We are veritable sticklers for old customs; and accordingly at this
season of the year, have our room decorated with holly and other
characteristic evergreens. For the last hour we have been seated before
a fine bundle of these festive trophies; and, strange as it may seem,
this circumstance gave rise to the following paper. The holly reminded
us of the Czar Peter spoiling the garden-hedge at Sayes Court; this led
us to John Evelyn, the father of English gardening: and the laurels
drove us into shrubbery nooks, and all the retrospections of our early
days, and above all to our early love of gardens. Our enthusiasm was
then unaffected and uninfluenced by great examples; we had neither heard
nor read of Lord Bacon nor Sir William Temple, nor any other illustrious
writer on gardening; but this love was the pure offspring of our own
mind and heart. Planting and transplanting were our delight; the seed
which our tiny hands let fall into the bosom of the earth, we almost
watched peeping through little clods, after the kind and quickening
showers of spring; and we regarded the germinating of an upturned bean
with all the surprise and curiosity of our nature. As we grew in mind
and stature, we learned the loftier lessons of philosophy, and threw
aside the "Pocket Gardener," for the sublime chapters of Bacon and
Temple; and as the stream of life carried us into its vortex, we learned
to contemplate their pages as the living parterres of a garden, and
their bright imageries as fascinating flowers. As we journeyed onward
through the busy herds of crowded cities, we learned the holier
influences of gardens in reflecting that a garden has been the scene of
man's birth--his fall--and proffered redemption.
It would be difficult to find a subject which has been more fervently
treated by poets and philosophers, than the _love of gardens_. In old
Rome, poets sung of their gardens. Ovid is so fond of flowers, that in
his account of the Rape of Proserpine, in his Fasti, he devotes several
lines to the enumeration of flowers gathered by her attendants. But the
passion for gardening, which evidently came from the East, never
prevailed much in Europe till the times of the religious orders, who
greatly improved it.
Our anecdotical recollections of the taste for gardens must be but few,
or they will carry us beyond our limits. Lord Bacon appears to have done
more towards their encouragement than any other writer, and his essay
on gardens is too well known to admit of quotation. Sir William Temple
has, however, many eloquent passages in his writings, in one of which he
calls _gardening_ the "inclination of kings, the choice of philosophers,
and the common favourite 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." Perhaps John
Evelyn did more than either of these philosophers. Temple's garden at
Moor Park was one of the most beautiful of its kind; but at the time
when Evelyn introduced ornamental gardening into England, there were no
examples for imitation. All was devised by his own active mind; and in
the political storms of his time, his garden and plantations became
subjects of popular conversation; while the intervals of his secession
from public life were filled up in writing several practical treatises
on his favourite science. At Wotton, in Surrey, may be seen the large,
enclosed flower-garden, which was to have formed one of the principal
objects in his "Elysium Britannicum;" and this idea has been partly
realized by one of his successors.
Andrew Marvell has, however, anathematized gardens with much severity,
in some lines entitled "The Mower against Gardens;" and commencing
thus:--
Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use,
Did after him the world seduce,
And from the fields the flowers and plants allure,
Where nature was most plain and pure.
He first enclos'd within the garden's square
A dead and standing pool of air;
And a more luscious earth from them did knead,
Which stupify'd them while it fed, &c.,
On the other side, old Gerarde asks his courteous and well-willing
readers--"Whither do all men walk for their honest recreation, but where
the earth has most beneficially painted her face with flourishing
colours? and what season of the year more longed for than the spring,
whose gentle breath entices forth the kindly sweets, and makes them
yield their fragrant smells." Lord Bacon, too, thus fondly dwells on
part of its allurements:--"That flower, which above all others yields
the sweetest smell in the air, is the violet. Next to that is the
musk-rose, then the strawberry leaves, dying with a most excellent
cordial smell. Then sweet briars, then wall flowers, which are very
delightful to be set under a parlour, or lower chamber window. But those
which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but
being trodden upon and crushed, are three, that is burner, wild thyme,
and water mints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them, to
have the pleasure where you walk or tread." Sir William Temple says
Epicurus studied, exercised, and taught his philosophy in his garden.
Milton, we know, passed many hours together in his garden at Chalfont;
Cowley poured forth the greatness of his soul in his rural retreat
at Chertsey; and Lord Shaftesbury wrote his "Characteristics," at
a delightful spot near Reigate. Pope, in one of his letters, says,
"I am in my garden, amused and easy; this is a scene where one finds no
disappointment;"--and within the same neighbourhood, Thomson
"Sung the Seasons and their change."
England can likewise boast of very great names who have been attached to
this art, though they have not written on the subject. Lord Burleigh,
Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Capell, William III--for Switzer tells us, that
"in the least interval of ease, gardening took up a great part of his
time, in which he was not only a delighter, but likewise a great
judge,"--the Earl of Essex, whom Lord William Russell said "was the
worthiest, the justest, the sincerest, and the most concerned for the
public, of any man he ever knew;" Lord William Russell too, who, as
Switzer tells us, "made Stratton, about seven miles from Winchester, his
seat, and his gardens there were some of the best that were made in
those early days, such indeed as have mocked some that have been done
since, and the gardens at Southampton House, in Bloomsbury Square, were
also of his making." Henry, Earl of Danby, the Earl of Gainsborough,
"the _Maecenas_ of his age," the Earl of Halifax, the friend of Addison,
Swift, Pope, and Steele; Lord Weymouth, of Longleate; Dr. Sherard, of
Eltham; the Earl of Scarborough, an accomplished nobleman, immortalized
by Pope, and by the fine pen of Chesterfield; and the Duke of Argyle,
with numerous other men of rank and science, have highly assisted in
elevating gardening to the station it has long since held.[6]
[6] "Portraits of English Authors on Gardening."
Beauty and health are the attributes of gardening. In illustration of
the former, we remember a passage from Gervase Markham, thus: "As in the
composition of a delicate woman the grace of her cheeke is the mixture
of red and white, the wonder of her eye blacke and white, and the beauty
of her hand blew and white, any of which is not said to be beautifull if
it consist of single or simple colours; and so in walkes or alleyes,
the all greene, nor the all yellow, cannot be said to be most
beautifull; but the greene and yellow, (that is to say the untroade
grasse, and the well-knit gravelle) being equally mixt, give the eye
both lustre and delight beyond comparison." Abercrombie lived to the age
of _eighty_, when he died by a fall down stairs in the dark. He was
present at the battle of Preston Pans, which was fought close to his
father's garden walls. For the last twenty years he lived chiefly on
tea, using it three times a-day; his pipe was his first companion in the
morning, and last at night. He never remembered to have taken a dose of
physic in his life; prior to his last fatal accident, nor of having a
day's illness but once.
The association of gardening with pastoral poetry, was exemplified in
Shenstone's design of the Leasowes--as Mr. Whately observes--a perfect
picture of his mind, simple, elegant, and amiable, and which will always
suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verses, or whether in the
scenes which he formed, he only realized the pastoral images which
abound in his songs. That elegant trifler, Horace Walpole, was
enthusiastically fond of gardening. One day telling his nurseryman that
he would have his trees planted irregularly, he replied, "Yes, sir, I
understand; you would have them hung down--somewhat _poetical_."