Fair spring days, the farmers beginning the planting of the season's
crops. One cannot well forego the pleasures which the culture of a
garden affords. He must have a little spot upon which to bestow his
affections, and own his affinities with earth and sky. The profits in a
pecuniary way may be inconsiderable, but the pleasures are rewarding.
Formerly I allowed neither hoe, spade, nor rake, not handled by myself,
to approach my plants. But when one has put his garden within covers,
to be handled in a book, he fancies he has earned the privilege of
delegating the tillage thereafter, in part, to other hands, and may
please himself with its superintendence; especially when he is so
fortunate as to secure the services of any who can take their orders
without debate, and execute them with dispatch; and if he care to
compare opinions with them, find they have views of their own, and
respect for his. And the more agreeable if they have a pleasant humor
and the piety of lively spirits.
"In laborer's ballads oft more piety
God finds than in _Te Deum's_ melody."
"When our ancestors," says Cato, "praised a good man, they called him a
good agriculturist and a good husbandman; he was thought to be greatly
honored who was thus praised."
Without his plot of ground for tillage and ornamentation, a countryman
seems out of place, its culture and keeping being the best occupation
for keeping himself wholesome and sweet. The garden is the tie uniting
man and nature. How civic an orchard shows in a clearing,--a garden
in a prairie, as if nature waited for man to arrive and complete
her, by converting the wild into the human, and thus to marry beauty
and utility on the spot! A house, too, without garden or orchard, is
unfurnished, incomplete, does not fulfil our ideas of the homestead,
but stands isolate, defiant in its individualism, with a savage,
slovenly air, and distance, that lacks softening and blending with
the surrounding landscape. Besides, it were tantalizing to note the
natural advantages of one's grounds, and at the same time be unskilful
to complete what nature has sketched for the hand of art to adorn and
idealize. With a little skill, good taste, and small outlay of time
and pains, one may render any spot a pretty paradise of beauty and
comfort,--if these are not one in due combination, and not for himself
only, but for those who shall inherit when he shall have left it. The
rightful ownership in the landscape is born of one's genius, partakes
of his essence thus wrought with the substance of the soil, the
structures which he erects thereon. Whoever enriches and adorns the
smallest spot, lives not in vain. For him the poet sings, the moralist
points his choicest periods.
I know of nothing better suited to inspire a taste for rural affairs
than a Gardener's Almanac, containing matters good to be known by
country people. All the more attractive the volume if tastefully
illustrated, and contain reprints of select pastoral verses,
biographies, with portraits of those who have written on country
affairs, and lists of their works. The old herbals, too, with all their
absurdities, are still tempting books, and contain much information
important for the countryman to possess.[3]
[Footnote 3: To the list of ancient authors, as Cato, Columella, Varro,
Palladius, Virgil, Theocritus, Tibullus, selections might be added from
Cowley, Marlowe, Browne, Spenser, Tusser, Dyer, Phillips, Shenstone,
Cowper, Thomson, and others less known. Evelyn's works are of great
value, his Kalendarium Hortense particularly. And for showing the state
of agriculture and of the language in his time, Tusser's Five Hundred
Points of Husbandry is full of information, while his quaint humor
adds to his rugged rhymes a primitive charm. Then of the old herbals,
Gerard's is best known. He was the father of English herbalists, and
had a garden attached to his house in Holbern. Coles published his
Adam in Eden, the Paradise of Plants, in 1659; Austin his Treatise on
Fruit Trees ten years earlier. Dr. Holland's translation of the School
of Salerne, or the Regiment of Health, appeared in 1649. Thos. Tryon
wrote on the virtues of plants, and on health, about the same time, and
his works are very suggestive and valuable. Miller, gardener to the
Chelsea Gardens, gave the first edition of his Gardener's Dictionary
to the press in 1731. Sir William Temple also wrote sensibly on
herbs. Cowley's Six Books of Plants was published in English in 1708.
Phillips' History of Cultivated Plants, etc., published in 1822, is a
book of great merit. So is Culpepper's Herbal.]
Cowley and Evelyn are of rural authors the most attractive. Cowley's
Essays are delightful reading. Nor shall I forgive his biographer
for destroying the letters of a man of whom King Charles said at his
interment in Westminster Abbey, "Mr. Cowley has not left a better in
England." The friend and correspondent of the most distinguished poets,
statesmen, and gentlemen of his time, himself the first poet of his
day, his letters must have been most interesting and important, and but
for the unsettled temper of affairs, would doubtless have been added to
our polite literature.
Had King Charles remembered Cowley's friend Evelyn, the compliment both
to the living and dead would have been just. Evelyn was the best of
citizens and most loyal of subjects. A complete list of his writings
shows to what excellent uses he gave himself. The planter of forests in
his time, he might be profitably consulted as regards the replanting of
New England now.
Respecting his planting, and the origin of his Sylva, he writes to his
friend, Lady Sunderland, August, 1690:--
"As to the Kalendar your ladyship mentions, whatever assistance it may
be to some novice gardener, sure I am his lordship will find nothing in
it worth his notice, but an old inclination to an innocent diversion;
and the acceptance it found with my dear, and while he lived, worthy
friend, Mr. Cowley; upon whose reputation only it has survived seven
impressions, and is now entering on the eighth, with some considerable
improvement more agreeable to the present curiosity. 'Tis now, Madam,
almost forty years since I first writ it, when horticulture was not
much advanced in England, and near thirty years since it was published,
which consideration will, I hope, excuse its many defects. If in the
meantime it deserve the name of no unuseful trifle, 'tis all it is
capable of.
"When, many years ago, I came from rambling abroad, and a great deal
more since I came home than gave me much satisfaction, and, as events
have proved, scarce worth one's pursuit, I cast about how I should
employ the time which hangs on most young men's hands, to the best
advantage; and, when books and grave studies grew tedious, and other
impertinence would be pressing, by what innocent diversions I might
sometimes relieve myself without compliance to recreations I took no
felicity in, because they did not contribute to any improvement of
mind. This set me upon planting of trees, and brought forth my Sylva,
which book, infinitely beyond my expectations, is now also calling
for a fourth impression, and has been the occasion of propagating
many millions of useful timber trees throughout this nation, as I
may justify without immodesty, from many letters of acknowledgement
received from gentlemen of the first quality, and others altogether
strangers to me. His late Majesty, Charles II, was sometimes graciously
pleased to take notice of it to me; and that I had by that book alone
incited a world of planters to repair their broken estates and woods
which the greedy rebels had wasted and made such havoc of. Upon
encouragement, I was once speaking to a mighty man then in despotic
power to mention the great inclination I had to serve his majesty in a
little office then newly vacant (the salary I think hardly £300), whose
province was to inspect the timber trees in his majesty's forests,
etc., and take care of their culture and improvement; but this was
conferred upon another, who, I believe, had seldom been out of the
smoke of London, where, though there was a great deal of timber, there
were not many trees. I confess I had an inclination to the employment
upon a public account as well as its being suitable to my rural genius,
born as I was, at Watton, among woods.
"Soon after this, happened the direful conflagration of this city,
when, taking notice of our want of books of architecture in the English
tongue, I published those most useful directions of ten of the best
authors on that subject, whose works were very rarely to be had, all
written in French, Latin, or Italian, and so not intelligible to
our mechanics. What the fruit of that labor and cost has been, (for
the sculptures, which are elegant, were very chargeable,) the great
improvement of our workmen and several impressions of the copy since
will best testify.
"In this method I thought proper to begin planting trees, because they
would require time for growth, and be advancing to delight and shade at
least, and were, therefore, by no means to be neglected and deferred,
while buildings might be raised and finished in a summer or two, if the
owner pleased.
"Thus, Madam, I endeavored to do my countrymen some little service, in
as natural an order as I could for the improving and adorning of their
estates and dwellings, and, if possible, make them in love with those
useful and innocent pleasures, in exchange for a wasteful and ignoble
sloth which I had observed so universally corrupted an ingenious
education.
"To these I likewise added my little history of Chalcography, a
treatise of the perfection of painting and of libraries, medals, with
some other intermesses which might divert within doors as well as
altogether without."