THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.-1. Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London. 7 vols. 1812-1851. 2. The Cottager's Calendar of Garden Operations. By Joseph Paxton. 1849. 3. The Gardener's Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette. (Weekly.) Edited by Professor Lindley. 10 vols. 1841-1851. 4. The Cottage Gardener. (Weekly.) Conducted by George W. Johnson, Esq. 5 vols. 1848-1851. 5. The Miscellaneous Writings of John Evelyn, Esq. Now first collected by William Upcott. 1825. 6. Phytologia; or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening. By Erasmus Darwin, M.D. 7. An Introduction to Physiological and Systematical Botany. By Sir James Edward Smith. 1825. 8. An Introduction to the Natural System of Botany. By John Lindley. 1830. 'I NEVER 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 large garden, with very moderate conveniences joyned to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them and study of Nature And there, with no design beyond my wall, Whole and entire to lye In no inactive ease and no unglorious poverty.' Cowley's wish is, like Pope's Universal Prayer, adapted to all sorts and conditions of men. How many hundred thousand times, in each of the nearly two hundred years since the Epistle to John Evelyn, Esq., was written, has the same ardent longing been breathed by lips that pant to inhale the fresh breeze of the country, instead of the smoke-laden air of the town! Give me but a garden! is the aspiration sighed forth, with more or less of hope, in cities and in solitudes, by children and by their grandsires. From Punch's indication of the season when to rake mignonette-box with silver fork, pass to Leichhardt's sketch of a persevering brother in Australian exploration: 'Mr. Phillips is rather singular in his habits; he erects his tent VOL. LXXXIX. NO. CLXXVII. B generally generally at a distance from the rest, under a shady tree or in a green bower of shrubs, where he makes himself as comfortable as the place will allow, by spreading branches and grass under his couch, and covering his tent with them, to keep it shady and cool, and even planting lilies in blossom (crinum) before his tent. to enjoy their sight during the short time of our stay.-Overland Expedition to Port Essington, p. 237. All this industry repeated night after night, by a weary footsore man, merely in the hope to have something like a shred of garden to look at on waking in the morning! Could there be a more touching expression of the 'hortulan' passion which, whether latent or in full action, remains, like hope, ineradicable from the human breast? It is a natural consequence, too, that those who cannot taste the actual fruition of a garden, should take the greater delight in reading about one. But the enjoyment next below actual possession seems to be derived from writing on the topic. 'Had I not observed,' says Sir Thomas Browne, that purblind men have discoursed well of sight, and some, without issue, excellently of generation, I, that was never master of any considerable garden, had not attempted this subject. But the earth is the garden of nature, and each fruitful country a Paradise.'- Garden of Cyrus. All the world are Diλoßoravo, as John Ray expresses it in his 'D. D. D. Fautoribus et Amicis.' The most highly esteemed favour which the early missionaries at Tahiti could confer on the king and queen was to furnish them each, on state occasions, with a specimen of that splendid novelty the sun-flower, to be worn in their dusky bosoms. The men of St. Kilda, who went to pay their duty to their lord (Macleod) in the far southern island of Skye, could hardly proceed on their journey when approaching Dunvegan Castle, because (said they) the trees-such beautiful things had never been seen even in their dreams!—the trees kept pulling them back. Be grateful, then, you who live in country-houses, in a temperate clime; and endeavour to enjoy your Eden truly, by fencing off every unhallowed intrusion, and by the remembrance that for you and yours there grows in the midst a tree of evil as well as a tree of good! Among the possessors of gardens there are favoured mortals who have ample means, well-stored knowledge, and intelligent industry; to whom their multitudinous band of gardeners look up for guidance, as the army regards the Duke. Such persons are horticultural lighthouses, shining on high. The gratification they derive from their pursuits must be very great indeed; but they cannot be a numerous body. They do not need any cicerone to point out the specialities of garden literature. Nor do they--and they do not wish to-monopolize the learning and the the pleasures of horticulture. On the contrary, they are fountainheads of patronage, patterns of successful practice, centres of dissemination and distribution. Without them, and even in spite of them, gardening would still be somewhat-but by no means what it actually is. To name any single individual, male or femalefor some of the ladies are horticultural giantesses, even Fellows— would be invidious to the rest of this select advanced guard. But there is a second class, who are much to be envied, and that because they have what Dr. Watts, in his Logic, calls a 'learned,' instead of a 'vulgar idea' of the hobby which they ride so pleasantly. Perhaps, indeed, none derive so great an amount of enjoyment from a garden as those of the every-gentleman-his-own-gardener sort. They are spared an immense number of known nuisances, and revel in a multitude of unknown delights. To be told by the men in early spring that there is nothing in the garden, neither for missis' nor for cook;' and then to come in with a charming bunch of Russian violets, fragrant coltsfoot, daphne, erica carnea, wall-flowers, polyanthus, &c. &c. for the cara sposa, and a punnet of the sweetest, greenest sprouts, and the plumpest, whitest seakale, for the emissary of him who did not send meat ;-to insert manu propriâ a bark-bound bud on a brittle branch, and after many months, or years, to gather therefrom a great handful of flowers or a heaping dish of fruit;—to be able to say, 'With the sun shining in this manner, I cannot go on reading and writing, unless you lash me to my chair-give me the baskets-I will go and cut the vegetables for dinner;'-to dine with a puffy specimen of humanity, who has his pits and his pineries, and his gangs of people at nobody knows what wages, and to taste what he sets before you, and send him better next day-you keeping only the man, the boy, and yourself;-to see the look of thankfulness in a neighbour's eyes, when, driving to inquire after his convalescent wife or his sinking child, you produce some horticultural dainty, which will be enjoyed and relished because it comes unexpected-and they have nothing of the kind just now;'-to attack a standard rose with a head like a plica polonica, and leave it as orderly as a little schoolboy's on Saturday afternoon;--to sow an infinity of seeds, and amidst the wilderness of seedlings to discover one which, if it is not, ought to be the best possible variety, the unapproachable exceeder of perfection—there is no finishing the list of luxuries. Those delicate gentlefolks who scorn in any way to act as their own head gardener, have to compose their catalogue of 'delightful tasks' in quite a different type. E. G.-To fret for four or five days together, with company under your roof, over a shabby dessert ;-at last, to ease your mind about it by telling B 2 your your Scottish Chief that though the grapes have been tolerable, the peaches have been poor, very different fruit from what the house promised when you were last in it; figs ditto; and to be answered by a remark touching the housekeeper's niece, and her tastes-the invisible girl with gooseberry eyes and her hair never out of papers, whom her aunt had your leave to ask down from London for her health. To have to say to Mrs. Uppercrust that Mr. MacForcer shall, for the present, arrange his dessert immediately before its introduction to the dining-room;-and to be told by her, in rejoinder, a story of Mr. Blanco, who wanted extra-fine fruit for some superb affair, and bought in Covent Garden Market a supply which he was told was the best that could be had, as they had just received their usual package from Mr. Blanco's gardener, who spared no expense. To obtain, at a reckless cost, the newest thing from Shanghae or the Himalayas, which is propagated with such difficulty that you cannot communicate it to your own sister or brother, and then, next year, to see it in plenty on the other side of the garden palings of several of MacSwill the helper's most intimate friends. To walk in well-dressed pleasure-grounds, for whose dressing you pay something handsome per annum, and to feel that you cannot do as you like there; reproached, if you cut a bouquet of roses, with having destroyed MacForcer's every chance of the prize for half a hundred dissimilar blooms at the next Horticultural show-if you take the liberty of sending off a dozen pot-plants to a lady friend, nods and winks, and whispered wonder how Missis will like it?' If you invade the kitchen garden, and ravage it of a few hampers full of good edibles, to be told that it is not your perquisite, and to receive warning. To grudge spending a sixpence on a garden almanack, or an hour in reading it, and then to perceive that the men are grinning while you proceed to utter some long-hatched criticism on their operations. The ladies and gentlemen who undergo these pains and penalties of ignorance deserve not the slightest commiseration, for garden literature has not only for a long while been copious, but is still receiving that surplus of contributions which it is the delightful duty of the world to pour into a flourishing exchequer. And yet the organisms, which are the subjects of gardening, are themselves of a very puzzling and ambiguous nature. 'Stones grow' (as in crystallization, stalactites, &c.), said Linnæus; 'vegetables grow and live; animals grow, live, and feel.' But several later botanists have endeavoured to demonstrate the probability that vegetables also feel. Thus, Mr. J. P. Tupper : 'If sensation be imputed to plants, it may with propriety be asked, whether they are furnished with organs similar to those which are the seat seat of sensation in animals? Perhaps this would not be easily proved by ocular demonstration; nor, indeed, is it necessary that the sentient organs of vegetables should have the same structure, seeing that all those other parts which they are allowed to possess in common with animals, sensibly differ in their form and character.' And again It may be asked, in what particular manner do vegetables feel themselves affected in consequence of any impression which they may receive? Of this I presume it is impossible to form an idea, seeing that their sentient organs are necessarily so different from our own. But although we may not be able to form any precise idea of the particular kind of pleasure or pain of which vegetables may be susceptible, yet we can easily determine which of the two sensations a plant may experience by observing its general appearance under particular circumstances.'-Essay on the Probability of Sensation in Vegetables.* Some visionaries, whom we need not follow further, have speculated on the chance which plants have of enjoying, in an 'equal sky,' a future state of existence. But even Dr. Darwin boldly says To reason rightly on many vegetable phenomena, we shall find it necessary first to show that vegetables are in reality an inferior order of animals.' He asserts, in words which are at least deserving of attention, that they resemble animals in having absorbent, umbilical, placental, and pulmonary vessels, arteries, glands, organs of reproduction, with muscles, nerves, and brain, or common sensorium; nay adds— 'It is not impossible, if Spallanzani should continue his experiments, that some beautiful productions might be generated between the regetable and animal kingdoms, like the eastern fable of the rose and the nightingale.'-Phytologia, p. 119. Of some plants the seeds are, as far as we can perceive, living animalcules, with voluntary motion, till they pitch their tent upon a spot that they think will suit them; they then germinate, and change from animals to algæ. Dr. Darwin opines that a degree of pleasurable sensation must be supposed from the strongest analogy to attend this activity of their systems.' We have no intention to discuss on this occasion the flirtations, loves, and clandestine marriages of the plants. But-abstaining from See also Sir J. E. Smith's Introduction to Botany, p. 3, and Sir W. Scott's Essay on Landscape Gardening, Quarterly Review, vol. xxxvii. p. 328. † For these see the Botanic Garden, a poem whose fate it is to be for the great part forgotten, and yet to furnish some of our most familiar quotations. The Loves of the Plants want variety, and the employment of Rosicrucian machinery in The Economy of Vegetation challenges a dangerous comparison with the Rape of the Lock. The work was a daring experiment at the time; and the critic ought to bear in mind a sentence from the author's Apology: Extravagant theories, in those parts of |