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 hiscare.'

I

"I have made myself two gardens," says Petrarch, "and I do not imagine that they are to be equalled in all the world. 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.

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 flowergardens. 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 gardenretreats, 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 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 col