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.* 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.

* 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 landlevelled 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 Howitt 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.

Another lady-poet has poured forth in verse her admira

tion 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 aud 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 viewthat 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 Phœbus' 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 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. 66 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.