider that Shenstone, in developing his fine pastoral ideas +in the Leasowes, educated the nation into that taste for +landscape-gardening, which has become the model of all Europe, this itself +constitutes a claim on the gratitude of posterity. Thus the private +pleasures of a man of genius may become at length those of a whole +people. The creator of this new taste appears to have received far less +notice than he merited. The name of Shenstone does not appear in the +Essay on Gardening, by Lord Orford; even the supercilious Gray only +bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his +friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by +nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after describing some of the +offices of the landscape designer, adds, that 'he will not inquire +whether they demand any great powers of mind.' Johnson, however, conveys +to us his own feelings, when he immediately expresses them under the +character of 'a sullen and surly speculator.' The anxious life of +Shenstone would indeed have been remunerated, could he have read the +enchanting eulogium of Whateley on the Leasowes; which, said he, 'is a +perfect picture of his mind--simple, elegant and amiable; and will +always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verse, or whether +in the scenes which he formed, he only realised the pastoral images +which abound in his songs.' Yes! Shenstone had been delighted could he +have heard that Montesquieu, on his return home, adorned his 'Chateau +Gothique, mais orne de bois charmans, don't j'ai pris l'idee en +Angleterre;' and Shenstone, even with his modest and timid nature, had +been proud to have witnessed a noble foreigner, amidst memorials +dedicated to Theocritus and Virgil, to Thomson and Gesner, raising in +his grounds an inscription, in bad English, but in pure taste, to +Shenstone himself; for having displayed in his writings 'a mind +natural,' and in his Leasowes 'laid Arcadian greens rural;' and recently +Pindemonte has traced the taste of English gardening to Shenstone. A man +of genius sometimes receives from foreigners, who are placed out of the +prejudices of his compatriots, the tribute of posterity!" + +"The Leasowes," says William Howitt, "now belongs to the Atwood family; +and a Miss Atwood resides there occasionally. But the whole place bears +the impress of desertion and neglect. The house has a dull look; the +same heavy spirit broods over the lawns and glades: And it is only when +you survey it from a distance, as when approaching Hales-Owen from +Hagley, that the whole presents an aspect of unusual beauty." + +Shenstone was at least as proud of his estate of the Leasowes as was +Pope of his Twickenham Villa--perhaps more so. By mere men of the world, +this pride in a garden may be regarded as a weakness, but if it be a +weakness it is at least an innocent and inoffensive one, and it has been +associated with the noblest intellectual endowments. Pitt and Fox and +Burke and Warren Hastings were not weak men, and yet were they all +extremely proud of their gardens. Every one, indeed, who takes an active +interest in the culture and embellishment of his garden, finds his pride +in it and his love for it increase daily. He is delighted to see it +flourish and improve beneath his care. Even the humble mechanic, in his +fondness for a garden, often indicates a feeling for the beautiful, and +a genial nature. If a rich man were openly to boast of his plate or his +equipages, or a literary man of his essays or his sonnets, as lovers of +flowers boast of their geraniums or dahlias or rhododendrons, they would +disgust the most indulgent hearer. But no one is shocked at the +exultation of a gardener, amateur or professional, when in the fulness +of his heart he descants upon the unrivalled beauty of his favorite +flowers: + + 'Plants of his hand, and children of his care.' + +"I have made myself two gardens," says Petrarch, "and I do not imagine +that they are to be equalled in all the world. I should feel myself +inclined to be angry with fortune if there were any so beautiful out of +Italy." "I wish," says poor Kirke White writing to a friend, "I wish you +to have a taste of these (rural) pleasures with me, and if ever I should +live to be blessed with a quiet parsonage, and _another great object of +my ambition--a garden_, I have no doubt but we shall be for some short +intervals at least two quite contented bodies." The poet Young, in the +latter part of his life, after years of vain hopes and worldly +struggles, gave himself up almost entirely to the sweet seclusion of a +garden; and that peace and repose which cannot be found in courts and +political cabinets, he found at last + + In sunny garden bowers + Where vernal winds each tree's low tones awaken, + And buds and bells with changes mark the hours. + +He discovered that it was more profitable to solicit nature than to +flatter the great. + + For Nature never did betray + The heart that loved her. + +People of a poetical temperament--all true lovers of nature--can afford, +far better than more essentially worldly beings, to exclaim with +Thomson. + + I care not Fortune what you me deny, + You cannot bar me of free Nature's grace, + You cannot shut the windows of the sky + Through which Aurora shows her brightening face: + You cannot bar my constant feet to trace + The woods and lawns and living streams at eve: + Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, + And I their toys to the _great children_ leave:-- + Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave. + +The pride in a garden laid out under one's own directions and partly +cultivated by one's own hand has been alluded to as in some degree +unworthy of the dignity of manhood, not only by mere men of the world, +or silly coxcombs, but by people who should have known better. Even Sir +William Temple, though so enthusiastic about his fruit-trees, tells us +that he will not enter upon any account of _flowers_, having only +pleased himself with seeing or smelling them, and not troubled himself +with the care of them, which he observes "_is more the ladies part than +the men's_." Sir William makes some amends for this almost contemptuous +allusion to flowers in particular by his ardent appreciation of the use +of gardens and gardening in general. He thus speaks of their attractions +and advantages: "The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of the +smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the +exercise of working or walking, but above all, the exemption from cares +and solicitude, seem equally to favor and improve both contemplation and +health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet +and ease of the body and mind." Again: "As gardening has been the +inclination of kings and the choice of philosophers, so it has been the +common favorite of public and private men, a pleasure of the greatest +and the care of the meanest; and indeed _an employment and a possession +for which no man is too high or too low_." This is just and liberal; +though I can hardly help still feeling a little sore at Sir William's +having implied in the passage previously quoted, that the care of +flowers is but a feminine occupation. As an elegant amusement, it is +surely equally well fitted for all lovers of the beautiful, without +reference to their sex. + +It is not women and children only who delight in flower-gardens. Lord +Bacon and William Pitt and the Earl of Chatham and Fox and Burke and +Warren Hastings--all lovers of flowers--were assuredly not men of +frivolous minds or of feminine habits. They were always eager to exhibit +to visitors the beauty of their parterres. In his declining years the +stately John Kemble left the stage for his garden. That sturdy English +yeoman, William Cobbett, was almost as proud of his beds of flowers as +of the pages of his _Political Register_. He thus speaks of gardening: + +"Gardening is a source of much greater profit than is generally +imagined; but, merely as an amusement or recreation it is a thing of +very great value. It is not only compatible with but favorable to the +study of any art or science; it is conducive to health by means of the +irresistible temptation which it offers to early rising; to the stirring +abroad upon one's legs, for a man may really ride till he cannot walk, +sit till he cannot stand, and lie abed till he cannot get up. It tends +to turn the minds of youth from amusements and attachments of a +frivolous and vicious nature, it is a taste which is indulged at home; +it tends to make home pleasant, and to endear to us the spot on which it +is our lot to live,--and as to the _expenses_ attending it, what are all +these expenses compared with those of the short, the unsatisfactory, the +injurious enjoyment of the card-table, and the rest of those amusements +which are sought from the town." _Cobbett's English Gardener_. + +"Other fine arts," observes Lord Kames, "may be perverted to excite +irregular and even vicious emotions: but gardening, which inspires the +purest and most refined pleasures, cannot fail to promote every good +affection. The gaiety and harmony of mind it produceth, inclining the +spectator to communicate his satisfaction to others, and to make them +happy as he is himself, tend naturally to establish in him a habit of +humanity and benevolence." + +Every thoughtful mind knows how much the face of nature has to do with +human happiness. In the open air and in the midst of summer-flowers, we +often feel the truth of the observation that "a fair day is a kind of +sensual pleasure, and of all others the most innocent." But it is also +something more, and better. It kindles a spiritual delight. At such a +time and in such a scene every observer capable of a religious emotion +is ready to exclaim-- + + Oh! there is joy and happiness in every thing I see, + Which bids my soul rise up and bless the God that blesses me + +_Anon._ + +The amiable and pious Doctor Carey of Serampore, in whose grounds sprang +up that dear little English daisy so beautifully addressed by his +poetical proxy, James Montgomery of Sheffield, in the stanzas +commencing:-- + + Thrice welcome, little English flower! + My mother country's white and red-- + +was so much attached to his Indian garden, that it was always in his +heart in the intervals of more important cares. It is said that he +remembered it even upon his death-bed, and that it was amongst his last +injunctions to his friends that they should see to its being kept up +with care. He was particularly anxious that the hedges or railings +should always be in such good order as to protect his favorite shrubs +and flowers from the intrusion of Bengalee cattle. + +A garden is a more interesting possession than a gallery of pictures or +a cabinet of curiosities. Its glories are never stationary or stale. It +has infinite variety. It is not the same to-day as it was yesterday. It +is always changing the character of its charms and always increasing +them in number. It delights all the senses. Its pleasures are not of an +unsocial character; for every visitor, high or low, learned or +illiterate, may be fascinated with the fragrance and beauty of a garden. +But shells and minerals and other curiosities are for the man of science +and the connoisseur. And a single inspection of them is generally +sufficient: they never change their aspect. The Picture-Gallery may +charm an instructed eye but the multitude have little relish for human +Art, because they rarely understand it:--while the skill of the Great +Limner of Nature is visible in every flower of the garden even to the +humblest swain. + +It is pleasant to read how the wits and beauties of the time of Queen +Anne used to meet together in delightful garden-retreats, 'like the +companies in Boccaccio's Decameron or in one of Watteau's pictures.' +Ritchings Lodge, for instance, the seat of Lord Bathurst, was visited by +most of the celebrities of England, and frequently exhibited bright +groups of the polite and accomplished of both sexes; of men +distinguished for their heroism or their genius, and of women eminent +for their easy and elegant conversation, or for gaiety and grace of +manner, or perfect loveliness of face and form--all in harmonious union +with the charms of nature. The gardens at Ritchings were enriched with +Inscriptions from the pens of Congreve and Pope and Gay and Addison and +Prior. When the estate passed into the possession of the Earl of +Hertford, his literary lady devoted it to the Muses. "She invited every +summer," says Dr. Johnson, "some poet into the country to hear her +verses and assist her studies." Thomson, who praises her so lavishly in +his "Spring," offended her ladyship by allowing her too clearly to +perceive that he was resolved not to place himself in the dilemma of +which Pope speaks so feelingly with reference to other poetasters. + + Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I, + Who can't be silent, and who will not lie. + I sit with sad civility, I read + With honest anguish and an aching head. + +But though "the bard more fat than bard beseems" was restive under her +ladyship's "poetical operations," and too plainly exhibited a desire to +escape the infliction, preferring the Earl's claret to the lady's +rhymes, she should have been a little more generously forgiving towards +one who had already made her immortal. It is stated, that she never +repeated her invitation to the Poet of the Seasons, who though so +impatient of the sound of her tongue when it "rolled" her own +"raptures," seems to have been charmed with her _at a distance_--while +meditating upon her excellencies in the seclusion of his own study. The +compliment to the Countess is rather awkwardly wedged in between +descriptions of "gentle Spring" with her "shadowing roses" and "surly +Winter" with his "ruffian blasts." It should have commenced the poem. + + O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts + With unaffected grace, or walk the plain, + With innocence and meditation joined + In soft assemblage, listen to my song, + Which thy own season paints; when nature all + Is blooming and benevolent like thee. + +Thomson had no objection to strike off a brief compliment in verse, but +he was too indolent to keep up _in propria persona_ an incessant fire of +compliments, like the _bon bons_ at a Carnival. It was easier to write +her praises than listen to her verses. Shenstone seems to have been more +pliable. He was personally obsequious, lent her recitations an attentive +ear, and was ever ready with the expected commendation. It is not likely +that her ladyship found much, difficulty in collecting around her a +crowd of critics more docile than Thomson and quite as complaisant as +Shenstone. Let but a _Countess_ + + Once own the happy lines, + How the wit brightens, how the style refines! + +Though Thomson's first want on his arrival in London from the North was +a pair of shoes, and he lived for a time in great indigence, he was +comfortable enough at last. Lord Lyttleton introduced him to the Prince +of Wales (who professed himself the patron of literature) and when his +Highness questioned him about the state of his affairs, Thomson assured +him that they "were in a more poetical posture than formerly." The +prince bestowed upon the poet a pension of a hundred pounds a year, and +when his friend Lord Lyttleton was in power his Lordship obtained for +him the office of Surveyor General of the Leeward Islands. He sent a +deputy there who was more trustworthy than Thomas Moore's at Bermuda. +Thomson's deputy after deducting his own salary remitted his principal +three hundred pounds per annum, so that the bard 'more fat than bard +beseems' was not in a condition to grow thinner, and could afford to +make his cottage a Castle of Indolence. Leigh Hunt has versified an +anecdote illustrative of Thomson's luxurious idleness. He who could +describe "_Indolence_" so well, and so often appeared in the part +himself, + + Slippered, and with hands, + Each in a waistcoat pocket, (so that all + Might yet repose that could) was seen one morn + Eating a wondering peach from off the tree. + +A little summer-house at Richmond which Thomson made his study is still +preserved, and even some articles of furniture, just as he left +them.[025] Over the entrance is erected a tablet on which is the +following inscription: + + HERE + THOMSON SANG + THE SEASONS + AND THEIR CHANGE. + +Thomson was buried in Richmond Church. Collins's lines to his memory, +beginning + + In yonder grave a Druid lies, + +are familiar to all readers of English poetry. + +Richmond Hill has always been the delight not of poets only but of +painters. Sir Joshua Reynolds built a house there, and one of the only +three landscapes which seem to have survived him, is a view from the +window of his drawing-room. Gainsborough was also a resident in +Richmond. Richmond gardens laid out or rather altered by Brown, are now +united with those of Kew. + +Savage resided for some time at Richmond. It was the favorite haunt of +Collins, one of the most poetical of poets, who, as Dr. Johnson says, +"delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the +magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian +gardens." Wordsworth composed a poem upon the Thames near Richmond in +remembrance of Collins. Here is a stanza of it. + + Glide gently, thus for ever glide, + O Thames, that other bards may see + As lovely visions by thy side + As now fair river! come to me; + O glide, fair stream for ever so, + Thy quiet soul on all bestowing, + Till all our minds for ever flow + As thy deep waters now are flowing. + +Thomson's description of the scenery of Richmond Hill perhaps hardly +does it justice, but the lines are too interesting to be omitted. + + Say, shall we wind + Along the streams? or walk the smiling mead? + Or court the forest-glades? or wander wild + Among the waving harvests? or ascend, + While radiant Summer opens all its pride, + Thy hill, delightful Shene[026]? Here let us sweep + The boundless landscape now the raptur'd eye, + Exulting swift, to huge Augusta send, + Now to the sister hills[027] that skirt her plain, + To lofty Harrow now, and now to where + Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow + In lovely contrast to this glorious view + Calmly magnificent, then will we turn + To where the silver Thames first rural grows + There let the feasted eye unwearied stray, + Luxurious, there, rove through the pendent woods + That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat, + And stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks, + Beneath whose shades, in spotless peace retir'd, + With her the pleasing partner of his heart, + The worthy Queensbury yet laments his Gay, + And polish'd Cornbury woos the willing Muse + Slow let us trace the matchless vale of Thames + Fair winding up to where the Muses haunt + In Twit nam's bowers, and for their Pope implore + The healing god[028], to loyal Hampton's pile, + To Clermont's terrass'd height, and Esher's groves; + Where in the sweetest solitude, embrac'd + By the soft windings of the silent Mole, + From courts and senates Pelham finds repose + Enchanting vale! beyond whate'er the Muse + Has of Achaia or Hesperia sung! + O vale of bliss! O softly swelling hills! + On which the _Power of Cultivation_ lies, + And joys to see the wonders of his toil. + +The Revd. Thomas Maurice wrote a poem entitled _Richmond Hill_, but it +contains nothing deserving of quotation after the above passage from +Thomson. In the _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ the labors of +Maurice are compared to those of Sisyphus + + So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond, heaves + Dull Maurice, all his granite weight of leaves. + +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." + +The English style of landscape-gardening being founded on natural +principles must be recognized by true taste in all countries. Even in +Rome, when art was most allowed to predominate over nature, there were +occasional instances of that correct feeling for rural beauty which the +English during the last century and a half have exhibited more +conspicuously than other nations. Atticus preferred Tully's villa at +Arpinum to all his other villas; because at Arpinum, Nature predominated +over art. Our Kents and Browns[031] never expressed a greater contempt, +than was expressed by Atticus, for all formal and artificial decorations +of natural scenery. + +The spot where Cicero's villa stood, was, in the time of Middleton, +possessed by a convent of monks and was called the Villa of St. Dominic. +It was built, observes Mr. Dunlop, in the year 1030, from the fragments +of the Arpine Villa! + + Art, glory, Freedom, fail--but Nature still is fair. + +"Nothing," says Mr. Kelsall, "can be imagined finer than the surrounding +landscape. The deep azure of the sky, unvaried by a single cloud--Sora +on a rock at the foot of the precipitous Appennines--both banks of the +Garigliano covered with vineyards--the _fragor aquarum_, alluded to by +Atticus in his work _De Legibus_--the coolness, the rapidity and +ultramarine hue of the Fibrenus--the noise of its cataracts--the rich +turquoise color of the Liris--the minor Appennines round Arpino, crowned +with umbrageous oaks to the very summits--present scenery hardly +elsewhere to be equalled, certainly not to be surpassed, even in Italy." + +This description of an Italian landscape can hardly fail to charm the +imagination of the coldest reader; but after all, I cannot help +confessing to so inveterate a partiality for dear old England as to be +delighted with the compliment which Gray, the poet, pays to English +scenery when he prefers it to the scenery of Italy. "Mr. Walpole," +writes the poet from Italy, "says, our _memory_ sees more than our eyes +in this country. This is extremely true, since for _realities_ WINDSOR +or RICHMOND HILL is infinitely preferable to ALBANO or FRESCATI." + +Sir Walter Scott, with all his patriotic love for his own romantic land, +could not withhold his tribute to the loveliness of Richmond Hill,--its +"_unrivalled landscape_" its "_sea of verdure_." + + "They" (The Duke of Argyle and Jeanie Deans) "paused for a + moment on the brow of a hill, to gaze on the unrivalled + landscape it presented. A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and + intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves was + tenanted by numberless flocks and herds which seemed to wander + unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The + Thames, here turreted with villas, and there garlanded with + forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch + of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but + accessaries, and bore on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs + whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the + whole." _The Heart of Mid-Lothian_. + +It must of course be admitted that there are grander, more sublime, more +varied and extensive prospects in other countries, but it would be +difficult to persuade me that the richness of English verdure could be +surpassed or even equalled, or that any part of the world can exhibit +landscapes more truly _lovely_ and _loveable_, than those of England, or +more calculated to leave a deep and enduring impression upon the heart. +Mr. Kelsall speaks of an Italian sky "_uncovered by a single cloud_," +but every painter and poet knows how much variety and beauty of effect +are bestowed upon hill and plain and grove and river by passing clouds; +and even our over-hanging vapours remind us of the veil upon the cheek +of beauty; and ever as the sun uplifts the darkness the glory of the +landscape seems renewed and freshened. It would cheer the saddest heart +and send the blood dancing through the veins, to behold after a dull +misty dawn, the sun break out over Richmond Hill, and with one broad +light make the whole landscape smile; but I have been still more +interested in the prospect when on a cloudy day the whole "sea of +verdure" has been swayed to and fro into fresher life by the fitful +breeze, while the lights and shadows amidst the foliage and on the lawns +have been almost momentarily varied by the varying sky. These changes +fascinate the eye, keep the soul awake, and save the scenery from the +comparatively monotonous character of landscapes in less varying climes. +And for my own part, I cordially echo the sentiment of Wordsworth, who +when conversing with Mrs. Hemans about the scenery of the Lakes in the +North of England, observed: "I would not give up the mists that +_spiritualize_ our mountains for all the blue skies of Italy." + +Though Mrs. Stowe, the American authoress already quoted as one of the +admirers of England, duly appreciates the natural grandeur of her own +land, she was struck with admiration and delight at the aspect of our +English landscapes. Our trees, she observes, "are of an order of +nobility and they wear their crowns right kingly." "Leaving out of +account," she adds, "our _mammoth arboria_, the English Parks have trees +as fine and effective as ours, and when I say their trees are of an +order of nobility, I mean that they (the English) pay a reverence to +them such as their magnificence deserves." + +Walter Savage Landor, one of the most accomplished and most highly +endowed both by nature and by fortune of our living men of letters, has +done, or rather has tried to do, almost as much for his country in the +way of enriching its collection of noble trees as Evelyn himself. He +laid out L70,000 on the improvement of an estate in Monmouthshire, where +he planted and fenced half a million of trees, and had a million more +ready to plant, when the conduct of some of his tenants, who spitefully +uprooted them and destroyed the whole plantation, so disgusted him with +the place, that he razed to the ground the house which had cost him +L8,000, and left the country. He then purchased a beautiful estate in +Italy, which is still in possession of his family. He himself has long +since returned to his native land. Landor loves Italy, but he loves +England better. In one of his _Imaginary Conversations_ he tells an +Italian nobleman: + +"The English are more zealous of introducing new fruits, shrubs and +plants, than other nations; you Italians are less so than any civilized +one. Better fruit is eaten in Scotland than in the most fertile and +cultivated parts of your peninsula. _As for flowers, there is a greater +variety in the worst of our fields than in the best of your gardens._ As +for shrubs, I have rarely seen a lilac, a laburnum, a mezereon, in any +of them, and yet they flourish before almost every cottage in our +poorest villages." + +"We wonder in England, when we hear it related by travellers, that +peaches in Italy are left under the trees for swine; but, when we +ourselves come into the country, our wonder is rather that the swine do +not leave them for animals less nice." + +Landor acknowledges that he has eaten better pears and cherries in Italy +than in England, but that all the other kinds of fruitage in Italy +appeared to him unfit for dessert. + +The most celebrated of the private estates of the present day in England +is Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire. The mansion, called +the Palace of the Peak, is considered one of the most splendid +residences in the land. The grounds are truly beautiful and most +carefully attended to. The elaborate waterworks are perhaps not in the +severest taste. Some of them are but costly puerilities. There is a +water-work in the form of a tree that sends a shower from every branch +on the unwary visitor, and there are snakes that spit forth jets upon +him as he retires. This is silly trifling: but ill adapted to interest +those who have passed their teens; and not at all an agreeable sort of +hospitality in a climate like that of England. It is in the style of the +water-works at Versailles, where wooden soldiers shoot from their +muskets vollies of water at the spectators.[032] + +It was an old English custom on certain occasions to sprinkle water over +the company at a grand entertainment. Bacon, in his Essay on Masques, +seems to object to getting drenched, when he observes that "some sweet +odours suddenly coming forth, _without any drops falling_, are in such +a company as there is steam and heat, things of great pleasure and +refreshment." It was a custom also of the ancient Greeks and Romans to +sprinkle their guests with fragrant waters. The Gascons had once the +same taste: "At times," says Montaigne, "from the bottom of the stage, +they caused sweet-scented waters to spout upwards and dart their thread +to such a prodigious height, as to sprinkle and perfume the vast +multitudes of spectators." The Native gentry of India always slightly +sprinkle their visitors with rose-water. It is flung from a small silver +utensil tapering off into a sort of upright spout with a pierced top in +the fashion of that part of a watering pot which English gardeners call +the _rose_. + +The finest of the water-works at Chatsworth is one called the _Emperor +Fountain_ which throws up a jet 267 feet high. This height exceeds that +of any fountain in Europe. There is a vast Conservatory on the estate, +built of glass by Sir Joseph Paxton, who designed and constructed the +Crystal Palace. His experience in the building of conservatories no +doubt suggested to him the idea of the splendid glass edifice in Hyde +Park. The conservatory at Chatsworth required 70,000 square feet of +glass. Four miles of iron tubing are used in heating the building. There +is a broad carriage way running right through the centre of the +conservatory.[033] This conservatory is peculiarly rich in exotic plants +of all kinds, collected at an enormous cost. This most princely estate, +contrasted with the little cottages and cottage-gardens in the +neighbourhood, suggested to Wordsworth the following sonnet. + +CHATSWORTH. + + Chatsworth! thy stately mansion, and the pride + Of thy domain, strange contrast do present + To house and home in many a craggy tent + Of the wild Peak, where new born waters glide + Through fields whose thrifty occupants abide + As in a dear and chosen banishment + With every semblance of entire content; + So kind is simple Nature, fairly tried! + Yet he whose heart in childhood gave his troth + To pastoral dales, then set with modest farms, + May learn, if judgment strengthen with his growth, + That not for Fancy only, pomp hath charms; + And, strenuous to protect from lawless harms + The extremes of favored life, may honour both. + +The two noblest of modern public gardens in England are those at +Kensington and Kew. Kensington Gardens were begun by King William the +III, but were originally only twenty-six acres in extent. Queen Anne +added thirty acres more. The grounds were laid out by the well-known +garden-designers, London and Wise.[034] Queen Caroline, who formed the +Serpentine River by connecting several detached pieces of water into +one, and set the example of a picturesque deviation from the straight +line,[035] added from Hyde Park no less than three hundred acres which +were laid out by Bridgeman. This was a great boon to the Londoners. +Horace Walpole says that Queen Caroline at first proposed to shut up St. +James's Park and convert it into a private garden for herself, but when +she asked Sir Robert Walpole what it would cost, he answered--"Only +three Crowns." This changed her intentions. + +The reader of Pope will remember an allusion to the famous Ring in Hyde +Park. The fair Belinda was sometimes attended there by her guardian +Sylphs: + + The light militia of the lower sky. + +They guarded her from 'the white-gloved beaux,' + + These though unseen are ever on the wing, + Hang o'er the box, _and hover o'er the Ring_. + +It was here that the gallantries of the "Merry Monarch" were but too +often exhibited to his people. "After dinner," says the right garrulous +Pepys in his journal, "to Hyde Parke; at the Parke was the King, and in +another Coach, Lady Castlemaine, they greeting one another at every +turn." + +The Gardens at Kew "Imperial Kew," as Darwin styles it, are the richest +in the world. They consist of one hundred and seventy acres. They were +once private gardens, and were long in the possession of Royalty, until +the accession of Queen Victoria, who opened the gardens to the public +and placed them under the control of the Commissioners of Her Majesty's +Woods and Forests, "with a view of rendering them available to the +general good." + + She hath left you all her walks, + Her private arbors and new planted orchards + On this side Tiber. She hath left them you + And to your heirs for ever; common pleasures + To walk abroad and recreate yourselves. + +They contain a large Palm-house built in 1848.[036] The extent of glass +for covering the building is said to be 360,000 square feet. My +Mahomedan readers in Hindostan, (I hope they will be numerous,) will +perhaps be pleased to hear that there is an ornamental mosque in these +gardens. On each of the doors of this mosque is an Arabic inscription in +golden characters, taken from the Koran. The Arabic has been thus +translated:-- + + LET THERE BE NO FORCE IN RELIGION. + THERE IS NO OTHER GOD EXCEPT THE DEITY. + MAKE NOT ANY LIKENESS UNTO GOD. + +The first sentence of the translation is rather ambiguously worded. The +sentiment has even an impious air: an apparent meaning very different +from that which was intended. Of course the original text _means_, +though the English translator has not expressed that meaning--"Let there +be no force _used_ in religion." + +When William Cobbett was a boy of eleven years of age he worked in the +garden of the Bishop of Winchester at Farnham. Having heard much of Kew +gardens he resolved to change his locality and his master. He started +off for Kew, a distance of about thirty miles, with only thirteen pence +in his pocket. The head gardener at Kew at once engaged his services. A +few days after, George the Fourth, then Prince of Wales, saw the boy +sweeping the lawns, and laughed heartily at his blue smock frock and +long red knotted garters. But the poor gardener's boy became a public +writer, whose productions were not exactly calculated to excite the +merriment of princes. + +Most poets have a painter's eye for the disposition of forms and +colours. Kent's practice as a painter no doubt helped to make him what +he was as a landscape-gardener. When an architect was consulted about +laying out the grounds at Blenheim he replied, "you must send for a +landscape-painter:" he might have added--"_or a poet_." + +Our late Laureate, William Wordsworth, exhibited great taste in his +small garden at Rydal Mount. He said of himself--very truly though not +very modestly perhaps,--but modesty was never Wordsworth's +weakness--that nature seemed to have fitted him for three callings--that +of the poet, the critic on works of art, and the landscape-gardener. +The poet's nest--(Mrs. Hemans calls it 'a lovely cottage-like +building'[037])--is almost hidden in a rich profusion of roses and ivy +and jessamine and virginia-creeper. Wordsworth, though he passionately +admired the shapes and hues of flowers, knew nothing of their fragrance. +In this respect knowledge at one entrance was quite shut out. He had +possessed at no time of his life the sense of smell. To make up for this +deficiency, he is said (by De Quincey) to have had "a peculiar depth of +organic sensibility of form and color." + +Mr. Justice Coleridge tells us that Wordsworth dealt with +shrubs, flower-beds and lawns with the readiness of a practised +landscape-gardener, and that it was curious to observe how he had imparted +a portion of his taste to his servant, James Dixon. In fact, honest James +regarded himself as a sort of Arbiter Elegantiarum. The master and his +servant often discussed together a question of taste. Wordsworth +communicated to Mr. Justice Coleridge how "he and James" were once "in a +puzzle" about certain discolored spots upon the lawn. "Cover them with +soap-lees," said the master. "That will make the green there darker than +the rest," said the gardener. "Then we must cover the whole." "That will +not do," objects the gardener, "with reference to the little lawn to +which you pass from this." "Cover that," said the poet. "You will then," +replied the gardener, "have an unpleasant contrast with the foliage +surrounding it." + +Pope too had communicated to his gardener at Twickenham something of his +own taste. The man, long after his master's death, in reference to the +training of the branches of plants, used to talk of their being made to +hang "_something poetical_". + +It would have grieved Shakespeare and Pope and Shenstone had they +anticipated the neglect or destruction of their beloved retreats. +Wordsworth said, "I often ask myself what will become of Rydal Mount +after our day. Will the old walls and steps remain in front of the house +and about the grounds, or will they be swept away with all the beautiful +mosses and ferns and wild geraniums and other flowers which their rude +construction suffered and encouraged to grow among them. This little +wild flower, _Poor Robin_, is here constantly courting my attention and +exciting what may be called a domestic interest in the varying aspect of +its stalks and leaves and flowers." I hope no Englishman meditating to +reside on the grounds now sacred to the memory of a national poet will +ever forget these words of the poet or treat his cottage and garden at +Rydal Mount as some of Pope's countrymen have treated the house and +grounds at Twickenham.[038] It would be sad indeed to hear, after this, +that any one had refused to spare the _Poor Robins_ and _wild geraniums_ +of Rydal Mount. Miss Jewsbury has a poem descriptive of "the Poet's +Home." I must give the first stanza:-- + +WORDSWORTH'S COTTAGE. + + Low and white, yet scarcely seen + Are its walls of mantling green; + Not a window lets in light + But through flowers clustering bright, + Not a glance may wander there + But it falls on something fair; + Garden choice and fairy mound + Only that no elves are found; + Winding walk and sheltered nook + For student grave and graver book, + Or a bird-like bower perchance + Fit for maiden and romance. + +Another lady-poet has poured forth in verse her admiration of + +THE RESIDENCE OF WORDSWORTH. + + Not for the glory on their heads + Those stately hill-tops wear, + Although the summer sunset sheds + Its constant crimson there: + Not for the gleaming lights that break + The purple of the twilight lake, + Half dusky and half fair, + Does that sweet valley seem to be + A sacred place on earth to me. + + The influence of a moral spell + Is found around the scene, + Giving new shadows to the dell, + New verdure to the green. + With every mountain-top is wrought + The presence of associate thought, + A music that has been; + Calling that loveliness to life, + With which the inward world is rife. + + His home--our English poet's home-- + Amid these hills is made; + Here, with the morning, hath he come, + There, with the night delayed. + On all things is his memory cast, + For every place wherein he past, + Is with his mind arrayed, + That, wandering in a summer hour, + Asked wisdom of the leaf and flower. + +L.E.L. + +The cottage and garden of the poet are not only picturesque and +delightful in themselves, but from their position in the midst of some +of the finest scenery of England. One of the writers in the book +entitled '_The Land we Live in_' observes that the bard of the mountains +and the lakes could not have found a more fitting habitation had the +whole land been before him, where to choose his place of rest. "Snugly +sheltered by the mountains, embowered among trees, and having in itself +prospects of surpassing beauty, it also lies in the midst of the very +noblest objects in the district, and in one of the happiest social +positions. The grounds are delightful in every respect; but one +view--that from the terrace of moss-like grass--is, to our thinking, the +most exquisitely graceful in all this land of beauty. It embraces the +whole valley of Windermere, with hills on either side softened into +perfect loveliness." + +Eustace, the Italian tourist, seems inclined to deprive the English of +the honor of being the first cultivators of the natural style in +gardening, and thinks that it was borrowed not from Milton but from +Tasso. I suppose that most genuine poets, in all ages and in all +countries, when they give full play to the imagination, have glimpses of +the truly natural in the arts. The reader will probably be glad to renew +his acquaintance with Tasso's description of the garden of Armida. I +shall give the good old version of Edward Fairfax from the edition of +1687. Fairfax was a true poet and wrote musically at a time when +sweetness of versification was not so much aimed at as in a later day. +Waller confessed that he owed the smoothness of his verse to the example +of Fairfax, who, as Warton observes, "well vowelled his lines." + +THE GARDEN OF ARMIDA. + + When they had passed all those troubled ways, + The Garden sweet spread forth her green to shew; + The moving crystal from the fountains plays; + Fair trees, high plants, strange herbs and flowerets new, + Sunshiny hills, vales hid from Phoebus' rays, + Groves, arbours, mossie caves at once they view, + And that which beauty most, most wonder brought, + No where appear'd the Art which all this wrought. + + So with the rude the polished mingled was, + That natural seem'd all and every part, + Nature would craft in counterfeiting pass, + And imitate her imitator Art: + Mild was the air, the skies were clear as glass, + The trees no whirlwind felt, nor tempest's smart, + But ere the fruit drop off, the blossom comes, + This springs, that falls, that ripeneth and this blooms. + + The leaves upon the self-same bough did hide, + Beside the young, the old and ripened fig, + Here fruit was green, there ripe with vermeil side; + The apples new and old grew on one twig, + The fruitful vine her arms spread high and wide, + That bended underneath their clusters big; + The grapes were tender here, hard, young and sour, + There purple ripe, and nectar sweet forth pour. + + The joyous birds, hid under green-wood shade, + Sung merry notes on every branch and bow, + The wind that in the leaves and waters plaid + With murmer sweet, now sung and whistled now; + Ceased the birds, the wind loud answer made: + And while they sung, it rumbled soft and low; + Thus were it hap or cunning, chance or art, + The wind in this strange musick bore his part. + + With party-coloured plumes and purple bill, + A wondrous bird among the rest there flew, + That in plain speech sung love-lays loud and shrill, + Her leden was like humane language true; + So much she talkt, and with such wit and skill, + That strange it seemed how much good she knew; + Her feathered fellows all stood hush to hear, + Dumb was the wind, the waters silent were. + + The gently budding rose (quoth she) behold, + That first scant peeping forth with virgin beams, + Half ope, half shut, her beauties doth upfold + In their dear leaves, and less seen, fairer seems, + And after spreads them forth more broad and bold, + Then languisheth and dies in last extreams, + Nor seems the same, that decked bed and bower + Of many a lady late, and paramour. + + So, in the passing of a day, doth pass + The bud and blossom of the life of man, + Nor ere doth flourish more, but like the grass + Cut down, becometh wither'd, pale and wan: + O gather then the rose while time thou hast, + Short is the day, done when it scant began; + Gather the rose of love, while yet thou may'st + Loving be lov'd; embracing, be embrac'd. + + He ceas'd, and as approving all he spoke, + The quire of birds their heav'nly tunes renew, + The turtles sigh'd, and sighs with kisses broke, + The fowls to shades unseen, by pairs withdrew; + It seem'd the laurel chaste, and stubborn oak, + And all the gentle trees on earth that grew, + It seem'd the land, the sea, and heav'n above, + All breath'd out fancy sweet, and sigh'd out love. + +_Godfrey of Bulloigne_ + +I must place near the garden of Armida, Ariosto's garden of Alcina. +"Ariosto," says Leigh Hunt, "cared for none of the pleasures of the +great, except building, and was content in Cowley's fashion, with "a +small house in a large garden." He loved gardening better than he +understood it, was always shifting his plants, and destroying the seeds, +out of impatience to see them germinate. He was rejoicing once on the +coming up of some "capers" which he had been visiting every day, to see +how they got on, when it turned out that his capers were elder trees!" + +THE GARDEN OF ALCINA. + + 'A more delightful place, wherever hurled, + Through the whole air, Rogero had not found; + And had he ranged the universal world, + Would not have seen a lovelier in his round, + Than that, where, wheeling wide, the courser furled + His spreading wings, and lighted on the ground + Mid cultivated plain, delicious hill, + Moist meadow, shady bank, and crystal rill; + + 'Small thickets, with the scented laurel gay, + Cedar, and orange, full of fruit and flower, + Myrtle and palm, with interwoven spray, + Pleached in mixed modes, all lovely, form a bower; + And, breaking with their shade the scorching ray, + Make a cool shelter from the noon-tide hour. + And nightingales among those branches wing + Their flight, and safely amorous descants sing. + + 'Amid red roses and white lilies _there_, + Which the soft breezes freshen as they fly, + Secure the cony haunts, and timid hare, + And stag, with branching forehead broad and high. + These, fearless of the hunter's dart or snare, + Feed at their ease, or ruminating lie; + While, swarming in those wilds, from tuft or steep, + Dun deer or nimble goat disporting leap.' + +_Rose's Orlando Furioso_. + +Spenser's description of the garden of Adonis is too long to give +entire, but I shall quote a few stanzas. The old story on which Spenser +founds his description is told with many variations of circumstance and +meaning; but we need not quit the pages of the Faerie Queene to lose +ourselves amidst obscure mythologies. We have too much of these indeed +even in Spenser's own version of the fable. + +THE GARDEN OF ADONIS. + + Great enimy to it, and all the rest + That in the Gardin of Adonis springs, + Is wicked Time; who with his scythe addrest + Does mow the flowring herbes and goodly things, + And all their glory to the ground downe flings, + Where they do wither and are fowly mard + He flyes about, and with his flaggy wings + Beates downe both leaves and buds without regard, + Ne ever pitty may relent his malice hard. + + * * * * * + + But were it not that Time their troubler is, + All that in this delightful gardin growes + Should happy bee, and have immortall blis: + For here all plenty and all pleasure flowes; + And sweete Love gentle fitts emongst them throwes, + Without fell rancor or fond gealosy. + Franckly each paramour his leman knowes, + Each bird his mate; ne any does envy + Their goodly meriment and gay felicity. + + There is continual spring, and harvest there + Continuall, both meeting at one tyme: + For both the boughes doe laughing blossoms beare. + And with fresh colours decke the wanton pryme, + And eke attonce the heavy trees they clyme, + Which seeme to labour under their fruites lode: + The whiles the ioyous birdes make their pastyme + Emongst the shady leaves, their sweet abode, + And their trew loves without suspition tell abrode. + + Right in the middest of that Paradise + There stood a stately mount, on whose round top + A gloomy grove of mirtle trees did rise, + Whose shady boughes sharp steele did never lop, + Nor wicked beastes their tender buds did crop, + But like a girlond compassed the hight, + And from their fruitfull sydes sweet gum did drop, + That all the ground, with pretious deaw bedight, + Threw forth most dainty odours and most sweet delight. + + And in the thickest covert of that shade + There was a pleasaunt arber, not by art + But of the trees owne inclination made, + Which knitting their rancke braunches part to part, + With wanton yvie-twine entrayld athwart, + And eglantine and caprifole emong, + Fashioned above within their inmost part, + That neither Phoebus beams could through them throng, + Nor Aeolus sharp blast could worke them any wrong. + + And all about grew every sort of flowre, + To which sad lovers were transformde of yore, + Fresh Hyacinthus, Phoebus paramoure + And dearest love; + Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watry shore; + Sad Amaranthus, made a flowre but late, + Sad Amaranthus, in whose purple gore + Me seemes I see Amintas wretched fate, + To whom sweet poet's verse hath given endlesse date. + +_Fairie Queene, Book III. Canto VI_. + +I must here give a few stanzas from Spenser's description of the _Bower +of Bliss_ + + In which whatever in this worldly state + Is sweet and pleasing unto living sense, + Or that may dayntiest fantasy aggrate + Was poured forth with pleantiful dispence. + +The English poet in his Fairie Queene has borrowed a great deal from +Tasso and Ariosto, but generally speaking, his borrowings, like those of +most true poets, are improvements upon the original. + +THE BOWER OF BLISS. + + There the most daintie paradise on ground + Itself doth offer to his sober eye, + In which all pleasures plenteously abownd, + And none does others happinesse envye; + The painted flowres; the trees upshooting hye; + The dales for shade; the hilles for breathing-space; + The trembling groves; the christall running by; + And that which all faire workes doth most aggrace, + The art, which all that wrought, appeared in no place. + + One would have thought, (so cunningly the rude[039] + And scorned partes were mingled with the fine,) + That Nature had for wantonesse ensude + Art, and that Art at Nature did repine; + So striving each th' other to undermine, + Each did the others worke more beautify; + So diff'ring both in willes agreed in fine; + So all agreed, through sweete diversity, + This Gardin to adorn with all variety. + + And in the midst of all a fountaine stood, + Of richest substance that on earth might bee, + So pure and shiny that the silver flood + Through every channel running one might see; + Most goodly it with curious ymageree + Was over-wrought, and shapes of naked boyes, + Of which some seemed with lively iollitee + To fly about, playing their wanton toyes, + Whylest others did themselves embay in liquid ioyes. + + * * * * * + + Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, + Of all that mote delight a daintie eare, + Such as attonce might not on living ground, + Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: + Right hard it was for wight which did it heare, + To read what manner musicke that mote bee; + For all that pleasing is to living eare + Was there consorted in one harmonee; + Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters all agree: + + The ioyous birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade, + Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet; + Th' angelicall soft trembling voyces made + To th' instruments divine respondence meet; + The silver-sounding instruments did meet + With the base murmure of the waters fall; + The waters fall with difference discreet, + Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; + The gentle warbling wind low answered to all. + +_The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto XII._ + +Every school-boy has heard of the gardens of the Hesperides. The story +is told in many different ways. According to some accounts, the +Hesperides, the daughters of Hesperus, were appointed to keep charge of +the tree of golden apples which Jupiter presented to Juno on their +wedding day. A hundred-headed dragon that never slept, (the offspring of +Typhon,) couched at the foot of the tree. It was one of the twelve +labors of Hercules to obtain possession of some of these apples. He slew +the dragon and gathered three golden apples. The gardens, according to +some authorities, were situated near Mount Atlas. + +Shakespeare seems to have taken _Hesperides_ to be the name of the +garden instead of that of its fair keepers. Even the learned Milton in +his _Paradise Regained_, (Book II) talks of _the ladies of the +Hesperides_, and appears to make the word Hesperides synonymous with +"Hesperian gardens." Bishop Newton, in a foot-note to the passage in +"Paradise Regained," asks, "What are the Hesperides famous for, but the +gardens and orchards which _they had_ bearing golden fruit in the +western Isles of Africa." Perhaps after all there may be some good +authority in favor of extending the names of the nymphs to the garden +itself. Malone, while condemning Shakespeare's use of the words as +inaccurate, acknowledges that other poets have used it in the same way, +and quotes as an instance, the following lines from Robert Greene:-- + + Shew thee the tree, leaved with refined gold, + Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat, + That watched _the garden_ called the _Hesperides_. + +_Robert Greene_. + + For valour is not love a Hercules, + Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? + +_Love's Labour Lost_. + + Before thee stands this fair Hesperides, + With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched + For death-like dragons here affright thee hard. + +_Pericles, Prince of Tyre_. + +Milton, after the fourth line of his Comus, had originally inserted, in +his manuscript draft of the poem, the following description of the +garden of the Hesperides. + +THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES + + Amid the Hesperian gardens, on whose banks + Bedewed with nectar and celestial songs + Eternal roses grow, and hyacinth, + And fruits of golden rind, on whose fair tree + The scaly harnessed dragon ever keeps + His uninchanted eye, around the verge + And sacred limits of this blissful Isle + The jealous ocean that old river winds + His far extended aims, till with steep fall + Half his waste flood the wide Atlantic fills; + And half the slow unfathomed Stygian pool + But soft, I was not sent to court your wonder + With distant worlds and strange removed climes + Yet thence I come and oft from thence behold + The smoke and stir of this dim narrow spot + +Milton subsequently drew his pen through these lines, for what reason is +not known. Bishop Newton observes, that this passage, saved from +intended destruction, may serve as a specimen of the truth of the +observation that + + Poets lose half the praise they should have got + Could it be known what they discreetly blot. + +_Waller_. + +As I have quoted in an earlier page some unfavorable allusions to +Homer's description of a Grecian garden, it will be but fair to follow +up Milton's picture of Paradise, and Tasso's garden of Armida, and +Ariosto's Garden of Alcina, and Spenser's Garden of Adonis and his Bower +of Bliss, with Homer's description of the Garden of Alcinous. Minerva +tells Ulysses that the Royal mansion to which the garden of Alcinous is +attached is of such conspicuous grandeur and so generally known, that +any child might lead him to it; + + For Phoeacia's sons + Possess not houses equalling in aught + The mansion of Alcinous, the king. + +I shall give Cowper's version, because it may be less familiar to the +reader than Pope's, which is in every one's hand. + +THE GARDEN OF ALCINOUS + + Without the court, and to the gates adjoined + A spacious garden lay, fenced all around, + Secure, four acres measuring complete, + There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree, + Pomgranate, pear, the apple blushing bright, + The honeyed fig, and unctuous olive smooth. + Those fruits, nor winter's cold nor summer's heat + Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang + Perennial, while unceasing zephyr breathes + Gently on all, enlarging these, and those + Maturing genial; in an endless course. + Pears after pears to full dimensions swell, + Figs follow figs, grapes clustering grow again + Where clusters grew, and (every apple stripped) + The boughs soon tempt the gatherer as before. + There too, well rooted, and of fruit profuse, + His vineyard grows; part, wide extended, basks + In the sun's beams; the arid level glows; + In part they gather, and in part they tread + The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes + Here put their blossoms forth, there gather fast + Their blackness. On the garden's verge extreme + Flowers of all hues[040] smile all the year, arranged + With neatest art judicious, and amid + The lovely scene two fountains welling forth, + One visits, into every part diffused, + The garden-ground, the other soft beneath + The threshold steals into the palace court + Whence every citizen his vase supplies. + +_Homer's Odyssey, Book VII_. + +The mode of watering the garden-ground, and the use made of the water by +the public-- + + Whence every citizen his vase supplies-- + +can hardly fail to remind Indian and Anglo-Indian readers of a Hindu +gentleman's garden in Bengal. + +Pope first published in the _Guardian_ his own version of the account of +the garden of Alcinous and subsequently gave it a place in his entire +translation of Homer. In introducing the readers of the _Guardian_ to +the garden of Alcinous he observes that "the two most celebrated wits of +the world have each left us a particular picture of a garden; wherein +those great masters, being wholly unconfined and pointing at pleasure, +may be thought to have given a full idea of what seemed most excellent +in that way. These (one may observe) consist entirely of the useful part +of horticulture, fruit trees, herbs, waters, &c. The pieces I am +speaking of are Virgil's account of the garden of the old Corycian, and +Homer's of that of Alcinous. The first of these is already known to the +English reader, by the excellent versions of Mr. Dryden and Mr. +Addison." + +I do not think our present landscape-gardeners, or parterre-gardeners or +even our fruit or kitchen-gardeners can be much enchanted with Virgil's +ideal of a garden, but here it is, as "done into English," by John +Dryden, who describes the Roman Poet as "a profound naturalist," and "_a +curious Florist_." + +THE GARDEN OF THE OLD CORYCIAN. + + I chanc'd an old Corycian swain to know, + Lord of few acres, and those barren too, + Unfit for sheep or vines, and more unfit to sow: + Yet, lab'ring well his little spot of ground, + Some scatt'ring pot-herbs here and there he found, + Which, cultivated with his daily care + And bruis'd with vervain, were his frugal fare. + With wholesome poppy-flow'rs, to mend his homely board: + For, late returning home, he supp'd at ease, + And wisely deem'd the wealth of monarchs less: + The little of his own, because his own, did please. + To quit his care, he gather'd, first of all, + In spring the roses, apples in the fall: + And, when cold winter split the rocks in twain, + And ice the running rivers did restrain, + He stripp'd the bear's foot of its leafy growth, + And, calling western winds, accus'd the spring of sloth + He therefore first among the swains was found + To reap the product of his labour'd ground, + And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crown'd + His limes were first in flow'rs, his lofty pines, + With friendly shade, secur'd his tender vines. + For ev'ry bloom his trees in spring afford, + An autumn apple was by tale restor'd + He knew to rank his elms in even rows, + For fruit the grafted pear tree to dispose, + And tame to plums the sourness of the sloes + With spreading planes he made a cool retreat, + To shade good fellows from the summer's heat + +_Virgil's Georgics, Book IV_. + +An excellent Scottish poet--Allan Ramsay--a true and unaffected +describer of rural life and scenery--seems to have had as great a +dislike to topiary gardens, and quite as earnest a love of nature, as +any of the best Italian poets. The author of the "Gentle Shepherd" tells +us in the following lines what sort of garden most pleased his fancy. + +ALLAN RAMSAY'S GARDEN. + + I love the garden wild and wide, + Where oaks have plum-trees by their side, + Where woodbines and the twisting vine + Clip round the pear tree and the pine + Where mixed jonquils and gowans grow + And roses midst rank clover grow + Upon a bank of a clear strand, + In wrimplings made by Nature's hand + Though docks and brambles here and there + May sometimes cheat the gardener's care, + _Yet this to me is Paradise_, + _Compared with prim cut plots and nice_, + _Where Nature has to Act resigned,_ + _Till all looks mean, stiff and confined_. + +I cannot say that I should wish to see forest trees and docks and +brambles in garden borders. Honest Allan here runs a little into the +extreme, as men are apt enough to do, when they try to get as far as +possible from the side advocated by an opposite party. + +I shall now exhibit two paintings of bowers. I begin with one from +Spenser. + +A BOWER + + And over him Art stryving to compayre + With Nature did an arber greene dispied[041] + Framed of wanton yvie, flouring, fayre, + Through which the fragrant eglantine did spred + His prickling armes, entrayld with roses red, + Which daintie odours round about them threw + And all within with flowers was garnished + That, when myld Zephyrus emongst them blew, + Did breathe out bounteous smels, and painted colors shew + + And fast beside these trickled softly downe + A gentle streame, whose murmuring wave did play + Emongst the pumy stones, and made a sowne, + To lull him soft asleepe that by it lay + The wearie traveiler wandring that way, + Therein did often quench his thirsty head + And then by it his wearie limbes display, + (Whiles creeping slomber made him to forget + His former payne,) and wypt away his toilsom sweat. + + And on the other syde a pleasaunt grove + Was shott up high, full of the stately tree + That dedicated is t'Olympick Iove, + And to his son Alcides,[042] whenas hee + In Nemus gayned goodly victoree + Theirin the merry birds of every sorte + Chaunted alowd their cheerful harmonee, + And made emongst themselves a sweete consort + That quickned the dull spright with musicall comfort. + +_Fairie Queene, Book 2 Cant. 5 Stanzas 29, 30 and 31._ + +Here is a sweet picture of a "shady lodge" from the hand of Milton. + +EVE'S NUPTIAL BOWER. + + Thus talking, hand in hand alone they pass'd + On to their blissful bower. It was a place + Chosen by the sov'reign Planter, when he framed + All things to man's delightful use, the roof + Of thickest covert was inwoven shade, + Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew + Of firm and fragrant leaf, on either side + Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub, + Fenced up the verdant wall, each beauteous flower + Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine, + Rear'd high their flourish'd heads between, and wrought + Mosaic, under foot the violet, + Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay + Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone + Of costliest emblem other creature here, + Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none, + Such was their awe of man. In shadier bower + More sacred and sequester'd, though but feign'd, + Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph + Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess, + With flowers, garlands, and sweet smelling herbs, + Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed, + And heavenly quires the hymenean sung + +I have already quoted from Leigh Hunt's "Stories from the Italian poets" +an amusing anecdote illustrative of Ariosto's ignorance of botany. But +even in these days when all sorts of sciences are forced upon all sorts +of students, we often meet with persons of considerable sagacity and +much information of a different kind who are marvellously ignorant of +the vegetable world. + +In the just published Memoirs of the late James Montgomery, of +Sheffield, it is recorded that the poet and his brother Robert, a +tradesman at Woolwich, (not Robert Montgomery, the author of 'Satan,' +&c.) were one day walking together, when the trader seeing a field of +flax in full flower, asked the poet what sort of corn it was. "Such corn +as your shirt is made of," was the reply. "But Robert," observes a +writer in the _Athenaeum_, "need not be ashamed of his simplicity. +Rousseau, naturalist as he was, could hardly tell one berry from +another, and three of our greatest wits disputing in the field whether +the crop growing there was rye, barley, or oats, were set right by a +clown, who truly pronounced it wheat." + +Men of genius who have concentrated all their powers on some one +favorite profession or pursuit are often thus triumphed over by the +vulgar, whose eyes are more observant of the familiar objects and +details of daily life and of the scenes around them. Wordsworth and +Coleridge, on one occasion, after a long drive, and in the absence of a +groom, endeavored to relieve the tired horse of its harness. After +torturing the poor animal's neck and endangering its eyes by their +clumsy and vain attempts to slip off the collar, they at last gave up +the matter in despair. They felt convinced that the horse's head must +have swollen since the collar was put on. At last a servant-girl beheld +their perplexity. "La, masters," she exclaimed, "you dont set about it +the right way." She then seized hold of the collar, turned it broad end +up, and slipped it off in a second. The mystery that had puzzled two of +the finest intellects of their time was a very simple matter indeed to a +country wench who had perhaps never heard that England possessed a +Shakespeare. + +James Montgomery was a great lover of flowers, and few of our English +poets have written about the family of Flora, the sweet wife of Zephyr, +in a more genial spirit. He used to regret that the old Floral games and +processions on May-day and other holidays had gone out of fashion. +Southey tells us that in George the First's reign a grand Florist's +Feast was held at Bethnall Green, and that a carnation named after his +Majesty was _King of the Year_. The Stewards were dressed with laurel +leaves and flowers. They carried gilded staves. Ninety cultivators +followed in procession to the sound of music, each bearing his own +flowers before him. All elegant customs of this nature have fallen into +desuetude in England, though many of them are still kept up in other +parts of Europe. + +Chaucer who dearly loved all images associated with the open air and the +dewy fields and bright mornings and radiant flowers makes the gentle +Emily, + + That fairer was to seene + Than is the lily upon his stalkie greene, + +rise early and do honor to the birth of May-day. All things now seem to +breathe of hope and joy. + + Though long hath been + The trance of Nature on the naked bier + Where ruthless Winter mocked her slumbers drear + And rent with icy hand her robes of green, + That trance is brightly broken! Glossy trees, + Resplendent meads and variegated flowers + Flash in the sun and flutter in the breeze + And now with dreaming eye the poet sees + Fair shapes of pleasure haunt romantic bowers, + And laughing streamlets chase the flying hours. + +D.L.R. + +The great describer of our Lost Paradise did not disdain to sing a + +SONG ON MAY-MORNING. + + Now the bright Morning star, Day's harbinger, + Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her + The flowery May, who from her green lap throws + The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose + Hail bounteous-May, that dost inspire + Mirth and youth and warm desire; + Woods and groves are of thy dressing, + Hill and dale do boast thy blessing. + Thus we salute thee with our early song, + And welcome thee and wish thee long. + +Nor did the Poet of the World, William Shakespeare, hesitate to + + Do observance to a morn of May. + +He makes one of his characters (in _King Henry VIII_.) complain that it +is as impossible to keep certain persons quiet on an ordinary day, as it +is to make them sleep on May-day--once the time of universal merriment-- +when every one was wont "_to put himself into triumph_." + + 'Tis as much impossible, + Unless we sweep 'em from the doors with cannons + To scatter 'em, _as 'tis to make 'em sleep + On May-day Morning_. + +Spenser duly celebrates, in his "Shepheard's Calender," + + Thilke mery moneth of May + When love-lads masken in fresh aray, + +when "all is yclad with pleasaunce, the ground with grasse, the woods +with greene leaves, and the bushes with bloosming buds." + + Sicker[043] this morowe, no longer agoe, + I saw a shole of shepeardes outgoe + With singing and shouting and iolly chere: + Before them yode[044] a lustre tabrere,[045] + That to the many a hornepype playd + Whereto they dauncen eche one with his mayd. + To see those folks make such iovysaunce, + Made my heart after the pype to daunce. + Tho[046] to the greene wood they speeden hem all + To fetchen home May with their musicall; + And home they bringen in a royall throne + Crowned as king; and his queene attone[047] + Was LADY FLORA. + +_Spenser_. + +This is the season when the birds seem almost intoxicated with delight +at the departure of the dismal and cold and cloudy days of winter and +the return of the warm sun. The music of these little May musicians +seems as fresh as the fragrance of the flowers. The Skylark is the +prince of British Singing-birds--the leader of their cheerful band. + +LINES TO A SKYLARK. + + Wanderer through the wilds of air! + Freely as an angel fair + Thou dost leave the solid earth, + Man is bound to from his birth + Scarce a cubit from the grass + Springs the foot of lightest lass-- + _Thou_ upon a cloud can'st leap, + And o'er broadest rivers sweep, + Climb up heaven's steepest height, + Fluttering, twinkling, in the light, + Soaring, singing, till, sweet bird, + Thou art neither seen nor heard, + Lost in azure fields afar + Like a distance hidden star, + That alone for angels bright + Breathes its music, sheds its light + + Warbler of the morning's mirth! + When the gray mists rise from earth, + And the round dews on each spray + Glitter in the golden ray, + And thy wild notes, sweet though high, + Fill the wide cerulean, sky, + Is there human heart or brain + Can resist thy merry strain? + + But not always soaring high, + Making man up turn his eye + Just to learn what shape of love, + Raineth music from above,-- + All the sunny cloudlets fair + Floating on the azure air, + All the glories of the sky + Thou leavest unreluctantly, + Silently with happy breast + To drop into thy lowly nest. + + Though the frame of man must be + Bound to earth, the soul is free, + But that freedom oft doth bring + Discontent and sorrowing. + Oh! that from each waking vision, + Gorgeous vista, gleam Elysian, + From ambition's dizzy height, + And from hope's illusive light, + Man, like thee, glad lark, could brook + Upon a low green spot to look, + And with home affections blest + Sink into as calm a nest! D.L.R. + +I brought from England to India two English skylarks. I thought they +would help to remind me of English meadows and keep alive many agreeable +home-associations. In crossing the desert they were carefully lashed on +the top of one of the vans, and in spite of the dreadful jolting and the +heat of the sun they sang the whole way until night-fall. It was +pleasant to hear English larks from rich clover fields singing so +joyously in the sandy waste. In crossing some fields between Cairo and +the Pyramids I was surprized and delighted with the songs of Egyptian +skylarks. Their notes were much the same as those of the English lark. +The lark of Bengal is about the size of a sparrow and has a poor weak +note. At this moment a lark from Caubul (larger than an English lark) is +doing his best to cheer me with his music. This noble bird, though so +far from his native fields, and shut up in his narrow prison, pours +forth his rapturous melody in an almost unbroken stream from dawn to +sunset. He allows no change of season to abate his minstrelsy, to any +observable degree, and seems equally happy and musical all the year +round. I have had him nearly two years, and though of course he must +moult his feathers yearly, I have not observed the change of plumage, +nor have I noticed that he has sung less at one period of the year than +another. One of my two English larks was stolen the very day I landed in +India, and the other soon died. The loss of an English lark is not to be +replaced in Calcutta, though almost every week, canaries, linnets, +gold-finches and bull-finches are sold at public auctions here. + +But I must return to my main subject.--The ancients used to keep the +great Feast of the goddess Flora on the 28th of April. It lasted till +the 3rd of May. The Floral Games of antiquity were unhappily debased by +indecent exhibitions; but they were not entirely devoid of better +characteristics.[048] Ovid describing the goddess Flora says that "while +she was speaking she breathed forth vernal roses from her mouth." The +same poet has represented her in her garden with the Florae gathering +flowers and the Graces making garlands of them. The British borrowed the +idea of this festival from the Romans. Some of our Kings and Queens used +'_to go a Maying_,' and to have feasts of wine and venison in the open +meadows or under the good green-wood. Prior says: + + Let one great day + To celebrate sports and floral play + Be set aside. + +But few people, in England, in these times, distinguish May-day from the +initial day of any other month of the twelve. I am old enough to +remember _Jack-in-the-Green_. Nor have I forgotten the cheerful +clatter--the brush-and-shovel music--of our little British +negroes--"innocent blacknesses," as Lamb calls them--the +chimney-sweepers,--a class now almost _swept away_ themselves by +_machinery_. One May-morning in the streets of London these +tinsel-decorated merry-makers with their sooty cheeks and black lips +lined with red, and staring eyes whose white seemed whiter still by +contrast with the darkness of their cases, and their ivory teeth kept +sound and brilliant with the professional powder, besieged George Selwyn +and his arm-in-arm companion, Lord Pembroke, for May-day boxes. Selwyn +making them a low bow, said, very solemnly "I have often heard of _the +sovereignty of the people_, and I suppose you are some of the young +princes in court mourning." + +My Native readers in Bengal can form no conception of the delight with +which the British people at home still hail the spring of the year, or +the deep interest which they take in all "the Seasons and their change"; +though they have dropped some of the oldest and most romantic of the +ceremonies once connected with them. If there were an annual fall of the +leaf in the groves of India, instead of an eternal summer, the natives +would discover how much the charms of the vegetable world are enhanced +by these vicissitudes, and how even winter itself can be made +delightful. My brother exiles will remember as long as life is in them, +how exquisite, in dear old England, is the enjoyment of a brisk morning +walk in the clear frosty air, and how cheering and cosy is the social +evening fire! Though a cold day in Calcutta is not exactly like a cold +day in London, it sometimes revives the remembrance of it. An Indian +winter, if winter it may be called, is indeed far less agreeable than a +winter in England, but it is not wholly without its pleasures. It is, at +all events, a grateful change--a welcome relief and refreshment after a +sultry summer or a _muggy_ rainy season. + +An Englishman, however, must always prefer the keener but more wholesome +frigidity of his own clime. There, the external gloom and bleakness of a +severe winter day enhance our in-door comforts, and we do not miss sunny +skies when greeted with sunny looks. If we then see no blooming flowers, +we see blooming faces. But as we have few domestic enjoyments in this +country--no social snugness,--no sweet seclusion--and as our houses are +as open as bird-cages,--and as we almost live in public and in the open +air--we have little comfort when compelled, with an enfeebled frame and +a morbidly sensitive cuticle, to remain at home on what an Anglo-Indian +Invalid calls a cold day, with an easterly wind whistling through every +room.[049] In our dear native country each season has its peculiar moral +or physical attractions. It is not easy to say which is the most +agreeable--its summer or its winter. Perhaps I must decide in favor of +the first. The memory of many a smiling summer day still flashes upon my +soul. If the whole of human life were like a fine English day in June, +we should cease to wish for "another and a better world." It is often +from dawn to sunset one revel of delight. How pleasantly, from the first +break of day, have I lain wide awake and traced the approach of the +breakfast hour by the increasing notes of birds and the advancing +sun-light on my curtains! A summer feeling, at such a time, would make my +heart dance within me, as I thought of the long, cheerful day to be +enjoyed, and planned some rural walk, or rustic entertainment. The ills +that flesh is heir to, if they occurred for a moment, appeared like idle +visions. They were inconceivable as real things. As I heard the lark +singing in "a glorious privacy of light," and saw the boughs of the +green and gold laburnum waving at my window, and had my fancy filled +with images of natural beauty, I felt a glow of fresh life in my veins, +and my soul was inebriated with joy. It is difficult, amidst such +exhilarating influences, to entertain those melancholy ideas which +sometimes crowd upon, us, and appear so natural, at a less happy hour. +Even actual misfortune comes in a questionable shape, when our physical +constitution is in perfect health, and the flowers are in full bloom, +and the skies are blue, and the streams are glittering in the sun. So +powerfully does the light of external nature sometimes act upon the +moral system, that a sweet sensation steals gradually over the heart, +even when we think we have reason to be sorrowful, and while we almost +accuse ourselves of a want of feeling. The fretful hypochondriac would +do well to bear this fact in mind, and not take it for granted that all +are cold and selfish who fail to sympathize with his fantastic cares. He +should remember that men are sometimes so buoyed up by the sense of +corporeal power, and a communion with nature in her cheerful moods, that +things connected with their own personal interests, and which at other +times might irritate and wound their feelings, pass by them like the +idle wind which they regard not. He himself must have had his intervals +of comparative happiness, in which the causes of his present grief would +have appeared trivial and absurd. He should not, then, expect persons +whose blood is warm in their veins, and whose eyes are open to the +blessed sun in heaven, to think more of the apparent causes of his +sorrow than he would himself, were his mind and body in a healthful +state. + +With what a light heart and eager appetite did I enter the little +breakfast parlour of which the glass-doors opened upon a bright green +lawn, variegated with small beds of flowers! The table was spread with +dewy and delicious fruits from our own garden, and gathered by fair and +friendly hands. Beautiful and luscious as were these garden dainties, +they were of small account in comparison with the fresh cheeks and +cherry lips that so frankly accepted the wonted early greeting. Alas! +how that circle of early friends is now divided, and what a change has +since come over the spirit of our dreams! Yet still I cherish boyish +feelings, and the past is sometimes present. As I give an imaginary kiss +to an "old familiar face," and catch myself almost unconsciously, yet +literally, returning imaginary smiles, my heart is as fresh and fervid +as of yore. + +A lapse of fifteen years, and a distance of fifteen thousand miles, and +the glare of a tropical sky and the presence of foreign faces, need not +make an Indian Exile quite forgetful of home-delights. Parted friends +may still share the light of love as severed clouds are equally kindled +by the same sun. No number of miles or days can change or separate +faithful spirits or annihilate early associations. That strange +magician, Fancy, who supplies so many corporeal deficiencies and +overcomes so many physical obstructions, and mocks at space and time, +enables us to pass in the twinkling of an eye over the dreary waste of +waters that separates the exile from the scenes and companions of his +youth. He treads again his native shore. He sits by the hospitable +hearth and listens to the ringing laugh of children. He exchanges +cordial greetings with the "old familiar faces." There is a resurrection +of the dead, and a return of vanished years. He abandons himself to the +sweet illusion, and again + + Lives over each scene, and is what he beholds. + +I must not be too egotistically garrulous in print, or I would now +attempt to describe the various ways in which I have spent a summer's +day in England. I would dilate upon my noon-day loiterings amidst wild +ruins, and thick forests, and on the shaded banks of rivers--the pic-nic +parties--the gipsy prophecies--the twilight homeward walk--the social +tea-drinking, and, the last scene of all, the "rosy dreams and slumbers +light," induced by wholesome exercise and placid thoughts.[050] But +perhaps these few simple allusions are sufficient to awaken a train of +kindred associations in the reader's mind, and he will thank me for +those words and images that are like the keys of memory, and "open all +her cells with easy force." + +If a summer's day be thus rife with pleasure, scarcely less so is a day +in winter, though with some little drawbacks, that give, by contrast, a +zest to its enjoyments. It is difficult to leave the warm morning bed +and brave the external air. The fireless grate and frosted windows may +well make the stoutest shudder. But when we have once screwed our +courage to the sticking place, and with a single jerk of the clothes, +and a brisk jump from the bed, have commenced the operations of the +toilet, the battle is nearly over. The teeth chatter for a while, and +the limbs shiver, and we do not feel particularly comfortable while +breaking the ice in our jugs, and performing our cold ablutions amidst +the sharp, glass-like fragments, and wiping our faces with a frozen +towel. But these petty evils are quickly vanquished, and as we rush out +of the house, and tread briskly and firmly on the hard ringing earth, +and breathe our visible breath in the clear air, our strength and +self-importance miraculously increase, and the whole frame begins to glow. +The warmth and vigour thus acquired are inexpressibly delightful. As we +re-enter the house, we are proud of our intrepidity and vigour, and pity +the effeminacy of our less enterprising friends, who, though huddled +together round the fire, like flies upon a sunny wall, still complain of +cold, and instead of the bloom of health and animation, exhibit pale and +pinched and discolored features, and hands cold, rigid, and of a deadly +hue. Those who rise with spirit on a winter morning, and stir and thrill +themselves with early exercise, are indifferent to the cold for the rest +of the day, and feel a confidence in their corporeal energies, and a +lightness of heart that are experienced at no other season. + +But even the timid and luxurious are not without their pleasures. As the +shades of evening draw in, the parlour twilight--the closed +curtains--and the cheerful fire--make home a little paradise to all. + + Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, + Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, + And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn + Throws up a steamy column, and the cups + That cheer but not inebriate wait on each, + So let us welcome peaceful evening in + +_Cowper_. + +The warm and cold seasons of India have no charms like those of England, +but yet people who are guiltless of what Milton so finely calls "a +sullenness against nature," and who are willing, in a spirit of true +philosophy and piety, to extract good from every thing, may save +themselves from wretchedness even in this land of exile. While I am +writing this paragraph, a bird in my room, (not the Caubul songster that +I have already alluded to, but a fine little English linnet,) who is as +much a foreigner here as I am, is pouring out his soul in a flood of +song. His notes ring with joy. He pines not for his native meadows--he +cares not for his wiry bars--he envies not the little denizens of air +that sometimes flutter past my window, nor imagines, for a moment, that +they come to mock him with their freedom. He is contented with his +present enjoyments, because they are utterly undisturbed by idle +comparisons with those experienced in the past or anticipated in the +future. He has no thankless repinings and no vain desires. Is intellect +or reason then so fatal, though sublime a gift that we cannot possess it +without the poisonous alloy of care? Must grief and ingratitude +inevitably find entrance into the heart, in proportion to the loftiness +and number of our mental endowments? Are we to seek for happiness in +ignorance? To these questions the reply is obvious. Every good quality +may be abused, and the greatest, most; and he who perversely employs his +powers of thought and imagination to a wrong purpose deserves the misery +that he gains. Were we honestly to deduct from the ills of life all +those of our own creation, how trifling, in the majority of cases, the +amount that would remain! We seem to invite and encourage sorrow, while +happiness is, as it were, forced upon us against our will. It is +wonderful how some men pertinaciously cling to care, and argue +themselves into a dissatisfaction with their lot. Thus it is really a +matter of little moment whether fortune smile or frown, for it is in +vain to look for superior felicity amongst those who have more +"appliances and means to boot," than their fellow-men. Wealth, rank, and +reputation, do not secure their possessors from the misery of +discontent. + +As happiness then depends upon the right direction and employment of our +faculties, and not on worldly goods or mere localities, our countrymen +might be cheerful enough, even in this foreign land, if they would only +accustom themselves to a proper train of thinking, and be ready on every +occasion to look on the brighter side of all things.[051] In reverting +to home-scenes we should regard them for their intrinsic charms, and not +turn them into a source of disquiet by mournfully comparing them with +those around us. India, let Englishmen murmur as they will, has some +attractions, enjoyments and advantages. No Englishman is here in danger +of dying of starvation as some of our poets have done in the +inhospitable streets of London. The comparatively princely and generous +style in which we live in this country, the frank and familiar tone of +our little society, and the general mildness of the climate, (excepting +a few months of a too sultry summer) can hardly be denied by the most +determined malcontent. The weather is indeed too often a great deal +warmer than we like it; but if "the excessive heat" did not form a +convenient subject for complaint and conversation, it is perhaps +doubtful if it would so often be thought of or alluded to. But admit the +objection. What climate is without its peculiar evils? In the cold +season a walk in India either in the morning or the evening is often +extremely pleasant in pleasant company, and I am glad to see many +sensible people paying the climate the compliment of treating it like +that of England. It is now fashionable to use our limbs in the ordinary +way, and the "Garden of Eden"[052] has become a favorite promenade, +particularly on the evenings when a band from the Fort fills the air +with a cheerful harmony and throws a fresher life upon the scene. It is +not to be denied that besides the mere exercise, pedestrians at home +have great advantages over those who are too indolent or aristocratic to +leave their equipages, because they can cut across green and quiet +fields, enter rural by-ways, and enjoy a thousand little patches of +lovely scenery that are secrets to the high-road traveller. But still +the Calcutta pedestrian has also his gratifications. He can enjoy no +exclusive prospects, but he beholds upon an Indian river a forest of +British masts--the noble shipping of the Queen of the Sea--and has a +fine panoramic view of this City of Palaces erected by his countrymen on +a foreign shore;--and if he is fond of children, he must be delighted +with the numberless pretty and happy little faces--the fair forms of +Saxon men and women in miniature--that crowd about him on the green +sward;--he must be charmed with their innocent prattle, their quick and +graceful movements, and their winning ways, that awaken a tone of tender +sentiment in his heart, and rekindle many sweet associations. + +SONNETS, + +WRITTEN IN EXILE. + + I. + + Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never;-- + And while the soul's internal cell is bright, + The cloudless eye lets in the bloom and light + Of earth and heaven to charm and cheer us ever. + Though youth hath vanished, like a winding river + Lost in the shadowy woods; and the dear sight + Of native hill and nest-like cottage white, + 'Mid breeze-stirred boughs whose crisp leaves gleam and quiver, + And murmur sea-like sounds, perchance no more + My homeward step shall hasten cheerily; + Yet still I feel as I have felt of yore, + And love this radiant world. Yon clear blue sky-- + These gorgeous groves--this flower-enamelled floor-- + Have deep enchantments for my heart and eye. + + II. + + Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never, + Though to the sullen gaze of grief the sight + Of sun illumined skies may _seem_ less bright, + Or gathering clouds less grand, yet she, as ever, + Is lovely or majestic. Though fate sever + The long linked bands of love, and all delight + Be lost, as in a sudden starless night, + The radiance may return, if He, the giver + Of peace on earth, vouchsafe the storm to still + This breast once shaken with the strife of care + Is touched with silent joy. The cot--the hill, + Beyond the broad blue wave--and faces fair, + Are pictured in my dreams, yet scenes that fill + My waking eye can save me from despair. + + III. + + Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never,-- + Strange features throng around me, and the shore + Is not my own dear land. Yet why deplore + This change of doom? All mortal ties must sever. + The pang is past,--and now with blest endeavour + I check the ready tear, the rising sigh + The common earth is here--the common sky-- + The common FATHER. And how high soever + O'er other tribes proud England's hosts may seem, + God's children, fair or sable, equal find + A FATHER'S love. Then learn, O man, to deem + All difference idle save of heart or mind + Thy duty, love--each cause of strife, a dream-- + Thy home, the world--thy family, mankind. + +D.L.R. + +For the sake of my home readers I must now say a word or two on the +effect produced upon the mind of a stranger on his approach to Calcutta +from the Sandheads. + +As we run up the Bay of Bengal and approach the dangerous Sandheads, the +beautiful deep blue of the ocean suddenly disappears. It turns into a +pale green. The sea, even in calm weather, rolls over soundings in long +swells. The hue of the water is varied by different depths, and in +passing over the edge of soundings, it is curious to observe how +distinctly the form of the sands may be traced by the different shades +of green in the water above and beyond them. In the lower part of the +bay, the crisp foam of the dark sea at night is instinct with phosphoric +lustre. The ship seems to make her way through galaxies of little ocean +stars. We lose sight of this poetical phenomenon as we approach the +mouth of the Hooghly. But the passengers, towards the termination of +their voyage, become less observant of the changeful aspect of the sea. +Though amused occasionally by flights of sea-gulls, immense shoals of +porpoises, apparently tumbling or rolling head over tail against the +wind, and the small sprat-like fishes that sometimes play and glitter on +the surface, the stranger grows impatient to catch a glimpse of an +Indian jungle; and even the swampy tiger-haunted Saugor Island is +greeted with that degree of interest which novelty usually inspires. + +At first the land is but little above the level of the water. It rises +gradually as we pass up further from the sea. As we come still nearer to +Calcutta, the soil on shore seems to improve in richness and the trees +to increase in size. The little clusters of nest-like villages snugly +sheltered in foliage--the groups of dark figures in white garments--the +cattle wandering over the open plain--the emerald-colored fields of +rice--the rich groves of mangoe trees--the vast and magnificent banyans, +with straight roots dropping from their highest branches, (hundreds of +these branch-dropped roots being fixed into the earth and forming "a +pillared shade"),--the tall, slim palms of different characters and with +crowns of different forms, feathery or fan-like,--the many-stemmed and +long, sharp-leaved bamboos, whose thin pliant branches swing gracefully +under the weight of the lightest bird,--the beautifully rounded and +bright green peepuls, with their burnished leaves glittering in the +sunshine, and trembling at the zephyr's softest touch with a pleasant +rustling sound, suggestive of images of coolness and repose,--form a +striking and singularly interesting scene (or rather succession of +scenes) after the monotony of a long voyage during which nothing has +been visible but sea and sky. + +But it is not until he arrives at a bend of the river called _Garden +Reach_, where the City of Palaces first opens on the view, that the +stranger has a full sense of the value of our possessions in the East. +The princely mansions on our right;--(residences of English gentry), +with their rich gardens and smooth slopes verdant to the water's +edge,--the large and rich Botanic Garden and the Gothic edifice of Bishop's +College on our left--and in front, as we advance a little further, the +countless masts of vessels of all sizes and characters, and from almost +every clime,--Fort William, with its grassy ramparts and white +barracks,--the Government House, a magnificent edifice in spite of many +imperfections,--the substantial looking Town Hall--the Supreme Court +House--the broad and ever verdant plain (or _madaun_) in front--and the +noble lines of buildings along the Esplanade and Chowringhee Road,--the +new Cathedral almost at the extremity of the plain, and half-hidden +amidst the trees,--the suburban groves and buildings of Kidderpore +beyond, their outlines softened by the haze of distance, like scenes +contemplated through colored glass--the high-sterned budgerows and small +trim bauleahs along the edge of the river,--the neatly-painted +palanquins and other vehicles of all sorts and sizes,--the variously-hued +and variously-clad people of all conditions; the fair European, the +black and nearly naked Cooly, the clean-robed and lighter-skinned native +Baboo, the Oriental nobleman with his jewelled turban and kincob vest, +and costly necklace and twisted cummerbund, on a horse fantastically +caparisoned, and followed in barbaric state by a train of attendants +with long, golden-handled punkahs, peacock feather chowries, and golden +chattahs and silver sticks,--present altogether a scene that is +calculated to at once delight and bewilder the traveller, to whom all +the strange objects before him have something of the enchantment and +confusion of an Arabian Night's dream. When he recovers from his +surprise, the first emotion in the breast of an Englishman is a feeling +of national pride. He exults in the recognition of so many glorious +indications of the power of a small and remote nation that has founded a +splendid empire in so strange and vast a land. + +When the first impression begins to fade, and he takes a closer view of +the great metropolis of India--and observes what miserable straw huts +are intermingled with magnificent palaces--how much Oriental filth and +squalor and idleness and superstition and poverty and ignorance are +associated with savage splendour, and are brought into immediate and +most incongruous contact with Saxon energy and enterprize and taste and +skill and love of order, and the amazing intelligence of the West in +this nineteenth century--and when familiarity breeds something like +contempt for many things that originally excited a vague and pleasing +wonder--the English traveller in the East is apt to dwell too +exclusively on the worst side of the picture, and to become insensible +to the real interest, and blind to the actual beauty of much of the +scene around him. Extravagant astonishment and admiration, under the +influence of novelty, a strong re-action, and a subsequent feeling of +unreasonable disappointment, seem, in some degree, natural to all men; +but in no other part of the world, and under no other circumstances, is +this peculiarity of our condition more conspicuously displayed than in +the case of Englishmen in India. John Bull, who is always a grumbler +even on his own shores, is sure to become a still more inveterate +grumbler in other countries, and perhaps the climate of Bengal, +producing lassitude and low spirits, and a yearning for their native +land, of which they are so justly proud, contribute to make our +countrymen in the East even more than usually unsusceptible of +pleasurable emotions until at last they turn away in positive disgust +from the scenes and objects which remind them that they are in a state +of exile. + +"There is nothing," says Hamlet, "either good or bad, but thinking makes +it so." At every change of the mind's colored optics the scene before it +changes also. I have sometimes contemplated the vast metropolis of +England--or rather _of the world_--multitudinous and mighty LONDON--with +the pride and hope and exultation, not of a patriot only, but of a +cosmopolite--a man. Its grand national structures that seem built for +eternity--its noble institutions, charitable, and learned, and +scientific, and artistical--the genius and science and bravery and moral +excellence within its countless walls--have overwhelmed me with a sense +of its glory and majesty and power. But in a less admiring mood, I have +quite reversed the picture. Perhaps the following sonnet may seem to +indicate that the writer while composing it, must have worn his colored +spectacles. + +LONDON, IN THE MORNING. + + The morning wakes, and through the misty air + In sickly radiance struggles--like the dream + Of sorrow-shrouded hope. O'er Thames' dull stream, + Whose sluggish waves a wealthy burden bear + From every port and clime, the pallid glare + Of early sun-light spreads. The long streets seem + Unpeopled still, but soon each path shall teem + With hurried feet, and visages of care. + And eager throngs shall meet where dusky marts + Resound like ocean-caverns, with the din + Of toil and strife and agony and sin. + Trade's busy Babel! Ah! how many hearts + By lust of gold to thy dim temples brought + In happier hours have scorned the prize they sought? + +D.L.R. + +I now give a pair of sonnets upon the City of Palaces as viewed through +somewhat clearer glasses. + +VIEW OF CALCUTTA. + + Here Passion's restless eye and spirit rude + May greet no kindred images of power + To fear or wonder ministrant. No tower, + Time-struck and tenantless, here seems to brood, + In the dread majesty of solitude, + O'er human pride departed--no rocks lower + O'er ravenous billows--no vast hollow wood + Rings with the lion's thunder--no dark bower + The crouching tiger haunts--no gloomy cave + Glitters with savage eyes! But all the scene + Is calm and cheerful. At the mild command + Of Britain's sons, the skilful and the brave, + Fair palace-structures decorate the land, + And proud ships float on Hooghly's breast serene! + +D.L.R. + +SONNET, ON RETURNING TO CALCUTTA AFTER A VOYAGE TO THE STRAITS OF +MALACCA. + + Umbrageous woods, green dells, and mountains high, + And bright cascades, and wide cerulean seas, + Slumbering, or snow-wreathed by the freshening breeze, + And isles like motionless clouds upon the sky + In silent summer noons, late charmed mine eye, + Until my soul was stirred like wind-touched trees, + And passionate love and speechless ecstasies + Up-raised the thoughts in spiritual depths that lie. + Fair scenes, ye haunt me still! Yet I behold + This sultry city on the level shore + Not all unmoved; for here our fathers bold + Won proud historic names in days of yore, + And here are generous hearts that ne'er grow cold, + And many a friendly hand and open door. + +D.L.R. + +There are several extremely elegant customs connected with some of the +Indian Festivals, at which flowers are used in great profusion. The +surface of the "sacred river" is often thickly strewn with them. In Mrs. +Carshore's pleasing volume of _Songs of the East_[053] there is a long +poem (too long to quote entire) in which the _Beara Festival_ is +described. I must give the introductory passage. + +"THE BEARA FESTIVAL. + + "Upon the Ganges' overflowing banks, + Where palm trees lined the shore in graceful ranks, + I stood one night amidst a merry throng + Of British youths and maidens, to behold + A witching Indian scene of light and song, + Crowds of veiled native loveliness untold, + Each streaming path poured duskily along. + The air was filled with the sweet breath of flowers, + And music that awoke the silent hours, + It was the BEARA FESTIVAL and feast + When proud and lowly, loftiest and least, + Matron and Moslem maiden pay their vows, + With impetratory and votive gift, + And to the Moslem Jonas bent their brows. + _Each brought her floating lamp of flowers_, and swift + A thousand lights along the current drift, + Till the vast bosom of the swollen stream, + Glittering and gliding onward like a dream, + Seems a wide mirror of the starry sphere + Or more as if the stars had dropt from air, + And in an earthly heaven were shining here, + And far above were, but reflected there + Still group on group, advancing to the brink, + As group on group retired link by link; + For one pale lamp that floated out of view + Five brighter ones they quickly placed anew; + At length the slackening multitudes grew less, + And the lamps floated scattered and apart. + As stars grow few when morning's footsteps press + When a slight girl, shy as the timid halt, + Not far from where we stood, her offering brought. + Singing a low sweet strain, with lips untaught. + Her song proclaimed, that 'twas not many hours + Since she had left her childhood's innocent home; + And now with Beara lamp, and wreathed flowers, + To propitiate heaven, for wedded bliss had come" + +To these lines Mrs. Carshore (who has been in this country, I believe, +from her birth, and who ought to know something of Indian customs) +appends the following notes. + +"_It was the Beara festival_." Much has been said about the Beara or +floating lamp, but I have never yet seen a correct description. Moore +mentions that Lalla Rookh saw a solitary Hindoo girl bring her lamp to +the river. D.L.R. says the same, whereas the Beara festival is a Moslem +feast that takes place once a year in the monsoons, when thousands of +females offer their vows to the patron of rivers. + +"_Moslem Jonas_" Khauj Khoddir is the Jonas of the Mussulman; he, like +the prophet of Nineveh, was for three days inside a fish, and for that +reason is called the patron of rivers." + +I suppose Mrs. Carshore alludes, in the first of these notes, to the +following passage in the prose part of Lalla Rookh:-- + +"As they passed along a sequestered river after sunset, they saw a young +Hindoo girl upon the bank whose employment seemed to them so strange +that they stopped their palanquins to observe her. She had lighted a +small lamp, filled with oil of cocoa, and placing it in an earthern +dish, adorned with a wreath of flowers, had committed it with a +trembling hand to the stream: and was now anxiously watching its +progress down the current, heedless of the gay cavalcade which had drawn +up beside her. Lalla Rookh was all curiosity;--when one of her +attendants, who had lived upon the banks of the Ganges, (where this +ceremony is so frequent that often, in the dusk of evening, the river is +seen glittering all over with lights, like the Oton-Jala or Sea of +Stars,) informed the Princess that it was the usual way, in which the +friends of those who had gone on dangerous voyages offered up vows for +their safe return. If the lamp sunk immediately, the omen was +disastrous; but if it went shining down the stream, and continued to +burn till entirely out of sight, the return of the beloved object was +considered as certain. + +Lalla Rookh, as they moved on, more than once looked back, to observe +how the young Hindoo's lamp proceeded: and while she saw with pleasure +that it was unextinguished, she could not help fearing that all the hopes +of this life were no better than that feeble light upon the river." + +Moore prepared himself for the writing of Lalla Rookh by "long and +laborious reading." He himself narrates that Sir James Mackintosh was +asked by Colonel Wilks, the Historian of British India, whether it was +true that the poet had never been in the East. Sir James replied, +"_Never_." "Well, that shows me," said Colonel Wilks, "that reading over +D'Herbelot is as good as riding on the back of a camel." Sir John +Malcolm, Sir William Ouseley and other high authorities have testified +to the accuracy of Moore's descriptions of Eastern scenes and customs. + +The following lines were composed on the banks of the Hooghly at +Cossipore, (many long years ago) just after beholding the river one +evening almost covered with floating lamps.[054] + +A HINDU FESTIVAL. + + Seated on a bank of green, + Gazing on an Indian scene, + I have dreams the mind to cheer, + And a feast for eye and ear. + At my feet a river flows, + And its broad face richly glows + With the glory of the sun, + Whose proud race is nearly run + + Ne'er before did sea or stream + Kindle thus beneath his beam, + Ne'er did miser's eye behold + Such a glittering mass of gold + 'Gainst the gorgeous radiance float + Darkly, many a sloop and boat, + While in each the figures seem + Like the shadows of a dream + Swiftly, passively, they glide + As sliders on a frozen tide. + + Sinks the sun--the sudden night + Falls, yet still the scene is bright + Now the fire-fly's living spark + Glances through the foliage dark, + And along the dusky stream + Myriad lamps with ruddy gleam + On the small waves float and quiver, + As if upon the favored river, + And to mark the sacred hour, + Stars had fallen in a shower. + + For many a mile is either shore + Illumined with a countless store + Of lustres ranged in glittering rows, + Each a golden column throws + To light the dim depths of the tide, + And the moon in all her pride + Though beauteously her regions glow, + Views a scene as fair below + +D.L.R. + +Mrs. Carshore alludes, I suppose to the above lines, or the following +sonnet, or both perhaps, when she speaks of my erroneous Orientalism-- + +SCENE ON THE GANGES. + + The shades of evening veil the lofty spires + Of proud Benares' fanes! A thickening haze + Hangs o'er the stream. The weary boatmen raise + Along the dusky shore their crimson fires + That tinge the circling groups. Now hope inspires + Yon Hindu maid, whose heart true passion sways, + To launch on Gungas flood the glimmering rays + Of Love's frail lamp,--but, lo the light expires! + Alas! what sudden sorrow fills her breast! + No charm of life remains. Her tears deplore + A lover lost and never, never more + Shall hope's sweet vision yield her spirit rest! + The cold wave quenched the flame--an omen dread + That telleth of the faithless--_or the dead_! + +D.L.R. + +Horace Hayman Wilson, a high authority on all Oriental customs, clearly +alludes in the following lines to the launching of floating lamps by +_Hindu_ females. + + Grave in the tide the Brahmin stands, + And folds his cord or twists his hands, + And tells his beads, and all unheard + Mutters a solemn mystic word + With reverence the Sudra dips, + And fervently the current sips, + That to his humbler hope conveys + A future life of happier days. + But chief do India's simple daughters + Assemble in these hallowed waters, + With vase of classic model laden + Like Grecian girl or Tuscan maiden, + Collecting thus their urns to fill + From gushing fount or trickling rill, + And still with pious fervour they + To Gunga veneration pay + And with pretenceless rite prefer, + The wishes of their hearts to her + The maid or matron, as she throws + _Champae_ or lotus, _Bel_ or rose, + Or sends the quivering light afloat + In shallow cup or paper boat, + Prays for a parent's peace and wealth + Prays for a child's success and health, + For a fond husband breathes a prayer, + For progeny their loves to share, + For what of good on earth is given + To lowly life, or hoped in heaven, + +H.H.W. + +On seeing Miss Carshore's criticism I referred the subject to an +intelligent Hindu friend from whom I received the following answer:-- + + My dear Sir, + + The _Beara_, strictly speaking, is a Mahomedan festival. Some of + the lower orders of the Hindus of the NW Provinces, who have + borrowed many of their customs from the Mahomedans, celebrate + the _Beara_. But it is not observed by the Hindus of Bengal, who + have a festival of their own, similar to the _Beara_. It takes + place on the evening of the _Saraswati Poojah_, when a small + piece of the bark of the Plantain Tree is fitted out with all + the necessary accompaniments of a boat, and is launched in a + private tank with a lamp. The custom is confined to the women + who follow it in their own house or in the same neighbourhood. + It is called the _Sooa Dooa Breta_. + + Yours truly, + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Carshore it would seem is partly right and partly wrong. She is +right in calling the _Beara_ a _Moslem_ Festival. It is so; but we have +the testimony of Horace Hayman Wilson to the fact that _Hindu maids and +matrons also launch their lamps upon the river_. My Hindu friend +acknowledges that his countrymen in the North West Provinces have +borrowed many of their customs from the Mahomedans, and though he is not +aware of it, it may yet be the case, that some of the Hindus of +_Bengal_, as elsewhere, have done the same, and that they set lamps +afloat upon the stream to discover by their continued burning or sudden +extinction the fate of some absent friend or lover. I find very few +Natives who are able to give me any exact and positive information +concerning their own national customs. In their explanations of such +matters they differ in the most extraordinary manner amongst themselves. +Two most respectable and intelligent Native gentlemen who were proposing +to lay out their grounds under my directions, told me that I must +not cut down a single cocoa-nut tree, as it would be dreadful +sacrilege--equal to cutting the throats of seven brahmins! Another equally +respectable and intelligent Native friend, when I mentioned the fact, +threw himself back in his chair to give vent to a hearty laugh. When he +had recovered himself a little from this risible convulsion he observed +that his father and his grandfather had cut down cocoa-nut trees in +considerable numbers without the slightest remorse or fear. And yet +again, I afterwards heard that one of the richest Hindu families in +Calcutta, rather than suffer so sacred an object to be injured, piously +submit to a very serious inconvenience occasioned by a cocoa-nut tree +standing in the centre of the carriage road that leads to the portico of +their large town palace. I am told that there are other sacred trees +which must not be removed by the hands of Hindus of inferior caste, +though in this case there is a way of getting over the difficulty, for +it is allowable or even meritorious to make presents of these trees to +Brahmins, who cut them down for their own fire-wood. But the cocoa-nut +tree is said to be too sacred even for the axe of a Brahmin. + +I have been running away again from my subject;--I was discoursing upon +May-day in England. The season there is still a lovely and a merry one, +though the most picturesque and romantic of its ancient observances, now +live but in the memory of the "oldest inhabitants," or on the page of +history.[055] + + See where, amidst the sun and showers, + The Lady of the vernal hours, + Sweet May, comes forth again with all her flowers. + +_Barry Cornwall_. + +The _May-pole_ on these days is rarely seen to rise up in English towns +with its proper floral decorations[056]. In remote rural districts a +solitary May-pole is still, however, occasionally discovered. "A +May-pole," says Washington Irving, "gave a glow to my feelings and spread +a charm over the country for the rest of the day: and as I traversed a +part of the fair plains of Cheshire, and the beautiful borders of Wales +and looked from among swelling hills down a long green valley, through +which the Deva wound its wizard stream, my imagination turned all into a +perfect Arcadia. One can readily imagine what a gay scene old London +must have been when the doors were decked with hawthorn; and Robin Hood, +Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, Morris dancers, and all the other fantastic +dancers and revellers were performing their antics about the May-pole in +every part of the city. I value every custom which tends to infuse +poetical feeling into the common people, and to sweeten and soften the +rudeness of rustic manners without destroying their simplicity." + +Another American writer--a poet--has expressed his due appreciation of +the pleasures of the season. He thus addresses the merrie month of +MAY.[057] + +MAY. + + Would that thou couldst laugh for aye, + Merry, ever merry May! + Made of sun gleams, shade and showers + Bursting buds, and breathing flowers, + Dripping locked, and rosy vested, + Violet slippered, rainbow crested; + Girdled with the eglantine, + Festooned with the dewy vine + Merry, ever Merry May, + Would that thou could laugh for aye! + +_W.D. Gallagher._ + +I must give a dainty bit of description from the poet of the poets--our +own romantic Spenser. + + Then comes fair May, the fayrest mayde on ground, + Decked with all dainties of the season's pryde, + And throwing flowres out of her lap around. + Upon two brethren's shoulders she did ride, + The twins of Leda, which, on eyther side, + Supported her like to their Sovereign queene + Lord! how all creatures laught when her they spide, + And leapt and danced as they had ravisht beene! + And Cupid's self about her fluttred all in greene. + +Here are a few lines from Herrick. + + Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appeare + Re-clothed in freshe and verdant diaper; + Thawed are the snowes, and now the lusty spring + Gives to each mead a neat enameling, + The palmes[058] put forth their gemmes, and every tree + Now swaggers in her leavy gallantry. + +The Queen of May--Lady Flora--was the British representative of the +Heathen Goddess Flora. May still returns and ever will return at her +proper season, with all her bright leaves and fragrant blossoms, but men +cease to make the same use of them as of yore. England is waxing +utilitarian and prosaic. + +The poets, let others neglect her as they will, must ever do fitting +observance, in songs as lovely and fresh as the flowers of the hawthorn, + + To the lady of the vernal hours. + +Poor Keats, who was passionately fond of flowers, and everything +beautiful or romantic or picturesque, complains, with a true poet's +earnestness, that in _his_ day in England there were + + No crowds of nymphs, soft-voiced and young and gay + In woven baskets, bringing ears of corn, + Roses and pinks and violets, to adorn + The shrine of Flora in her early May. + +The Floral Games--_Jeux Floraux_--of Toulouse--first celebrated at the +commencement of the fourteenth century, are still kept up annually with +great pomp and spirit. Clemence Isaure, a French lady, bequeathed to the +Academy of Toulouse a large sum of money for the annual celebration of +these games. A sort of College Council is formed, which not only confers +degrees on those poets who do most honor to the Goddess Flora, but +sometimes grants them more substantial favors. In 1324 the poets were +encouraged to compete for a golden violet and a silver eglantine and +pansy. A century later the prizes offered were an amaranthus of gold of +the value of 400 livres, for the best ode, a violet of silver, valued at +250 livres, for an essay in prose, a silver pansy, worth 200 livres, for +an eclogue, elegy or idyl, and a silver lily of the value of sixty +livres, for the best sonnet or hymn in honor of the Virgin Mary,--for +religion is mixed up with merriment, and heathen with Christian rites. +He who gained a prize three times was honored with the title of Doctor +_en gaye science_, the name given to the poetry of the Provencal +troubadours. A mass, a sermon, and alms-giving, commence the ceremonies. +The French poet, Ronsard who had gained a prize in the floral games, so +delighted Mary Queen of Scots with his verses on the Rose that she +presented him with a silver rose worth L500, with this inscription--"_A +Ronsard, l'Apollon de la source des Muses_." + +At Ghent floral festivals are held twice a year when amateur and +professional florists assemble together and contribute each his share of +flowers to the grand general exhibition which is under the direct +patronage of the public authorities. Honorary medals are awarded to the +possessors of the finest flowers. + +The chief floral festival of the Chinese is on their new year's day, +when their rivers are covered with boats laden with flowers, and gay +flags streaming from every mast. Their homes and temples are richly hung +with festoons of flowers. Boughs of the peach and plum trees in blossom, +enkianthus quinque-flora, camelias, cockscombs, magnolias, jonquils are +then exposed for sale in all the streets of Canton. Even the Chinese +ladies, who are visible at no other season, are seen on this occasion in +flower-boats on the river or in the public gardens on the shore. + +The Italians, it is said, still have artificers called _Festaroli_, +whose business it is to prepare festoons and garlands. The ancient +Romans were very tasteful in their nosegays and chaplets. Pliny tells us +that the Sicyonians were especially celebrated for the graceful art +exhibited in the arrangement of the varied colors of their garlands, and +he gives us the story of Glycera who, to please her lover Pausias, the +painter of Sicyon, used to send him the most exquisite chaplets of her +own braiding, which he regularly copied on his canvas. He became very +eminent as a flower-painter. The last work of his pencil, and his +master-piece, was a picture of his mistress in the act of arranging a +chaplet. The picture was called the _Garland Twiner_. It is related that +Antony for some time mistrusting Cleopatra made her taste in the first +instance every thing presented to him at her banquets. One day "the +Serpent of old Nile" after dipping her own coronet of flowers into her +goblet drank up the wine and then directed him to follow her example. He +was off his guard. He dipped his chaplet in his cup. The leaves had been +touched with poison. He was just raising the cup to his lips when she +seized his arm, and said "Cease your jealous doubts, for know, that if +I had desired your death or wished to live without you, I could easily +have destroyed you." The Queen then ordered a prisoner to be brought +into their presence, who being made to drink from the cup, instantly +expired.[059] + +Some of the nosegays made up by "flower-girls" in London and its +neighbourhood are sold at such extravagant prices that none but the very +wealthy are in the habit of purchasing them, though sometimes a poor +lover is tempted to present his mistress on a ball-night with a bouquet +that he can purchase only at the cost of a good many more leaves of +bread or substantial meals than he can well spare. He has to make every +day a banian-day for perhaps half a month that his mistress may wear a +nosegay for a few hours. However, a lover is often like a cameleon and +can almost live on air--_for a time_--"promise-crammed." 'You cannot +feed capons so.' + +At Covent Garden Market, (in London) and the first-rate Flower-shops, a +single wreath or nosegay is often made up for the head or hand at a +price that would support a poor labourer and his family for a month. The +colors of the wreaths are artfully arranged, so as to suit different +complexions, and so also as to exhibit the most rare and costly flowers +to the greatest possible advantage. + +All true poets + + --The sages + Who have left streaks of light athwart their pages-- + +have contemplated flowers--with a passionate love, an ardent admiration; +none more so than the sweet-souled Shakespeare. They are regarded by the +imaginative as the fairies of the vegetable world--the physical +personifications of etherial beauty. In _The Winter's Tale_ our great +dramatic bard has some delightful floral allusions that cannot be too +often quoted. + + Here's flowers for you, + Hot lavender, mint, savory, majoram, + The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun, + And with him rises weeping these are flowers + Of middle summer, and I think they are given + To men of middle age. + + * * * * * + + O, Proserpina, + For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lett'st fall + From Dis's waggon! Daffodils, + That come before the swallow dares, and take + The winds of March with beauty, violets dim, + But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, + Or Cytherea's breath, pale primroses, + That die unmarried ere they can behold + Great Phoebus in his strength,--a malady + Most incident to maids, bold oxlips and + The crown imperial, lilies of all kinds, + The flower de luce being one + +Shakespeare here, as elsewhere, speaks of "_pale_ primroses." The poets +almost always allude to the primrose as a _pale_ and interesting +invalid. Milton tells us of + + The yellow cowslip and the _pale_ primrose[060] + +The poet in the manuscript of his _Lycidas_ had at first made the +primrose "_die unwedded_," which was a pretty close copy of Shakespeare. +Milton afterwards struck out the word "_unwedded_," and substituted the +word "_forsaken_." The reason why the primrose was said to "die +unmarried," is, according to Warton, because it grows in the shade +uncherished or unseen by the sun, who was supposed to be in love with +certain sorts of flowers. Ben Jonson, however, describes the primrose as +_a wedded lady_--"the Spring's own _Spouse_"--though she is certainly +more commonly regarded as the daughter of Spring not the wife. J +Fletcher gives her the true parentage:-- + + Primrose, first born child of Ver + +There are some kinds of primroses, that are not _pale_. There is a +species in Scotland, which is of a deep purple. And even in England (in +some of the northern counties) there is a primrose, the bird's-eye +primrose, (Primula farinosa,) of which the blossom is lilac colored and +the leaves musk-scented. + +In Sweden they call the Primrose _The key of May_. + +The primrose is always a great favorite with imaginative and sensitive +observers, but there are too many people who look upon the beautiful +with a utilitarian eye, or like Wordsworth's Peter Bell regard it with +perfect indifference. + + A primrose by the river's brim + A yellow primrose was to him. + And it was nothing more. + +I have already given one anecdote of a utilitarian; but I may as well +give two more anecdotes of a similar character. Mrs. Wordsworth was in a +grove, listening to the cooing of the stock-doves, and associating their +music with the remembrance of her husband's verses to a stock-dove, when +a farmer's wife passing by exclaimed, "Oh, I do like stock-doves!" The +woman won the heart of the poet's wife at once; but she did not long +retain it. "Some people," continued the speaker, "like 'em in a pie; for +my part I think there's nothing like 'em stewed in inions." This was a +rustic utilitarian. Here is an instance of a very different sort of +utilitarianism--the utilitarianism of men who lead a gay town life. Sir +W.H. listened, patiently for some time to a poetical-minded friend who +was rapturously expatiating upon the delicious perfume of a bed of +violets; "Oh yes," said Sir W. at last, "its all very well, but for my +part I very much prefer the smell of a flambeau at the theatre." But +intellects far more capacious than that of Sir W.H. have exhibited the +same indifference to the beautiful in nature. Locke and Jeremy Bentham +and even Sir Isaac Newton despised all poetry. And yet God never meant +man to be insensible to the beautiful or the poetical. "Poetry, like +truth," says Ebenezer Elliot, "is a common flower: God has sown it over +the earth, like the daisies sprinkled with tears or glowing in the sun, +even as he places the crocus and the March frosts together and +beautifully mingles life and death." If the finer and more spiritual +faculties of men were as well cultivated or exercised as are their +colder and coarser faculties there would be fewer utilitarians. But the +highest part of our nature is too much neglected in all our systems of +education. Of the beauty and fragrance of flowers all earthly creatures +except man are apparently meant to be unconscious. The cattle tread down +or masticate the fairest flowers without a single "compunctious visiting +of nature." This excites no surprize. It is no more than natural. But it +is truly painful and humiliating to see any human being as insensible as +the beasts of the field to that poetry of the world which God seems to +have addressed exclusively to the heart and soul of man. + +In South Wales the custom of strewing all kinds of flowers over the +graves of departed friends, is preserved to the present day. +Shakespeare, it appears, knew something of the customs of that part of +his native country and puts the following _flowery_ speech into the +mouth of the young Prince, Arviragus, who was educated there. + + With fairest flowers, + While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, + I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack + The flower that's like thy face, pale Primrose, nor + The azured Harebell, like thy veins; no, nor + The leaf of Eglantine; whom not to slander, + Out-sweetened not thy breath. + +_Cymbeline_. + +Here are two more flower-passages from Shakespeare. + + Here's a few flowers; but about midnight more; + The herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night + Are strewings fitt'st for graves.--Upon their faces:-- + You were as flowers; now withered; even so + These herblets shall, which we upon you strow. + +_Cymbeline_. + + Sweets to the sweet. Farewell! + I hoped thou shoulds't have been my Hamlet's wife; + I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, + And not t' have strewed thy grave. + +_Hamlet_. + +Flowers are peculiarly suitable ornaments for the grave, for as Evelyn +truly says, "they are just emblems of the life of man, which has been +compared in Holy Scripture to those fading creatures, whose roots being +buried in dishonor rise again in glory."[061] + +This thought is natural and just. It is indeed a most impressive sight, +a most instructive pleasure, to behold some "bright consummate flower" +rise up like a radiant exhalation or a beautiful vision--like good from +evil--with such stainless purity and such dainty loveliness, from the +hot-bed of corruption. + +Milton turns his acquaintance with flowers to divine account in his +Lycidas. + + Return; Sicilian Muse, + And call the vales, and bid them hither cast + Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. + Ye vallies low, where the mild whispers use + Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, + On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks; + Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, + That on the green turf suck the honied showers. + And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. + Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. + The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, + The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, + The glowing violet, + The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine, + With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,[062] + And every flower that sad embroidery wears; + Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, + And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, + To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies, + For, so to interpose a little ease, + Let our frail thoughts dally with faint surmise + +Here is a nosegay of spring-flowers from the hand of Thomson:-- + + Fair handed Spring unbosoms every grace, + Throws out the snow drop and the crocus first, + the daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue, + And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes, + The yellow wall flower, stained with iron brown, + And lavish stock that scents the garden round, + From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed, + Anemonies, auriculas, enriched + With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves + And full ranunculus of glowing red + Then comes the tulip race, where Beauty plays + Her idle freaks from family diffused + To family, as flies the father dust, + The varied colors run, and while they break + On the charmed eye, the exulting Florist marks + With secret pride, the wonders of his hand + Nor gradual bloom is wanting, from the bird, + First born of spring, to Summer's musky tribes + Nor hyacinth, of purest virgin white, + Low bent, and, blushing inward, nor jonquils, + Of potent fragrance, nor Narcissus fair, + As o'er the fabled fountain hanging still, + Nor broad carnations, nor gay spotted pinks; + Nor, showered from every bush, the damask rose. + Infinite varieties, delicacies, smells, + With hues on hues expression cannot paint, + The breath of Nature and her endless bloom. + +Here are two bouquets of flowers from the garden of Cowper + + Laburnum, rich + In streaming gold, syringa, ivory pure, + The scentless and the scented rose, this red, + And of an humbler growth, the other[063] tall, + And throwing up into the darkest gloom + Of neighboring cypress, or more sable yew, + Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf + That the wind severs from the broken wave, + The lilac, various in array, now white, + Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set + With purple spikes pyramidal, as if + Studious of ornament yet unresolved + Which hue she most approved, she chose them all, + Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan, + But well compensating her sickly looks + With never cloying odours, early and late, + Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm + Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods, + That scarce a loaf appears, mezereon too, + Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset + With blushing wreaths, investing every spray, + Althaea with the purple eye, the broom + Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy'd, + Her blossoms, and luxuriant above all + The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, + The deep dark green of whose unvarnish'd leaf + Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more, + The bright profusion of her scatter'd stars + + * * * * * + + Th' amomum there[064] with intermingling flowers + And cherries hangs her twigs. Geranium boasts + Her crimson honors, and the spangled beau + Ficoides, glitters bright the winter long + All plants, of every leaf, that can endure + The winter's frown, if screened from his shrewd bite, + Live their and prosper. Those Ausonia claims, + Levantine regions those, the Azores send + Their jessamine, her jessamine remote + Caffraia, foreigners from many lands, + They form one social shade as if convened + By magic summons of the Orphean lyre + +Here is a bunch of flowers laid before the public eye by Mr. Proctor-- + + There the rose unveils + Her breast of beauty, and each delicate bud + O' the season comes in turn to bloom and perish, + But first of all the violet, with an eye + Blue as the midnight heavens, the frail snowdrop, + Born of the breath of winter, and on his brow + Fixed like a full and solitary star + The languid hyacinth, and wild primrose + And daisy trodden down like modesty + The fox glove, in whose drooping bells the bee + Makes her sweet music, the Narcissus (named + From him who died for love) the tangled woodbine, + Lilacs, and flowering vines, and scented thorns, + And some from whom the voluptuous winds of June + Catch their perfumings + +_Barry Cornwall_ + +I take a second supply of flowers from the same hand + + Here, this rose + (This one half blown) shall be my Maia's portion, + For that like it her blush is beautiful + And this deep violet, almost as blue + As Pallas' eye, or thine, Lycemnia, + I'll give to thee for like thyself it wears + Its sweetness, never obtruding. For this lily + Where can it hang but it Cyane's breast? + And yet twill wither on so white a bed, + If flowers have sense of envy.--It shall be + Amongst thy raven tresses, Cytheris, + Like one star on the bosom of the night + The cowslip and the yellow primrose,--they + Are gone, my sad Leontia, to their graves, + And April hath wept o'er them, and the voice + Of March hath sung, even before their deaths + The dirge of those young children of the year + But here is hearts ease for your woes. And now, + The honey suckle flower I give to thee, + And love it for my sake, my own Cyane + It hangs upon the stem it loves, as thou + Hast clung to me, through every joy and sorrow, + It flourishes with its guardian growth, as thou dost, + And if the woodman's axe should droop the tree, + The woodbine too must perish. + +_Barry Cornwall_ + +Let me add to the above heap of floral beauty a basket of flowers from +Leigh Hunt. + + Then the flowers on all their beds-- + How the sparklers glance their heads, + Daisies with their pinky lashes + And the marigolds broad flashes, + Hyacinth with sapphire bell + Curling backward, and the swell + Of the rose, full lipped and warm, + Bound about whose riper form + Her slender virgin train are seen + In their close fit caps of green, + Lilacs then, and daffodillies, + And the nice leaved lesser lilies + Shading, like detected light, + Their little green-tipt lamps of white; + Blissful poppy, odorous pea, + With its wing up lightsomely; + Balsam with his shaft of amber, + Mignionette for lady's chamber, + And genteel geranium, + With a leaf for all that come; + And the tulip tricked out finest, + And the pink of smell divinest; + And as proud as all of them + Bound in one, the garden's gem + Hearts-ease, like a gallant bold + In his cloth of purple and gold. + +Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who introduced inoculation into England--a +practically useful boon to us,--had also the honor to be amongst the +first to bring from the East to the West an elegant amusement--the +Language of Flowers.[065] + + Then he took up his garland, and did show + What every flower, as country people hold, + Did signify; and how all, ordered thus, + Expressed his grief: and, to my thoughts, did read + The prettiest lecture of his country art + That could be wished. + +_Beaumont's and Fletcher's "Philaster."_ + + * * * * * + + There from richer banks + Culling out flowers, which in a learned order + Do become characters, whence they disclose + Their mutual meanings, garlands then and nosegays + Being framed into epistles. + +_Cartwright's "Love's Covenant."_ + + * * * * * + + An exquisite invention this, + Worthy of Love's most honied kiss, + This art of writing _billet-doux_ + In buds and odours and bright hues, + In saying all one feels and thinks + In clever daffodils and pinks, + Uttering (as well as silence may,) + The sweetest words the sweetest way. + +_Leigh Hunt_. + + * * * * * + + Yet, no--not words, for they + But half can tell love's feeling; + Sweet flowers alone can say + What passion fears revealing.[066] + A once bright rose's withered leaf-- + A towering lily broken-- + Oh, these may paint a grief + No words could e'er have spoken. + +_Moore_. + + * * * * * + + By all those token flowers that tell + What words can ne'er express so well. + +_Byron_. + + * * * * * + + A mystic language, perfect in each part. + Made up of bright hued thoughts and perfumed speeches. + +_Adams_. + +If we are to believe Shakespeare it is not human beings only who use a +floral language:-- + + Fairies use flowers for their charactery. + +Sir Walter Scott tells us that:-- + + The myrtle bough bids lovers live-- + +A sprig of hawthorn has the same meaning as a sprig of myrtle: it gives +hope to the lover--the sweet heliotrope tells the depth of his +passion,--if he would charge his mistress with levity he presents the +larkspur,--and a leaf of nettle speaks her cruelty. Poor Ophelia (in +_Hamlet_) gives rosemary for remembrance, and pansies (_pensees_) for +thoughts. The laurel indicates victory in war or success with the Muses, + + "The meed of mighty conquerors and poets sage." + +The ivy wreathes the brows of criticism. The fresh vine-leaf cools the +hot forehead of the bacchanal. Bergamot and jessamine imply the +fragrance of friendship. + +The Olive is the emblem of peace--the Laurel, of glory--the Rue, of +grace or purification (Ophelia's _Herb of Grace O'Sundays_)--the +Primrose, of the spring of human life--the Bud of the White Rose, of +Girl-hood,--the full blossom of the Red Rose, of consummate beauty--the +Daisy, of innocence,--the Butter-cup, of gold--the Houstania, of +content--the Heliotrope, of devotion in love--the Cross of Jerusalem, of +devotion in religion--the Forget-me-not, of fidelity--the Myrrh, of +gladness--the Yew, of sorrow--the Michaelmas Daisy, of cheerfulness in +age--the Chinese Chrysanthemum, of cheerfulness in adversity--the Yellow +Carnation, of disdain--the Sweet Violet, of modesty--the white +Chrysanthemum, of truth--the Sweet Sultan, of felicity--the Sensitive +Plant, of maiden shyness--the Yellow Day Lily, of coquetry--the +Snapdragon, of presumption--the Broom, of humility--the Amaryllis, of +pride--the Grass, of submission--the Fuschia, of taste--the Verbena, of +sensibility--the Nasturtium, of splendour--the Heath, of solitude--the +Blue Periwinkle, of early friendship--the Honey-suckle, of the bond of +love--the Trumpet Flower, of fame--the Amaranth, of immortality--the +Adonis, of sorrowful remembrance,--and the Poppy, of oblivion. + +The Witch-hazel indicates a spell,--the Cape Jasmine says _I'm too +happy_--the Laurestine, _I die if I am neglected_--the American Cowslip, +_You are a divinity_--the Volkamenica Japonica, _May you be happy_--the +Rose-colored Chrysanthemum, _I love_,--and the Venus' Car, _Fly with +me_. + +For the following illustrations of the language of flowers I am indebted +to a useful and well conducted little periodical published in London and +entitled the _Family Friend_;--the work is a great favorite with the +fair sex. + +"Of the floral grammar, the first rule to be observed is, that the +pronoun _I_ or _me_ is expressed by inclining the symbol flower to the +_left_, and the pronoun _thou_ or _thee_ by inclining it to the _right_. +When, however, it is not a real flower offered, but a representation +upon paper, these positions must be reversed, so that the symbol leans +to the heart of the person whom it is to signify. + +The second rule is, that the opposite of a particular sentiment +expressed by a flower presented upright is denoted when the symbol is +reversed; thus a rose-bud sent upright, with its thorns and leaves, +means, "_I fear, but I hope_." If the bud is returned upside down, it +means, "_You must neither hope nor fear_." Should the thorns, however, +be stripped off, the signification is, "_There is everything to hope_;" +but if stript of its leaves, "_There is everything to fear_." By this it +will be seen that the expression of almost all flowers may be varied by +a change in their positions, or an alteration of their state or +condition. For example, the marigold flower placed in the hand signifies +"_trouble of spirits_;" on the heart, "_trouble or love_;" on the bosom, +"_weariness_." The pansy held upright denotes "_heart's ease_;" +reversed, it speaks the contrary. When presented upright, it says, +"_Think of me_;" and when pendent, "_Forget me_." So, too, the +amaryllis, which is the emblem of pride, may be made to express, "_My +pride is humbled_," or, "_Your pride is checked_," by holding it +downwards, and to the right or left, as the sense requires. Then, again, +the wallflower, which is the emblem of fidelity in misfortune, if +presented with the stalk upward, would intimate that the person to whom +it was turned was unfaithful in the time of trouble. + +The third rule has relation to the manner in which certain words may be +represented; as, for instance, the articles, by tendrils with single, +double, and treble branches, as under-- + +[Illustration of _The_, _An_ & _A_.] + +The numbers are represented by leaflets running from one to eleven, as +thus-- + +[Illustration of '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', & '6'.] + +From eleven to twenty, berries are added to the ten leaves thus-- + +[Illustration of '12' & '15'.] + +From twenty to one hundred, compound leaves are added to the other ten +for the decimals, and berries stand for the odd numbers so-- + +[Illustration of '20', '34' & '56'.] + +A hundred is represented by ten tens; and this may be increased by a +third leaflet and a branch of berries up to 999. + +[Illustration of '100'.] + +A thousand may be symbolized by a frond of fern, having ten or more +leaves, and to this a common leaflet may be added to increase the number +of thousands. In this way any given number may be represented in +foliage, such as the date of a year in which a birthday, or other event, +occurs, to which it is desirable to make allusion, in an emblematic +wreath or floral picture. Thus, if I presented my love with a mute yet +eloquent expression of good wishes on her eighteenth birthday, I should +probably do it in this wise:--Within an evergreen wreath (_lasting as my +affection_), consisting of ten leaflets and eight berries (_the age of +the beloved_), I would place a red rose bud (_pure and lovely_), or a +white lily (_pure and modest_), its spotless petals half concealing a +ripe strawberry (_perfect excellence_); and to this I might add a +blossom of the rose-scented geranium (_expressive of my preference_), a +peach blossom to say "_I am your captive_" fern for sincerity, and +perhaps bachelor's buttons for _hope in love_"--_Family Friend_. + +There are many anecdotes and legends and classical fables to illustrate +the history of shrubs and flowers, and as they add something to the +peculiar interest with which we regard individual plants, they ought not +to be quite passed over by the writers upon Floriculture. + +THE FLOS ADONIS. + +The Flos Adonis, a blood-red flower of the Anemone tribe, is one of the +many plants which, according to ancient story sprang from the tears of +Venus and the blood of her coy favorite. + + Rose cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase + Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn + +_Shakespeare_. + +Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, the mother of Love, the Queen of Laughter, +the Mistress of the Graces and the Pleasures, could make no impression +on the heart of the beautiful son of Myrrha, (who was changed into a +myrrh tree,) though the passion-stricken charmer looked and spake with +the lip and eye of the fairest of the immortals. Shakespeare, in his +poem of _Venus and Adonis_, has done justice to her burning eloquence, +and the lustre of her unequalled loveliness. She had most earnestly, and +with all a true lover's care entreated Adonis to avoid the dangers of +the chase, but he slighted all her warnings just as he had slighted her +affections. He was killed by a wild boar. Shakespeare makes Venus thus +lament over the beautiful dead body as it lay on the blood-stained +grass. + + Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost! + What face remains alive that's worth the viewing? + Whose tongue is music now? What can'st thou boast + Of things long since, or any thing ensuing? + The flowers are sweet, their colors fresh and trim, + But true sweet beauty lived and died with him. + +In her ecstacy of grief she prophecies that henceforth all sorts of +sorrows shall be attendants upon love,--and alas! she was too correct an +oracle. + + The course of true love never does run smooth. + +Here is Shakespeare's version of the metamorphosis of Adonis into a +flower. + + By this the boy that by her side lay killed + Was melted into vapour from her sight, + And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled, + A purple flower sprang up, checquered with white, + Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood + Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood. + + She bows her head, the new sprung flower to smell, + Comparing it to her Adonis' breath, + And says, within her bosom it shall dwell + Since he himself is reft from her by death; + She crops the stalk, and in the branch appears + Green dropping sap which she compares to tears. + +The reader may like to contrast this account of the change from human +into floral beauty with the version of the same story in Ovid as +translated by Eusden. + + Then on the blood sweet nectar she bestows, + The scented blood in little bubbles rose; + Little as rainy drops, which fluttering fly, + Borne by the winds, along a lowering sky, + Short time ensued, till where the blood was shed, + A flower began to rear its purple head + + Such, as on Punic apples is revealed + Or in the filmy rind but half concealed, + Still here the fate of lonely forms we see, + _So sudden fades the sweet Anemone_. + The feeble stems to stormy blasts a prey + Their sickly beauties droop, and pine away + The winds forbid the flowers to flourish long + Which owe to winds their names in Grecian song. + +The concluding couplet alludes to the Grecian name of the flower +([Greek: anemos], _anemos_, the wind.) + +It is said of the Anemone that it never opens its lips until Zephyr +kisses them. Sir William Jones alludes to its short-lived beauty. + + Youth, like a thin anemone, displays + His silken leaf, and in a morn decays. + +Horace Smith speaks of + + The coy anemone that ne'er discloses + Her lips until they're blown on by the wind + +Plants open out their leaves to breathe the air just as eagerly as they +throw down their roots to suck up the moisture of the earth. Dr. Linley, +indeed says, "they feed more by their leaves than their roots." I lately +met with a curious illustration of the fact that plants draw a larger +proportion of their nourishment from light and air than is commonly +supposed. I had a beautiful convolvulus growing upon a trellis work in +an upper verandah with a south-western aspect. The root of the plant was +in pots. The convolvulus growing too luxuriantly and encroaching too +much upon the space devoted to a creeper of another kind, I separated +its upper branches from the root and left them to die. The leaves began +to fade the second day and most of them were quite dead the third or +fourth day, but two or three of the smallest retained a sickly life for +some days more. The buds or rather chalices outlived the leaves. The +chalices continued to expand every morning, for--I am afraid to say how +long a time--it might seem perfectly incredible. The convolvulus is a +plant of a rather delicate character and I was perfectly astonished at +its tenacity of life in this case. I should mention that this happened +in the rainy season and that the upper part of the creeper was partially +protected from the sun. + +The Anemone seems to have been a great favorite with Mrs. Hemans. She +thus addresses it. + + Flower! The laurel still may shed + Brightness round the victor's head, + And the rose in beauty's hair + Still its festal glory wear; + And the willow-leaves droop o'er + Brows which love sustains no more + But by living rays refined, + Thou the trembler of the wind, + Thou, the spiritual flower + Sentient of each breeze and shower,[067] + Thou, rejoicing in the skies + And transpierced with all their dyes; + Breathing-vase with light o'erflowing, + Gem-like to thy centre flowing, + Thou the Poet's type shall be + Flower of soul, Anemone! + +The common anemone was known to the ancients but the finest kind was +introduced into France from the East Indies, by Monsieur Bachelier, an +eminent Florist. He seems to have been a person of a truly selfish +disposition, for he refused to share the possession of his floral +treasure with any of his countrymen. For ten years the new anemone from +the East was to be seen no where in Europe but in Monsieur Bachelier's +parterre. At last a counsellor of the French Parliament disgusted with +the florist's selfishness, artfully contrived when visiting the garden +to drop his robe upon the flower in such a manner as to sweep off some +of the seeds. The servant, who was in his master's secret, caught up the +robe and carried it away. The trick succeeded; and the counsellor shared +the spoils with all his friends through whose agency the plant was +multiplied in all parts of Europe. + +THE OLIVE. + +The OLIVE is generally regarded as an emblem of peace, and should have +none but pleasant associations connected with it, but Ovid alludes to a +wild species of this tree into which a rude and licentious fellow was +converted as a punishment for "banishing the fair," with indecent words +and gestures. The poet tells us of a secluded grotto surrounded by +trembling reeds once frequented by the wood-nymphs of the sylvan race:-- + + Till Appulus with a dishonest air + And gross behaviour, banished thence the fair. + The bold buffoon, whene'er they tread the green, + Their motion mimics, but with jest obscene; + Loose language oft he utters; but ere long + A bark in filmy net-work binds his tongue; + Thus changed, a base wild olive he remains; + The shrub the coarseness of the clown retains. + +_Garth's Ovid_. + +The mural of this is excellent. The sentiment reminds me of the Earl of +Roscommon's well-known couplet in his _Essay on Translated Verse_, a +poem now rarely read. + + Immodest words admit of no defense,[068] + For want of decency is want of sense, + +THE HYACINTH. + +The HYACINTH has always been a great favorite with the poets, ancient +and modern. Homer mentions the Hyacinth as forming a portion of the +materials of the couch of Jove and Juno. + + Thick new-born Violets a soft carpet spread, + And clustering Lotos swelled the rising bed, + And sudden _Hyacinths_[069] the turf bestrow, + And flaming Crocus made the mountains glow + +_Iliad, Book 14_ + +Milton gives a similar couch to Adam and Eve. + + Flowers were the couch + Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel + And _Hyacinth_, earth's freshest, softest lap + +With the exception of the lotus (so common in Hindustan,) all these +flowers, thus celebrated by the greatest of Grecian poets, and +represented as fit luxuries for the gods, are at the command of the +poorest peasant in England. The common Hyacinth is known to the +unlearned as the Harebell, so called from the bell shape of its flowers +and from its growing so abundantly in thickets frequented by hares. +Shakespeare, as we have seen, calls it the _Blue_-bell. + +The curling flowers of the Hyacinth, have suggested to our poets the +idea of clusters of curling tresses of hair. + + His fair large front and eye sublime declared + Absolute rule, and hyacinthine locks + Round from his parted forelock manly hung, + Clustering + +_Milton_ + + The youths whose locks divinely spreading + Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue + +_Collins_ + +Sir William Jones describes-- + + The fragrant hyacinths of Azza's hair, + That wanton with the laughing summer air. + +A similar allusion may also be found in prose. + +"It was the exquisitely fair queen Helen, whose jacinth[070] hair, +curled by nature, intercurled by art, like a brook through golden sands, +had a rope of fair pearl, which, now hidden by the hair, did, as it were +play at fast and loose each with the other, mutually giving and +receiving richness."--_Sir Philip Sidney_ + +"The ringlets so elegantly disposed round the fair countenances of these +fair Chiotes [071] are such as Milton describes by 'hyacinthine locks' +crisped and curled like the blossoms of that flower" + +_Dallaway_ + +The old fable about Hyacinthus is soon told. Apollo loved the youth and +not only instructed him in literature and the arts, but shared in his +pastimes. The divine teacher was one day playing with his pupil at +quoits. Some say that Zephyr (Ovid says it was Boreas) jealous of the +god's influence over young Hyacinthus, wafted the ponderous iron ring +from its right course and caused it to pitch upon the poor boy's head. +He fell to the ground a bleeding corpse. Apollo bade the scarlet +hyacinth spring from the blood and impressed upon its leaves the words +_Ai Ai_, (_alas! alas!_) the Greek funeral lamentation. Milton alludes +to the flower in _Lycidas_, + + Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. + +Drummond had before spoken of + + That sweet flower that bears + In sanguine spots the tenor of our woes + +Hurdis speaks of: + + The melancholy Hyacinth, that weeps + All night, and never lifts an eye all day. + +Ovid, after giving the old fable of Hyacinthus, tells us that "the time +shall come when a most valiant hero shall add his name to this flower." +"He alludes," says Mr. Riley, "to Ajax, from whose blood when he slew +himself, a similar flower[072] was said to have arisen with the letters +_Ai Ai_ on its leaves, expressive either of grief or denoting the first +two letters of his name [Greek: Aias]." + + As poets feigned from Ajax's streaming blood + Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower. + +_Young_. + +Keats has the following allusion to the old story of Hyacinthus, + + Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent + On either side; pitying the sad death + Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath + Of Zephyr slew him,--Zephyr penitent, + Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament + Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. + +_Endymion_. + +Our English Hyacinth, it is said, is not entitled to its legendary +honors. The words _Non Scriptus_ were applied to this plant by +Dodonaeus, because it had not the _Ai Ai_ upon its petals. Professor +Martyn says that the flower called _Lilium Martagon_ or the _Scarlet +Turk's Cap_ is the plant alluded to by the ancients. + +Alphonse Karr, the eloquent French writer, whose "_Tour Round my +Garden_" I recommend to the perusal of all who can sympathize with +reflections and emotions suggested by natural objects, has the following +interesting anecdote illustrative of the force of a floral +association:-- + +"I had in a solitary corner of my garden _three hyacinths_ which my +father had planted and which death did not allow him to see bloom. Every +year the period of their flowering was for me a solemnity, a funeral and +religious festival, it was a melancholy remembrance which revived and +reblossomed every year and exhaled certain thoughts with its perfume. +The roots are dead now and nothing lives of this dear association but in +my own heart. But what a dear yet sad privilege man possesses above all +created beings, while thus enabled by memory and thought to follow those +whom he loved to the tomb and there shut up the living with the dead. +What a melancholy privilege, and yet is there one amongst us who would +lose it? Who is he who would willingly forget all" + +Wordsworth, suddenly stopping before a little bunch of harebells, which +along with some parsley fern, grew out of a wall, he exclaimed, 'How +perfectly beautiful that is! + + Would that the little flowers that grow could live + Conscious of half the pleasure that they give + +The Hyacinth has been cultivated with great care and success in Holland, +where from two to three hundred pounds have been given for a single +bulb. A florist at Haarlem enumerates 800 kinds of double-flowered +Hyacinths, besides about 400 varieties of the single kind. It is said +that there are altogether upwards of 2000 varieties of the Hyacinth. + +The English are particularly fond of the Hyacinth. It is a domestic +flower--a sort of parlour pet. When in "close city pent" they transfer +the bulbs to glass vases (Hyacinth glasses) filled with water, and place +them in their windows in the winter. + +An annual solemnity, called Hyacinthia, was held in Laconia in honor of +Hyacinthus and Apollo. It lasted three days. So eagerly was this +festival honored, that the soldiers of Laconia even when they had taken +the field against an enemy would return home to celebrate it. + +THE NARCISSUS + + Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watery shore + +_Spenser_ + +With respect to the NARCISSUS, whose name in the floral vocabulary is +the synonyme of _egotism_, there is a story that must be familiar enough +to most of my readers. Narcissus was a beautiful youth. Teresias, the +Soothsayer, foretold that he should enjoy felicity until he beheld his +own face but that the first sight of that would be fatal to him. Every +kind of mirror was kept carefully out of his way. Echo was enamoured of +him, but he slighted her love, and she pined and withered away until she +had nothing left her but her voice, and even that could only repeat the +last syllables of other people's sentences. He at last saw his own image +reflected in a fountain, and taking it for that of another, he fell +passionately in love with it. He attempted to embrace it. On seeing the +fruitlessness of all his efforts, he killed himself in despair. When the +nymphs raised a funeral pile to burn his body, they found nothing but a +flower. That flower (into which he had been changed) still bears his +name. + +Here is a little passage about the fable, from the _Two Noble Kinsmen_ +of Beaumont and Fletcher. + + _Emilia_--This garden hath a world of pleasure in it, + What flower is this? + + _Servant_--'Tis called Narcissus, Madam. + + _Em._--That was a fair boy certain, but a fool + To love himself, were there not maids, + Or are they all hard hearted? + + _Ser_--That could not be to one so fair. + +Ben Jonson touches the true moral of the fable very forcibly. + + 'Tis now the known disease + That beauty hath, to hear too deep a sense + Of her own self conceived excellence + Oh! had'st thou known the worth of Heaven's rich gift, + Thou would'st have turned it to a truer use, + And not (with starved and covetous ignorance) + Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem + The glance whereof to others had been more + Than to thy famished mind the wide world's store. + +Gay's version of the fable is as follows: + + Here young Narcissus o'er the fountain stood + And viewed his image in the crystal flood + The crystal flood reflects his lovely charms + And the pleased image strives to meet his arms. + No nymph his inexperienced breast subdued, + Echo in vain the flying boy pursued + Himself alone, the foolish youth admires + And with fond look the smiling shade desires, + O'er the smooth lake with fruitless tears he grieves, + His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves, + Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows, + And in a short lived flower his beauty glows + +Addison has given a full translation of the story of Narcissus from +Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book the third. + +The common daffodil of our English fields is of the genus Narcissus. +"Pray," said some one to Pope, "what is this _Asphodel_ of Homer?" "Why, +I believe," said Pope "if one was to say the truth, 'twas nothing else +but that poor yellow flower that grows about our orchards, and, if so, +the verse might be thus translated in English + + --The stern Achilles + Stalked through a mead of daffodillies" + +THE LAUREL + +Daphne was a beautiful nymph beloved by that very amorous gentleman, +Apollo. The love was not reciprocal. She endeavored to escape his +godship's importunities by flight. Apollo overtook her. She at that +instant solicited aid from heaven, and was at once turned into a laurel. +Apollo gathered a wreath from the tree and placing it on his own +immortal brows, decreed that from that hour the laurel should be sacred +to his divinity. + +THE SUN-FLOWER + + Who can unpitying see the flowery race + Shed by the morn then newflushed bloom resign, + Before the parching beam? So fade the fair, + When fever revels in their azure veins + But one, _the lofty follower of the sun_, + Sad when he sits shuts up her yellow leaves, + Drooping all night, and when he warm return, + Points her enamoured bosom to his ray + +_Thomson_. + +THE SUN-FLOWER (_Helianthus_) was once the fair nymph Clytia. +Broken-hearted at the falsehood of her lover, Apollo, (who has so many +similar sins to answer for) she pined away and died. When it was too late +Apollo's heart relented, and in honor of true affection he changed poor +Clytia into a _Sun-flower_.[073] It is sometimes called _Tourne-sol_--a +word that signifies turning to the sun. Thomas Moore helps to keep the +old story in remembrance by the concluding couplet of one of his +sweetest ballads. + + Oh! the heart that has truly loved never forgets, + But as truly loves on to its close + As the sun flower turns on her god when he sets + The same look that she turned when he rose + +But Moore has here poetized a vulgar error. Most plants naturally turn +towards the light, but the sun-flower (in spite of its name) is perhaps +less apt to turn itself towards Apollo than the majority of other +flowers for it has a stiff stem and a number of heavy heads. At all +events it does not change its attitude in the course of the day. The +flower-disk that faces the morning sun has it back to it in the evening. + +Gerard calls the sun-flower "The Flower of the Sun or the Marigold of +Peru". Speaking of it in the year 1596 he tells us that he had some in +his own garden in Holborn that had grown to the height of fourteen feet. + +THE WALL-FLOWER + + The weed is green, when grey the wall, + And blossoms rise where turrets fall + +Herrick gives us a pretty version of the story of the WALL-FLOWER, +(_cheiranthus cheiri_)("the yellow wall-flower stained with iron brown") + + Why this flower is now called so + List sweet maids and you shall know + Understand this firstling was + Once a brisk and bonny lass + Kept as close as Danae was + Who a sprightly springal loved, + And to have it fully proved, + Up she got upon a wall + Tempting down to slide withal, + But the silken twist untied, + So she fell, and bruised and died + Love in pity of the deed + And her loving, luckless speed, + Turned her to the plant we call + Now, 'The Flower of the Wall' + +The wall-flower is the emblem of fidelity in misfortune, because it +attaches itself to fallen towers and gives a grace to ruin. David Moir +(the Delta of _Blackwood's Magazine_) has a poem on this flower. I must +give one stanza of it. + + In the season of the tulip cup + When blossoms clothe the trees, + How sweet to throw the lattice up + And scent thee on the breeze; + The butterfly is then abroad, + The bee is on the wing, + And on the hawthorn by the road + The linnets sit and sing. + +Lord Bacon observes that wall-flowers are very delightful when set under +the parlour window or a lower chamber window. They are delightful, I +think, any where. + +THE JESSAMINE. + + The Jessamine, with which the Queen of flowers, + To charm her god[074] adorns his favorite bowers, + Which brides, by the plain hand of neatness dressed-- + Unenvied rivals!--wear upon their breast; + Sweet as the incense of the morn, and chaste + As the pure zone which circles Dian's waist. + +_Churchill._ + +The elegant and fragrant JESSAMINE, or Jasmine, (_Jasmimum Officinale_) +with its "bright profusion of scattered stars," is said to have passed +from East to West. It was originally a native of Hindustan, but it is +now to be found in every clime, and is a favorite in all. There are +many varieties of it in Europe. In Italy it is woven into bridal wreaths +and is used on all festive occasions. There is a proverbial saying +there, that she who is worthy of being decorated with jessamine is rich +enough for any husband. Its first introduction into that sunny land is +thus told. A certain Duke of Tuscany, the first possessor of a plant of +this tribe, wished to preserve it as an unique, and forbade his gardener +to give away a single sprig of it. But the gardener was a more faithful +lover than servant and was more willing to please a young mistress than +an old master. He presented the young girl with a branch of jessamine on +her birth-day. She planted it in the ground; it took root, and grew and +blossomed. She multiplied the plant by cuttings, and by the sale of +these realized a little fortune, which her lover received as her +marriage dowry. + +In England the bride wears a coronet of intermingled orange blossom and +jessamine. Orange flowers indicate chastity, and the jessamine, elegance +and grace. + +THE ROSE. + + For here the rose expands + Her paradise of leaves. + +_Southey._ + +The ROSE, (_Rosa_) the Queen of Flowers, was given by Cupid to +Harpocrates, the God of Silence, as a bribe, to prevent him from +betraying the amours of Venus. A rose suspended from the ceiling +intimates that all is strictly confidential that passes under it. Hence +the phrase--_under the Rose_[075]. + +The rose was raised by Flora from the remains of a favorite nymph. Venus +and the Graces assisted in the transformation of the nymph into a +flower. Bacchus supplied streams of nectar to its root, and Vertumnus +showered his choicest perfumes on its head. + +The loves of the Nightingale and the Rose have been celebrated by the +Muses of many lands. An Eastern poet says "You may place a hundred +handfuls of fragrant herbs and flowers before the Nightingale; yet he +wishes not, in his constant heart, for more than the sweet breath of his +beloved Rose." + +The Turks say that the rose owes its origin to a drop of perspiration +that fell from the person of their prophet Mahommed. + +The classical legend runs that the rose was at first of a pure white, +but a rose-thorn piercing the foot of Venus when she was hastening to +protect Adonis from the rage of Mars, her blood dyed the flower. Spenser +alludes to this legend: + + White as the native rose, before the change + Which Venus' blood did on her leaves impress. + +_Spenser_. + +Milton says that in Paradise were, + + Flowers of all hue, and _without thorns the rose_. + +According to Zoroaster there was no thorn on the rose until Ahriman (the +Evil One) entered the world. + +Here is Dr. Hooker's account of the origin of the red rose. + + To sinless Eve's admiring sight + The rose expanded snowy white, + When in the ecstacy of bliss + She gave the modest flower a kiss, + And instantaneous, lo! it drew + From her red lip its blushing hue; + While from her breath it sweetness found, + And spread new fragrance all around. + +This reminds me of a passage in Mrs. Barrett Browning's _Drama of Exile_ +in which she makes Eve say-- + + --For was I not + At that last sunset seen in Paradise, + When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs + Of sudden angel-faces, face by face, + All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God + Held them suspended,--was I not, that hour + The lady of the world, princess of life, + Mistress of feast and favour? _Could I touch + A Rose with my white hand, but it became + Redder at once?_ + +Another poet. (Mr. C. Cooke) tells us that a species of red rose with +all her blushing honors full upon her, taking pity on a very pale +maiden, changed complexions with the invalid and became herself as white +as snow. + +Byron expressed a wish that all woman-kind had but one _rosy_ mouth, +that he might kiss all woman-kind at once. This, as some one has rightly +observed, is better than Caligula's wish that all mankind had but one +head that he might cut it off at a single blow. + +Leigh Hunt has a pleasant line about the rose: + + And what a red mouth hath the rose, the woman of the flowers! + +In the Malay language the same word signifies _flowers_ and _women_. + +Human beauty and the rose are ever suggesting images of each other to +the imagination of the poets. Shakespeare has a beautiful description of +the two little princes sleeping together in the Tower of London. + + Their lips were four red roses on a stalk + That in their summer beauty kissed each other. + +William Browne (our Devonshire Pastoral Poet) has a _rosy_ description +of a kiss:-- + + To her Amyntas + Came and saluted; never man before + More blest, nor like this kiss hath been another + But when two dangling cherries kist each other; + Nor ever beauties, like, met at such closes, + But in the kisses of two damask roses. + +Here is something in the same spirit from Crashaw. + + So have I seen + Two silken sister-flowers consult and lay + Their bashful cheeks together; newly they + Peeped from their buds, showed like the garden's eyes + Scarce waked, like was the crimson of their joys, + Like were the tears they wept, so like that one + Seemed but the other's kind reflection. + +Loudon says that there is a rose called the _York and Lancaster_ which +when, it comes true has one half of the flower red and the other half +white. It was named in commemoration of the two houses at the marriage +of Henry VII. of Lancaster with Elizabeth of York. + +Anacreon devotes one of his longest and best odes to the laudation of +the Rose. Such innumerable translations have been made of it that it is +now too well known for quotation in this place. Thomas Moore in his +version of the ode gives in a foot-note the following translation of a +fragment of the Lesbian poetess. + + If Jove would give the leafy bowers + A queen for all their world of flowers + The Rose would be the choice of Jove, + And blush the queen of every grove + Sweetest child of weeping morning, + Gem the vest of earth adorning, + Eye of gardens, light of lawns, + Nursling of soft summer dawns + June's own earliest sigh it breathes, + Beauty's brow with lustre wreathes, + And to young Zephyr's warm caresses + Spreads abroad its verdant tresses, + Till blushing with the wanton's play + Its cheeks wear e'en a redder ray. + +From the idea of excellence attached to this Queen of Flowers arose, as +Thomas Moore observes, the pretty proverbial expression used by +Aristophanes--_you have spoken roses_, a phrase adds the English poet, +somewhat similar to the _dire des fleurettes_ of the French. + +The Festival of the Rose is still kept up in many villages of France and +Switzerland. On a certain day of every year the young unmarried women +assemble and undergo a solemn trial before competent judges, the most +virtuous and industrious girl obtains a crown of roses. In the valley of +Engandine, in Switzerland, a man accused of a crime but proved to be not +guilty, is publicly presented by a young maiden with a white rose called +the Rose of Innocence. + +Of the truly elegant Moss Rose I need say nothing myself; it has been so +amply honored by far happier pens than mine. Here is a very ingenious +and graceful story of its origin. The lines are from the German. + +THE MOSS ROSE + + The Angel of the Flowers one day, + Beneath a rose tree sleeping lay, + The spirit to whom charge is given + To bathe young buds in dews of heaven, + Awaking from his light repose + The Angel whispered to the Rose + "O fondest object of my care + Still fairest found where all is fair, + For the sweet shade thou givest to me + Ask what thou wilt 'tis granted thee" + "Then" said the Rose, "with deepened glow + On me another grace bestow." + The spirit paused in silent thought + What grace was there the flower had not? + 'Twas but a moment--o'er the rose + A veil of moss the Angel throws, + And robed in Nature's simple weed, + Could there a flower that rose exceed? + +Madame de Genlis tells us that during her first visit to England she saw +a moss-rose for the first time in her life, and that when she took it +back to Paris it gave great delight to her fellow-citizens, who said it +was the first that had ever been seen in that city. Madame de Latour +says that Madame de Genlis was mistaken, for the moss-rose came +originally from Provence and had been known to the French for ages. + +The French are said to have cultivated the Rose with extraordinary care +and success. It was the favorite flower of the Empress Josephine, who +caused her own name to be traced in the parterres at Malmaison with a +plantation of the rarest roses. In the royal rosary at Versailles there +are standards eighteen feet high grafted with twenty different varieties +of the rose. + +With the Romans it was no metaphor but an allusion to a literal fact +when they talked of sleeping upon beds of roses. Cicero in his third +oration against Verres, when charging the proconsul with luxurious +habits, stated that he had made the tour of Sicily seated upon roses. +And Seneca says, of course jestingly, that a Sybarite of the name of +Smyrndiride was unable to sleep if one of the rose-petals on his bed +happened to be curled! At a feast which Cleopatra gave to Marc Antony +the floor of the hall was covered with fresh roses to the depth of +eighteen inches. At a fete given by Nero at Baiae the sum of four +millions of sesterces or about 20,000_l_. was incurred for roses. The +Natives of India are fond of the rose, and are lavish in their +expenditure at great festivals, but I suppose that no millionaire +amongst them ever spent such an amount of money as this upon flowers +alone.[076] + +I shall close the poetical quotations on the Rose with one of +Shakespeare's sonnets. + + O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, + By that sweet ornament which truth doth give. + The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem + For that sweet odour which doth in it live. + The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye + As the perfumed tincture of the roses, + Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly, + When summer's breath their masked buds discloses; + But for their virtue only is their show, + They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade; + Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so; + Of then sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: + And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, + When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth. + +There are many hundred acres of rose trees at Ghazeepore which are +cultivated for distillation, and making "attar." There are large fields +of roses in England also, for the manufacture of rose-water. + +There is a story about the origin of attar of Roses. The Princess +Nourmahal caused a large tank, on which she used to be rowed about with +the great Mogul, to be filled with rose-water. The heat of the sun +separating the water from the essential oil of the rose, the latter was +observed to be floating on the surface. The discovery was immediately +turned to good account. At Ghazeepoor, the _essence_, _atta_ or _uttar_ +or _otto_, or whatever it should be called, is obtained with great +simplicity and ease. After the rose water is prepared it is put into +large open vessels which are left out at night. Early in the morning the +oil that floats upon the surface is skimmed off, or sucked up with fine +dry cotton wool, put into bottles, and carefully sealed. Bishop Heber +says that to produce one rupee's weight of atta 200,000 well grown roses +are required, and that a rupee's weight sells from 80 to 100 rupees. The +atta sold in Calcutta is commonly adulterated with the oil of sandal +wood. + +LINNAEA BOREALIS + +The LINNAEA BOREALIS, or two horned Linnaea, though a simple Lapland +flower, is interesting to all botanists from its association with the +name of the Swedish Sage. It has pretty little bells and is very +fragrant. It is a wild, unobtrusive plant and is very averse to the +trim lawn and the gay flower-border. This little woodland beauty pines +away under too much notice. She prefers neglect, and would rather waste +her sweetness on the desert air, than be introduced into the fashionable +lists of Florist's flowers. She shrinks from exposure to the sun. A +gentleman after walking with Linnaeus on the shores of the lake near +Charlottendal on a lovely evening, writes thus "I gathered a small +flower and asked if it was the _Linnaea borealis_. 'Nay,' said the +philosopher, 'she lives not here, but in the middle of our largest +woods. She clings with her little arms to the moss, and seems to resist +very gently if you force her from it. She has a complexion like a +milkmaid, and ah! she is very, very sweet and agreeable!" + +THE FORGET-ME-NOT + +The dear little FORGET-ME-NOT, (_myosotis palustris_)[077] with its eye +of blue, is said to have derived its touching appellation from a +sentimental German story. Two lovers were walking on the bank of a rapid +stream. The lady beheld the flower growing on a little island, and +expressed a passionate desire to possess it. He gallantly plunged into +the stream and obtained the flower, but exhausted by the force of the +tide, he had only sufficient strength left as he neared the shore to +fling the flower at the fair one's feet, and exclaim "_Forget-me-not!_" +(_Vergiss-mein-nicht_.) He was then carried away by the stream, out of +her sight for ever. + +THE PERIWINKLE. + +The PERIWINKLE (_vinca_ or _pervinca_) has had its due share of poetical +distinction. In France the common people call it the Witch's violet. It +seems to have suggested to Wordsworth an idea of the consciousness of +flowers. + + Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, + The Periwinkle trailed its wreaths, + _And 'tis my faith that every flower + Enjoys the air it breathes._ + +Mr. J.L. Merritt, has some complimentary lines on this flower. + + The Periwinkle with its fan-like leaves + All nicely levelled, is a lovely flower + Whose dark wreath, myrtle like, young Flora weaves; + There's none more rare + Nor aught more meet to deck a fairy's bower + Or grace her hair. + +The little blue Periwinkle is rendered especially interesting to the +admirers of the genius of Rousseau by an anecdote that records his +emotion on meeting it in one of his botanical excursions. He had seen it +thirty years before in company with Madame de Warens. On meeting its +sweet face again, after so long and eventful an interim, he fell upon +his knees, crying out--_Ah! voila de la pervanche!_ "It struck him," +says Hazlitt, "as the same little identical flower that he remembered so +well; and thirty years of sorrow and bitter regret were effaced from his +memory." + +The Periwinkle was once supposed to be a cure for many diseases. Lord +Bacon says that in his time people afflicted with cramp wore bands of +green periwinkle tied about their limbs. It had also its supposed moral +influences. According to Culpepper the leaves of the flower if eaten by +man and wife together would revive between them a lost affection. + +THE BASIL. + + Sweet marjoram, with her like, _sweet basil_, rare for smell. + +_Drayton._ + +The BASIL is a plant rendered poetical by the genius which has handled +it. Boccaccio and Keats have made the name of the _sweet basil_ sound +pleasantly in the ears of many people who know nothing of botany. A +species of this plant (known in Europe under the botanical name of +_Ocymum villosum_, and in India as the _Toolsee_) is held sacred by the +Hindus. Toolsee was a disciple of Vishnu. Desiring to be his wife she +excited the jealousy of Lukshmee by whom she was transformed into the +herb named after her.[078] + +THE TULIP. + + Tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked. + +_Southey_. + +The TULIP (_tulipa_) is the glory of the garden, as far as color without +fragrance can confer such distinction. Some suppose it to be 'The Lily +of the Field' alluded to in the Sermon on the Mount. It grows wild in +Syria. + +The name of the tulip is said to be of Turkish origin. It was called +Tulipa from its resemblance to the tulipan or turban. + + What crouds the rich Divan to-day + With turbaned heads, of every hue + Bowing before that veiled and awful face + Like Tulip-beds of different shapes and dyes, + Bending beneath the invisible west wind's sighs? + +_Moore_. + +The reader has probably heard of the Tulipomania once carried to so +great an excess in Holland. + + With all his phlegm, it broke a Dutchman's heart, + At a vast price, with one loved root to part. + +_Crabbe_. + +About the middle of the 17th century the city of Haarlem realized in +three years ten millions sterling by the sale of tulips. A single tulip +(the _Semper Augustus_) was sold for one thousand pounds. Twelve acres +of land were given for a single root and engagements to the amount of +L5,000 were made for a first-class tulip when the mania was at its +height. A gentleman, who possessed a tulip of great value, hearing that +some one was in possession of a second root of the same kind, eagerly +secured it at a most extravagant price. The moment he got possession of +it, he crushed it under his foot. "Now," he exclaimed, "my tulip is +unique!" + +A Dutch Merchant gave a sailor a herring for his breakfast. Jack seeing +on the Merchant's counter what he supposed to be a heap of onions, took +up a handful of them and ate them with his fish. The supposed onions +were tulip bulbs of such value that they would have paid the cost of a +thousand Royal feasts.[079] + +The tulip mania never leached so extravagant a height in England as in +Holland, but our country did not quite escape the contagion, and even so +late as the year 1836 at the sale of Mr. Clarke's tulips at Croydon, +seventy two pounds were given for a single bulb of the _Fanny Kemble_; +and a Florist in Chelsea in the same year, priced a bulb in his +catalogue at 200 guineas. + +The Tulip is not endeared to us by many poetical associations. We have +read, however, one pretty and romantic tale about it. A poor old woman +who lived amongst the wild hills of Dartmoor, in Devonshire, possessed a +beautiful bed of Tulips, the pride of her small garden. One fine +moonlight night her attention was arrested by the sweet music which +seemed to issue from a thousand Liliputian choristers. She found that +the sounds proceeded from her many colored bells of Tulips. After +watching the flowers intently she perceived that they were not swayed to +and fro by the wind, but by innumerable little beings that were climbing +on the stems and leaves. They were pixies. Each held in its arms an +elfin baby tinier than itself. She saw the babies laid in the bells of +the plant, which were thus used as cradles, and the music was formed of +many lullabies. When the babies were asleep the pixies or fairies left +them, and gamboled on the neighbouring sward on which the old lady +discovered the day after, several new green rings,--a certain evidence +that her fancy had not deceived her! At earliest dawn the fairies had +returned to the tulips and taken away their little ones. The good old +woman never permitted her tulip bed to be disturbed. She regarded it as +holy ground. But when she died, some Utilitarian gardener turned it into +a parsley bed! The parsley never flourished. The ground was now cursed. +In gratitude to the memory of the benevolent dame who had watched and +protected the floral nursery, every month, on the night before the full +moon, the fairies scattered flowers on her grave, and raised a sweet +musical dirge--heard only by poetic ears--or by maids and children who + + Hold each strange tale devoutly true. + +For as the poet says: + + What though no credit doubting wits may give, + The fair and innocent shall still believe. + +Men of genius are often as trustful as maids and children. Collins, +himself a lover of the wonderful, thus speaks of Tasso:-- + + Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind + Believed the magic wonders that he sung. + +All nature indeed is full of mystery to the imaginative. + + And visions as poetic eyes avow + Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough. + +The Hindoos believe that the Peepul tree of which the foliage trembles +like that of the aspen, has a spirit in every leaf. + +"Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, Madam?" said Blake, the artist. +"Never Sir." "_I_ have," continued that eccentric genius, "One night I +was walking alone in my garden. There was great stillness amongst the +branches and flowers and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard +a low and pleasant sound, and knew not whence it came: at last I +perceived _the broad leaf of a flower move_, and underneath I saw a +procession of creatures the size and color of green and gray +grasshoppers, _bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf_, which they +buried with song, and then disappeared." + +THE PINK. + +The PINK (_dianthus_) is a very elegant flower. I have but a short story +about it. The young Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis the Fifteenth, +was brought up in the midst of flatterers as fulsome as those rebuked by +Canute. The youthful prince was fond of cultivating pinks, and one of +his courtiers, by substituting a floral changeling, persuaded him that +one of those pinks planted by the royal hand had sprung up into bloom in +a single night! One night, being unable to sleep, he wished to rise, but +was told that it was midnight; he replied "_Well then, I desire it to be +morning_." + +The pink is one of the commonest of the flowers in English gardens. It +is a great favorite all over Europe. The botanists have enumerated about +400 varieties of it. + +THE PANSY OR HEARTS-EASE. + +The PANSY (_viola tricolor_) commonly called _Hearts-ease_, or +_Love-in-idleness_, or _Herb-Trinity_ (_Flos Trinitarium_), or +_Three-faces-under-a-hood_, or _Kit-run-about_, is one of the richest +and loveliest of flowers. + +The late Mrs. Siddons, the great actress, was so fond of this flower +that she thought she could never have enough of it. Besides round beds +of it she used it as an edging to all the flower borders in her garden. +She liked to plant a favorite flower in large masses of beauty. But such +beauty must soon fatigue the eye with its sameness. A round bed of one +sort of flowers only is like a nosegay composed of one sort of flowers +or of flowers of the same hue. She was also particularly fond of +evergreens because they gave her garden a pleasant aspect even in the +winter. + +"Do you hear him?"--(John Bunyan makes the guide enquire of Christiana +while a shepherd boy is singing beside his sheep)--"I will dare to say +this boy leads a merrier life, and wears more of the herb called +_hearts-ease_ in his bosom, than he that is clothed in silk and purple." + +Shakespeare has connected this flower with a compliment to the maiden +Queen of England. + + That very time I saw (but thou couldst not) + Flying between the cold moon and the earth, + Cupid all armed, a certain aim he took + At a fair Vestal, throned by the west; + And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow + As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. + But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft + Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon-- + And the imperial votaress passed on + In maiden meditation fancy free, + Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell. + It fell upon _a little western flowers, + Before milk white, now purple with love's wound-- + And maidens call it_ LOVE IN IDLENESS + Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once, + The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, + Will make or man or woman madly dote + Upon the next live creature that it sees. + Fetch me this herb and be thou here again, + Ere the leviathan can swim a league. + +_Midsummer Night's Dream._ + +The hearts-ease has been cultivated with great care and success by some +of the most zealous flower-fanciers amongst our countrymen in India. But +it is a delicate plant in this clime, and requires most assiduous +attention, and a close study of its habits. It always withers here under +ordinary hands. + +THE MIGNONETTE. + +The MIGNONETTE, (_reseda odorato_,) the Frenchman's _little darling_, +was not introduced into England until the middle of the 17th century. +The Mignonette or Sweet Reseda was once supposed capable of assuaging +pain, and of ridding men of many of the ills that flesh is heir to. It +was applied with an incantation. This flower has found a place in the +armorial bearings of an illustrious family of Saxony. I must tell the +story: The Count of Walsthim loved the fair and sprightly Amelia de +Nordbourg. She was a spoilt child and a coquette. She had an humble +companion whose christian name was Charlotte. One evening at a party, +all the ladies were called upon to choose a flower each, and the +gentlemen were to make verses on the selections. Amelia fixed upon the +flaunting rose, Charlotte the modest mignonette. In the course of the +evening Amelia coquetted so desperately with a dashing Colonel that the +Count could not suppress his vexation. On this he wrote a verse for the +Rose: + + Elle ne vit qu'un jour, et ne plait qu'un moment. + (She lives but for a day and pleases but for a moment) + +He then presented the following line on the Mignonette to the gentle +Charlotte: + + "Ses qualities surpassent ses charmes." + +The Count transferred his affections to Charlotte, and when he married +her, added a branch of the Sweet Reseda to the ancient arms of his +family, with the motto of + + Your qualities surpass your charms. + +VERVAIN. + + The vervain-- + That hind'reth witches of their will. + +_Drayton_ + +VERVAIN (_verbena_) was called by the Greeks _the sacred herb_. It was +used to brush their altars. It was supposed to keep off evil spirits. It +was also used in the religious ceremonies of the Druids and is still +held sacred by the Persian Magi. The latter lay branches of it on the +altar of the sun. + +The ancients had their _Verbenalia_ when the temples were strewed with +vervain, and no incantation or lustration was deemed perfect without the +aid of this plant. It was supposed to cure the bite of a serpent or a +mad dog. + +THE DAISY. + +The DAISY or day's eye (_bellis perennis_) has been the darling of the +British poets from Chaucer to Shelley. It is not, however, the darling +of poets only, but of princes and peasants. And it is not man's favorite +only, but, as Wordsworth says, Nature's favorite also. Yet it is "the +simplest flower that blows." Its seed is broadcast on the land. It is +the most familiar of flowers. It sprinkles every field and lane in the +country with its little mimic stars. Wordsworth pays it a beautiful +compliment in saying that + + Oft alone in nooks remote + _We meet it like a pleasant thought + When such is wanted._ + +But though this poet dearly loved the daisy, in some moods of mind he +seems to have loved the little celandine (common pilewort) even better. +He has addressed two poems to this humble little flower. One begins with +the following stanza. + + Pansies, Lilies, Kingcups, Daisies, + Let them live upon their praises; + Long as there's a sun that sets + Primroses will have their glory; + Long as there are Violets, + They will have a place in story: + There's a flower that shall be mine, + 'Tis the little Celandine. + +No flower is too lowly for the affections of Wordsworth. Hazlitt says, +"the daisy looks up to Wordsworth with sparkling eye as an old +acquaintance; a withered thorn is weighed down with a heap of +recollections; and even the lichens on the rocks have a life and being +in his thoughts." + +The Lesser Celandine, is an inodorous plant, but as Wordsworth possessed +not the sense of smell, to him a deficiency of fragrance in a flower +formed no objection to it. Miss Martineau alludes to a newspaper report +that on one occasion the poet suddenly found himself capable of enjoying +the fragrance of a flower, and gave way to an emotion of tumultuous +rapture. But I have seen this contradicted. Miss Martineau herself has +generally no sense of smell, but we have her own testimony to the fact +that a brief enjoyment of the faculty once actually occurred to her. In +her case there was a simultaneous awakening of two dormant +faculties--the sense of smell and the sense of taste. Once and once only, +she enjoyed the scent of a bottle of Eau de Cologne and the taste of meat. +The two senses died away again almost in their birth. + +Shelley calls Daisies "those pearled Arcturi of the earth"--"the +constellated flower that never sets." + +The Father of English poets does high honor to this star of the meadow +in the "Prologue to the Legend of Goode Women." + +He tells us that in the merry month of May he was wont to quit even his +beloved books to look upon the fresh morning daisy. + + Of all the floures in the mede + Then love I most these floures white and red, + Such that men callen Daisies in our town, + To them I have so great affection. + As I sayd erst, when comen is the Maie, + That in my bedde there dawneth me no daie + That I nam up and walking in the mede + To see this floure agenst the Sunne sprede, + When it up riseth early by the morrow + That blisfull sight softeneth all my sorrow. + +_Chaucer_. + +The poet then goes on with his hearty laudation of this lilliputian +luminary of the fields, and hesitates not to describe it as "of all +floures the floure." The famous Scottish Peasant loved it just as truly, +and did it equal honor. Who that has once read, can ever forget his +harmonious and pathetic address to a mountain daisy on turning it up +with the plough? I must give the poem a place here, though it must be +familiar to every reader. But we can read it again and again, just as we +can look day after day with undiminished interest upon the flower that +it commemorates. + +Mrs. Stowe (the American writer) observes that "the daisy with its wide +plaited ruff and yellow centre is not our (that is, an American's) +flower. The English flower is the + + Wee, modest, crimson tipped flower + +which Burns celebrated. It is what we (in America) raise in green-houses +and call the Mountain Daisy. Its effect, growing profusely about fields +and grass-plats, is very beautiful." + +TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. + +ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN APRIL, 1786 + + Wee, modest, crimson tipped flow'r, + Thou's met me in an evil hour, + For I maun[080] crush amang the stoure[081] + Thy slender stem, + To spare thee now is past my pow'r, + Thou bonnie gem. + + Alas! its no thy neobor sweet, + The bonnie lark, companion meet, + Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet[082] + Wi' speckled breast, + When upward springing, blythe, to greet + The purpling east + + Cauld blew the bitter biting north + Upon thy early, humble, birth, + Yet cheerfully thou glinted[083] forth + Amid the storm, + Scarce reared above the patient earth + Thy tender form + + The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, + High sheltering woods and wa's[084] maun shield, + But thou beneath the random bield[085] + O' clod or stane, + Adorns the histie[086] stibble field[087] + Unseen, alane. + + There, in thy scanty mantle clad, + Thy snawye bosom sun ward spread, + Thou lifts thy unassuming head + In humble guise, + But now the share up tears thy bed, + And low thou lies! + + Such is the fate of artless Maid, + Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade! + By love's simplicity betrayed, + And guileless trust, + Till she, like thee, all soiled is laid + Low i' the dust. + + Such is the fate of simple Bard, + On Life's rough ocean luckless starred! + Unskilful he to note the card + Of prudent lore, + Till billows rage, and gales blow hard + And whelm him o'er! + + Such fate to suffering worth is given + Who long with wants and woes has striven + By human pride or cunning driven + To misery's brink, + Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven, + He, ruined, sink! + + Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, + That fate is thine--no distant date; + Stern Ruin's plough-share drives elate, + Full on thy bloom; + Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight + Shall be thy doom. + +_Burns._ + +The following verses though they make no pretension to the strength and +pathos of the poem by the great Scottish Peasant, have a grace and +simplicity of their own, for which they have long been deservedly +popular. + +A FIELD FLOWER. + +ON FINDING ONE IN FULL BLOOM, ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1803. + + There is a flower, a little flower, + With silver crest and golden eye, + That welcomes every changing hour, + And weathers every sky. + + The prouder beauties of the field + In gay but quick succession shine, + Race after race their honours yield, + They flourish and decline. + + But this small flower, to Nature dear, + While moons and stars their courses run, + Wreathes the whole circle of the year, + Companion of the sun. + + It smiles upon the lap of May, + To sultry August spreads its charms, + Lights pale October on his way, + And twines December's arms. + + The purple heath and golden broom, + On moory mountains catch the gale, + O'er lawns the lily sheds perfume, + The violet in the vale. + + But this bold floweret climbs the hill, + Hides in the forest, haunts the glen, + Plays on the margin of the rill, + Peeps round the fox's den. + + Within the garden's cultured round + It shares the sweet carnation's bed; + And blooms on consecrated ground + In honour of the dead. + + The lambkin crops its crimson gem, + The wild-bee murmurs on its breast, + The blue-fly bends its pensile stem, + Light o'er the sky-lark's nest. + + 'Tis FLORA'S page,--in every place, + In every season fresh and fair; + It opens with perennial grace. + And blossoms everywhere. + + On waste and woodland, rock and plain, + Its humble buds unheeded rise; + The rose has but a summer-reign; + The DAISY never dies. + +_James Montgomery_. + +Montgomery has another very pleasing poetical address to the daisy. The +poem was suggested by the first plant of the kind which had appeared in +India. The flower sprang up unexpectedly out of some English earth, sent +with other seeds in it, to this country. The amiable Dr. Carey of +Serampore was the lucky recipient of the living treasure, and the poem +is supposed to be addressed by him to the dear little flower of his +home, thus born under a foreign sky. Dr. Carey was a great lover of +flowers, and it was one of his last directions on his death-bed, as I +have already said, that his garden should be always protected from the +intrusion of Goths and Vandals in the form of Bengallee goats and cows. +I must give one stanza of Montgomery's second poetical tribute to the +small flower with "the silver crest and golden eye." + + Thrice-welcome, little English flower! + To this resplendent hemisphere + Where Flora's giant offsprings tower + In gorgeous liveries all the year; + Thou, only thou, art little here + Like worth unfriended and unknown, + Yet to my British heart more dear + Than all the torrid zone. + +It is difficult to exaggerate the feeling with which an exile welcomes a +home-flower. A year or two ago Dr. Ward informed the Royal Institution +of London, that a single primrose had been taken to Australia in a +glass-case and that when it arrived there in full bloom, the sensation +it excited was so great that even those who were in the hot pursuit of +gold, paused in their eager career to gaze for a moment upon the flower +of their native fields, and such immense crowds at last pressed around +it that it actually became necessary to protect it by a guard. + +My last poetical tribute to the Daisy shall be three stanzas from +Wordsworth, from two different addresses to the same flower. + + With little here to do or see + Of things that in the great world be, + Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee, + For thou art worthy, + Thou unassuming Common-place + Of Nature, with that homely face, + And yet with something of a grace, + Which Love makes for thee! + + * * * * * + + If stately passions in me burn, + And one chance look to Thee should turn, + I drink out of an humbler urn + A lowlier pleasure; + The homely sympathy that heeds + The common life, our nature breeds; + A wisdom fitted to the needs + Of hearts at leisure. + + When, smitten by the morning ray, + I see thee rise, alert and gay, + Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play + With kindred gladness; + And when, at dusk, by dews opprest + Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest + Hath often eased my pensive breast + Of careful sadness. + +It is peculiarly interesting to observe how the profoundest depths of +thought and feeling are sometimes stirred in the heart of genius by the +smallest of the works of Nature. Even more ordinarily gifted men are +similarly affected to the utmost extent of their intellect and +sensibility. We grow tired of the works of man. In the realms of art we +ever crave something unseen before. We demand new fashions, and when the +old are once laid aside, we wonder that they should ever have excited +even a moment's admiration. But Nature, though she is always the same, +never satiates us. The simple little Daisy which Burns has so sweetly +commemorated is the same flower that was "of all flowres the flowre," in +the estimation of the Patriarch of English poets, and which so delighted +Wordsworth in his childhood, in his middle life, and in his old age. He +gazed on it, at intervals, with unchanging affection for upwards of +fourscore years. + +The Daisy--the miniature sun with its tiny rays--is especially the +favorite of our earliest years. In our remembrances of the happy meadows +in which we played in childhood, the daisy's silver lustre is ever +connected with the deeper radiance of its gay companion, the butter-cup, +which when held against the dimple on the cheek or chin of beauty turns +it into a little golden dell. The thoughtful and sensitive frequenter of +rural scenes discovers beauty every where; though it is not always the +sort of beauty that would satisfy the taste of men who recognize no +gaiety or loveliness beyond the walls of cities. To the poet's eye even +the freckles on a milk-maid's brow are not without a grace, associated +as they are with health, and the open sunshine. + +Chaucer tells us that the French call the Daisy _La belle Marguerite_. +There is a little anecdote connected with the appellation. Marguerite of +Scotland, the Queen of Louis the Eleventh, presented Marguerite Clotilde +de Surville, a poetess, with a bouquet of daisies, with this +inscription; "Marguerite d'Ecosse a Marguerite (_the pearl_) d'Helicon." + +The country maidens in England practise a kind of sortilege with this +flower. They pluck off leaf by leaf, saying alternately "_He loves me_" +and "_He loves me not_." The omen or oracle is decided by the fall of +either sentence on the last leaf. + +It is extremely difficult to rear the daisy in India. It is accustomed +to all weathers in England, but the long continued sultriness of this +clime makes it as delicate as a languid English lady in a tropical +exile, and however carefully and skilfully nursed, it generally pines +for its native air and dies.[088] + +THE PRICKLY GORSE. + + --Yon swelling downs where the sweet air stirs + The harebells, and where prickly furze + Buds lavish gold. + +_Keat's Endymion_. + + Fair maidens, I'll sing you a song, + I'll tell of the bonny wild flower, + Whose blossoms so yellow, and branches so long, + O'er moor and o'er rough rocky mountains are flung + Far away from trim garden and bower + +_L.A. Tuamley_. + +The PRICKLY GORSE or Goss or Furze, (_ulex_)[089] I cannot omit to +notice, because it was the plant which of all others most struck +Dillenius when he first trod on English ground. He threw himself on his +knees and thanked Heaven that he had lived to see the golden undulation +of acres of wind-waved gorse. Linnaeus lamented that he could scarcely +keep it alive in Sweden even in a greenhouse. + +I have the most delightful associations connected with this plant, and +never think of it without a summer feeling and a crowd of delightful +images and remembrances of rural quietude and blue skies and balmy +breezes. Cowper hardly does it justice: + + The common, over-grown with fern, and rough + With prickly gorse, that shapeless and deformed + And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom + And decks itself with ornaments of gold, + Yields no unpleasing ramble. + +The plant is indeed irregularly shaped, but it is not _deformed_, and if +it is dangerous to the touch, so also is the rose, unless it be of that +species which Milton places in Paradise--"_and without thorns the +rose_." + +Hurdis is more complimentary and more just to the richest ornament of +the swelling hill and the level moor. + + And what more noble than the vernal furze + With golden caskets hung? + +I have seen whole _cotees_ or _coteaux_ (sides of hills) in the sweet +little island of Jersey thickly mantled with the golden radiance of this +beautiful wildflower. The whole Vallee des Vaux (_the valley of +vallies_) is sometimes alive with its lustre. + +VALLEE DES VAUX. + +AIR--THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. + + If I dream of the past, at fair Fancy's command, + Up-floats from the blue sea thy small sunny land! + O'er thy green hills, sweet Jersey, the fresh breezes blow, + And silent and warm is the Vallee des Vaux! + + There alone have I loitered 'mid blossoms of gold, + And forgot that the great world was crowded and cold, + Nor believed that a land of enchantment could show + A vale more divine than the Vallee des Vaux. + + A few scattered cots, like white clouds in the sky, + Or like still sails at sea when the light breezes die, + And a mill with its wheel in the brook's silver glow, + Form thy beautiful hamlet, sweet Vallee des Vaux! + + As the brook prattled by like an infant at play, + And each wave as it passed stole a moment away, + I thought how serenely a long life would flow, + By the sweet little brook in the Vallee des Vaux. + +D.L.R. + +Jersey is not the only one of the Channel Islands that is enriched with +"blossoms of gold." In the sister island of Guernsey the prickly gorse +is much used for hedges, and Sir George Head remarks that the premises +of a Guernsey farmer are thus as impregnably fortified and secured as if +his grounds were surrounded by a stone wall. In the Isle of Man the +furze grows so high that it is sometimes more like a fir tree than the +ordinary plant. + +There is an old proverb:--"When gorse is out of blossom, kissing is out +of fashion"--that is _never_. The gorse blooms all the year. + +FERN. + + I'll seek the shaggy fern-clad hill + And watch, 'mid murmurs muttering stern, + The seed departing from the fern + Ere wakeful demons can convey + The wonder-working charm away. + +_Leyden_. + +"The green and graceful Fern" (_filices_) with its exquisite tracery +must not be overlooked. It recalls many noble home-scenes to British +eyes. Pliny says that "of ferns there are two kinds, and they bear +neither flowers nor seed." And this erroneous notion of the fern bearing +no seed was common amongst the English even so late as the time of +Addison who ridicules "a Doctor that had arrived at the knowledge of the +green and red dragon, _and had discovered the female fern-seed_." The +seed is very minute and might easily escape a careless eye. In the +present day every one knows that the seed of the fern lies on the under +side of the leaves, and a single leaf will often bear some millions of +seeds. Even those amongst the vulgar who believed the plant bore seed, +had an idea that the seeds were visible only at certain mysterious +seasons and to favored individuals who by carrying a quantity of it on +their person, were able, like those who wore the helmet of Pluto or the +ring of Gyges, to walk unseen amidst a crowd. The seed was supposed to +be best seen at a certain hour of the night on which St. John the +Baptist was born. + + We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible, + +_Shakespeare's Henry IV. Part I_. + +In Beaumont's and Fletcher's _Fair Maid of the Inn_, is the following +allusion to the fern. + + --Had you Gyges' ring, + _Or the herb that gives invisibility_. + +Ben Jonson makes a similar allusion to it: + + I had + No medicine, sir, to go invisible, + _No fern-seed in my pocket_. + +Pope puts a branch of spleen-wort, a species of fern, (_Asplenium +trichomanes_) into the hand of a gnome as a protection from evil +influences in the Cave of Spleen. + + Safe passed the gnome through this fantastic band + A branch of healing spleen-wort in his hand. + +The fern forms a splendid ornament for shadowy nooks and grottoes, or +fragments of ruins, or heaps of stones, or the odd corners of a large +garden or pleasure-ground. + +I have had many delightful associations with this plant both at home and +abroad. When I visited the beautiful Island of Penang, Sir William +Norris, then the Recorder of the Island, and who was a most +indefatigable collector of ferns, obligingly presented me with a +specimen of every variety that he had discovered in the hills and +vallies of that small paradise; and I suppose that in no part of the +world could a finer collection of specimens of the fern be made for a +botanist's _herbarium_. Fern leaves will look almost as well ten years +after they are gathered as on the day on which they are transferred from +the dewy hillside to the dry pages of a book. + +Jersey and Penang are the two loveliest islands on a small scale that I +have yet seen: the latter is the most romantic of the two and has nobler +trees and a richer soil and a brighter sky--but they are both charming +retreats for the lovers of peace and nature. As I have devoted some +verses to Jersey I must have some also on + +THE ISLAND OF PENANG. + + I. + + I stand upon the mountain's brow-- + I drink the cool fresh, mountain breeze-- + I see thy little town below,[090] + Thy villas, hedge-rows, fields and trees, + And hail thee with exultant glow, + GEM OF THE ORIENTAL SEAS! + + II. + + A cloud had settled on my heart-- + My frame had borne perpetual pain-- + I yearned and panted to depart + From dread Bengala's sultry plain-- + Fate smiled,--Disease withholds his dart-- + I breathe the breath of life again! + + III. + + With lightened heart, elastic tread, + Almost with youth's rekindled flame, + I roam where loveliest scenes outspread + Raise thoughts and visions none could name, + Save those on whom the Muses shed + A spell, a dower of deathless fame. + + IV. + + I _feel_, but oh! could ne'er _pourtray_, + Sweet Isle! thy charms of land and wave, + The bowers that own no winter day, + The brooks where timid wild birds lave, + The forest hills where insects gay[091] + Mimic the music of the brave! + + V. + + I see from this proud airy height + A lovely Lilliput below! + Ships, roads, groves, gardens, mansions white, + And trees in trimly ordered row,[092] + Present almost a toy like sight, + A miniature scene, a fairy show! + + VI. + + But lo! beyond the ocean stream, + That like a sheet of silver lies, + As glorious as a poet's dream + The grand Malayan mountains rise, + And while their sides in sunlight beam + Their dim heads mingle with the skies. + + VI. + + Men laugh at bards who live _in clouds_-- + The clouds _beneath_ me gather now, + Or gliding slow in solemn crowds, + Or singly, touched with sunny glow, + Like mystic shapes in snowy shrouds, + Or lucid veils on Beauty's brow. + + VIII. + + While all around the wandering eye + Beholds enchantments rich and rare, + Of wood, and water, earth, and sky + A panoramic vision fair, + The dyal breathes his liquid sigh, + And magic floats upon the air! + + IX. + + Oh! lovely and romantic Isle! + How cold the heart thou couldst not please! + Thy very dwellings seem to smile + Like quiet nests mid summer trees! + I leave thy shores--but weep the while-- + GEM OF THE ORIENTAL SEAS! + +D.L.R. + +HENNA. + +The henna or al hinna (_Lawsonia inermis_) is found in great abundance +in Egypt, India, Persia and Arabia. In Bengal it goes by the name of +_Mindee_. It is much used here for garden hedges. Hindu females rub it +on the palms of their hands, the tips of their fingers and the soles of +their feet to give them a red dye. The same red dye has been observed +upon the nails of Egyptian mummies. In Egypt sprigs of henna are hawked +about the streets for sale with the cry of "_O, odours of Paradise; O, +flowers of the henna!_" Thomas Moore alludes to one of the uses of the +henna:-- + + Thus some bring leaves of henna to imbue + The fingers' ends of a bright roseate hue, + So bright, that in the mirror's depth they seem + Like tips of coral branches in the stream. + +MOSS. + +MOSSES (_musci_) are sometimes confounded with Lichens. True mosses are +green, and lichens are gray. All the mosses are of exquisitely delicate +structure. They are found in every part of the world where the +atmosphere is moist. They have a wonderful tenacity of life and can +often be restored to their original freshness after they have been dried +for years. It was the sight of a small moss in the interior of Africa +that suggested to Mungo Park such consolatory reflections as saved him +from despair. He had been stripped of all he had by banditti. + +"In this forlorn and almost helpless condition," he says, "when the +robbers had left me, I sat for some time looking around me with +amazement and terror. Whichever way I turned, nothing appeared but +danger and difficulty. I found myself in the midst of a vast wilderness, +in the depth of the rainy season--naked and alone,--surrounded by +savages. I was five hundred miles from any European settlement. All +these circumstances crowded at once upon my recollection; and I confess +that my spirits began to fail me. I considered my fate as certain, and +that I had no alternative, but to lie down and perish. The influence of +religion, however aided and supported me. I reflected that no human +prudence or foresight could possibly have averted my present sufferings. +I was indeed a stranger in a strange land, yet I was still under the eye +of that Providence who has condescended to call himself the stranger's +friend. At this moment, painful as my reflections were, the +extraordinary beauty of a small Moss irresistibly caught my eye; and +though the whole plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, +I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its roots, leaves, +and fruit, without admiration. Can that Being (thought I) who planted, +watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world, a +thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon the +situation and sufferings of creatures formed after his own image? Surely +not.--Reflections like these would not allow me to despair. I started +up; and disregarding both, hunger and fatigue, traveled forward, assured +that relief was at hand; and I was not disappointed." + +VICTORIA REGIA. + +On this Queen of Aquatic Plants the language of admiration has been +exhausted. It was discovered in the first year of the present century by +the botanist Haenke who was sent by the Spanish Government to +investigate the vegetable productions of Peru. When in a canoe on the +Rio Mamore, one of the great tributaries of the river Amazon, he came +suddenly upon the noblest and largest flower that he had ever seen. He +fell on his knees in a transport of admiration. It was the plant now +known as the Victoria Regia, or American Water-lily. + +It was not till February 1849, that Dr. Hugh Rodie and Mr. Lachie of +Demerara forwarded seeds of the plant to Sir W.T. Hooker in vials of +pure water. They were sown in earth, in pots immersed in water, and +enclosed in a glass case. They vegetated rapidly. The plants first came +to perfection at Chatsworth the seat of the Duke of Devonshire,[093] and +subsequently at the Royal gardens at Kew. + +Early in November of the same year, (1849,) the leaves of the plant at +Chatsworth were 4 feet 8 inches in diameter. A child weighing forty two +pounds was placed upon one of the leaves which bore the weight well. The +largest leaf of the plant by the middle of the next month was five feet +in diameter with a turned up edge of from two to four inches. It then +bore up a person of 11 stone weight. The flat leaf of the Victoria Regia +as it floats on the surface of the water, resembles in point of form the +brass high edged platter in which Hindus eat their rice. + +The flowers in the middle of May 1850 measured one foot one inch in +diameter. The rapidity of the growth of this plant is one of its most +remarkable characteristics, its leaves often expanding eight inches in +diameter daily, and Mr. John Fisk Allen, who has published in America an +admirably illustrated work upon the subject, tells us that instances +under his own observation have occurred of the leaves increasing at the +rate of half an inch hourly. + +Not only is there an extraordinary variety in the colours of the several +specimens of this flower, but a singularly rapid succession of changes +of hue in the same individual flower as it progresses from bud to +blossom. + +This vegetable wonder was introduced into North America in 1851. It +grows to a larger size there than in England. Some of the leaves of the +plant cultivated in North America measure seventy-two inches in +diameter. + +This plant has been proved to be perennial. It grows best in from 4 to 6 +feet of water. Each plant generally sends but four or five leaves to the +surface. + +In addition to the other attractions of this noble Water Lily, is the +exquisite character of its perfume, which strongly resembles that of a +fresh pineapple just cut open. + +The Victoria Regia in the Calcutta Botanic Garden has from some cause or +other not flourished so well as it was expected to do. The largest leaf +is not more than four feet and three quarters in diameter. But there can +be little doubt that when the habits of the plant are better understood +it will be brought to great perfection in this country. I strongly +recommend my native friends to decorate their tanks with this the most +glorious of aquatic plants. + +THE FLY-ORCHIS--THE BEE-ORCHIS. + +Of these strange freaks of nature many strange stories are told. I +cannot repeat them all. I shall content myself with quoting the +following passage from D'Israeli's _Curiosities of Literature_:-- + +"There is preserved in the British Museum, a black stone, on which +nature has sketched a resemblance of the portrait of Chaucer. Stones of +this kind, possessing a sufficient degree of resemblance, are rare; but +art appears not to have been used. Even in plants, we find this sort of +resemblance. There is a species of the orchis found in the mountainous +parts of Lincolnshire, Kent, &c. Nature has formed a bee, apparently +feeding on the breast of the flower, with so much exactness, that it is +impossible at a very small distance to distinguish the imposition. Hence +the plant derives its name, and is called, the _Bee-flower_. Langhorne +elegantly notices its appearance. + + See on that floweret's velvet breast, + How close the busy vagrant lies? + His thin-wrought plume, his downy breast, + Th' ambrosial gold that swells his thighs. + Perhaps his fragrant load may bind + His limbs;--we'll set the captive free-- + I sought the living bee to find, + And found the picture of a bee,' + +The late Mr. James of Exeter wrote to me on this subject: 'This orchis +is common near our sea-coasts; but instead of being exactly like a BEE, +_it is not like it at all_. It has a general resemblance to a _fly_, and +by the help of imagination, may be supposed to be a fly pitched upon the +flower. The mandrake very frequently has a forked root, which may be +fancied to resemble thighs and legs. I have seen it helped out with +nails on the toes.' + +An ingenious botanist, a stranger to me, after reading this article, was +so kind as to send me specimens of the _fly_ orchis, _ophrys muscifera_, +and of the _bee_ orchis, _ophrys apifera_. Their resemblance to these +insects when in full flower is the most perfect conceivable; they are +distinct plants. The poetical eye of Langhorne was equally correct and +fanciful; and that too of Jackson, who differed so positively. Many +controversies have been carried on, from a want of a little more +knowledge; like that of the BEE _orchis_ and the FLY _orchis_; both +parties prove to be right."[094] + +THE FUCHSIA. + +The Fuchsia is decidedly the most _graceful_ flower in the world. It +unfortunately wants fragrance or it would be the _beau ideal_ of a +favorite of Flora. There is a story about its first introduction into +England which is worth reprinting here: + +'Old Mr. Lee, a nurseryman and gardener, near London, well known fifty +or sixty years ago, was one day showing his variegated treasures to a +friend, who suddenly turned to him, and declared, 'Well, you have not in +your collection a prettier flower than I saw this morning at +Wapping!'--'No! and pray what was this phoenix like?' 'Why, the plant +was elegant, and the flowers hung in rows like tassels from the pendant +branches; their colour the richest crimson; in the centre a fold of deep +purple,' and so forth. Particular directions being demanded and given, +Mr. Lee posted off to Wapping, where he at once perceived that the plant +was new in this part of the world. He saw and admired. Entering the +house, he said, 'My good woman, that is a nice plant. I should like to +buy it.'--'I could not sell it for any money, for it was brought me from +the West Indies by my husband, who has now left again, and I must keep +it for his sake.'--'But I must have it!'--'No sir!'--'Here,' emptying +his pockets; 'here are gold, silver, copper.' (His stock was something +more than eight guineas.)--'Well a-day! but this is a power of money, +sure and sure.'--''Tis yours, and the plant is mine; and, my good dame, +you shall have one of the first young ones I rear, to keep for your +husband's sake,'--'Alack, alack!'--'You shall.' A coach was called, in +which was safely deposited our florist and his seemingly dear purchase. +His first work was to pull off and utterly destroy every vestige of +blossom and bud. The plant was divided into cuttings, which were forced +in bark beds and hotbeds; were redivided and subdivided. Every effort +was used to multiply it. By the commencement of the next flowering +season, Mr. Lee was the delighted possessor of 300 Fuchsia plants, all +giving promise of blossom. The two which opened first were removed into +his show-house. A lady came:--'Why, Mr. Lee, my dear Mr. Lee, where did +you get this charming flower?'--'Hem! 'tis a new thing, my lady; pretty, +is it not?'--'Pretty! 'tis lovely. Its price?'--'A guinea: thank your +ladyship;' and one of the plants stood proudly in her ladyship's +boudoir. 'My dear Charlotte, where did you get?' &c.--'Oh! 'tis a new +thing; I saw it at old Lee's; pretty, is it not?'--'Pretty! 'tis +beautiful! Its price!'--'A guinea; there was another left.' The +visitor's horses smoked off to the suburb; a third flowering plant stood +on the spot whence the first had been taken. The second guinea was paid, +and the second chosen Fuchsia adorned the drawing-room of her second +ladyship The scene was repeated, as new-comers saw and were attracted by +the beauty of the plant. New chariots flew to the gates of old Lee's +nursery-ground. Two Fuchsias, young, graceful and bursting into healthy +flower, were constantly seen on the same spot in his repository. He +neglected not to gladden the faithful sailor's wife by the promised +gift; but, ere the flower season closed, 300 golden guineas clinked in +his purse, the produce of the single shrub of the widow of Wapping; the +reward of the taste, decision, skill, and perseverance of old Mr. Lee.' + +Whether this story about the fuchsia, be only partly fact and partly +fiction I shall not pretend to determine; but the best authorities +acknowledge that Mr. Lee, one of the founders of the Hammersmith +Nursery, was the first to make the plant generally known in England and +that he for some time got a guinea for each of the cuttings. The fuchsia +is a native of Mexico and Chili. I believe that most of the plants of +this genus introduced into India have flourished for a brief period and +then sickened and died. + +The poets of England have not yet sung the Fuschia's praise. Here are +three stanzas written for a gentleman who had been presented, by the +lady of his love with a superb plant of this kind. + +A FUCHSIA. + + I. + +A deed of grace--a graceful gift--and graceful too the giver! +Like ear-rings on thine own fair head, these long buds hang and quiver: +Each tremulous taper branch is thrilled--flutter the wing-like leaves-- +For thus to part from thee, sweet maid, the floral spirit grieves! + + II. + +Rude gods in brass or gold enchant an untaught devotee-- +Fair marble shapes, rich paintings old, are Art's idolatry; +But nought e'er charmed a human breast like this small tremulous flower, +Minute and delicate work divine of world-creative power! + + III. + +This flower's the Queen of all earth's flowers, and loveliest things appear +Linked by some secret sympathy, in this mysterious sphere; +The giver and the gift seem one, and thou thyself art nigh +When this glory of the garden greets thy lover's raptured eye. + +D.L.R. + +"Do you know the proper name of this flower?" writes Jeremy Bentham to a +lady-friend, "and the signification of its name? Fuchsia from Fuchs, a +German botanist." + +ROSEMARY. + + There's rosemary--that's for remembrance: + Pray you, love, remember. + +_Hamlet_ + + There's rosemarie; the Arabians Justifie + (Physitions of exceeding perfect skill) + It comforteth the brain and memory. + +_Chester_. + +Bacon speaks of heaths of ROSEMARY (_Rosmarinus_[095]) that "will smell +a great way in the sea; perhaps twenty miles." This reminds us of +Milton's Paradise. + + So lovely seemed + That landscape, and of pure, now purer air, + Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires + Vernal delight and joy, able to drive + All sadness but despair. Now gentle gales + Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense + Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole + Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail + Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past + Mozambic, off at sea north east winds blow + Sabean odours from the spicy shore + Of Araby the blest, with such delay + Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league + Cheered with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles. + +Rosemary used to be carried at funerals, and worn as wedding favors. + + _Lewis_ Pray take a piece of Rosemary + _Miramont_ I'll wear it, + But for the lady's sake, and none of your's! + +_Beaumont and Fletcher's "Elder Brother."_ + +Rosemary, says Malone, being supposed to strengthen the memory, was the +emblem of fidelity in lovers. So in _A Handfull of Pleasant Delites, +containing Sundrie New Sonets, 16mo_. 1854: + + Rosemary is for remembrance + Between us daie and night, + Wishing that I might alwaies have + You present in my sight. + +The poem in which these lines are found, is entitled, '_A Nosegay +alwaies sweet for Lovers to send for Tokens of Love_.' + +Roger Hochet in his sermon entitled _A Marriage Present_ (1607) thus +speaks of the Rosemary;--"It overtoppeth all the flowers in the garden, +boasting man's rule. It helpeth the brain, strengtheneth the memorie, +and is very medicinable for the head. Another propertie of the rosemary +is, it affects the heart. Let this rosemarinus, this flower of men, +ensigne of your wisdom, love, and loyaltie, be carried not only in your +hands, but in your hearts and heads." + +"Hungary water" is made up chiefly from the oil distilled from this +shrub. + + * * * * * + +I should talk on a little longer about other shrubs, herbs, and flowers, +(particularly of flowers) such as the "pink-eyed Pimpernel" (the poor +man's weather glass) and the fragrant Violet, ('the modest grace of the +vernal year,') the scarlet crested Geranium with its crimpled leaves, +and the yellow and purple Amaranth, powdered with gold, + + A flower which once + In Paradise, fast by the tree of life + Began to bloom, + +and the crisp and well-varnished Holly with "its rutilant berries," and +the white Lily, (the vestal Lady of the Vale,--"the flower of virgin +light") and the luscious Honeysuckle, and the chaste Snowdrop, + + Venturous harbinger of spring + And pensive monitor of fleeting years, + +and the sweet Heliotrope and the gay and elegant Nasturtium, and a great +many other "bonnie gems" upon the breast of our dear mother earth,--but +this gossipping book has already extended to so unconscionable a size +that I must quicken my progress towards a conclusion[096]. + +I am indebted to the kindness of Babu Kasiprasad Ghosh, the first Hindu +gentlemen who ever published a volume of poems in the English +language[097] for the following interesting list of Indian flowers used +in Hindu ceremonies. Many copies of the poems of Kasiprasad Ghosh, were +sent to the English public critics, several of whom spoke of the +author's talents with commendation. The late Miss Emma Roberts wrote a +brief biography of him for one of the London annuals, so that there must +be many of my readers at home who will not on this occasion hear of his +name for the first time. + +A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF INDIAN FLOWERS, COMMONLY USED IN HINDU +CEREMONIES.[098] + +A'KUNDA (_Calotropis Gigantea_).--A pretty purple coloured, and slightly +scented flower, having a sweet and agreeable smell. It is called _Arca_ +in Sanscrit, and has two varieties, both of which are held to be sacred +to Shiva. It forms one of the five darts with which the Indian God of +Love is supposed to pierce the hearts of young mortals.[099] Sir William +Jones refers to it in his Hymn to Kama Deva. It possesses medicinal +properties.[100] + +A'PARA'JITA (_Clitoria ternatea_).--A conically shaped flower, the upper +part of which is tinged with blue and the lower part is white. Some are +wholly white. It is held to be sacred to Durga. + +ASOCA. (_Jonesia Asoca_).--A small yellow flower, which blooms in large +clusters in the month of April and gives a most beautiful appearance to +the tree. It is eaten by young females as a medicine. It smells like the +Saffron. + +A'TASHI.--A small yellowish or brown coloured flower without any smell. +It is supposed to be sacred to Shiva, and is very often alluded to by +the Indian poets. It resembles the flower of the flax or Linum +usitatissimum.[101] + +BAKA.--A kidney shaped flower, having several varieties, all of which +are held to be sacred to Vishnu, and are in consequence used in his +worship. It is supposed to possess medicinal virtues and is used by the +native doctors. + +BAKU'LA (_Mimusops Etengi_).--A very small, yellowish, and fragrant +flower. It is used in making garlands and other female ornaments. +Krishna is said to have fascinated the milkmaids of Brindabun by playing +on his celebrated flute under a _Baku'la_ tree on the banks of the +Jumna, which is, therefore, invariably alluded to in all the Sanscrit +and vernacular poems relating to his amours with those young women. + +BA'KASHA (_Justicia Adhatoda_).--A white flower, having a slight smell. +It is used in certain native medicines. + +BELA (_Jasminum Zambac_).--A fragrant small white flower, in common use +among native females, who make garlands of it to wear in their braids of +hair. A kind of _uttar_ is extracted from this flower, which is much +esteemed by natives. It is supposed to form one of the darts of Kama +Deva or the God of Love. European Botanists seem to have confounded this +flower with the Monika, which they also call the Jasminum Zambac. + +BHU'MI CHAMPAKA.--An oblong variegated flower, which shoots out from the +ground at the approach of spring. It has a slight smell, and is +considered to possess medicinal properties. The great peculiarity of +this flower is that it blooms when there is not apparently the slightest +trace of the existence of the shrub above ground. When the flower dies +away, the leaves make their appearance. + +CHAMPA' (_Michelia Champaka_).--A tulip shaped yellow flower possessing +a very strong smell.[102] It forms one of the darts of Kama Deva, the +Indian Cupid. It is particularly sacred to Krishna. + +CHUNDRA MALLIKA' (_Chrysanthemum Indiana_).--A pretty round yellow +flower which blooms in winter. The plant is used in making hedges in +gardens and presents a beautiful appearance in the cold weather when the +blossoms appear. + +DHASTU'RA (_Datura Fastuosa_).--A large tulip shaped white flower, +sacred to Mahadeva, the third Godhead of the Hindu Trinity. The seeds of +this flower have narcotic properties.[103] + +DRONA.--A white flower with a very slight smell. + +DOPATI (_Impatiens Balsamina_).--A small flower having a slight smell. +There are several varieties of this flower. Some are red and some white, +while others are both white and red. + +GA'NDA' (_Tagetes erecta_).--A handsome yellow flower, which sometimes +grows very large. It is commonly used in making garlands, with which the +natives decorate their idols, and the Europeans in India their churches +and gates on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. + +GANDHA RA'J (_Gardenia Florida_).--A strongly scented white flower, +which blooms at night. + +GOLANCHA (_Menispermum Glabrum_).--A white flower. The plant is already +well known to Europeans as a febrifuge. + +JAVA' (_Hibiscus Rosa Sinensis_).--A large blood coloured flower held to +be especially sacred to Kali. There are two species of it, viz. the +ordinary Java commonly seen in our gardens and parterres, and the +_Pancha Mukhi_, which, as its name imports, has five compartments and is +the largest of the two.[104] + +JAYANTI (_Aeschynomene Sesban_).--A small yellowish flower, held to be +sacred to Shiva. + +JHA'NTI.--A small white flower possessing medicinal properties. The +leaves of the plants are used in curing certain ulcers. + +JA'NTI (_Jasminum Grandiflorum_).--Also a small white flower having a +sweet smell. The _uttar_ called _Chumeli_ is extracted from it. + +JUYIN (_Jasminum Auriculatum_).--The Indian Jasmine. It is a very small +white flower remarkable for its sweetness. It is also used in making a +species of _uttar_ which is highly prized by the natives, as also in +forming a great variety of imitation female ornaments. + +KADAMBA (_Nauclea Cadamba_).--A ball shaped yellow flower held to be +particularly sacred to Krishna, many of whose gambols with the milkmaids +of Brindabun are said to have been performed under the Kadamba tree, +which is in consequence very frequently alluded to in the vernacular +poems relating to his loves with those celebrated beauties. + +KINSUKA (_Butea Frondosa_).--A handsome but scentless white flower. + +KANAKA CHAMPA (_Pterospermum Acerifolium_).--A yellowish flower which +hangs down in form of a tassel. It has a strong smell, which is +perceived at a great distance when it is on the tree, but the moment it +is plucked off, it begins to lose its fragrance. + +KANCHANA (_Bauhinia Variegata_).--There are several varieties of this +flower. Some are white, some are purple, while others are red. It gives +a handsome appearance to the tree when the latter is in full blossom. + +KUNDA (_Jasminum pulescens_).--A very pretty white flower. Indian poets +frequently compare a set of handsome teeth, to this flower. It is held +to be especially sacred to Vishnu. + +KARABIRA (_Nerium Odosum_).--There are two species of this flower, viz. +the white and red, both of which are sacred to Shiva. + +KAMINI (_Murraya Exotica_).--A pretty small white flower having a strong +smell. It blooms at night and is very delicate to the touch. The +_kamini_ tree is frequently used as a garden hedge. + +KRISHNA CHURA (_Poinciana Pulcherrima_).--A pretty small flower, which, +as its name imports resembles the head ornament of Krishna. When the +Krishna Chura tree is in full blossom, it has a very handsome +appearance. + +KRISHNA KELI (_Mirabilis Jalapa_.)[105]--A small tulip shaped yellow +flower. The bulb of the plant has medicinal properties and is used by +the natives as a poultice. + +KUMADA (_Nymphaea Esculenta_)--A white flower, resembling the lotus, but +blooming at night, whence the Indian poets suppose that it is in love +with Chandra or the Moon, as the lotus is imagined by them to be in love +with the Sun. + +LAVANGA LATA' (_Limonia Scandens_.)--A very small red flower growing +upon a creeper, which has been celebrated by Jaya Deva in his famous +work called the _Gita Govinda_. This creeper is used in native gardens +for bowers. + +MALLIKA' (_Jasminum Zambac_.)--A white flower resembling the _Bela_. It +has a very sweet smell and is used by native females to make ornaments. +It is frequently alluded to by Indian poets. + +MUCHAKUNDA (_Pterospermum Suberifolia_).--A strongly scented flower, +which grows in clusters and is of a brown colour. + +MA'LATI (_Echites Caryophyllata_.)--The flower of a creeper which is +commonly used in native gardens. It has a slight smell and is of a white +colour. + +MA'DHAVI (_Gaertnera Racemosa_.)--The flower of another creeper which is +also to be seen in native gardens. It is likewise of a white colour. + +NA'GESWARA (_Mesua Ferrua_.)--A white flower with yellow filaments, +which are said to possess medicinal properties and are used by the +native physicians. It has a very sweet smell and is supposed by Indian +poets to form one of the darts of Kama Deva. See Sir William Jones's +Hymn to that deity. + +PADMA (_Nelumbium Speciosum_.)--The Indian lotus, which is held to be +sacred to Vishnu, Brama, Mahadava, Durga, Lakshami and Saraswati as well +as all the higher orders of Indian deities. It is a very elegant flower +and is highly esteemed by the natives, in consequence of which the +Indian poets frequently allude to it in their writings. + +PA'RIJATA (_Buchanania Latifolia_.)--A handsome white flower, with a +slight smell. In native poetry, it furnishes a simile for pretty eyes, +and is held to be sacred to Vishnu. + +PAREGATA (_Erythrina Fulgens_.)--A flower which is supposed to bloom in +the garden of Indra in heaven, and forms the subject of an interesting +episode in the _Puranas_, in which the two wives of Krisna, (Rukmini and +Satyabhama) are said to have quarrelled for the exclusive possession of +this flower, which their husband had stolen from the celestial garden +referred to. It is supposed to be identical with the flower of the +_Palta madar_. + +RAJANI GANDHA (_Polianthus Tuberosa_.)--A white tulip-shaped flower +which blooms at night, from which circumstance it is called "the Rajani +Gandha, (or night-fragrance giver)." It is the Indian tuberose. + +RANGANA.--A small and very pretty red flower which is used by native +females in ornamenting their betels. + +SEONTI. _Rosa Glandulefera_. A white flower resembling the rose in size +and appearance. It has a sweet smell. + +SEPHA'LIKA (_Nyctanthes Arbor-tristis_.)--A very pretty and delicate +flower which blooms at night, and drops down shortly after. It has a +sweet smell and is held to be sacred to Shiva. The juice of the leaves +of the Sephalika tree are used in curing both remittant and intermittent +fevers. + +SURYJA MUKHI (_Helianthus Annuus_).--A large and very handsome yellow +flower, which is said to turn itself to the Sun, as he goes from East to +West, whence it has derived its name. + +SURYJA MANI (_Hibiscus Phoeniceus_).--A small red flower. + +GOLAKA CHAMPA.--A large beautiful white tulip-shaped flower having a +sweet smell. It is externally white but internally orange-colored. + +TAGUR (_Tabernoemontana Coronaria_).--A white flower having a slight +smell. + +TARU LATA.--A beautiful creeper with small red flowers. It is used in +native gardens for making hedges. + +K.G. + + * * * * * + +Pliny in his Natural History alludes to the marks of time exhibited in +the regular opening and closing of flowers. Linnaeus enumerates +forty-six flowers that might be used for the construction of a floral +time-piece. This great Swedish botanist invented a Floral horologe, "whose +wheels were the sun and earth and whose index-figures were flowers." +Perhaps his invention, however, was not wholly original. Andrew Marvell +in his "_Thoughts in a Garden_" mentions a sort of floral dial:-- + + How well the skilful gardener drew + Of flowers and herbs this dial new! + Where, from above, the milder sun + Does through a fragrant zodiac run: + And, as it works, th'industrious bee + Computes its time as well as we: + How could such sweet and wholesome hours + Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers? + +_Marvell_[106] + +Milton's notation of time--"_at shut of evening flowers_," has a +beautiful simplicity, and though Shakespeare does not seem to have +marked his time on a floral clock, yet, like all true poets, he has made +very free use of other appearances of nature to indicate the +commencement and the close of day. + + The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch-- + Than we will ship him hence. + +_Hamlet_. + + Fare thee well at once! + The glow-worm shows the matin to be near + And gins to pale his uneffectual fire. + +_Hamlet_. + + But look! The morn, in russet mantle clad, + Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill:-- + Break we our watch up. + +_Hamlet_. + + _Light thickens_, and the crow + Makes wing to the rooky wood. + +_Macbeth_. + +Such picturesque notations of time as these, are in the works of +Shakespeare, as thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in +Valombrosa. In one of his Sonnets he thus counts the years of human life +by the succession of the seasons. + + To me, fair friend, you never can be old, + For as you were when first your eye I eyed, + Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold + Have from the forests shook three summers' pride; + Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned + In process of the seasons have I seen; + Three April's perfumes in three hot Junes burned + Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green. + +Grainger, a prosaic verse-writer who once commenced a paragraph of a +poem with "Now, Muse, let's sing of rats!" called upon the slave drivers +in the West Indies to time their imposition of cruel tasks by the +opening and closing of flowers. + + Till morning dawn and Lucifer withdraw + His beamy chariot, let not the loud bell + Call forth thy negroes from their rushy couch: + And ere the sun with mid-day fervor glow, + When every broom-bush opes her yellow flower, + Let thy black laborers from their toil desist: + Nor till the broom her every petal lock, + Let the loud bell recal them to the hoe, + But when the jalap her bright tint displays, + When the solanum fills her cup with dew, + And crickets, snakes and lizards gin their coil, + Let them find shelter in their cane-thatched huts. + +_Sugar Cane_.[107] + +I shall here give (_from Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening_) the form +of a flower dial. It may be interesting to many of my readers:-- + + 'Twas a lovely thought to mark the hours + As they floated in light away + By the opening and the folding flowers + That laugh to the summer day.[108] + +_Mr. Hemans_. + +A FLOWER DIAL. + +TIME OF OPENING. + [109] h. m. +YELLOW GOAT'S BEARD T.P. 3 5 +LATE FLOWERING DANDELION Leon.S. 4 0 +BRISTLY HELMINTHIA H.B. 4 5 +ALPINE BORKHAUSIA B.A. 4 5 +WILD SUCCORY C.I. 4 5 +NAKED STALKED POPPY P.N. 5 0 +COPPER COLOURED DAY LILY H.F. 5 0 +SMOOTH SOW THISTLE S.L. 5 0 +ALPINE AGATHYRSUS Ag.A. 5 0 +SMALL BIND WEED Con.A. 5 6 +COMMON NIPPLE WORT L.C. 5 6 +COMMON DANDELION L.T. 5 6 +SPORTED ACHYROPHORUS A.M. 6 7 +WHITE WATER LILY N.A. 7 0 +GARDEN LETTUCE Lec.S. 7 0 +AFRICAN MARIGOLD T.E. 7 0 +COMMON PIMPERNEL A.A. 7 8 +MOUSE-EAR HAWKWEED H.P. 8 0 +PROLIFEROUS PINK D.P. 8 0 +FIELD MARIGOLD Cal.A. 9 0 +PURPLE SANDWORT A.P. 9 10 +SMALL PURSLANE P.O. 9 10 +CREEPING MALLOW M.C. 9 10 +CHICKWEED S.M. 9 10 + +TIME OF CLOSING. + h. m. +HELMINTHIA ECHIOIDES B.H. 12 0 +AGATHYRSUS ALPINUS A.B. 12 0 +BORKHAUSIA ALPINA A.B. 12 0 +LEONTODON SEROTINUS L.D. 12 0 +MALVA CAROLINIANA C.M. 12 1 +DAINTHUS PROLIFER P.P. 1 0 +HIERACIUM PILOSELLA M.H. 0 2 +ANAGALLIS ARVENSIS S.P. 2 3 +ARENARIA PURPUREA P.S. 2 4 +CALENDULA ARVENSIS F.M. 3 0 +TACETES ERECTA A.M. 3 3 +CONVOLVULUS ARVENSIS S.B. 4 0 +ACHYROPHORUS MACULATUS S.A. 4 5 +NYMPHAEA ALBA W.W.B. 5 0 +PAPAVER NUDICAULE N.P. 7 0 +HEMEROCALLIS FULVA C.D.L. 7 0 +CICHORIUM INTYBUS W.S. 8 9 +TRAGOPOGON PRATENSIS Y.G.B. 9 10 +STELLARIA MEDIA C. 9 10 +LAPSANA COMMUNIS C.N. 10 0 +LACTUCA SATIVA G.L. 10 0 +SONCHUS LAEVIS S.T. 11 10 +PORTULACA OLERACEA S.P. 11 12 + +Of course it will be necessary to adjust the _Horologium Florae_ (or +Flower clock) to the nature of the climate. Flowers expand at a later +hour in a cold climate than in a warm one. "A flower," says Loudon, +"that opens at six o'clock in the morning at Senegal, will not open in +France or England till eight or nine, nor in Sweden till ten. A flower +that opens at ten o'clock at Senegal will not open in France or England +till noon or later, and in Sweden it will not open at all. And a flower +that does not open till noon or later at Senegal will not open at all in +France or England. This seems as if heat or its absence were also (as +well as light) an agent in the opening and shutting of flowers; though +the opening of such as blow only in the night cannot be attributed to +either light or heat." + +The seasons may be marked in a similar manner by their floral +representatives. Mary Howitt quotes as a motto to her poem on _Holy +Flowers_ the following example of religious devotion timed by flowers:-- + +"Mindful of the pious festivals which our church prescribes," (says a +Franciscan Friar) "I have sought to make these charming objects of +floral nature, the _time-pieces of my religious calendar_, and the +mementos of the hastening period of my mortality. Thus I can light the +taper to our Virgin Mother on the blowing of the white snow-drop which +opens its floweret at the time of Candlemas; the lady's smock and the +daffodil, remind me of the Annunciation; the blue harebell, of the +Festival of St George; the ranunculus, of the Invention of the Cross; +the scarlet lychnis, of St. John the Baptist's day; the white lily, of +the Visitation of our Lady, and the Virgin's bower, of her Assumption; +and Michaelmas, Martinmas, Holyrood, and Christmas, have all their +appropriate monitors. I learn the time of day from the shutting of the +blossoms of the Star of Jerusalem and the Dandelion, and the hour of the +night by the stars." + +Some flowers afford a certain means of determining the state of the +atmosphere. If I understand Mr. Tyas rightly he attributes the following +remarks to Hartley Coleridge.-- + +"Many species of flowers are admirable barometers. Most of the +bulbous-rooted flowers contract, or close their petals entirely on the +approach of rain. The African marigold indicates rain, if the corolla is +closed after seven or eight in the morning. The common bind-weed closes +its flowers on the approach of rain; but the anagallis arvensis, or scarlet +pimpernel, is the most sure in its indications as the petals constantly +close on the least humidity of the atmosphere. Barley is also singularly +affected by the moisture or dryness of the air. The awns are furnished +with stiff points, all turning towards one end, which extend when moist, +and shorten when dry. The points, too, prevent their receding, so that +they are drawn up or forward; as moisture is returned, they advance and +so on; indeed they may be actually seen to travel forwards. The capsules +of the geranium furnish admirable barometers. Fasten the beard, when +fully ripe, upon a stand, and it will twist itself, or untwist, +according as the air is moist or dry. The flowers of the chick-weed, +convolvulus, and oxalis, or wood sorrel, close their petals on the +approach of rain." + +The famous German writer, Jean Paul Richter, describes what he calls _a +Human Clock_. + +A HUMAN CLOCK. + +"I believe" says Richter "the flower clock of Linnaeus, in Upsal +(_Horologium Florae_) whose wheels are the sun and earth, and whose +index-figures are flowers, of which one always awakens and opens later +than another, was what secretly suggested my conception of the human +clock. + +I formerly occupied two chambers in Scheeraw, in the middle of the +market place: from the front room I overlooked the whole market-place +and the royal buildings and from the back one, the botanical garden. +Whoever now dwells in these two rooms possesses an excellent harmony, +arranged to his hand, between the flower clock in the garden and the +human clock in the marketplace. At three o'clock in the morning, the +yellow meadow goats-beard opens; and brides awake, and the stable-boy +begins to rattle and feed the horses beneath the lodger. At four o'clock +the little hawk weed awakes, choristers going to the Cathedral who are +clocks with chimes, and the bakers. At five, kitchen maids, dairy maids, +and butter-cups awake. At six, the sow-thistle and cooks. At seven +o'clock many of the Ladies' maids are awake in the Palace, the Chicory +in my botanical garden, and some tradesmen. At eight o'clock all the +colleges awake and the little mouse-ear. At nine o'clock, the female +nobility already begin to stir; the marigold, and even many young +ladies, who have come from the country on a visit, begin to look out of +their windows. Between ten and eleven o'clock the Court Ladies and the +whole staff of Lords of the Bed-chamber, the green colewort and the +Alpine dandelion, and the reader of the Princess rouse themselves out of +their morning sleep; and the whole Palace, considering that the morning +sun gleams so brightly to-day from the lofty sky through the coloured +silk curtains, curtails a little of its slumber. + +At twelve o'clock, the Prince: at one, his wife and the carnation have +their eyes open in their flower vase. What awakes late in the afternoon +at four o'clock is only the red-hawkweed, and the night watchman as +cuckoo-clock, and these two only tell the time as evening-clocks and +moon-clocks. + +From the eyes of the unfortunate man, who like the jalap plant +(Mirabilia jalapa), first opens them at five o'clock, we will turn our +own in pity aside. It is a rich man who only exchanges the fever fancies +of being pinched with hot pincers for waking pains. + +I could never know when it was two o'clock, because at that time, +together with a thousand other stout gentlemen and the yellow mouse-ear, +I always fell asleep; but at three o'clock in the afternoon, and at +three in the morning, I awoke as regularly as though I was a repeater. +Thus we mortals may be a flower-clock for higher beings, when our +flower-leaves close upon our last bed; or sand clocks, when the sand of +our life is so run down that it is renewed in the other world; or +picture-clocks because, when our death-bell here below strikes and +rings, our image steps forth, from its case into the next world. + +On each event of the kind, when seventy years of human life have passed +away, they may perhaps say, what! another hour already gone! how the +time flies!"--_From Balfour's Phyto-Theology_. + +Some of the natives of India who possess extensive estates might think +it worth their while to plant a LABYRINTH for the amusement of their +friends. I therefore give a plan of one from London's _Arboretum et +Fruticetum Britannicum_. It would not be advisable to occupy much of a +limited estate in a toy of this nature; but where the ground required +for it can be easily spared or would otherwise be wasted, there could be +no objection to adding this sort of amusement to the very many others +that may be included in a pleasure ground. The plan here given, +resembles the labyrinth at Hampton Court. The hedges should be a little +above a man's height and the paths should be just wide enough for two +persons abreast. The ground should be kept scrupulously clean and well +rolled and the hedges well trimmed, or in this country the labyrinth +would soon be damp and unwholesome, especially in the rains. To prevent +its affording a place of refuge and concealment for snakes and other +reptiles, the gardener should cut off all young shoots and leaves within +half a foot of the ground. The centre building should be a tasteful +summer-house, in which people might read or smoke or take refreshments. +To make the labyrinth still more intricate Mr. Loudon suggests that +stop-hedges might be introduced across the path, at different places, as +indicated in the figure by dotted lines.[110] + +[Illustration of A GARDEN LABYRINTH with a scale in feet.] + +Of strictly Oriental trees and shrubs and flowers, perhaps the majority +of Anglo Indians think with much less enthusiasm than of the common +weeds of England. The remembrance of the simplest wild flower of their +native fields will make them look with perfect indifference on the +decorations of an Indian Garden. This is in no degree surprizing. Yet +nature is lovely in all lands. + +Indian scenery has not been so much the subject of description in either +prose or verse as it deserves, but some two or three of our Anglo-Indian +authors have touched upon it. Here is a pleasant and truthful passage +from an article entitled "_A Morning Walk in India_," written by the +late Mr. Lawson, the Missionary, a truly good and a highly gifted man:-- + +"The rounded clumps that afford the deepest shade, are formed by the +mangoe, the banian, and the cotton trees. At the verge of this deep-green +forest are to be seen the long and slender hosts of the betle and +cocoanut trees; and the grey bark of their trunks, as they catch the +light of the morning, is in clear relief from the richness of the +back-ground. These as they wave their feathery tops, add much to the +picturesque interest of the straw-built hovels beneath them, which are +variegated with every tinge to be found amongst the browns and yellows, +according to the respective periods of their construction. Some of them +are enveloped in blue smoke, which oozes through every interstice of the +thatch, and spreads itself, like a cloud hovering over these frail +habitations, or moves slowly along, like a strata of vapour not far from +the ground, as though too heavy to ascend, and loses itself in the thin +air, so inspiring to all who have courage to leave their beds and enjoy +it. The champa tree forms a beautiful object in this jungle. It may be +recognized immediately from the surrounding scenery. It has always been +a favourite with me. I suppose most persons, at times, have been +unaccountably attracted by an object comparatively trifling in itself. +There are also particular seasons, when the mind is susceptible of +peculiar impressions, and the moments of happy, careless youth, rush +upon the imagination with a thousand tender feelings. There are few that +do not recollect with what pleasure they have grasped a bunch of wild +flowers, when, in the days of their childhood, the languor of a +lingering fever has prevented them for some weary months from enjoying +that chief of all the pleasures of a robust English boy, a ramble +through the fields, where every tree, and bush, and hillock, and +blossom, are endeared to him, because, next to a mother's caresses, they +were the first things in the world upon which he opened his eyes, and, +doubtless, the first which gave him those indescribable feelings of +fairy pleasure, which even in his dreams were excited; while the +coloured clouds of heaven, the golden sunshine of a landscape, the fresh +nosegay of dog-roses and early daisies, and the sounds of busy +whispering trees and tinkling brooks presented to the sleeping child all +the pure pleasure of his waking moments. And who is there here that does +not sometimes recal some of those feelings which were his solace perhaps +thirty years ago? Should I be wrong, were I to say that even, at his +desk, amid all the excitements and anxieties of commercial pursuits, the +weary Calcutta merchant has been lulled into a sort of pensive +reminiscence of the past, and, with his pen placed between his lips and +his fevered forehead leaning upon his hand, has felt his heart bound at +some vivid picture rising upon his imagination. The forms of a fond +mother, and an almost angel-looking sister, have been so strongly +conjured up with the scenes of his boyish days, that the pen has been +unceremoniously dashed to the ground, and 'I will go home' was the sigh +that heaved from a bosom full of kindness and English feeling; while, as +the dream vanished, plain truth told its tale, and the man of commerce +is still to be seen at his desk, pale, and getting into years and +perhaps less desirous than ever of winding up his concern. No wonder! +because the dearest ties of his heart have been broken, and those who +were the charm of home have gone down to the cold grave, the home of +all. Why then should he revisit his native place? What is the cottage of +his birth to him? What charms has the village now for the gentleman just +arrived from India? Every well remembered object of nature, seen after a +lapse of twenty years, would only serve to renew a host of buried, +painful feelings. Every visit to the house of a surviving neighbour +would but bring to mind some melancholy incident; for into what house +could he enter, to idle away an hour, without seeing some wreck of his +own family, such as a venerable clock, once so loved for the painted +moon that waxed and waned to the astonishment of the gazer, or some +favorite ancient chair, edged so nobly with rows of brass nails, + + --but perforated sore, and dull'd in holes + By worms voracious, eating through and through. + +These are little things, but they are objects which will live in his +memory to the latest day of his life, and with which are associated in +his mind the dearest feelings and thoughts of his happiest hours." + +Here is an attempt at a description in verse of some of the most common + +TREES AND FLOWERS OF BENGAL + + This land is not my father land, + And yet I love it--for the hand + Of God hath left its mark sublime + On nature's face in every clime-- + + Though from home and friends we part, + Nature and the human heart + Still may soothe the wanderer's care-- + And his God is every where + + Beneath BENGALA'S azure skies, + No vallies sink, no green hills rise, + Like those the vast sea billows make-- + The land is level as a lake[111] + But, oh, what giants of the wood + Wave their wide arms, or calmly brood + Each o'er his own deep rounded shade + When noon's fierce sun the breeze hath laid, + And all is still. On every plain + How green the sward, or rich the grain! + In jungle wild and garden trim, + And open lawn and covert dim, + What glorious shrubs and flowerets gay, + Bright buds, and lordly beasts of prey! + How prodigally Gunga pours + Her wealth of waves through verdant shores + O'er which the sacred peepul bends, + And oft its skeleton lines extends + Of twisted root, well laved and bare, + Half in water, half in air! + + Fair scenes! where breeze and sun diffuse + The sweetest odours, fairest hues-- + Where brightest the bright day god shows, + And where his gentle sister throws + Her softest spell on silent plain, + And stirless wood, and slumbering main-- + Where the lucid starry sky + Opens most to mortal eye + The wide and mystic dome serene + Meant for visitants unseen, + A dream like temple, air built hall, + Where spirits pure hold festival! + + Fair scenes! whence envious Art might steal + More charms than fancy's realms reveal-- + Where the tall palm to the sky + Lifts its wreath triumphantly-- + And the bambu's tapering bough + Loves its flexile arch to throw-- + Where sleeps the favored lotus white, + On the still lake's bosom bright-- + Where the champac's[112] blossoms shine, + Offerings meet for Brahma's shrine, + While the fragrance floateth wide + O'er velvet lawn and glassy tide-- + Where the mangoe tope bestows + Night at noon day--cool repose, + Neath burning heavens--a hush profound + Breathing o'er the shaded ground-- + Where the medicinal neem, + Of palest foliage, softest gleam, + And the small leafed tamarind + Tremble at each whispering wind-- + And the long plumed cocoas stand + Like the princes of the land, + Near the betel's pillar slim, + With capital richly wrought and trim-- + And the neglected wild sonail + Drops her yellow ringlets pale-- + And light airs summer odours throw + From the bala's breast of snow-- + Where the Briarean banyan shades + The crowded ghat, while Indian maids, + Untouched by noon tide's scorching rays, + Lave the sleek limb, or fill the vase + With liquid life, or on the head + Replace it, and with graceful tread + And form erect, and movement slow, + Back to their simple dwellings go-- + [Walls of earth, that stoutly stand, + Neatly smoothed with wetted hand-- + Straw roofs, yellow once and gay, + Turned by time and tempest gray--] + Where the merry minahs crowd + Unbrageous haunts, and chirrup loud-- + And shrilly talk the parrots green + 'Midst the thick leaves dimly seen-- + And through the quivering foliage play, + Light as buds, the squirrels gay, + Quickly as the noontide beams + Dance upon the rippled streams-- + Where the pariah[113] howls with fear, + If the white man passeth near-- + Where the beast that mocks our race + With taper finger, solemn face, + In the cool shade sits at ease + Calm and grave as Socrates-- + Where the sluggish buffaloe + Wallows in mud--and huge and slow, + Like massive cloud of sombre van, + Moves the land leviathan--[114] + Where beneath the jungle's screen + Close enwoven, lurks unseen + The couchant tiger--and the snake + His sly and sinuous way doth make + Through the rich mead's grassy net, + Like a miniature rivulet-- + Where small white cattle, scattered wide, + Browse, from dawn to even tide-- + Where the river watered soil + Scarce demands the ryot's toil-- + And the rice field's emerald light + Out vies Italian meadows bright,-- + Where leaves of every shape and dye, + And blossoms varied as the sky, + The fancy kindle,--fingers fair + That never closed on aught but air-- + Hearts, that never heaved a sigh-- + Wings, that never learned to fly-- + Cups, that ne'er went table round-- + Bells, that never rang with sound-- + Golden crowns, of little worth-- + Silver stars, that strew the earth-- + Filagree fine and curious braid, + Breathed, not labored, grown, not made-- + Tresses like the beams of morn + Without a thought of triumph worn-- + Tongues that prate not--many an eye + Untaught midst hidden things to pry-- + Brazen trumpets, long and bright, + That never summoned to the fight-- + Shafts, that never pierced a side-- + And plumes that never waved with pride;-- + Scarcely Art a shape may know + But Nature here that shape can show. + + Through this soft air, o'er this warm sod, + Stern deadly Winter never trod; + The woods their pride for centuries wear, + And not a living branch is bare; + Each field for ever boasts its bowers, + And every season brings its flowers. + +D.L.R. + +We all "uphold Adam's profession": we are all gardeners, either +practically or theoretically. The love of trees and flowers, and shrubs +and the green sward, with a summer sky above them, is an almost +universal sentiment. It may be smothered for a time by some one or other +of the innumerable chances and occupations of busy life; but a painting +in oils by Claude or Gainsborough, or a picture in words by Spenser or +Shakespeare that shall for ever + + Live in description and look green in song, + +or the sight of a few flowers on a window-sill in the city, can fill the +eye with tears of tenderness, or make the secret passion for nature +burst out again in sudden gusts of tumultuous pleasure and lighten up +the soul with images of rural beauty. There are few, indeed, who, when +they have the good fortune to escape on a summer holiday from the +crowded and smoky city and find themselves in the heart of a delicious +garden, have not a secret consciousness within them that the scene +affords them a glimpse of a true paradise below. Rich foliage and gay +flowers and rural quiet and seclusion and a smiling sun are ever +associated with ideas of earthly felicity. + + And oh, if there be an Elysium on earth, + It is this, it is this! + +The princely merchant and the petty trader, the soldier and the sailor, +the politician and the lawyer, the artist and the artisan, when they +pause for a moment in the midst of their career, and dream of the +happiness of some future day, almost invariably fix their imaginary +palace or cottage of delight in a garden, amidst embowering trees and +fragrant flowers. This disposition, even in the busiest men, to indulge +occasionally in fond anticipations of rural bliss-- + + In visions so profuse of pleasantness-- + +shows that God meant us to appreciate and enjoy the beauty of his works. +The taste for a garden is the one common feeling that unites us all. + + One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. + +There is this much of poetical sensibility--of a sense of natural +beauty--at the core of almost every human heart. The monarch shares it +with the peasant, and Nature takes care that as the thirst for her +society is the universal passion, the power of gratifying it shall be +more or less within the reach of all.[115] + +Our present Chief Justice, Sir Lawrence Peel, who has set so excellent +an example to his countrymen here in respect to Horticultural pursuits +and the tasteful embellishment of what we call our "_compounds_" and +who, like Sir William Jones and Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, sees no reason +why Themis should be hostile to the Muses, has obliged me with the +following stanzas on the moral or rather religious influence of a +garden. They form a highly appropriate and acceptable contribution to +this volume. + +I HEARD THY VOICE IN THE GARDEN. + + That voice yet speaketh, heed it well-- + But not in tones of wrath it chideth, + The moss rose, and the lily smell + Of God--in them his voice abideth. + + There is a blessing on the spot + The poor man decks--the sun delighteth + To smile upon each homely plot, + And why? The voice of God inviteth. + + God knows that he is worshipped there, + The chaliced cowslip's graceful bending + Is mute devotion, and the air + Is sweet with incense of her lending. + + The primrose, aye the children's pet, + Pale bride, yet proud of its uprooting, + The crocus, snowdrop, violet + And sweet-briar with its soft leaves shooting. + + There nestles each--a Preacher each-- + (Oh heart of man! be slow to harden) + Each cottage flower in sooth doth teach + God walketh with us in the garden. + +I am surprized that in this city (of Calcutta) where so many kinds of +experiments in education have been proposed, the directors of public +instruction have never thought of attaching tasteful Gardens to the +Government Colleges--especially where Botany is in the regular course of +Collegiate studies. The Company's Botanic Garden being on the other side +of the river and at an inconvenient distance from the city cannot be +much resorted to by any one whose time is precious. An attempt was made +not long ago to have the Garden of the Horticultural Society (now +forming part of the Company's Botanic Garden) on this side of the river, +but the public subscriptions that were called for to meet the necessary +expenses were so inadequate to the purpose that the money realized was +returned to the subscribers, and the idea relinquished, to the great +regret of many of the inhabitants of Calcutta who would have been +delighted to possess such a place of recreation and instruction within a +few minutes' drive. + +Hindu students, unlike English boys in general, remind us of Beattie's +Minstrel:-- + + The exploit of strength, dexterity and speed + To him nor vanity, nor joy could bring. + +A sort of Garden Academy, therefore, full of pleasant shades, would be +peculiarly suited to the tastes and habits of our Indian Collegians. +They are not fond of cricket or leap-frog. They would rejoice to devote +a leisure hour to pensive letterings in a pleasure-garden, and on an +occasional holiday would gladly pursue even their severest studies, book +in hand, amidst verdant bowers. A stranger from Europe beholding them, +in their half-Grecian garments, thus wandering amidst the trees, would +be reminded of the disciples of Plato. + +"It is not easy," observes Lord Kames, "to suppress a degree of +enthusiasm, when we reflect on the advantages of gardening with respect +to virtuous education. In the beginning of life the deepest impressions +are made; and it is a sad truth, that the young student, familiarized to +the dirtiness and disorder of many colleges pent within narrow bounds in +populous cities, is rendered in a measure insensible to the elegant +beauties of art and nature. It seems to me far from an exaggeration, +that good professors are not more essential to a college, than a +spacious garden, sweetly ornamented, but without any thing glaring or +fantastic, is upon the whole to inspire our youth with a taste no less +for simplicity than for elegance. In this respect the University of +Oxford may justly be deemed a model." + +It may be expected that I should offer a few hints on the laying out of +gardens. Much has been said (by writers on ornamental and landscape +gardening) on _art_ and _nature_, and almost always has it been implied +that these must necessarily be in direct opposition. I am far from being +of this opinion. If art and nature be not in some points of view almost +identical, they are at least very good friends, or may easily be made +so. They are not necessarily hostile. They admit of the most harmonious +combinations. In no place are such combinations more easy or more proper +than in a garden. Walter Scott very truly calls a garden the child of +Art. But is it not also the child of Nature?--of Nature and Art +together? To attempt to exclude art--or even, the appearance of +art--from a small garden enclosure, is idle and absurd. He who objects to +all art in the arrangement of a flower-bed, ought, if consistent with +himself, to turn away with an expression of disgust from a well arranged +nosegay in a rich porcelain vase. But who would not loathe or laugh at +such manifest affectation or such thoroughly bad taste? As there is a +time for every thing, so also is there a place for every thing. No man +of true judgment would desire to trace the hand of human art on the form +of nature in remote and gigantic forests, and amidst vast mountains, as +irregular as the billows of a troubled sea. In such scenery there is a +sublime grace in wildness,--_there_ "the very weeds are beautiful." But +what true judgment would be enchanted with weeds and wildness in the +small parterre. As Pope rightly says, we must + + Consult the genius of the place in all. + +It is pleasant to enter a rural lane overgrown with field-flowers, or to +behold an extensive common irregularly decorated with prickly gorse or +fern and thistle, but surely no man of taste would admire nature in this +wild and dishevelled state in a little suburban garden. Symmetry, +elegance and beauty, (--no _sublimity_ or _grandeur_--) trimness, +snugness, privacy, cleanliness, comfort, and convenience--the results of +a happy conjunction of art and nature--are all that we can aim at within +a limited extent of ground. In a small parterre we either trace with +pleasure the marks of the gardener's attention or are disgusted with his +negligence. In a mere patch of earth around a domestic dwelling nature +ought not to be left entirely to herself. + +What is agreeable in one sphere of life is offensive in another. A dirty +smock frock and a soiled face in a ploughman's child who has been +swinging on rustic gates a long summer morning or rolling down the +slopes of hills, or grubbing in the soil of his small garden, may remind +us, not unpleasantly, of one of Gainsborough's pictures; but we look for +a different sort of nature on the canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds or Sir +Thomas Lawrence, or in the brilliant drawing-rooms of the nobility; and +yet an Earl's child looks and moves at least as _naturally_ as a +peasant's. + +There is nature every where--in the palace as well as in the hut, in the +cultivated garden as well as in the wild wood. Civilized life is, after +all, as natural as savage life. All our faculties are natural, and +civilized man cultivates his mental powers and studies the arts of life +by as true an instinct as that which leads the savage to make the most +of his mud hut, and to improve himself or his child as a hunter, a +fisherman, or a warrior. The mind of man is the noblest work of its +Maker (--in this world--) and the movements of man's mind may be quite +as natural, and quite as poetical too, as the life that rises from the +ground. It is as natural for the mind, as it is for a tree or flower to +advance towards perfection. Nature suggests art, and art again imitates +and approximates to nature, and this principle of action and reaction +brings man by degrees towards that point of comparative excellence for +which God seems to have intended him. The mind of a Milton or a +Shakespeare is surely not in a more unnatural condition than that of an +ignorant rustic. We ought not then to decry refinement nor deem all +connection of art with nature an offensive incongruity. A noble mansion +in a spacious and well kept park is an object which even an observer who +has no share himself in the property may look upon with pleasure. It +makes him proud of his race.[116] We cannot witness so harmonious a +conjunction of art and nature without feeling that man is something +better than a mere beast of the field or forest. We see him turn both +art and nature to his service, and we cannot contemplate the lordly +dwelling and the richly decorated land around it--and the neatness and +security and order of the whole scene--without associating them with the +high accomplishments and refined tastes that in all probability +distinguish the proprietor and his family. It is a strange mistake to +suppose that nothing is natural beyond savage ignorance--that all +refinement is unnatural--that there is only one sort of simplicity. For +the mind elevated by civilization is in a more natural state than a mind +that has scarcely passed the boundary of brutal instinct, and the +simplicity of a savage's hut, does not prevent there being a nobler +simplicity in a Grecian temple. + +Kent[117] the famous landscape gardener, tells us that _nature_ _abhors +a straight line_. And so she does--in some cases--but not in all. A ray +of light is a straight line, and so also is a Grecian nose, and so also +is the stem of the betel-nut tree. It must, indeed, be admitted that he +who should now lay out a large park or pleasure-ground on strictly +geometrical principles or in the old topiary style would exhibit a +deplorable want of taste and judgment. But the provinces of the +landscape gardener and the parterre gardener are perfectly distinct. The +landscape gardener demands a wide canvas. All his operations are on a +large scale. In a small garden we have chiefly to aim at the +_gardenesque_ and in an extensive park at the _picturesque_. Even in the +latter case, however, though + + 'Tis Nature still, 'tis nature methodized: + +Or in other words: + + Nature to advantage dressed. + +for even in the largest parks or pleasure-grounds, an observer of true +taste is offended by an air of negligence or the absence of all traces +of human art or care. Such places ought to indicate the presence of +civilized life and security and order. We are not pleased to see weeds +and jungle--or litter of any sort--even dry leaves--upon the princely +domain, which should look like a portion of nature set apart or devoted +to the especial care and enjoyment of the owner and his friends:--a +strictly private property. The grass carpet should be trimly shorn and +well swept. The trees should be tastefully separated from each other at +irregular but judicious distances. They should have fine round heads of +foliage, clean stems, and no weeds or underwood below, nor a single dead +branch above. When we visit the finest estates of the nobility and +gentry in England it is impossible not to perceive in every case a +marked distinction between the wild nature of a wood and the civilized +nature of a park. In the latter you cannot overlook the fact that every +thing injurious to the health and growth and beauty of each individual +tree has been studiously removed, while on the other hand, light, air, +space, all things in fact that, if sentient, the tree could itself be +supposed to desire, are most liberally supplied. There is as great a +difference between the general aspect of the trees in a nobleman's +pleasure ground and those in a jungle, as between the rustics of a +village and the well bred gentry of a great city. Park trees have +generally a fine air of aristocracy about them. + +A Gainsborough or a Morland would seek his subjects in remote villages +and a Watteau or a Stothard in the well kept pleasure ground. The ruder +nature of woods and villages, of sturdy ploughmen and the healthy though +soiled and ragged children in rural neighbourhoods, affords a by no +means unpleasing contrast and introduction to the trim trees and +smoothly undulating lawns, and curved walks, and gay parterres, and fine +ladies and well dressed and graceful children on some old ancestral +estate. We look for rusticity in the village, and for elegance in the +park. The sleek and noble air of patrician trees, standing proudly on +the rich velvet sward, the order and grace and beauty of all that meets +the eye, lead us, as I have said already, to form a high opinion of the +owner. In this we may of course be sometimes disappointed; but a man's +character is generally to be traced in almost every object around him +over which he has the power of a proprietor, and in few things are a +man's taste and habits more distinctly marked than in his park and +garden. If we find the owner of a neatly kept garden and an elegant +mansion slovenly, rude and vulgar in appearance and manners, we +inevitably experience that shock of surprize which is excited by every +thing that is incongruous or out of keeping. On the other hand if the +garden be neglected and overgrown with weeds, or if every thing in its +arrangement indicate a want of taste, and a disregard of neatness and +order, we feel no astonishment whatever in discovering that the +proprietor is as negligent of his mind and person as of his shrubberies +and his lawns. + +A civilized country ought not to look like a savage one. We need not +have wild nature in front of our neatly finished porticos. Nothing can +be more strictly artificial than all architecture. It would be absurd to +erect an elegantly finished residence in the heart of a jungle. There +should be an harmonious gradation from the house to the grounds, and +true taste ought not to object to terraces of elegant design and +graceful urns and fine statues in the immediate neighbourhood of a noble +dwelling. + +Undoubtedly as a general rule, the undulating curve in garden scenery is +preferable to straight lines or abrupt turns or sharp angles, but if +there should happen to be only a few yards between the outer gateway and +the house, could anything be more fantastical or preposterous than an +attempt to give the ground between them a serpentine irregularity? Even +in the most spacious grounds the walks should not seem too studiously +winding, as if the short turns were meant for no other purpose than to +perplex or delay the walker.[118] They should have a natural sweep, and +seem to meander rather in accordance with the nature of the ground and +the points to which they lead than in obedience to some idle sport of +fancy. They should not remind us of Gray's description of the divisions +of an old mansion: + + Long passages that lead to nothing. + +Foot-paths in small gardens need not be broader than will allow two +persons to walk abreast with ease. A spacious garden may have walks of +greater breadth. A path for one person only is inconvenient and has a +mean look. + +I have made most of the foregoing observations in something of a spirit +of opposition to those Landscape gardeners who I think once carried a +true principle to an absurd excess. I dislike, as much as any one can, +the old topiary style of our remote ancestors, but the talk about free +nature degenerated at last into downright cant, and sheer extravagance; +the reformers were for bringing weeds and jungle right under our parlour +windows, and applied to an acre of ground those rules of Landscape +gardening which required a whole county for their proper +exemplification. It is true that Milton's Paradise had "no nice art" in +it, but then it was not a little suburban pleasure ground but a world. +When Milton alluded to private gardens, he spoke of their trimness. + + Retired Leisure + That in _trim_ gardens takes his pleasure. + +The larger an estate the less necessary is it to make it merely neat, +and symmetrical, especially in those parts of the ground that are +distant from the house; but near the architecture some degree of finish +and precision is always necessary, or at least advisable, to prevent the +too sudden contrast between the straight lines and artificial +construction of the dwelling and the flowing curves and wild but +beautiful irregularities of nature unmoulded by art. A garden adjacent +to the house should give the owner a sense of _home_. He should not feel +himself abroad at his own door. If it were only for the sake of variety +there should be some distinction between the private garden and the open +field. If the garden gradually blends itself with a spacious park or +chase, the more the ground recedes from the house the more it may +legitimately assume the aspect of a natural landscape. It will then be +necessary to appeal to the eye of a landscape gardener or a painter or a +poet before the owner, if ignorant of the principles of fine art, +attempt the completion of the general design. + +I should like to see my Native friends who have extensive grounds, vary +the shape of their tanks, but if they dislike a more natural form of +water, irregular or winding, and are determined to have them with four +sharp corners, let them at all events avoid the evil of several small +tanks in the same "compound." A large tank is more likely to have good +water and to retain it through the whole summer season than a smaller +one and is more easily kept clean and grassy to the water's edge. I do +not say that it would be proper to have a piece of winding water in a +small compound--that indeed would be impracticable. But even an oval or +round tank would be better than a square one.[119] + +If the Native gentry could obtain the aid of tasteful gardeners, I would +recommend that the level land should be varied with an occasional +artificial elevation, nicely sloped or graduated; but Native _malees_ +would be sure to aim rather at the production of abrupt round knobs +resembling warts or excrescences than easy and natural undulations of +the surface. + +With respect to lawns, the late Mr. Speede recommended the use of the +_doob_ grass, but it is so extremely difficult to keep it clear of any +intermixture of the _ooloo_ grass, which, when it intrudes upon the +_doob_ gives the lawn a patchwork and shabby look, that it is better to +use the _ooloo_ grass only, for it is far more manageable; and if kept +well rolled and closely shorn it has a very neat, and indeed, beautiful +appearance. The lawns in the compound of the Government House in +Calcutta are formed of _ooloo_ glass only, but as they have been very +carefully attended to they have really a most brilliant and agreeable +aspect. In fact, their beautiful bright green, in the hottest summer, +attracts even the notice and admiration of the stranger fresh from +England. The _ooloo_ grass, however, on close inspection is found to be +extremely coarse, nor has even the finest _doob_ the close texture and +velvet softness of the grass of English lawns. + +Flower beds should be well rounded. They should never have long narrow +necks or sharp angles in which no plant can have room to grow freely. +Nor should they be divided into compartments, too minute or numerous, +for so arranged they must always look petty and toy-like. A lawn should +be as open and spacious as the ground will fairly admit without too +greatly limiting the space for flowers. Nor should there be an +unnecessary multiplicity of walks. We should aim at a certain breadth of +style. Flower beds may be here and there distributed over the lawn, but +care should be taken that it be not too much broken up by them. A few +trees may be introduced upon the lawn, but they must not be placed so +close together as to prevent the growth of the grass by obstructing +either light or air. No large trees should be allowed to smother up the +house, particularly on the southern and western sides, for besides +impeding the circulation through the rooms of the most wholesome winds +of this country, they would attract mosquitoes, and give an air of +gloominess to the whole place. + +Natives are too fond of over-crowding their gardens with trees and +shrubs and flowers of all sorts, with no regard to individual or general +effects, with no eye to arrangement of size, form or color; and in this +hot and moist climate the consequent exclusion of free air and the +necessary degree of light has a most injurious influence not only upon +the health of the resident but upon vegetation itself. Neither the +finest blossoms nor the finest fruits can be expected from an +overstocked garden. The native malee generally plants his fruit trees so +close together that they impede each other's growth and strength. Every +Englishman when he enters a native's garden feels how much he could +improve its productiveness and beauty by a free use of the hatchet. Too +many trees and too much embellishment of a small garden make it look +still smaller, and even on a large piece of ground they produce confused +and disagreeable effects and indicate an absence of all true judgment. +This practice of over-filling a garden is an instance of bad taste, +analogous to that which is so conspicuously characteristic of our own +countrymen in India with respect to their apartments, which look more +like an upholsterer's show-rooms or splendid ornament-shops than +drawing-rooms or parlours. There is scarcely space enough to turn in +them without fracturing some frail and costly bauble. Where a garden is +over-planted the whole place is darkened, the ground is green and slimy, +the grass thin, sickly and straggling, and the trees and shrubs +deficient in freshness and vigor. + +Not only should the native gentry avoid having their flower-borders too +thickly filled,--they should take care also that they are not too broad. +We ought not to be obliged to leave the regular path and go across the +soft earth of the bed to obtain a sight of a particular shrub or flower. +Close and entangled foliage keeps the ground too damp, obstructs +wholesome air, and harbours snakes and a great variety of other noxious +reptiles. Similar objections suggest the propriety of having no shrubs +or flowers or even a grass-plot immediately under the windows and about +the doors of the house. A well exposed gravel or brick walk should be +laid down on all sides of the house, as a necessary safeguard against +both moisture and vermin. + +I have spoken already of the unrivalled beauty of English gravel. It +cannot be too much admired. _Kunkur_[120] looks extremely smart for a +few weeks while it preserves its solidity and freshness, but it is +rapidly ground into powder under carriage wheels or blackened by +occasional rain and the permanent moisture of low grounds when only +partially exposed to the sun and air. Why should not an opulent Rajah or +Nawaub send for a cargo of beautiful red gravel from the gravel pits at +Kensington? Any English House of Agency here would obtain it for him. It +would be cheap in the end, for it lasts at least five times as long as +the kunkur, and if of a proper depth admits of repeated turnings with +the spade, looking on every turn almost as fresh as the day on which it +was first laid down. + +Instead of brick-bat edgings, the wealthy Oriental nobleman might trim +all his flower-borders with the green box-plant of England, which would +flourish I suppose in this climate or in any other. Cobbett in his +_English Gardener_ speaks with so much enthusiasm and so much to the +purpose on the subject of box as an edging, that I must here repeat his +eulogium on it. + +The box is at once the most efficient of all possible things, and the +prettiest plant that can possibly be conceived; the color of its leaf; +the form of its leaf; its docility as to height, width and shape; the +compactness of its little branches; its great durability as a plant; its +thriving in all sorts of soils and in all sorts of aspects; _its +freshness under the hottest sun_, and its defiance of all shade and +drip: these are the beauties and qualities which, for ages upon ages, +have marked it out as the chosen plant for this very important purpose. + +The edging ought to be clipped in the winter or very early in spring on +both sides and at top; a line ought to be used to regulate the movements +of the shears; it ought to be clipped again in the same manner about +midsummer; and if there be _a more neat and beautiful thing than this in +the world, all that I can say is, that I never saw that thing_. + +A small green edging for a flower bed can hardly be too _trim_; but +large hedges with tops and sides cut as flat as boards, and trees +fantastically shaped with the shears into an exhibition as full of +incongruities as the wildest dream, have deservedly gone out of fashion +in England. Poets and prose writers have agreed to ridicule all verdant +sculpture on a large scale. Here is a description of the old topiary +gardens. + + These likewise mote be seen on every side + The shapely box, of all its branching pride + Ungently shorn, and, with preposterous skill + To various beasts, and birds of sundry quill + Transformed, and human shapes of monstrous size. + + * * * * * + + Also other wonders of the sportive shears + Fair Nature misadorning; there were found + Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers + With spouting urns and budding statues crowned; + And horizontal dials on the ground + In living box, by cunning artists traced, + And galleys trim, or on long voyage bound, + But by their roots there ever anchored fast. + +_G. West_. + +The same taste for torturing nature into artificial forms prevailed +amongst the ancients long after architecture and statuary had been +carried to such perfection that the finest British artists of these +times can do nothing but copy and repeat what was accomplished so many +ages ago by the people of another nation. Pliny, in his description of +his Tuscan villa, speaks of some of his trees having been cut into +letters and the forms of animals, and of others placed in such regular +order that they reminded the spectator of files of soldiers.[121] The +Dutch therefore should not bear all the odium of the topiary style of +gardening which they are said to have introduced into England and other +countries of Europe. They were not the first sinners against natural +taste. + +The Hindus are very fond of formally cut hedges and trimmed trees. All +sorts of verdant hedges are in some degree objectionable in a hot moist +country, rife with deadly vermin. I would recommend ornamental iron +railings or neatly cut and well painted wooden pales, as more airy, +light, and cheerful, and less favorable to snakes and centipedes. + +This is the finest country in the world for making gardens speedily. In +the rainy season vegetation springs up at once, as at the stroke of an +Enchanter's wand. The Landscape gardeners in England used to grieve that +they could hardly expect to live long enough to see the effect of their +designs. Such artists would have less reason, to grieve on that account +in this country. Indeed even in England, the source of uneasiness +alluded to, is now removed. "The deliberation with which trees grow," +wrote Horace Walpole, in a letter to a friend, "is extremely +inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous +an age when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am +persuaded that 150 years hence it will be as common to remove oaks 150 +years old as it now is to plant tulip roots." The writer was not a bad +prophet. He has not yet been dead much more than half a century and his +expectations are already more than half realized. Shakespeare could not +have anticipated this triumph of art when he made Macbeth ask + + Who can impress the forest? Bid the tree + Unfix his earth-bound root? + +The gardeners have at last discovered that the largest (though not +perhaps the _oldest_) trees can be removed from one place to another +with comparative facility and safety. Sir H. Stewart moved several +hundred lofty trees without the least injury to any of them. And if +broad and lofty trees can be transplanted in England, how much more +easily and securely might such a process be effected in the rainy season +in this country. In half a year a new garden might be made to look like +a garden of half a century. Or an old and ill-arranged plantation might +thus be speedily re-adjusted to the taste of the owner. The main object +is to secure a good ball of earth round the root, and the main +difficulty is to raise the tree and remove it. Many most ingenious +machines for raising a tree from the ground, and trucks for removing it, +have been lately invented by scientific gardeners in England. A +Scotchman, Mr. McGlashen, has been amongst the most successful of late +transplanters. He exhibited one of his machines at Paris to the present +Emperor of the French, and lifted with it a fir tree thirty feet high. +The French ruler lavished the warmest commendations on the ingenious +artist and purchased his apparatus at a large price.[122] + +Bengal is enriched with a boundless variety of noble trees admirably +suited to parks and pleasure grounds. These should be scattered about a +spacious compound with a spirited and graceful irregularity, and so +disposed with reference to the dwelling as in some degree to vary the +view of it, and occasionally to conceal it from the visitor driving up +the winding road from the outer gate to the portico. The trees, I must +repeat, should be so divided as to give them a free growth and admit +sufficient light and air beneath them to allow the grass to flourish. +Grassless ground under park trees has a look of barrenness, discomfort +and neglect, and is out of keeping with the general character of the +scene. + +The Banyan (_Ficus Indica or Bengaliensis_)-- + + The Indian tree, whose branches downward bent, + Take root again, a boundless canopy-- + +and the Peepul or Pippul (_Ficus Religiosa_) are amongst the finest +trees in this country--or perhaps in the world--and on a very spacious +pleasure ground or park they would present truly magnificent aspects. +Colonel Sykes alludes to a Banyan at the village of Nikow in Poonah with +68 stems descending from and supporting the branches. This tree is said +to be capable of affording shelter to 20,000 men. It is a tree of this +sort which Milton so well describes. + + The fig tree, not that kind for fruit renowned, + But such as at this day, to Indians known + In Malabar or Deccan, spreads her arms + Branching so broad and long, a pillared shade, + High over arched, and echoing walks between + There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat, + Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds + At loop holes cut through the thickest shade those leaves, + They gathered, broad as Amazonian taige; + And with what skill they had together sewed, + To gird their waste. + +Milton is mistaken as to the size of the leaves of this tree, though he +has given its general character with great exactness.[123] + +A remarkable banyan or buri tree, near Manjee, twenty miles west of +Patna, is 375 inches in diameter, the circumference of its shadow at +noon measuring 1116 feet. It has sixty stems, or dropped branches that +have taken root. Under this tree once sat a naked fakir who had occupied +that situation for 25 years; but he did not continue there the whole +year, for his vow obliged him to be during the four cold months up to +his neck in the water of the Ganges![124] + +It is said that there is a banyan tree near Gombroon on the Persian +gulf, computed to cover nearly 1,700 yards. + +The Banyan tree in the Company's Botanic garden, is a fine tree, but it +is of small dimensions compared with those of the trees just +mentioned.[125] + +The cocoanut tree has a characteristically Oriental aspect and a natural +grace, but it is not well suited to the ornamental garden or the +princely villa. It is too suggestive of the rudest village scenery, and +perhaps also of utilitarian ideas of mere profit, as every poor man who +has half a dozen cocoanut trees on his ground disposes of the produce in +the bazar. + +I would recommend my native friends to confine their clumps of plaintain +trees to the kitchen garden, for though the leaf of the plaintain is a +proud specimen of oriental foliage when it is first opened out to the +sun, it soon gets torn to shreds by the lightest breeze. The tattered +leaves then dry up and the whole of the tree presents the most beggarly +aspect imaginable. The stem is as ragged and untidy as the leaves. + +The kitchen garden and the orchard should be in the rear of the house. +The former should not be too visible from the windows and the latter is +on many accounts better at the extremity of the grounds than close to +the house, as we too often find it. A native of high rank should keep as +much out of sight as possible every thing that would remind a visitor +that any portion of the ground was intended rather for pecuniary profit +than the immediate pleasure of the owner. The people of India do not +seem to be sufficiently aware that any sign of parsimony in the +management of a large park or pleasure ground produces in the mind of +the visitor an unfavorable impression of the character of the owner. I +have seen in Calcutta vast mansions of which every little niche and +corner towards the street was let out to very small traders at a few +annas a month. What would the people of England think of an opulent +English Nobleman who should try to squeeze a few pence from the poor by +dividing the street front of his palace into little pigeon-sheds of +petty shops for the retail of petty wares? Oh! Princes of India "reform +this altogether." This sordid saving, this widely published parsimony, +is not only not princely, it is not only not decorous, it is positively +disgusting to every passer-by who himself possesses any right thought or +feeling. + +The Natives seem every day more and more inclined to imitate European +fashions, and there are few European fashions, which could be borrowed +by the highest or lowest of the people of this country with a more +humanizing and delightful effect than that attention to the exterior +elegance and neatness of the dwelling-house, and that tasteful garniture +of the contiguous ground, which in England is a taste common to the +prince and the peasant, and which has made that noble country so full of +those beautiful homes which surprize and enchant its foreign visitors. + +The climate and soil of this country are peculiarly favorable to the +cultivation of trees and shrubs and flowers; and the garden here is at +no season of the year without its ornaments. + +The example of the Horticultural Society of India, and the attractions +of the Company's Botanic Garden ought to have created a more general +taste amongst us for the culture of flowers. Bishop Heber tells us that +the Botanic Garden here reminded hint more of Milton's description of +the Garden of Eden than any other public garden, that he had ever +seen.[126] + +There is a Botanic Garden at Serampore. In 1813 it was in charge of Dr. +Roxburgh. Subsequently came the amiable and able Dr. Wallich; then the +venerable Dr. Carey was for a time the Officiating Superintendent. Dr. +Voigt followed and then one of the greatest of our Anglo-Indian +botanists, Dr. Griffiths. After him came Dr. McLelland, who is at this +present time counting the teak trees in the forests of Pegu. He was +succeeded by Dr. Falconer who left this country but a few months ago. +The garden is now in charge of Dr. Thomson who is said to be an +enthusiast in his profession. He explored the region beyond the snowy +range I think with Captain Cunningham, some years ago. With the +exceptions of Voigt and Carey, all who have had charge of the garden at +Serampore have held at the same time the more important appointment of +Superintendent of the Company's Botanic Garden at Garden Beach. + +There is a Botanic Garden at Bhagulpore, which owes its origin to Major +Napleton. I have been unable to obtain any information regarding its +present condition. A good Botanic Garden has been already established in +the Punjab, where there is also an Agricultural and Horticultural +Society. + +I regret that it should have been deemed necessary to make stupid +pedants of Hindu malees by providing them with a classical nomenclature +for plants. Hindostanee names would have answered the purpose just as +well. The natives make a sad mess of our simplest English names, but +their Greek must be Greek indeed! A _Quarterly Reviewer_ observes that +Miss Mitford has found it difficult to make the maurandias and +alstraemerias and eschxholtzias--the commonest flowers of our modern +garden--look passable even in prose. But what are these, he asks, to the +pollopostemonopetalae and eleutheroromacrostemones of Wachendorf, with +such daily additions as the native name of iztactepotzacuxochitl +icohueyo, or the more classical ponderosity of Erisymum Peroffskyanum. + + --like the verbum Graecum + Spermagoraiolekitholakanopolides, + Words that should only be said upon holidays, + When one has nothing else to do. + +If these names are unpronounceable even by Europeans, what would the +poor Hindu malee make of them? The pedantry of some of our scientific +Botanists is something marvellous. One would think that a love of +flowers must produce or imply a taste for simplicity and nature in all +things.[127] + +As by way of encouragement to the native gardeners--to enable them to +dispose of the floral produce of their gardens at a fair price--the +Horticultural Society has withdrawn from the public the indulgence of +gratuitous supplies of plants, it would be as well if some men of taste +were to instruct these native nursery-men how to lay out their grounds, +(as their fellow-traders do at home,) with some regard to neatness, +cleanliness and order. These flower-merchants, and even the common +_malees_, should also be instructed, I think, how to make up a decent +bouquet, for if it be possible to render the most elegant things in the +creation offensive to the eye of taste, that object is assuredly very +completely effected by these swarthy artists when they arrange, with +such worse than Dutch precision and formality, the ill-selected, +ill-arranged, and tightly bound treasures of the parterre for the +classical vases of their British masters. I am often vexed to observe the +idleness or apathy which suffers such atrocities as these specimens of +Indian taste to disgrace the drawing-rooms of the City of Palaces. This is +quite inexcusable in a family where there are feminine hands for the +truly graceful and congenial task of selecting and arranging the daily +supply of garden decorations. A young lady--"herself a fairer +flower"--is rarely exhibited to a loving eye in a more delightful point of +view than when her delicate and dainty fingers are so employed. + +If a lovely woman arranging the nosegays and flower-vases, in her +parlour, is a sweet living picture, a still sweeter sight does she +present to us when she is in the garden itself. Milton thus represents +the fair mother of the fair in the first garden:-- + + Eve separate he spies. + Veil'd in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood, + Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round + About her glow'd, oft stooping to support + Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay, + Carnation, purple, azure, or speck'd with gold, + Hung drooping unsustain'd; them she upstays + Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while + Herself, though fairest unsupported flower, + From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh. + Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed + Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm; + Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen, + Among thick woven arborets, and flowers + Imborder'd on each bank, the hand of Eve[128] + +_Paradise Lost. Book IX_. + +Chaucer (in "The Knight's Tale,") describes Emily in her garden as +fairer to be seen + + Than is the lily on his stalkie green; + +And Dryden, in his modernized version of the old poet, says, + + At every turn she made a little stand, + And thrust among the thorns her lily hand + To draw the rose. + +Eve's roses were without thorns-- + + "And without thorn the rose,"[129] + +It is pleasant to see flowers plucked by the fairest fingers for some +elegant or worthy purpose, but it is not pleasant to see them _wasted_. +Some people pluck them wantonly, and then fling them away and litter the +garden walks with them. Some idle coxcombs, vain + + Of the nice conduct of a clouded cane, + +amuse themselves with switching off their lovely heads. "That's +villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it." +Lander says + + And 'tis my wish, and over was my way, + To let all flowers live freely, and so die. + +Here is a poetical petitioner against a needless destruction of the +little tenants of the parterre. + + Oh, spare my flower, my gentle flower, + The slender creature of a day, + Let it bloom out its little hour, + And pass away. + + So soon its fleeting charms must lie + Decayed, unnoticed and o'erthrown, + Oh, hasten not its destiny, + Too like thine own. + +_Lyte_. + +Those who pluck flowers needlessly and thoughtlessly should be told that +other people like to see them flourish, and that it is as well for every +one to bear in mind the beautiful remark of Lord Bacon that "the breath +of flowers is far sweeter in the air than in the hand; for in the air it +comes and goes like the warbling of music." + +The British portion of this community allow their exile to be much more +dull and dreary than it need be, by neglecting to cultivate their +gardens, and leaving them entirely to the taste and industry of the +_malee_. I never feel half so much inclined to envy the great men of +this now crowded city the possession of vast but gardenless mansions, +(partly blocked up by those of their neighbours,) as I do to felicitate +the owner of some humbler but more airy and wholesome dwelling in the +suburbs, when the well-sized grounds attached to it have been touched +into beauty by the tasteful hand of a lover of flowers. + +But generally speaking my countrymen in most parts of India allow their +grounds to remain in a state which I cannot help characterizing as +disreputable. It is amazing how men or women accustomed to English modes +of life can reconcile themselves to that air of neglect, disorder, and +discomfort which most of their "compounds" here exhibit. + +It would afford me peculiar gratification to find this book read with +interest by my Hindu friends, (for whom, chiefly, it has been written,) +and to hear that it has induced some of them to pay more attention to +the ornamental cultivation of their grounds; for it would be difficult +to confer upon them a greater blessing than a taste for the innocent and +elegant pleasures of the FLOWER-GARDEN. + + + +SUPPLEMENT. + + +SACRED TREES AND SHRUBS OF THE HINDUS. + +The following list of the trees and shrubs held sacred by the Hindus is +from the friend who furnished me with the list of Flowers used in Hindu +ceremonies.[130] It was received too late to enable me to include it in +the body of the volume. + +AMALAKI (_Phyllanthus emblica_).--A tree held sacred to Shiva. It has no +flowers, and its leaves are in consequence used in worshipping that +deity as well as Durga, Kali, and others. The natives of Bengal do not +look upon it with any degree of religious veneration, but those of the +Upper Provinces annually worship it on the day of the _Shiva Ratri_, +which generally falls in the latter end of February or the beginning of +March, and on which all the public offices are closed. + +ASWATH-THA (_Ficus Religiosa_).--It is commonly called by Europeans the +Peepul tree, by which name, it is known to the natives of the Upper +Provinces. The _Bhagavat Gita_ says that Krishna in giving an account of +his power and glory to Arjuna, before the commencement of the celebrated +battle between the _Kauravas_ and _Pandavas_ at _Kurukshetra_, +identified himself with the _Aswath-tha_ whence the natives consider it +to be a sacred tree.[131] + +BILWA OR SREEFUL (_Aegle marmelos_).--It is the common wood-apple tree, +which is held sacred to Shiva, and its leaves are used in worshipping +him as well as Durga, Kali, and others. The _Mahabharat_ says that when +Shiva at the request of Krishna and the Pandavas undertook the +protection of their camp at Kurukshetra on the night of the last day of +the battle, between them and the sons of Dhritarashtra, Aswathama, a +friend and follower of the latter, took up a Bilwa tree by its roots and +threw it upon the god, who considering it in the light of an offering +made to him, was so much pleased with Aswathama that he allowed him to +enter the camp, where he killed the five sons of the Pandavas and the +whole of the remnants of their army. Other similar stories are also told +of the Bilwa tree to prove its sacredness, but the one I have given +above, will be sufficient to shew in what estimation it is held by the +Hindus. + +BAT (_Ficus indica_).--Is the Indian Banian tree, supposed to be +immortal and coeval with the gods; whence it is venerated as one of +them. It is also supposed to be a male tree, while the Aswath-tha or +Peepul is looked upon as a female, whence the lower orders of the people +plant them side by side and perform the ceremony of matrimony with a +view to connect them as man and wife.[132] + +DURVA' (_Panicum dactylon_).--A grass held to be sacred to Vishnu, who +in his seventh _Avatara_ or incarnation, as Rama, the son of Dasaratha, +king of Oude, assumed the colour of the grass, which is used in all +religious ceremonies of the Hindus. It has medicinal properties. + +KA'STA' (_Saccharum spontaneum_).--It is a large species of grass. In +those ceremonies which the Hindus perform after the death of a person, +or with a view to propitiate the Manes of their ancestors this grass is +used whenever the Kusa is not to be had. When it is in flower, the +natives look upon the circumstance as indicative of the close of the +rains. + +KU'SA (_Poa cynosuroides_).--The grass to which, reference has been made +above. It is used in all ceremonies performed in connection with the +death of a person or having for their object the propitiation of the +Manes of ancestors. + +MANSA-SHIJ (_Euphorbia ligularia_).--This plant is supposed by the +natives of Bengal to be sacred to _Mansa_, the goddess of snakes, and is +worshipped by them on certain days of the months of June, July, August, +and September, during which those reptiles lay their eggs and breed +their young. The festival of Arandhana, which is more especially +observed by the lower orders of the people, is in honor of the Goddess +Mansa.[133] + +NA'RIKELA (_Coccos nucifera_).--The Cocoanut tree, which is supposed to +possess the attributes of a Brahmin and is therefore held sacred.[134] + +NIMBA (_Melia azadirachta_).--A tree from the trunk of which the idol at +Pooree was manufactured, and which is in consequence identified with the +ribs of Vishnu.[135] + +TU'LSI (_Ocymum_).--The Indian Basil, of which there are several +species, such as the _Ram Tulsi_ (ocymum gratissimum) the _Babooye +Tulsi_ (ocymum pilosum) the _Krishna Tulsi_ (osymum sanctum) and the +common _Tulsi_ (ocymum villosum) all of which possess medicinal +properties, but the two latter are held to be sacred to Vishnu and used +in his worship. The _Puranas_ say that Krishna assumed the form of +_Saukasura_, and seduced his wife Brinda. When he was discovered he +manifested his extreme regard for her by turning her into the _Tulsi_ +and put the leaves upon his head.[136] + + + +APPENDIX. + + + * * * * * + +THE FLOWER GARDEN IN INDIA. + +The following practical directions and useful information respecting the +Indian Flower-Garden, are extracted from the late Mr. Speede's _New +Indian Gardener_, with the kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. +Thacker Spink and Company of Calcutta. + +THE SOIL. + +So far as practicable, the soil should be renewed every year, by turning +in vegetable mould, river sand, and well rotted manure to the depth of +about a foot; and every second or third year the perennials should be +taken up, and reduced, when a greater proportion of manure may be added, +or what is yet better, the whole of the old earth removed, and new mould +substituted. + +It used to be supposed that the only time for sowing annuals or other +plants, (in Bengal) is the beginning of the cold weather, but although +this is the case with a great number of this class of plants, it is a +popular error to think it applies to all, since there are many that grow +more luxuriantly if sown at other periods. The Pink, for instance, may +be sown at any time, Sweet William thrives best if sown in March or +April, the variegated and light colored Larkspurs should not be put in +until December, the Dahlia germinates most successfully in the rains, +and the beautiful class of Zinnias are never seen to perfection unless +sown in June. + +This is the more deserving of attention, as it holds out the prospect of +maintaining our Indian flower gardens, in life and beauty, throughout +the whole year, instead of during the confined period hitherto +attempted. + +The several classes of flowering plants are divided into PERENNIAL, +BIENNIAL, and ANNUAL. + +PERENNIALS. + +The HERON'S BILL, Erodium; the STORK'S BILL, Pelargonium; and the +CRANE'S BILL, Geranium; all popularly known under the common designation +of Geranium, which gives name to the family, are well known, and are +favorite plants, of which but few of the numerous varieties are found +in this country. + +Of the first of these there are about five and twenty fixed species, +besides a vast number of varieties; of which there are here found only +the following:-- + +The _Flesh-colored Heron's bill_, E. incarnatum, is a pretty plant of +about six inches high, flowering in the hot weather, with flesh-colored +blossoms, but apt to become rather straggling. + +Of the hundred and ninety species of the second class, independently of +their varieties, there are few indeed that have found their way here, +only thirteen, most of which are but rarely met with. + +The _Rose-colored Stork's bill_, P. roseum, is tuberous rooted, and in +April yields pretty pink flowers. + +The _Brick-colored Stork's bill_, P. lateritium, affords red flowers in +March and April. + +The _Botany Bay Stork's bill_, P. Australe, is rare, but may be made to +give a pretty red flower in March. + +The _Common horse-shoe Stork's bill_, P. zonale, is often seen, and +yields its scarlet blossoms freely in April. + +The _Scarlet-flowered Stork's bill_, P. inquinans, affords a very fine +flower towards the latter end of the cold weather, and approaching to +the hot; it requires protection from the rains, as it is naturally of a +succulent nature, and will rot at the joints if the roots become at all +sodden: many people lay the pots down on their sides to prevent this, +which is tolerably successful to their preservation. + +The _Sweet-Scented Stork's bill_, P. odoratissimum, with pink flowers, +but it does not blossom freely, and the branches are apt to grow long +and straggling. + +The _Cut-leaved Stork's bill_, P. incisum, has small flowers, the petals +being long and thin, and the flowers which appear in April are white, +marked with pink. + +The _Ivy-leaved Stork's bill_, P. lateripes, has not been known to yield +flowers in this country. + +The _Rose-scented Stork's bill_, P. capitatum, the odour of the leaves +is very pleasant, but it is very difficult to force into blossom. + +The _Ternate Stork's bill_, P. ternatum, has variegated pink flowers in +April. + +The _Oak-leaved Stork's bill_, P. quercifolium, is much esteemed for the +beauty of its leaves, but has not been known to blossom in this climate. + +The _Tooth-leaved Stork's bill_, P. denticulatum, is not a free +flowerer, but may with care be made to bloom in April. + +The _Lemon, or Citron-scented Stork's bill_, P. gratum, grows freely, +and has a pretty appearance, but does not blossom. + +Of the second class of these plants the forty-eight species have only +three representatives. + +The _Aconite-leaved Crane's bill_, G. aconiti-folium, is a pretty plant, +but rare, yielding its pale blue flowers with difficulty. + +The _Wallich's Crane's bill_ G. Wallichianum, indigenous to Nepal, +having pale pink blossoms and rather pretty foliage, flowering in March +and April; but requiring protection in the succeeding hot weather, and +the beginning of the rains, as it is very susceptible of heat, or excess +of moisture. + +_Propagation_--may be effected by seed to multiply, or produce fresh +varieties, but the ordinary mode of increasing the different sorts is by +cuttings, no plant growing more readily by this mode. These should be +taken off at a joint where the wood is ripening, at which point the root +fibres are formed, and put into a pot with a compost of one part garden +mould, one part vegetable mould, and one part sand, and then kept +moderately moist, in the shade, until they have formed strong root +fibres, when they may be planted out. The best method is to plant each +cutting in a separate pot of the smallest size. The germinating of the +seeds will be greatly promoted by sinking the pots three parts of their +depth in a hot bed, keeping them moist and shaded and until they +germinate. + +_Soil, &c._ A rich garden mould, composed of light loam, rather sandy +than otherwise, with very rotten dung, is desirable for this shrub. + +_Culture_. Most kinds are rapid and luxurious growers, and it is +necessary to pay them constant attention in pruning or nipping the +extremities of the shoots, or they will soon become ill-formed and +straggling. This is particularly requisite during the rains, when heat +and moisture combine to increase their growth to excess; allowing them +to enjoy the full influence of the sun during the whole of the cold +weather, and part of the hot. At the close of the rains, the plants had +better be put out into the open ground, and closely pruned, the shoots +taken off affording an ample supply of cuttings for multiplying the +plants; this putting out will cause them to throw up strong healthy +shoots and rich blossoms; but as the hot weather approaches, or in the +beginning of March, they must be re-placed in moderate sized pots, with +a compost similar to that required for cuttings and placed in the plant +shed, as before described. The earth in the pots should be covered with +pebbles, or pounded brick of moderate size, which prevents the +accumulation of moss or fungi. Geraniums should at no time be over +watered, and must at all seasons be allowed a free ventilation. + +There is no doubt that if visitors from this to the Cape, would pay a +little attention to the subject, the varieties might be greatly +increased, and that without much trouble, as many kinds may be produced +freely by seed, if brought to the country fresh, and sown immediately on +arrival; young plants also in well glazed cases would not take up much +space in some of the large vessels coming from thence. + +The ANEMONE has numerous varieties, and is, in England, a very favorite +flower, but although A. cernua is a native of Japan, and many varieties +are indigenous to the Cape, it is very rare here. + +The _Double anemone_ is the most prized, but there are several _Single_ +and _Half double_ kinds which are very handsome. The stem of a good +anemone should be eight or nine inches in height, with a strong upright +stalk. The flower ought not to be less than seven inches in +circumference, the outer row of petals being well rounded, flat, and +expanding at the base, turning up with a full rounded edge, so as to +form a well shaped cup, within which, in the double kinds, should arise +a large group of long small petals reverted from the centre, and +regularly overlapping each other; the colors clear, each shade being +distinct in such as are variegated. + +The _Garden, or Star Wind flower_, A. hortensis, _Boostan afrooz_, is +another variety, found in Persia, and brought thence to Upper India, of +a bright scarlet color; a blue variety has also blossomed in Calcutta, +and was exhibited at the Show of February, 1847, by Mrs. Macleod, to +whom Floriculture is indebted for the introduction of many beautiful +exotics heretofore new to India. But it is to be hoped this handsome +species of flowering plants will soon be more extensively found under +cultivation. + +_Propagation_. Seed can hardly be expected to succeed in this country, +as even in Europe it fails of germinating; for if not sown immediately +that it is ripe, the length of journey or voyage would inevitably +destroy its power of producing. Offsets of the tubers therefore are the +only means that are left, and these should not be replanted until they +have been a sufficient time out of the ground, say a month or so, to +become hardened, nor should they be put into the earth until they have +dried, or the whole offset will rot by exposure of the newly fractured +side to the moisture of the earth. The tubers should be selected which +are plump and firm, as well as of moderate size, the larger ones being +generally hollow; these may be obtained in good order from Hobart Town. + +_Soil, &c._ A strong rich loamy soil is preferable, having a +considerable portion of well rotted cow-dung, with a little leaf mould, +dug to a depth of two feet, and the beds not raised too high, as it is +desirable to preserve moisture in the subsoil; if in pots, this is +effected by keeping a saucer of water under them continually, the pot +must however be deep, or the fibres will have too much wet; an open airy +situation is desirable. + +_Culture_. When the plant appears above ground the earth must be pressed +well down around the root, as the crowns and tubers are injured by +exposure to dry weather, and the plants should be sheltered from the +heat of the sun, but not so as to confine the air; they require the +morning and evening sun to shine on them, particularly the former. + +The IRIS is a handsome plant, attractive alike from the variety and the +beauty of its blossoms; some of them are also used medicinally. All +varieties produce abundance of seed, in which form the plant might with +great care be introduced into this country. + +The _Florence Iris_, I. florentina, _Ueersa_, is a large variety, +growing some two feet in height, the flower being white, and produced in +the hot weather. + +The _Persian Iris_ I. persica, _Hoobur_, is esteemed not only for its +handsome blue and purple flowers, but also for its fragrance, blossoming +in the latter part of the cold weather; one variety has blue and yellow +blossoms. + +The _Chinese Iris_, I. chinensis, _Soosun peelgoosh_, in a small sized +variety, but has very pretty blue and purple flowers in the beginning of +the hot weather. + +_Propagation_. Besides seed, which should be sown in drills, at the +close of the rains, in a sandy soil, it may be produced by offsets. + +_Soil, &c._ Almost any kind of soil suits the Iris, but the best flowers +are obtained from a mixture of sandy loam, with leaf mould, the Persian +kind requiring a larger proportion of sand. + +_Culture_. Little after culture is required, except keeping the beds +clear from weeds, and occasionally loosening the earth. But the roots +must be taken, up every two, or at most three years, and replanted, +after having been kept to harden for a month or six weeks; the proper +season for doing this being when the leaves decay after blossoming. + +The TUBEROSE, Polianthes, is well deserving of culture, but it is not by +any means a rare plant, and like many indigenous odoriferous flowers, +has rather too strong an odour to be borne near at hand, and it is +considered unwholesome in a room. + +The _Common Tuberose_, P. tuberosa, _Chubugulshubboo_, being a native of +India thrives in almost any soil, and requires no cultivation: it is +multiplied by dividing the roots. It flowers at all times of the year in +bunches of white flowers with long sepals. + +The _Double Tuberose_, P. florepleno, is very rich in appearance, and of +more delicate fragrance, although still too powerful for the room. Crows +are great destroyers of the blossoms, which they appear fond of pecking. +This variety is more rare, and the best specimens have been obtained +from Hobart Town. It is rather more delicate and requires more attention +in culture than the indigenous variety, and should be earthed up, so as +to prevent water lodging around the stem. + +The LOBELIA is a brilliant class of flowers which may be greatly +improved by careful cultivation. + +The _Splendid Lobelia_, L. splendens, is found in many gardens, and is a +showy scarlet flower, well worthy of culture. + +The _Pyramidal Lobelia_, L. pyramidalis, is a native of Nepal, and is a +modest pretty flower, of a purple color. + +_Propagation_--is best performed by offsets, suckers, or cuttings, but +seeds produce good strong plants, which may with care, be made to +improve. + +_Soil, &c._--A moist, sandy soil is requisite for them, the small +varieties especially delighting in wet ground. Some few of this family +are annuals, and the roots of no varieties should remain more than three +years without renewal, as the blossoms are apt to deteriorate; they all +flower during the rains. + +The PITCAIRNIA is a very handsome species, having long narrow leaves, +with, spined edges and throwing up blossoms in upright spines. + +The _Long Stamened Pitcairnia_, P. staminea, is a splendid scarlet +flower, lasting long in blossom, which, appears in July or August, and +continues till December. + +The _Scarlet Pitcairnia_, P. bromeliaefolia, is also a fine rich scarlet +flower, but blossoming somewhat sooner, and may be made to continue +about a month later. + +_Propagation_--is by dividing the roots, or by suckers, which is best +performed at the close of the rains. + +_Soil, &c._ A sandy peat is the favorite soil of this plant, which +should be kept very moist. + +The DAHLIA, Dahlia; a few years since an attempt was made to rename this +beautiful and extensive family and to call it Georgina, but it failed, +and it is still better known throughout the world by its old name than +the new. It was long supposed that the Dahlia was only found indigenous +in Mexico, but Captain Kirke some few years back brought to the notice +of the Horticultural Society, that it was to be met with in great +abundance in Dheyra Dhoon, producing many varieties both single and +double; and he has from time to time sent down quantities of seed, which +have greatly assisted its increase in all parts of India. It has also +been found in Nagpore. + +A good Dahlia is judged of by its form, size, and color. In respect to +the first of these its _form_ should be perfectly round, without any +inequalities of projecting points of the petals, or being notched, or +irregular. These should also be so far revolute that the side view +should exhibit a perfect semicircle in its outline, and the eye or +prolific disc, in the centre should be entirely concealed. There has +been recently introduced into this country a new variety, all the petals +of which are quilled, which has a very handsome appearance. + +In _size_ although of small estimation if the other qualities are +defective, it is yet of some consideration, but the larger flowers are +apt to be wanting in that perfect hemispherical form that is so much +admired. + +The _color_ is of great importance to the perfection of the flower; of +those that are of one color this should be clear, unbroken, and +distinct; but when mixed hues are sought, each color should be clearly +and distinctly defined without any mingling of shades, or running into +each other. Further, the flowers ought to be erect so as to exhibit the +blossom in the fullest manner to the view. The most usual colors of the +imported double Dahlias, met with in India, are crimson, scarlet, +orange, purple, and white. Amongst those raised from seed from. Dheyra +Dhoon[137] of the double kind, there are of single colors, crimson, deep +crimson approaching to maroon, deep lilac, pale lilac, violet, pink, +light purple, canary color, yellow, red, and white; and of mixed colors, +white and pink, red and yellow, and orange and white: the single ones of +good star shaped flowers and even petals being of crimson, puce, lilac, +pale lilac, white, and orange. Those from Nagpore seed have yielded, +double flowers of deep crimson, lilac, and pale purple, amongst single +colors; lilac and blue, and red and yellow of mixed shades; and single +flowered, crimson, and orange, with mixed colors of lilac and yellow, +and lilac and white. + +_Propagation_--is by dividing the roots, by cuttings, by suckers, or by +seed; the latter is generally resorted to, where new varieties are +desired. Mr. George A. Lake, in an article on this subject (_Gardeners' +Magazine_, 1833) says: "I speak advisedly, and from, experience, when I +assert that plants raised from cuttings do not produce equally perfect +flowers, in regard to size, form, and fulness, with those produced by +plants grown from division of tubers;" and he more fully shews in +another part of the same paper, that this appears altogether conformable +to reason, as the cutting must necessarily for a long period want that +store of starch, which is heaped up in the full grown tuber for the +nutriment of the plant. This objection however might be met by not +allowing the cuttings to flower in the season when they are struck. + +To those who are curious in the cultivation of this handsome species, it +may be well to know how to secure varieties, especially of mixed colors; +for this purpose it is necessary to cover the blossoms intended for +fecundation with fine gauze tied firmly to the foot stalk, and when it +expands take the pollen from the male flowers with a camel's hair +pencil, and touch with it each floret of the intended bearing flower, +tying the gauze again over it, and keeping it on until the petals are +withered. The operation requires to be performed two or three successive +days, as the florets do not expand together. + +_Soil &c._ They thrive best in a rich loam, mixed with sand; but should +not be repeated too often on the same spot, as they exhaust the soil +considerably. + +_Culture_. The Dahlia requires an open, airy position unsheltered by +trees or walls, the plants should be put out where they are to blossom, +immediately on the cessation of the rains, at a distance of three feet +apart, either in rows or in clumps, as they make a handsome show in a +mass; and as they grow should be trimmed from the lower shoots, to about +a foot in height, and either tied carefully to a stake, or, what is +better, surrounded by a square or circular trellis, about five feet in +height. As the buds form they should be trimmed off, so as to leave but +one on each stalk, this being the only method by which full, large, and +perfectly shaped blossoms are obtained. Some people take up the tubers +every year in February or March, but this is unnecessary. The plants +blossom in November and December in the greatest perfection, but may +with attention be continued from the beginning of October to the end of +February. + +Those plants which are left in the ground during the whole year should +have their roots opened immediately on the close of the rains, the +superabundant or decayed tubers, and all suckers being removed, and +fresh earth filled in. The earth should always be heaped up high around +the stems, and it is a good plan to surround each plant with a small +trench to be filled daily with water so as to keep the stem and leaves +dry. + +The PINK, Dianthus, _Kurunful_, is a well known species of great +variety, and acknowledged beauty. + +The _Carnation_, D. caryophyilus, _Gul kurunful_, is by this time +naturalized in India, adding both beauty and fragrance to the parterre; +the only variety however that has yet appeared in the country is the +clove, or deep crimson colored: but the success attending the culture of +this beautiful flower is surely an encouragement to the introduction of +other sorts, there being above four hundred kinds, especially as they +may be obtained from seed or pipings sent packed in moss, which will +remain in good condition for two or three months, provided no moisture +beyond what is natural to the moss, have access to them. + +The distinguishing marks of a good carnation may be thus described: the +stem should be tall and straight, strong, elastic, and having rather +short foot stalks, the flower should be fully three inches in diameter +with large well formed petals, round and uncut, long and broad, so as to +stand out well, rising about half an inch above the calyx, and then the +outer ones turned off in a horizontal direction, supporting those of the +centre, decreasing gradually in size, the whole forming a near approach +to a hemisphere. It flowers in April and May. + +_Propagation_--is performed either by seed, by layers, or by pipings; +the best time for making the two latter is when the plant is in full +blossom, as they then root more strongly. In this operation the lower +leaves should be trimmed off, and an incision made with a sharp knife, +by entering the knife about a quarter of an inch below the joint, +passing it through its centre; it must then be pegged down with a hooked +peg, and covered with about a quarter of an inch of light rich mould; if +kept regularly moist, the layers will root in about a month's time: they +may then be taken off and planted out into pots in a sheltered +situation, neither exposed to excessive rain, nor sun, until they shoot +out freely. + +Pipings (or cuttings as they are called in other plants) must be taken +off from a healthy, free growing plant, and should have two complete +joints, being cut off horizontally close under the second one; the +extremities of the leaves must also be shortened, leaving the whole +length of each piping two inches; they should be thrown into a basin of +soft water for a few minutes to plump them, and then planted out in +moist rich mould, not more than an inch being inserted therein, and +slightly watered to settle the earth close around them; after this the +soil should be kept moderately moist, and never exposed to the sun. Seed +is seldom resorted to except to introduce new varieties. + +_Soil, &c._--A mixture of old well rotted stable manure, with one-third +the quantity of good fine loamy earth, and a small portion of sand, is +the best soil for carnations. + +_Culture_.--The plants should be sheltered from too heavy a fall of +rain, although they require to be kept moderately moist, and desire an +airy situation. When the flower stalks are about six or eight inches in +height, they must be supported by sticks, and, if large full blossoms be +sought for, all the buds, except the leading one, must be removed with a +pair of scissors; the calyx must also be frequently examined, as it is +apt to burst, and if any disposition to this should appear, it will be +well to assist the uniform expansion by cutting the angles with a sharp +penknife. If, despite all precautions the calyx burst and let out the +petals, it should be carefully tied with thread, or a circular piece of +card having a hole in the centre should be drawn over the bud so as to +hold the petals together, and display them to advantage by the contrast +of the white color. + +_Insects, &c._--The most destructive are the red, and the large black +ant, which attack, and frequently entirely destroy the roots before you +can be aware of its approach; powdered turmeric should therefore be +constantly kept strewed around this flower. + +The _Common Pink_, Dianthus Chinensis, _Kurunful_, and the _Sweet +William_, D: barbatus, are pretty, ornamental plants, and may be +propagated and cultivated in the same way as the carnation, save that +they do not require so much care, or so good a soil, any garden mould +sufficing; they are also more easily produced from seed. + +The VIOLET, Viola, _Puroos_, is a class containing many beautiful +flowers, some highly ornamental and others odoriferous. + +The _Sweet Violet_, V. odorata, _Bunufsh'eh_, truly the poet's flower. +It is a deserved favorite for its delightful fragrance as well as its +delicate and retiring purple flowers; there is also a white variety, but +it is rare in this country, as is also the double kind. This blossoms in +the latter part of the cold weather. + +The _Shrubby Violet_, V. arborescens, or suffruticosa, _Rutunpuroos_, +grows wild in the hills, and is a pretty blue flower, but wants the +fragrance of the foregoing. + +The _Dog's Violet_, V. canina, is also indigenous in the hills. + +_Propagation_.--All varieties may be propagated by seed, but the most +usual method is by dividing the roots, or taking off the runners. + +_Soil, &c._--The natural _habitat_ of the indigenous varieties is the +sides and interstices of the rocks, where leaf mould, and micaceous +sand, has accumulated and moisture been retained, indicating that the +kind of soil favorable to the growth of this interesting little plant is +a rich vegetable mould, with an admixture of sand, somewhat moist, but +having a dry subsoil. + +_Culture_.--It would not be safe to trust this plant in the open ground +except during a very short period of the early part of the cold weather, +when the so doing will give it strength to form blossoms. In January, +however, it should be re-potted, filling the pots about half-full of +pebbles or stone-mason's cuttings, over which should be placed good rich +vegetable mould, mixed with a large proportion of sand, covering with a +thin layer of the same material as has been put into the bottom of the +pot; a top dressing of ground bones is said to improve the fineness of +the blossoms. They should not be kept too dry, but at the same time +watered cautiously, as too much of either heat or moisture destroys the +plants. + +The _Pansy_ or _Heart's-ease_, V. tricolor, _Kheeroo, kheearee_, derives +its first name from the French _Pensee_. It was known amongst the early +Christians by the name of _Flos Trinitatis_, and worn as a symbol of +their faith. The high estimation which it has of late years attained in +Great Britain as a florist's flower has, in the last two or three years, +extended itself to this country. There are nearly four hundred +varieties, a few of which only have been found here. + +_The characters of a fine Heart's-ease_ are, the flower being well +expanded, offering a flat, or if any thing, rather a revolute surface, +and the petals so overlapping each other as to form a circle without any +break in the outline. These should be as nearly as possible of a size, +and the greater length of the two upper ones concealed by the covering +of those at the side in such manner as to preserve the appearance of +just proportion: the bottom petal being broad and two-lobed, and well +expanded, not curving inwards. The eye should be of moderate, or rather +small size, and much additional beauty is afforded, if the pencilling is +so arranged as to give the appearance of a dark angular spot. The colors +must also be clear, bright, and even, not clouded or indistinct. +Undoubtedly the handsomest kinds are those in which the two upper petals +are of deep purple and the triade of a shade less: in all, the flower +stalk should be long and stiff. The plant blossoms in this country in +February and March, although it is elsewhere a summer flower. + +_Propagation_.--In England the moat usual methods are dividing the +roots, layers, or cuttings from the stem, and these are certainly the +only sure means of preserving a good variety; but it is almost +impossible in India to preserve the plant through the hot weather, and +therefore it is more generally treated as an annual, and raised every +year from seed, which should be sown at the close of the rains; as +however their growth, in India is as yet little known, most people put +the imported seed into pots as soon as it arrives, lest the climate +should deteriorate its germinating power, as it is well known, that even +in Europe the seed should be sown as soon as possible after ripening. It +will be well also to assist its sprouting with a little bottom heat, by +plunging the pot up to its rim in a hot bed. American seed should be +avoided as the blossoms are little to be depended on, and generally +yield small, ill-formed flowers, clouded and run in color. + +_Soil, &c._--This should be moist, and the best compost is formed of +one-sixth of well rotted dung from an old hot bed, and five-sixth of +loam, or one-fourth of leaf mould and the remainder loam, but in either +case well incorporated and exposed for some time previous to use to the +action of the sun and air by frequent turning. + +_Culture_.--A shady situation is to be preferred, especially for the +dark varieties which assume a deeper hue if so placed. But it has been +observed by Mackintosh, that "the light varieties bloomed lighter in the +shade, and darker in the sunshine--a very remarkable effect, for which I +cannot account." The plants must at all times be kept moist, never being +allowed to become dry, and should be so placed as to receive only the +morning sun before ten o'clock. Under good management the plants will +extend a foot or more in height, and have a handsome appearance if +trained over a circular trellis of rattan twisted. When they rise too +high, or it is desirable to fill out with side shoots, the tops must be +pinched off, and larger flowers will be obtained if the flower buds are +thinned out where they appear crowded. + +These plants look very handsome when grown in large masses of several +varieties, but the seeds of those grown in this manner should not be +made use of, as they are sure to sport; to prevent which it is also +necessary that the plants which it is desired to perpetuate in this +manner should be isolated at a distance from any other kind, and it +would be advisable to cover them with thin gauze to prevent impregnation +from others by means of the bees and other insects. For show flowers the +branches should be kept down, and not suffered to straggle out or +multiply; these will also be improved by pegging the longer branches +down under the soil, and thereby increasing the number of the root +fibres, hence adding to their power of accumulating nourishment, and not +allowing them to expand beyond a limited number of blossoms, and those +retained should be as nearly equal in age as possible. + +The HYDRANGEA is a hardy plant requiring a good deal of moisture, being +by nature an inhabitant of the marshes. + +The _Changeable Hydrangea_, H. hortensis, is of Chinese origin and a +pretty growing plant that deserves to be a favorite; it blossoms in +bunches of flowers at the extremities of the branches which are +naturally pink, but in old peat earth, or having a mixture of alum, or +iron filings, the color changes to blue. It blooms in March and April. + +_Propagation_ may be effected by cuttings, which root freely, or by +layers. + +_Soil, &c._--Loam and old leaf mould, or peat with a very small +admixture of sand suits this plant. Their growth is much promoted by +being turned out, for a month or two in the rains, into the open ground, +and then re-potted with new soil, the old being entirely removed from +the roots: and to make it flower well it must not be encumbered with too +many branches. + +The HOYA is properly a trailing plant, rooting at the joints, but have +been generally cultivated here as a twiner. + +The _Fleshy-leaved Hoya_, H. carnosa, is vulgarly called the wax flower +from its singular star shaped-whitish pink blossoms, with a deep colored +varnished centre, having more the appearance of a wax model than a +production of nature. The flowers appear in globular groups and have a +very handsome appearance from the beginning of April to the close of the +rains. + +The _Green flowered Hoya_, H. viridiflora, _Nukchukoree, teel kunga_, +with its green flowers in numerous groups, is also an interesting plant, +it is esteemed also for its medicinal properties. + +_Propagation_.--Every morsel of these plants, even a piece of the leaf, +will form roots if put in the ground, cuttings therefore strike very +freely, as do layers, the joints naturally throwing out root-fibres +although not in the earth. + +_Soil, &c._--A light loam moderately dry is the best for these plants, +which look well if trained round a circular trellis in the open border. + +The STAPELIA is an extensive genus of low succulent plants without +leaves, but yielding singularly handsome star-shaped flowers; they are +of African origin growing in the sandy deserts, but in a natural state +very diminutive being increased to their present condition and numerous +varieties by cultivation, they mostly have an offensive smell whence +some people call them the carrion plant. They deserve more attention +than has hitherto been shown to them in India. + +The _Variegated Stapelia_, S. variegata, yields a flower in November, +the thick petals of which are yellowish green with brown irregular +spots, it is the simplest of the family. + +The _Revolute-flowered Stapelia_, S. revoluta, has a green blossom very +fully sprinkled with deep purple, it flowers at the close of the rains. + +The _Toad Stapelia_, S. bufonia, as its name implies, is marked like the +back of the reptile from whence it has its name; it flowers in December +and January. + +The _Hairy Stapelia_, S. hirsuta, is a very handsome variety, being, +like the rest, of green and brown, but the entire flower covered with +fine filaments or hairs of a light purple, at various periods of the +year. + +The _Starry Stapelia_, S. stellaris, is perhaps the most beautiful of +the whole, being like the last covered with hairs, but they are of a +bright pinkish blue color; there appears to be no fixed period for +flowering. + +The HAIRY CARRULLUMA, C. crinalata, belongs to the same family as the +foregoing species, which it much resembles, except that it blossoms in +good sized globular groups of small star-shaped flowers of green, +studded and streaked with brown. + +_Propagation_ is exceedingly easy with each of the last named two +species; as the smallest piece put in any soil that is moist, without +being saturated, will throw out root fibres. + +_Soil, &c._--This should consist of one-half sand, one-fourth garden +mould, and one-fourth well rotted stable manure. The pots in which they +are planted should have on the top a layer of pebbles, or broken brick. +All the after culture they require is to keep them within bounds, +removing decayed portions as they appear and avoiding their having too +much moisture. + +The perennial border plants, besides those included above, are very +numerous; the directions for cultivation admitting, from their +similarity, of the following general rules:-- + +_Propagation_.--Although some few will admit of other modes of +multiplication, the most usually successful are by seed, by suckers, or +by offsets, and by division of the root, the last being applicable to +nine-tenths of the hardy herbaceous plants, and performed either by +taking up the whole plant and gently separating it by the hand, or by +opening the ground near the one to be divided, and cutting off a part of +the roots and crown to make new the sections being either at once +planted where they are to stand, or placed for a short period in a +nursery; the best time for this operation is the beginning of the rains. +Offsets or suckers being rapidly produced during the rains, will be best +removed towards their close, at which period, also, seed should be sown +to benefit by the moisture remaining in the soil. The depth at which +seeds are buried in the earth varies with their magnitude, all the pea +or vetch kind will bear being put at a depth of from half an inch to one +inch; but with the smallest seeds it will be sufficient to scatter them, +on the sifted soil, beating them down with, the palm of the hand. + +_Culture_.--Transplanting this description of plants will be performed +to best advantage during the rains. The general management is +comprehended in stirring the soil occasionally in the immediate vicinity +of the roots; taking up overgrown plants, reducing and replanting them, +for which the rains is the best time; renewing the soil around the +roots; sticking the weak plants; pruning and trimming others, so as to +remove all weakly or decayed parts. + +Once a year, before the rains, the whole border should be dug one or two +spits deep, adding soil from the bottom of a tank or river; and again, +in the cold weather, giving a moderate supply of well rotted stable +manure, and leaf mould in equal portions. + +Crossing is considered as yet in its infancy even in England, and has, +except with the Marvel of Peru, hardly even been attempted in this +country. The principles under which this is effected are fully explained +at page 27 of the former part of this work; but it may also be done in +the more woody kinds by grafting one or more of the same genus on the +stock of another, the seed of which would give a new variety. + +Saving seed requires great attention in India, as it should be taken +during the hot weather if possible; to effect which the earliest +blossoms must be preserved for this purpose. With some kinds it will be +advisable to assist nature by artificial impregnation with a camel hair +pencil, carefully placing the pollen on the point of the stigma. The +seeds should be carefully dried in some open, airy place, but not +exposed to the sun, care being afterwards taken that they shall be +deposited in a dry place, not close or damp, whence the usual plan of +storing the seeds in bottles is not advisable. + + * * * * * + +BULBS. + +Bulbs have not as yet received that degree of attention in this country +(India) that they deserve, and they may be considered to form a separate +class, requiring a mode of culture differing from that of others. Their +slow progress has discouraged many and a supposition that they will only +thrive in the Upper Provinces, has deterred others from attempting to +grow them, an idea which has also been somewhat fostered by the +Horticultural Society, when they received a supply from England, having +sent the larger portion of them to their subscribers in the North West +Provinces. + +The NARCISSUS will thrive with care, in all parts of India, and it is a +matter of surprise that it is not more frequently met with. A good +Narcissus should have the six petals well formed, regularly and evenly +disposed, with a cup of good form, the colors distinct and clear, raised +on strong erect stems, and flowering together. + +The _Polyanthes Narcissus_, N. tazetta, _Narjus, hur'huft nusreen_, is +of two classes, white and sulphur colored, but these have sported into +almost endless varieties, especially amongst the Dutch, with whom this +and most other bulbs are great favorites. It flowers in February and +March. + +The _Poet's Narcissus_, N. poeticus, _Moozhan, zureenkuda_ is the +favorite, alike for its fragrance and its delicate and graceful +appearance, the petals being white and the cup a deep yellow: it flowers +from the beginning of January to the end of March and thrives well. The +first within the recollection of the author, in Bengal, was at Patna, +nearly twelve years since, in possession of a lady there under whose +care it blossomed freely in the shade, in the month of February. + +The _Daffodil_, N. pseudo-narcissus, _Khumsee buroonk_, is of pale +yellow, and some of the double varieties are very handsome. + +_Propagation_ is by offsets, pulled off after the bulbs are taken out of +the ground, and sufficiently hardened. + +_Soil, &c._--The best is a fresh, light loam with some well rotted cow +dung for the root fibres to strike into, and the bottom of the pot to +the height of one-third filled with pebbles or broken brick. They will +not blossom until the fifth year, and to secure strong flowers the bulbs +should only be taken up every third year. An eastern aspect where they +get only the morning sun, is to be preferred. The PANCRATIUM is a +handsome species that thrives well, some varieties being indigenous, and +others fully acclimated, generally flowering about May or June. + +The _One-flowered Pancratium_, P. zeylanicum, is rather later than the +rest in flowering and bears a curiously formed white flower. + +The _Two-flowered Pancratium_, P. triflorum, _Sada kunool_, was so named +by Roxburg, and gives a white flower in groups of threes, as its name +implies. + +The _Oval leaved pancratium_, P. ovatum, although of West Indian origin, +is so thoroughly acclimated as to be quite common in the Indian Garden. + +_Propagation_.--The best method is by suckers or offsets which are +thrown out very freely by all the varieties. + +_Soil, &c._--Any common garden soil will suit this plant, but they +thrive best with a good admixture of rich vegetable mould. + +The HYACINTH, Hyacinthus, is an elegant flower, especially the double +kind. The first bloomed in Calcutta was exhibited at the flower show +some three years since, but proved an imperfect blossom and not clear +colored; a very handsome one, however, was shown by Mrs. Macleod in +February 1847, and was raised from a stock originally obtained at +Simlah. The Dutch florists have nearly two thousand varieties. + +The distinguishing marks of a good hyacinth are clear bright colors, +free from clouding or sporting, broad bold petals, full, large and +perfectly doubled, sufficiently revolute to give the whole mass a degree +of convexity: the stem strong and erect and the foot stalks horizontal +at the base, gradually taking an angle upwards as they approach the +crown, so as to place the flowers in a pyramidical form, occupying about +one-half the length of the stem. + +The _Amethyst colored Hyacinth_, H. amethystimus, is a fine handsome +flower, varying in shade from pale blue to purple, and having bell +shaped flowers, but the foot stalks are generally not strong and they +are apt to become pendulous. + +The _Garden Hyacinth_, H. orientalis, _Sumbul, abrood_, is the handsomer +variety, the flowers being trumpet shaped, very double and of varying +colors--pink, red, blue, white, or yellow, and originally of eastern +growth. It flowers in February and has considerable fragrance. + +_Propagation_.--In Europe this is sometimes performed by seed, but as +this requires to be put into the ground as soon as possible after +ripening, and moreover takes a long time to germinate, this method would +hardly answer in this country, which must therefore, at least for the +present, depend upon imported bulbs and offsets. + +_Soil, &c._--This, as well as its after culture, is the same as for the +Narcissus. They will not show flowers until the second year, and not in +good bloom before the fifth or sixth of their planting out. + +The CROCUS, Crocus lutens, having no native name, has yet, it is +believed, been hardly ever known to flower here, even with the utmost +care. A good crocus has its colors clear, brilliant, and distinctly +marked. + +_Propagation_--must be effected, for new varieties, by seeds, but the +species are multiplied by offsets of the bulb. + +_Soil, &c._ Any fair garden soil is good for the crocus, but it prefers +that which is somewhat sandy. + +_Culture_. The small bulbs should be planted in clumps at the depth of +two inches; the leaves should not be cut off after the plant has done +blossoming, as the nourishment for the future season's flower is +gathered by them. + +The IXIA, is originally from the Cape, and belongs to the class of +Iridae: the Ixia Chinensis, more properly Morea Chinensis, is a native +of India and China, and common in most gardens. + +_Propagation_--is by offsets. + +_Soil, &c._ The best is of peat and sand, it thrives however in good +garden soil, if not too stiff, and requires no particular cultivation. + +The LILY, Lilium, _Soosun_, the latter derived from the Hebrew, is a +handsome species that deserves more care than it has yet received in +India, where some of the varieties are indigenous. + +The _Japan Lily_, L. japonicum, is a very tall growing plant, reaching +about 5 feet in height with broad handsome flowers of pure white, and a +small streak of blue, in the rains. + +The _Daunan Lily_, L. dauricum, _Rufeef, soosun_, gives an erect, light +orange flower in the rains. + +The _Canadian lily_, L. Canadense _B'uhmutan_, flowers in the rains in +pairs of drooping reflexed blossoms of a rather darker orange, sometimes +spotted with a deeper shade. + +_Propagation_--is effected by offsets, which however will not flower +until the third or fourth year. + +_Soil, &c._ This is the same as for the Narcissus, but they do not +require taking up more frequently than once in three years, and that +only for about a month at the close of the rains, the Japan lily will +thrive even under the shade of trees. + +The AMARYLLIS is a very handsome flower, which has been found to thrive +well in this country, and has a great variety, all of which possess much +beauty, some kinds are very hardy, and will grow freely in the open +ground. + +The _Mexican Lily_, A. regina Mexicanae, is a common hardy variety found +in most gardens, yielding an orange red flower in the months of March +and April, and will thrive even under the shades of trees. + +The _Ceylonese Amaryllis_, A: zeylanica, _Suk'h dursun_, gives a pretty +flower about the same period. + +The _Jacoboean Lily_, A, formosissima, has a handsome dark red flower of +singular form, having three petals well expanded above, and three others +downwards rolled over the fructile organs on the base, so as to give the +idea of its being the model whence the Bourbon _fleur de lis_ was taken, +the stem is shorter than the two previous kinds, blossoming in April or +May. + +The _Noble Amaryllis_, A: insignia, is a tall variety, having pink +flowers in March or April. + +The _Broad-leaved Amaryllis_, A: latifolia, is a native of India with +pinkish white flowers about the same period of the year. + +The _Belladonna Lily_. A: belladonna is of moderately high stem, +supporting a pink flower of the same singular form as the Jacoboean +lily, in May and June. + +_Propagation_--is by offsets of the bulb, which most kinds throw out +very freely, sometimes to the extent of ten, or a dozen in the season. + +_Soil, &c._--For the choice kinds is the same as is required for the +narcissus, and water should on no account be given over the leaves or +upper part of the bulb. + +The common kinds look well in masses, and a good form of planting them +is in a series of raised circles, so as for the whole to form a round +bed. + +The DOG'S TOOTH VIOLET, Erythronium, is a pretty flowering bulb and a +great favorite with florists in Europe. + +The _Common Dog's tooth Violet_, E. dens canis, is ordinarily found of +reddish purple, there is also a white variety, but it is rare, neither +of them grow above three or four inches in height, and flower in March +or April. + +The _Indian Dog's tooth Violet_, E. indicum, _junglee kanda_, is found +in the hills, and flowers at about the same time, with a pink blossom. + +The SUPERB GLORIOSA, Gloriosa superba, _Kareearee, eeskooee langula_, is +a very beautiful species of climbing bulb, a native of this country, and +on that account neglected, although highly esteemed as a stove plant in +England; the leaves bear tendrils at the points, and the flower, which +is pendulous, when first expanded, throws its petals nearly erect of +yellowish green, which gradually changes to yellow at the base and +bright scarlet at the point; the pistil which shoots from the seed +vessel horizontally possesses the singular property of making an entire +circuit between sun-rise and sun-set each day that the flower continues, +which is generally for some time, receiving impregnation from every +author as it visits them in succession. It blooms in the latter part of +the rains. + +_Propagation_ is in India sometimes from seed, but in Europe it is +confined to division of the offsets. + +_Soil, &c._--Most garden soils will suit this plant, but it affords the +handsomest, and richest colored flowers in fresh loam mixed with peat or +leaf mould, without dung. It should not have too much water when first +commencing its growth, and it requires the support of a trellis over +which it will bear training to a considerable extent, growing to the +height of from five to six feet. + +MANY OTHER BULBS, there is no doubt, might be successfully grown in +India where every thing is favorable to their growth, and so much +facility presents itself for procuring them from the Cape of Good Hope; +the natural _habitat_ of so many varieties of the handsomest species, +nearly all of them flowering between the end of the cold weather and the +close of the rains. + +Some of these being hardy, thrive in the open ground with but little +care or trouble, others requiring very great attention, protection from +exposure, and shelter from the heat of the sun, and the intensity of its +rays; which should therefore have a particular portion of the plant-shed +assigned to them, such being inhabitants of the green house in colder +climates, and the reason of assigning them such separated part of the +chief house, or what is better perhaps, a small house to themselves, is +that in culture, treatment, and other respects they do not associate +with plants of a different character. + +One great obstacle which the more extensive culture of bulbs has had to +contend against, may be found in that impatience that refuses to give +attention to what requires from three to five years to perfect, +generally speaking people in India prefer therefore to cultivate such +plants only as afford an immediate result, especially with relation to +the ornamental classes. + +_Propagation_.--The bulb after the formation of the first floral core is +instigated by nature to continue its species, as immediately the flower +fades the portion of bulb that gave it birth dies, for which purpose it +each year forms embryo bulbs on each side of the blossoming one, and +which although continued in the same external coat, are each perfect and +complete plants in themselves, rising from the crown of the root fibres: +in some kinds this is more distinctly exhibited by being as it were, +altogether outside and distinct from, the main, or original bulb. These +being separated for what are called offsets, and should be taken off +only when the parent bulb has been taken up and hardened, or the young +plant will suffer. + +Some species of bulbous rooted plants produce seeds, but this method of +reproduction, can seldom be resorted to in this country, and certainly +not to obtain new kinds, as the seeds require to be sown as soon as +ripe. + +_Soil, Culture, &c_.--For the delicate and rare bulbs, it is advisable +to have pots purposely made of some fifteen inches in height with a +diameter of about seven or eight inches at the top, tapering down to +five, with a hole at the bottom as in ordinary flower pots, and for this +to stand in, another pot should be made without any hole, of a height of +about four inches, sufficient size to leave the space of about an inch +all round between the outer side of the plant pot and the inner side of +the smaller pot or saucer. + +This will allow the plant pot to be filled with crocks, pebbles, or +stone chippings to the height of five inches, or about an inch higher +than the level of the water in the saucer, above which may be placed +eight inches in depth of soil and one inch on the top of that, pebbles +or small broken brick. By this arrangement, the saucer being kept +filled, or partly filled, as the plant may require, with water, the +fibres of the root obtain a sufficiency of moisture for the maintenance +and advancement of the plant without chance of injury to the bulb or +stem, by applying water to the upper earth which is also in this +prevented from becoming too much saturated. Light rich sandy loam, with +a portion of sufficiently decomposed leaf mould, is the best soil for +the early stages of growing bulbs. + +So soon as the leaves change color and wither, then all moisture must be +withheld, but as the repose obtained by this means is not sufficient to +secure health to the plant, and ensure its giving strong blossoms, +something more is required to effect this purpose. This being rendered +the more necessary because in those that form offsets by the sides of +the old bulbs, they would otherwise become crowded and degenerate, the +same occurring also with those forming under the old ones, which will +get down so deep that they cease to appear. + +The time to take up the bulb is when the flower-stem and leaves have +commenced decay; taking dry weather for the purpose, if the bulbs are +hardy, or if in pots having reduced the moisture as above shown, but it +must be left to individual experience to discover how long the different +varieties should remain out of the ground, some requiring one month's +rest, and others enduring three or four, with advantage; more than that +is likely to be injurious. When out of the ground, during the first part +of the period they are so kept, it should be, say for a fortnight at +least, in any room where no glare exists, with free circulation of air, +after which the off-sets may be removed, and the whole exposed to dry on +a table in the verandah, or any other place that is open to the air, but +protected from the sunshine, which would destroy them. + +Little peculiarity of after treatment is requisite, except perhaps that +the bulbs which are to flower in the season should have a rather larger +proportion of leaf mould in the compost, and that if handsome flowers +are required, it will be well to examine the bulb every week at least by +gently taking the mould from around them, and removing all off-sets that +appear on the old bulb. For the securing strength to the plant also, it +will be well to pinch off the flower so soon as it shews symptoms of +decay. + +The wire worm is a great enemy to bulbs, and whenever it appears they +should be taken up, cleaned, and re-planted. It is hardly necessary to +say that all other vermin and insects must be watched, and immediately +removed. + + * * * * * + +THE BIENNIAL BORDER PLANTS. + +It is only necessary to mention a few of these, as the curious in +floriculture will always make their own selection, the following will +therefore suffice.-- + +The SPEEDWELL-LEAVED HEDGE HYSSOP, Gratiola veronicifolia, _Bhoomee, +sooel chumnee_, seldom cultivated, though deserving to be so, has a +small blue flower. + +The SIMPLE-STALKED LOBELIA, Lobelia simplex, introduced from the Cape, +yields a pretty blue flower. + +The EVENING PRIMROSE, Oenothera mutabilis, a pretty white flower that +blossoms in the evening, its petals becoming pink by morning. + +The FLAX-LEAVED PIMPERNEL, Anagallis linifolia, a rare plant, giving a +blue flower in the rains; introduced from Portugal. + +The BROWALLIA, of two lauds, both pretty and interesting plants; +originally from South America. + +The _Spreading Browallia_, B. demissa is the smallest of these, and +blossoms in single flowers of bright blue, at the beginning of the cold +weather. + +The _Upright Browallia_, B. alata, gives bloom in groups, of a bright +blue; there is also a white variety, both growing to the height of +nearly two feet. + +The SMALL-FLOWERED TURNSOLE, Heliotropium parviflorum, _B'hoo roodee_, +differs from the rest of this family which are mostly perennials; it +yields groups of white flowers, which are fragrant. + +The FLAX-LEAVED CANDYTUFT, Iberis linifolia, with its purple blossoms, +is very rare, but it has been sometimes grown with, success. + +The STOCK, Mathiola, is a very popular plant, and deserves more +extensive cultivation in this country. + +The _Great Sea Stock_, M sinuata, is rare and somewhat difficult to +bring into bloom, it possesses some fragrance and its violet colored +groups of flowers have rather a handsome appearance about May. + +The _Ten weeks' Stock_, M annua, is also a pleasing flower about the +same time. In England this is an annual, but here it is not found to +bloom freely until the second year, its color is scarlet, and it has +some fragrance. + +The _Purple Gilly flower_, M incana, is a pretty flower of purple color, +and fragrant. There are some varieties of it such as the _Double_, +multiplex, the _Brompton_, coccinea, and the _White_, alba, varying in +color and blossoming in April. + +The STARWORT, Aster, is a hardy flowering plant not very attractive, +except as it yields blossoms at all seasons, if the foot stalks are cut +off as soon as the flower has faded, there are very numerous varieties +of this plant which is, in Europe a perennial, but it is preferable to +treat it here as only biennial, otherwise it degenerates. + +The _Bushy Starwort_, A dumosus, is a free blossoming plant in the +rains, with white flowers. + +The _Silky leaved Starwort_, A. sericeus, is Indigenous in the hills, +putting forth its blue blossoms during the rains. + +The _Hairy Starwort_, A pilosus, is of very pale blue, and may, with +care, be made to blossom throughout the year. + +The _Chinese Starwort,_ A chinensis, is of dark purple and very prolific +of blossoms at all times. + +The BEAUTIFUL JUSTICIA, J speciosa, although, described by Roxburgh as a +perennial, degenerates very much after the second year, it affords +bright carmine colored flowers at the end of the cold weather. + +The COMMON MARVEL OF PERU, Mirabilis Jalapa _Gul abas, krushna kelee_, +is vulgarly called the Four o'clock from its blossoms expanding in the +afternoon. There are several varieties distinguished only by difference +of color, lilac, red, yellow, orange, and white, which hybridize +naturally, and may easily be obliged to do so artificially, if any +particular shades are desired. + +The HAIRY INDIGO, Indigofera hirsuta, yields an ornamental flower with +abundance of purple blossoms. + +The HIBISCUS This class numbers many ornamental plants, the blossoms of +which all maintain the same character of having a darkened spot at the +base of each petal. + +The _Althaea frutex_, H syriacus, _Gurhul,_ yields a handsome purple +flower in the latter part of the rains, there are also a white, and a +red variety. + +The _Stinging Hibiscus_ H pruriens, has a yellow flower at the same +season. + +The _Hemp leaved Hibiscus_, H cannabinus, _Anbaree_, is much the same as +the last. + +The _Bladder Ketmia_, H trionum, is a dwarf species, yellow, with a +brown spot at the base of the petal. + +The _African Hibiscus_ H africanus, is a very handsome flower growing to +a considerable height, expanding to the diameter of six to seven inches, +of a bright canary color, the dark blown spots at the base of the petals +very distinctly marked, the seeds were considered a great acquisition +when first obtained from Hobarton, but the plant has since been seen in +great perfection growing wild in the _Turaee_ at the foot of the +Darjeeling range of hills, blooming in great perfection at the close of +the rains. + +The _Chinese Hibiscus_, H rosa sinensis, _Jooua, jasoon, jupa_, +although, really a perennial flower, is in greatest perfection if kept +as a biennial, it flowers during the greater part of the season a dark +red flower with a darker hued spot, there are also some other varieties +of different colors yellow, scarlet, and purple. + +The TREE MALLOW, Lavatera arborea, has of late years been introduced +from Europe, and may now be found in many gardens in India yielding +handsome purple flowers in the latter part of the rains. + +But it is unnecessary to continue such a mere catalogue, the character +and general cultivation of which require no distinct rules, but may all +be resolved into one general method, of which the following is a sketch. + +_Propagation_--They are all raised from seed, but the finest double +varieties require to be continued by cuttings. The seed should be sown +as soon as it can after opening, but if this occur during the rains, the +beds, or pots, perhaps better, must be sheltered, removing the plants +when they are few inches high to the spot where they are to remain, care +being at the same time taken in removing those that have tap roots, such +as Hollyhock, Lavatera, &c not to injure them, as it will check their +flowering strongly, the best mode is to sow those in pots and transplant +them, with balls of earth entire, into the borders, at the close of the +rains. Cuttings of such as are multiplied by that method, are taken +either from the flower stalks, or root-shoots, early in the rains, and +rooted either in pots, under shelter, or in beds, protected from the +heavy showers. + +_Culture_--Cultivation after the plants are put into the borders, is the +same as for perennial plants. But the duration and beauty of the flowers +is greatly improved by cutting off the buds that shew the earliest, so +as to retard the bloom--and for the same reason the footstalk should be +cut off when the flowers fade, for as soon as the plant begins to form +seed, the blossoms deteriorate. + + * * * * * + +THE ANNUAL BORDER PLANTS. + +These are generally known to every one, and many of them are so common +as hardly to need notice, a few of the most usual are however mentioned, +rather to recal the scattered thoughts of the many, than as a list of +annuals. + +The MIGNIONETTE, Resoda odorata, is too great a favorite both on account +of its fragrance and delicate flowers not to be well known, and by +repeated sowings it may be made under care to give flowers throughout +the year but it is advisable to renew the seed occasionally by fresh +importations from Europe, the Cape, or Hobarton. + +The PROLIFIC PINK, Dianthus prolifer _Kurumful_, is a pretty variety; +that blossoms freely throughout the year, sowing to keep up succession, +the shades and net work marks on them are much varied, and they make a +very pretty group together. + +The LUPINE, Lupinus, is a very handsome class of annuals, many of which +grow well in India, all of them flowering in the cold season. + +The _Small blue Lupine_, L. varius, was introduced from the Cape and is +the only one noticed by Roxburgh. + +The _Rose, and great blue Lupine_, L. pilosus and hirsutus, are both +good sized handsome flowers. + +The _Egyptian, or African Lupins_, L. thermis, _Turmus_, is the only one +named in the native language, and has a white flower. + +The _Tree Lupine_, L. arboreus, is a shrubby plant with a profusion of +yellow flowers which has been successfully cultivated from Hobarton +seed. + +The CATCHFLY, Silene, the only one known here is the small red, S. +rubella, having a very pretty pink flower appearing in the cold weather. + +The LARKSPUR, Delphinum, has not yet received any native name, and +deserves to be much more extensively cultivated, especially the +Neapolitan and variegated sorts. The common purple, D. Bhinensis, being +the one usually met with; it should be sown in succession from September +to December, but the rarer kinds must not be put in sooner than the +middle of November, as these do not blossom well before February, March, +or April. + +The SWEET PEA, Lathyrus odoralus, is not usually cultivated with +success, because it has been generally sown too late in the season, to +give a sufficient advance to secure blossoming. The seeds should be put +in about the middle of the rains in pots and afterwards planted out when +these cease, and carefully cultivated to obtain blossoms in February or +March. + +The ZINNIA, has only of late years been introduced, but by a mistake it +has generally been sown too late in the year to produce good flowers, +whereas if the seed is put into the ground about June, fine handsome +flowers will be the result, in the cold weather. + +The CENTAURY, Centaurea, is a very pretty class of annuals which grows, +and blossoms freely in this country. + +The _Woolly Centaury_, C. lanata, is mentioned by Roxburgh as indigenous +to the country, but the flowers are very small, of a purple color, +blossoming in December. + +The _Blue bottle_ O. cyanus, _Azeez_, flowers in December and January, +of pink and blue. + +The _Sweet Sultan_, C. moschata, _Shah pusund_ is known by its fragrant +and delicate lilac blossoms in January and February. + +The BALSAM, Impatiens, _Gulmu'hudee, doopatee_ is not cultivated, or +encouraged as it should be in India, where some of the varieties are +indigenous. A very rich soil should be used. + +Dr. R. Wight observes, that Balsams of the colder Hymalayas, like those +of Europe, split from the base, rolling the segment towards the apex, +whilst those of the hotter regions do the reverse. + +All annuals require the same, or nearly the same treatment, of which the +following may be considered a fair sketch. + +_Propagation_.--These plants are all raised from seed put in the earth +generally on the close of the rains, although some plants, such as +nasturtium, sweet pea, scabious, wall-flower, and stock, are better to +be sown in pots about June or July, and then put out into the border as +soon as the rains cease. The seed must be sown in patches, rings, or +small beds according to taste, the ground being previously stirred, and +made quite fine, the earth sifted over them to a depth proportioned to +the size of the seed, and then gently pressed down, so as closely to +embrace every part of the seed. When the plants are an inch high they +must be thinned out to a distance of two, three, five, seven, or more +inches apart, according to their kind, whether spreading, or upright, +having reference also to their size; the plants thinned out, if +carefully taken up, may generally be transplanted to fill up any parts +of the border where the seed may have failed. + +_Culture_. Weeding and occasionally stirring the soil, and sticking such +as require support, is all the cultivation necessary for annuals. If it +be desired to save seed, some of the earliest and most perfect blossoms +should be preserved for this purpose, so as to secure the best possible +seed for the ensuing year, not leaving it to chance to gather seed from +such plants as may remain after the flowers have been taken, as is +generally the case with native gardeners, if left to themselves. + + * * * * * + +FLOWERS THAT GROW UNDER THE SHADE OF TREES. + +It is of some value to know what these are, but at the same time it must +be observed that no plant will grow under trees of the fir tribe, and it +would be a great risk to place any under the _Deodar_--with all others +also it must not be expected that any trees having their foliage so low +as to affect the circulation of air under their branches, can do +otherwise than destroy the plants placed beneath them. + +Those which may be so planted are;--Wood Anemone.--Common Arum.--Deadly +Nightshade--Indian ditto.--Chinese Clematis--Upright ditto--Woody +Strawberry--Woody Geranium.--Green Hellebore.--Hairy St. John's +Wort.--Dog's Violet.--Imperial Fritillaria--The common Oxalis, and some +other bulbs.--Common Hound's Tongue.--Common Antirrhinum.--Common +Balsam.--To these may be added many of the orchidaceous plants. + + * * * * * + +ROSES. + +THE ROSE, ROSA, _Gul_ or _gulab_: as the most universally admired, +stands first amongst shrubs. The London catalogues of this beautiful +plant contain upwards of two thousand names: Mr. Loudon, in his +"_Encyclopaedia of Plants_" enumerates five hundred and twenty-two, of +which he describes three species, viz. Macrophylla, Brunonii, and +Moschata Nepalensis, as natives of Nepal; two, viz. Involucrata, and +Microphylla, as indigenous to India, and Berberifolia, and Moschata +arborea, as of Persian origin, whilst twelve appear to have come from +China. Dr. Roxburgh describes the following eleven species as +inhabitants of these regions:-- + +Rosa involucrata, + -- Chinensis, + -- semperflorens, + -- recurva, + -- microphylla, + -- inermis, +Rosa centiflora, + -- glandulifera, + -- pubescens, + -- diffusa, + -- triphylla, + +most of which, however, he represents to have been of Chinese origin. + +The varieties cultivated generally in gardens are, however, all that +will be here described. + +These are-- + +1. The _Madras rose,_ or _Rose Edward_, a variety of R centifolia, _Gul +ssudburul_, is the most common, and has multiplied so fast within a few +years, that no garden is without it, it blossoms all the year round, +producing large bunches of buds at the extremities of its shoots of the +year, but, if handsome, well-shaped flowers are desired, these must be +thinned out on their first appearance, to one or two, or at the most +three on each stalk. It is a pretty flower, but has little fragrance. +This and the other double sorts require a rich loam rather inclining to +clay, and they must be kept moist.[138] + +2. The _Bussorah Rose_, R gallica, _Gulsooree_, red, and white, the +latter seldom met with, is one of a species containing an immense number +of varieties. The fragrance of this rose is its greatest recommendation, +for if not kept down, and constantly looked to, it soon gets straggling, +and unsightly, like the preceding species too, the buds issue from the +ends of the branches in great clusters, which must be thinned, if well +formed fragrant blossoms are desired. The same soil is required as for +the preceding, with alternating periods of rest by opening the roots, +and of excitement by stimulating manure. + +3. The _Persian rose_, apparently R collina, _Gul eeran_ bears a very +full-petaled blossom, assuming a darker shade as these approach nearer +to the centre, but, it is difficult to obtain a perfect flower, the +calyx being so apt to burst with excess of fulness, that if perfect +flowers are required a thread should be tied gently round the bud, it +has no fragrance. A more sandy soil will suit this kind, with less +moisture. + +4. The _Sweet briar_ R rubiginosa, _Gul nusreen usturoon_, grows to a +large size, and blossoms freely in India, but is apt to become +straggling, although, if carefully clipped, it may be raised as a hedge +the same as in England, it is so universally a favorite as to need no +description. + +5. The _China blush rose_, R Indica (R Chinensis of Roxburgh), _Kut'h +gulab_, forms a pretty hedge, if carefully clipped, but is chiefly +usefully as a stock for grafting on. It has no odour. + +6 The _China ever-blowing rose_, R damascena of Roxburgh, _Adnee gula, +gulsurkh_, bearing handsome dark crimson blossoms during the whole of +the year, it is branching and bushy, but rather delicate, and wants +odour. + + 7 The _Moss Rose_, R muscosa, having no native name is found to exist, +but has only been known to have once blossomed in India; good plants may +be obtained from Hobart Town without much trouble. + +8 The _Indian dog-rose_, R arvensis, R involucrata of Roxburgh, _Gul be +furman_, is found to glow wild in some parts of Nepal and Bengal, as +well as in the province of Buhar, flowering in February, the blossoms +large, white, and very fragrant, its cultivation extending is improving +the blossoms, particularly in causing the petals to be multiplied. + +9. The _Bramble-flowered rose_ R multiflora, _Gul rana_, naturally a +trailer, may be trained to great advantage, when it will give beautiful +bunches of small many petaled flowers in February and March, of +delightful fragrance. + +10. The _Due de Berri rose_, a variety of R damascena, but having the +petals more rounded and more regular, it is a low rather drooping shrub +with delicately small branches. + +_Propagation_.--All the species may be multiplied by seed, by layers, by +cuttings, by suckers, or from grafts, almost indiscriminately. Layering +is the easiest, and most certain mode of propagating this most beautiful +shrub. + +The roots that branch, out and throw up distinct shoots may be divided, +or cut off from the main root, and even an eye thus taken off may be +made to produce a good plant. + +Suckers, when they have pushed through the soil, may be taken up by +digging down, and gently detaching them from the roots. + +Grafting or budding is used for the more delicate kinds, especially the +sweet briar, and, by the curious, to produce two or more varieties on +one stem, the best stocks being obtained from the China, or the Dog +Rose. + +_Soil &c._--Any good loamy garden soil without much sand, suits the +rose, but to produce it in perfection the ground can hardly be too rich. + +_Culture_.--Immediately at the close of the rains, the branches of most +kinds of roses, especially the double ones, should be cut down to not +more than six inches in length, removing at the same time, all old and +decayed wood, as well as all stools that have branched out from the main +one, and which will form new plants; the knife being at the same time +freely exercised in the removal of sickly and crowded fibres from the +roots; these should likewise be laid open, cleaned and pinned, and +allowed to remain exposed until blossom buds begin to appear at the end +of the first shoots; the hole must then be filled with good strong +stable manure, and slightly earthed over. About a month after, a basket +of stable dung, with the litter, should be heaped up round the stems, +and broken brick or turf placed over it to relieve the unsightly +appearance. + +While flowering, too, it will be well to water with liquid manure at +least once a week. If it be desired to continue the trees in blossom, +each shoot should be removed as soon as it has ceased flowering. To +secure full large blossoms, all the buds from a shoot should be cut off, +when quite young, except one. + +The _Sweet briar rose_ strikes its root low, and prefers shade, the best +soil being a deep rich loam with very little sand, rather strong than +otherwise; it will be well to place a heap of manure round the stem, +above ground, covering over with turf, but it is not requisite to open +the roots, or give them so much manure as for other varieties. The sweet +briar must not be much pruned, overgrowth being checked rather by +pinching the young shoots, or it will not blossom, and it is rather +slower in throwing out shoots than other roses. In this country the best +mode of multiplying this shrub is by grafting on a China rose stock, as +layers do not strike freely, and cuttings cannot be made to root at all. + +The _Bramble-flowered rose_ is a climber, and though not needing so +strong a soil as other kinds, requires it to be rich, and frequently +renewed, by taking away the soil from about the roots and supplying its +place with a good compost of loam, leaf mould, and well rotted dung, +pruning the root. The plants require shelter from the cold wind from the +North, or West, this, however, if carefully trained, they will form for +themselves, but until they do so, it is impossible to make them blossom +freely, the higher branches should be allowed to droop, and if growing +luxuriantly, with the shoots not shortened, they will the following +season, produce bunches of flowers at the end of every one, and have a +very beautiful effect, no pruning should be given, except what is just +enough to keep the plants within bounds, as they invariably suffer from +the use of the knife. This rose is easily propagated by cuttings or +layers, both of which root readily. + +The _China rose_ thrives almost anywhere, but is best in a soil of loam +and peat, a moderate supply of water being given daily during the hot +weather. They will require frequent thinning out of the branches, and +are propagated by cuttings, which strike freely.[139] + +As before mentioned, Rose trees look well in a parterre by themselves, +but a few may be dispersed along the borders of the garden. + +_Insects, &c._ The green, and the black plant louse are great enemies to +the rose tree, and, whenever they appear, it is advisable to cut out at +once the shoot attacked, the green caterpillar too, often makes +skeletons of the leaves in a short time, the ladybird, as it is commonly +called, is an useful insect, and worthy of encouragement, as it is a +destroyer of the plant louse. + + * * * * * + +CREEPERS AND CLIMBERS + +The CLIMBING, and TWINING SHRUBS offer a numerous family, highly +deserving of cultivation, the following being a few of the most +desirable. + +The HONEY-SUCKLE, Caprifolium, having no native name, is too well known, +and too closely connected with the home associations of all to need +particularizing. It is remarkable that they always twine from east to +west, and rather die than submit to a change. + +The TRUMPET FLOWER, Bignonia, are an eminently handsome family, chiefly +considered stove plants in Europe, but here growing freely in the open +ground, and flowering in loose spikes. + +The MOUNTAIN EBONY, Bauhinia, the distinguishing mark of the class being +its two lobed leaves, most of them are indigenous, and in their native +woods attain an immense size, far beyond what botanists in Europe appear +to give them credit for. + +The VIRGIN'S BOWER, Clematis, finds some indigenous representatives in +this country, although unnamed in the native language; the odour however +is rather too powerful, and of some kinds even offensive, except +immediately after a shower of rain. They are all climbers, requiring the +same treatment as the honey suckle. + +The PASSION FLOWER, Passiflora, is a very large family of twining +shrubs, many of them really beautiful, and generally of easy +cultivation, this country being of the same temperature with their +indigenous localities. + +The RACEMOSE ASPARAGUS, A. racemosus, _Sadabooree, sutmoolee_, is a +native of India, and by nature a trailing plant, but better cultivated +as a climber on a trellis, in which way its delicate setaceous foliage +makes it at all times ornamental, and at the close of the rains it sends +forth abundant bunches of long erect spires of greenish white color, and +of delicious fragrance, shedding perfume all around to a great distance. + + * * * * * + +KALENDAR WORK TO BE PERFORMED. + + +JANUARY. + +Thin out seeding annuals wherever they appear too thick. Water freely, +especially such plants as are in bloom, and keep all clean from weeds. +Cut off the footstalks of flowers, except such as are reserved for seed, +as soon as the petals fade. Collect the seeds of early annuals as they +ripen. + + +FEBRUARY. + +Continue as directed in last month. Prepare stocks for roses to be +grafted on, R. bengalensis, and R. canina are the best. Great care must +be paid to thinning out the buds of roses to insure perfect blossoms, as +well as to rubbing off the succulent upright shoots and suckers that are +apt to spring up at this period. Collect seeds as they ripen, to be +dried, or hardened in the shade. + +Collect seeds as they ripen, drying them carefully, for a few days in +the pods, and subsequently when freed from them in the shade, to put +them in the sun being highly injurious. Give a plentiful supply of water +in saucers to Narcissus, or other bulbs when flowering. + + +MARCH. + +Cut down the flower stalks of Narcissus that have ceased flowering, and +lessen the supply of water. Take up the tubers of Dahlias, and dry +gradually in an open place in the shade, but do not remove the offsets +for some days. Pot any of the species of Geranium that have been put out +after the rains, provided they are not in bloom. Give water freely to +the roots of all flowers that are in blossom. Mignionette that is in +blossom should have the seed pods clipped off with a pair of scissors +every day to continue it. Convolvulus in flower should be shaded early +in the morning, or it will quickly fade. The Evening Primrose should be +freely watered to increase the number of blossoms. Look to the +Carnations that are coming into bloom, give support to the flower stem, +cutting off all side shoots and buds, except the one intended to give a +handsome flower. + + +APRIL. + +Careful watering, avoiding any wetting of the leaves is necessary at +this period, and the saucers of all bulbs not yet flowered should be +kept constantly full, to promote blossoming--the saucers should however +be kept clean, and washed out every third day at least. Frequent weeding +must be attended to, with occasional watering all grass plots, or paths. +Wherever any part of the garden becomes empty by the clearing off of +annuals, it should be well dug to a depth of at least eighteen inches, +and after laying exposed in clods for a week or two, manured with tank +or road mud; leaf mould, or other good well rotted manure. + + +MAY. + +This is the time to make layers of Honeysuckle, Bauhinia, and other +climbing and twining shrubs. + +Mignionette must be very carefully treated, kept moist, and every +seed-pod clipped off as soon as the flower fades, or it will not be +preserved. Continue to dig, and manure the borders, not leaving the +manure exposed, or it will lose power. Make pipings and layers of +Carnations. + + +JUNE. + +Thin out the multitudinous buds of the Madras rose, also examine the +buds of the Persian rose, to prevent the bursting of the calyx by tying +with thread, or with a piece of parchment, or cardboard as directed for +Carnations. + +Watch Carnations to prevent the bursting of the calyx, and to remove +superfluous buds. Re pot Geraniums that are in sheds, or verandahs, so +soon as they have done flowering, also take up, and pot any that may yet +remain in the borders. Prune off also all superfluous, or straggling +branches. Continue digging over and manuring the flowering borders. Sow +Zinnias, also make cuttings of perennials and biennials that are +propagated by that means, and put in seeds of biennials under shelter, +as well as a few of the early annuals, particularly Stock and Sweet-pea. + + +JULY. + +Make cuttings and layers of hardy shrubs, and of the Fragrant Olive; put +in cuttings of the Willow, and some other trees. Plant out Pines, and +Casuarina, Cypress, Large-leaved fig, and the Laurel tribe. Transplant +young shrubs of a hardy nature. + +Divide the roots, and plant out suckers, or offsets of perennial border +plants. Make cuttings and sow seeds of biennials, as required; also a +few annuals to be hereafter transplanted. Sow also Geraniums. Continue +making pipings of Carnation, plant out, or transplant hardy perennials +into the borders. + + +AUGUST. + +This may be considered the best time for sowing the seeds of hardy +shrubs. Plant out Aralia, Canella, Magnolia, and other ornamental trees. +Transplant delicate and exotic shrubs. Remove, and plant out suckers, +and layers of hardy shrubs. Prune all shrubs freely. + +Divide, and plant out suckers, and offsets of hardy perennials, that +have formed during the rains. Plant out tender perennial plants, in the +borders, also biennials. Prune, and thin out perennial plants in the +borders. Put out in the borders such annuals as were sown in June, +protecting them from the heat of the sun in the afternoon. Sow a few +early annuals. Plant out Dahlia tubers where they are intended to +blossom, keeping them as much as possible in classes of colors. Make +pipings of Carnations. + + +SEPTEMBER. + +Prick out the cuttings of hardy shrubs that have been made before, or +during the rains, in beds for growing. Prune all flowering shrubs, +having due regard to the character of each, as bearing flowers on the +end of the shoots, or from the side exits, give the annual dressing of +manure to the entire shrubbery, with new upper soil. + +Remove the top soil from the borders, and renew with addition of a +moderate quantity of manure. Put out Geraniums into the borders, and set +rooted cuttings singly in pots. Plant out biennials in the borders, also +such annuals as have been sown in pots. Re-pot and give fresh earth to +plants in the shed. + + +OCTOBER. + +Open out the roots of a few Bussorah roses for early flowering, pruning +down all the branches to a height of six inches, removing all decayed, +and superannuated wood, dividing the roots, and pruning them freely. The +Madras roses should be treated in the same manner, not all at the same +time, but at intervals of a week between each cutting down, so as to +secure a succession for blossoming. Plant out rooted cuttings in beds, +to increase in size. + +Sow annuals freely, and thin out those put in last month, so as to leave +sufficient space for growing, at the same time transplanting the most +healthy to other parts of the border. + + +NOVEMBER. + +Continue opening the roots of Bussorah roses, as well as the Rose +Edward, and Madras roses, for succession to those on which this +operation was performed last month. Prune, and trim the Sweetbriar, and +Many-flowered rose. + +_Flower-Garden_--Divide, and plant bulbs of all kinds, both, for border, +and pot flowering. Continue to sow annuals. + + +DECEMBER + +Continue opening the roots, and cutting down the branches of Bussorah, +and other roses for late flowering. Prune, and thin out also the China +and Persian roses, as well as the Many-flowered rose, if not done last +month. Train carefully all climbing and twining shrubs. + +Weed beds of annuals, and thin out, where necessary. Sow Nepolitan, and +other fine descriptions of Larkspur, as well as all other annuals for a +late show. Dahlias are now blooming in perfection, and should be closely +watched that every side-bud, or more than one on each stalk may be cut +off close, with a pair of scissors to secure full, distinctly colored, +and handsome flowers. + +[For further instructions respecting the culture of flowers in India I +must refer my readers to the late Mr. Speede's works, where they will +find a great deal of useful information not only respecting the +flower-garden, but the kitchen-garden and the orchard.] + + * * * * * + +MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS. + +THE TREE-MIGNONETTE.--This plant does not appear to be a distinct +variety, for the common mignonette, properly trained becomes shrubby. It +may be propagated by either seed or cuttings. When it has put forth four +leaves or is about an inch high, take it from the bed and put it by +itself into a moderate sized pot. As it advances in growth, carefully +pick off all the side shoots, leaving the leaf at the base of each shoot +to assist the growth of the plant. When it has reached a foot in height +it will show flower. But every flower must be nipped off carefully. +Support the stem with a stick to make it grow straight. Even when it has +attained its proper height of two feet again cut off the bloom for a few +days. + +It is said that Miss Mitford, the admired authoress, was the first to +discover that the common mignonette could be induced to adopt tree-like +habits. The experiment has been tried in India, but it has sometimes +failed from its being made at the wrong season. The seed should be sown +at the end of the rains. + +GRAFTING.--Take care to unite exactly the inner bark of the scion with +the inner bark of the stock in order to facilitate the free course of +the sap. Almost any scion will take to almost any sort of tree or plant +provided there be a resemblance in their barks. The Chinese are fond of +making fantastic experiments in grafting and sometimes succeed in the +most heterogeneous combinations, such as grafting flowers upon fruit +trees. Plants growing near each other can sometimes be grafted by the +roots, or on the living root of a tree cut down another tree can be +grafted. The scions are those shoots which united with the stock form +the graft. It is desirable that the sap of the stock should be in brisk +and healthy motion at the time of grafting. The graft should be +surrounded with good stiff clay with a little horse or cow manure in it +and a portion of cut hay. Mix the materials with a little water and then +beat them up with a stick until the compound is quite ductile. When +applied it may be bandaged with a cloth. The best season for grafting in +India is the rains. + +MANURE.--Almost any thing that rots quickly is a good manure. It is +possible to manure too highly. A plant sometimes dies from too much +richness of soil as well as from too barren a one. + +WATERING.--Keep up a regular moisture, but do not deluge your plants +until the roots rot. Avoid giving very cold water in the heat of the day +or in the sunshine. Even in England some gardeners in a hot summer use +luke-warm water for delicate plants. But do not in your fear of +overwatering only wet the surface. The earth all round and below the +root should be equally moist, and not one part wet and the other dry. If +the plant requires but little water, water it seldom, but let the water +reach all parts of the root equally when you water at all. + +GATHERING AND PRESERVING FLOWERS.--Always use the knife, and prefer such +as are coming into flower rather than such as are fully expanded. If +possible gather from crowded plants, or parts of plants, so that every +gathering may operate at the same time as a judicious pruning and +thinning. Flowers may be preserved when gathered, by inserting their +ends in winter, in moist earth, or moss; and may be freshened, when +withered, by sprinkling them with water, and putting them in a close +vessel, as under a bellglass, handglass, flowerpot or in a botanic box; +if this will not do, sprinkle them with warm water heated to 80 deg. or 90 deg., +and cover them with a glass.--_Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening_. + +PIPING---is a mode of propagation by cuttings and is adopted in plants +having joined tubular stems, as the dianthus tribe. When the shoot has +nearly done growing (soon after its blossom has fallen) its extremity is +to be separated at a part of the stem where it is hard and ripe. This is +done by holding the root with one hand and with the other pulling the +top part above the pair of leaves so as to separate it from the root +part of the stem at the socket, formed by the axillae of the leaves, +leaving the stem to remain with a tubular or pipe-looking termination. +The piping is inserted in finely sifted earth to the depth of the first +joint or pipe and its future management regulated on the same general +principles as cuttings.--_From the same_. + +BUDDING.--This is performed when the leaves of plants have grown to +their full size and the bud is to be seen at the base of it. The +relative nature of the bud and the stock is the same as in grafting. +Make a slit in the bark of the stock, to reach from half an inch to an +inch and a half down the stock, according to the size of the plant; then +make another short slit across, that you may easily raise the bark from +the wood, then take a very thin slice of the bark from the tree or plant +to be budded, a little below a leaf, and bring the knife out a little +above it, so that you remove the leaf and the bud at its base, with the +little slice you have taken. You will perhaps have removed a small bit +of the wood with the bark, which you must take carefully out with the +sharp point of your knife and your thumb; then tuck the bark and bud +under the bark of the stock which you carefully bind over, letting the +bud come at the part where the slits cross each other. No part of the +stock should be allowed to grow after it is budded, except a little +shoot or so, above the bud, just to draw the sap past the +bud.--_Gleenny's Hand Book of Gardening_. + +ON PYRAMIDS OF ROSES.--The standard Roses give a fine effect to a bed of +Roses by being planted in the middle, forming a pyramidal bed, or alone +on grass lawns; but the _ne plus ultra_ of a pyramid of Roses is that +formed of from one, two, or three plants, forming a pyramid by being +trained up three strong stakes, to any length from 10 to 25 feet high +(as may suit situation or taste), placed about two feet apart at the +bottom; three forming an angle on the ground, and meeting close together +at the top; the plant, or plants to be planted inside the stakes. In two +or three years, they will form a pyramid of Roses which baffles all +description. When gardens are small, and the owners are desirous of +having _multum in parvo_, three or four may be planted to form one +pyramid; and this is not the only object of planting more sorts than one +together, but the beauty is also much increased by the mingled hues of +the varieties planted. For instance, plant together a white Boursault, a +purple Noisette, a Stadtholder, Sinensis (fine pink), and a Moschata +scandens and such a variety may be obtained, that twenty pyramids may +have each, three or four kinds, and no two sorts alike on the whole +twenty pyramids. A temple of Roses, planted in the same way, has a +beautiful appearance in a flower garden--that is, eight, ten, or twelve +stout peeled Larch poles, well painted, set in the ground, with a light +iron rafter from each, meeting at the top and forming a dome. An old +cable, or other old rope, twisted round the pillar and iron, gives an +additional beauty to the whole. Then plant against the pillars with two +or three varieties, each of which will soon run up the pillars, and form +a pretty mass of Roses, which amply repays the trouble and expense, by +the elegance it gives to the garden--_Floricultural Cabinet_. + +How TO MAKE ROSE WATER, &c--Take an earthen pot or jar well glazed +inside, wide in the month, narrow at the bottom, about 15 inches high, +and place over the mouth a strainer of clean coarse muslin, to contain a +considerable quantity of rose leaves, of some highly fragrant kind. +Cover them with a second strainer of the same material, and close the +mouth of the jar with an iron lid, or tin cover, hermetically sealed. On +this lid place hot embers, either of coal or charcoal, that the heat may +reach the rose-leaves without scorching or burning them. + +The aromatic oil will fall drop by drop to the bottom with the water +contained in the petals. When time has been allowed for extracting the +whole, the embers must be removed, and the vase placed in a cool spot. + +Rose-water obtained in this mode is not so durable as that obtained in +the regular way by a still but it serves all ordinary purposes. Small +alembics of copper with a glass capital, may be used in three different +ways. + +In the first process, the still or alembic must be mounted on a small +brick furnace, and furnished with a worm long enough to pass through a +pan of cold water. The petals of the rose being carefully picked so as +to leave no extraneous parts, should be thrown into the boiler of the +still with a little water. + +The great point is to keep up a moderate fire in the furnace, such as +will cause the vapour to rise without imparting a burnt smell to the +rose water. + +The operation is ended when the rose water, which falls drop by drop in +the tube, ceases to be fragrant. That which is first condensed has very +little scent, that which is next obtained is the best, and the third and +last portion is generally a little burnt in smell, and bitter in taste. +In a very small still, having no worm, the condensation must be produced +by linen, wetted in cold water, applied round the capital. A third +method consists in plunging the boiler of the still into a larger vessel +of boiling water placed over a fire, when the rose-water never acquires +the burnt flavour to which we have alluded. By another process, the +still is placed in a boiler filled with sand instead of water, and +heated to the necessary temperature. + +But this requires alteration, or it is apt to communicate a baked +flavour. + +SYRUP OF ROSES--May be obtained from Belgian or monthly roses, picked +over, one by one, and the base of the petal removed. In a China Jar +prepared with a layer of powdered sugar, place a layer of rose-leaves +about half an inch thick; then of sugar, then of leaves, till the vessel +is full. + +On the top, place a fresh wooden cover, pressed down with a weight. By +degrees, the rose-leaves produce a highly-coloured, highly-scented +syrup; and the leaves form a colouring-matter for liqueurs. + +PASTILLES DU SERAIL.--Sold in France as Turkish, in rosaries and other +ornaments, are made of the petals of the Belgian or Puteem Rose, ground +to powder and formed into a paste by means of liquid gum. + +Ivory-black is mixed with the gum to produce a black colour; and +cinnabar or vermilion, to render the paste either brown or red. + +It may be modelled by hand or in a mould, and when dried in the sun, or +a moderate oven, attains sufficient hardness to be mounted in gold or +silver.--_Mrs. Gore's Rose Fancier's Manual_. + +OF FORMING AND PRESERVING HERBARIUMS.--The most exact descriptions, +accompanied with the most perfect figures, leave still something to be +desired by him who wishes to know completely a natural being. This +nothing can supply but the autopsy or view of the object itself. Hence +the advantage of being able to see plants at pleasure, by forming dried +collections of them, in what are called herbariums. + +A good practical botanist, Sir J.E. Smith observes, must be educated +among the wild scenes of nature, while a finished theoretical one +requires the additional assistance of gardens and books, to which must +be superadded the frequent use of a good herbarium. When plants are well +dried, the original forms and positions of even their minutest parts, +though not their colours, may at any time be restored by immersion in +hot water. By this means the productions of the most distant and various +countries, such as no garden could possibly supply, are brought together +at once under our eyes, at any season of the year. If these be assisted +with drawings and descriptions, nothing less than an actual survey of +the whole vegetable world in a state of nature, could excel such a store +of information. + +With regard to the mode or state in which plants are preserved, +desiccation, accompanied by pressing, is the most generally used. Some +persons, Sir J.E. Smith observes, recommend the preservation of +specimens in weak spirits of wine, and this mode is by far the most +eligible for such as are very juicy: but it totally destroys their +colours, and often renders their parts less fit for examination than by +the process of drying. It is, besides, incommodious for frequent study, +and a very expensive and bulky way of making an herbarium. + +The greater part of plants dry with facility between the leaves of +books, or other paper, the smoother the better. If there be plenty of +paper, they often dry best without shifting; but if the specimens are +crowded, they must be taken out frequently, and the paper dried before +they are replaced. The great point to be attended to is, that the +process should meet with no check. Several vegetables are so tenacious +of their vital principle, that they will grow between papers; the +consequence of which is, a destruction of their proper habit and colors. +It is necessary to destroy the life of such, either by immersion in +boiling water or by the application of a hot iron, such as is used for +linen, after which they are easily dried. The practice of applying such +an iron, as some persons do, with great labor and perseverance, till the +plants are quite dry, and all their parts incorporated into a smooth +flat mass is not approved of. This renders them unfit for subsequent +examination, and destroys their natural habit, the most important thing +to be preserved. Even in spreading plants between papers, we should +refrain from that practice and artificial disposition of their branches, +leaves, and other parts, which takes away from their natural aspect, +except for the purpose of displaying the internal parts of some one or +two of their flowers, for ready observation. The most approved method of +pressing is by a box or frame, with a bottom of cloth or leather, like a +square sieve. In this, coarse sand or small shot may be placed; in any +quantity very little pressing is required in drying specimens; what is +found necessary should be applied equally to every part of the bundle +under the operation. + +Hot-pressing, by means of steel net-work heated, and placed in alternate +layers with the papers, in the manner of hot pressing paper, and the +whole covered with the equalizing press, above described, would probably +be an improvement, but we have not heard of its being tried. At all +events, pressing by screw presses, or weighty non-elastic bodies, must +be avoided, as tending to bruise the stalks and other protuberant parts +of plants. + +"After all we can do," Sir J.E. Smith observes, "plants dry very +variously. The blue colours of their flowers generally fade, nor are +reds always permanent. Yellows are much more so, but very few white +flowers retain their natural aspect. The snowdrop and parnassia, if well +dried, continue white. Some greens are much more permanent than others; +for there are some natural families whose leaves, as well as flowers, +turn almost black by drying, as melampyrum, bartsia, and their allies, +several willows, and most of the orchideae. The heaths and firs in +general cast off their leaves between papers, which appears to be an +effort of the living principle, for it is prevented by immersion of the +fresh specimen in boiling water." + +The specimens being dried, are sometimes kept loose between leaves of +paper; at other times wholly gummed or glued to paper, but most +generally attached by one or more transverse slips of paper, glued on +one end and pinned at the other, so that such specimens can readily be +taken out, examined, and replaced. On account of the aptitude of the +leaves and other parts of dried plants to drop off, many glue them +entirely, and such seems to be the method adopted by Linnaeus, and +recommended by Sir J.E. Smith. "Dried specimens," the professor +observes, "are best preserved by being fastened, with weak carpenter's +glue, to paper, so that they may be turned over without damage. Thick +and heavy stalks require the additional support of a few transverse +strips of paper, to bind them more firmly down. A half sheet, of a +convenient folio size, should be allotted to each species, and all the +species of a genus may be placed in one or more whole sheets or folios. +On the latter outside should be written the name of the genus, while the +name of every species, with its place of growth, time of gathering, the +finder's name, or any other concise piece of information, may be +inscribed on its appropriate paper. This is the plan of the Linnaean +herbarium."--_Loudon_. + +THE END. + + + +FOOTNOTES. + +[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 Strebaeus 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 L. per hour, +and another still later authority states that when the whole were set in +motion once a year on some Royal fete, the cost of the half hour during +which the main part of the exhibition lasted was not less than 3,000 L. +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 L500. 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 Elysees, 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, appeared in no place." + +Which is literally from Tasso, C, xvi 9. + + "E quel, che'l bello, e'l caro accresce a 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 e 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 Abbe 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 Deva, 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] _Mirabilis jalapa_, 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 bared 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. + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Flowers and Flower-Gardens +by David Lester Richardson + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWERS AND FLOWER-GARDENS *** + +***** This file should be named 12286.txt or 12286.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/2/8/12286/ + +Produced by Tony Browne and PG Distributed Proofreaders. 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