"Can any thing be more lovely, than the meadows between the rains of
May, when the sun smites them on the sudden like a painter, and they
laugh up at him, as if he had lighted a loving cheek!
I speak of a season when the returning threats of cold and the resisting
warmth of summer time, make robust mirth in the air; when the winds
imitate on a sudden the vehemence of winter; and silver-white clouds are
abrupt in their coming down and shadows on the grass chase one another,
panting, over the fields, like a pursuit of spirits. With undulating
necks they pant forward, like hounds or the leopard.
See! the cloud is after the light, gliding over the country like the
shadow of a god; and now the meadows are lit up here and there with
sunshine, as if the soul of Titian were standing in heaven, and playing
his fancies on them. Green are the trees in shadow; but the trees in the
sun how twenty-fold green _they_ are--rich and variegated with gold!"
One of the many exquisite out-of-doors enjoyments for the observers of
nature, is the sight of an English harvest. How cheering it is to behold
the sickles flashing in the sun, as the reapers with well sinewed arm,
and with a sweeping movement, mow down the close-arrayed ranks of the
harvest field! What are "the rapture of the strife" and all the "pomp,
pride and circumstance of glorious war," that bring death to some and
agony and grief to others, compared with the green and golden trophies
of the honest Husbandman whose bloodless blade makes no wife a widow, no
child an orphan,--whose office is not to spread horror and desolation
through shrieking cities, but to multiply and distribute the riches of
nature over a smiling land.
But let us quit the open fields for a time, and turn again to the
flowery retreats of
Retired Leisure
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
In all ages, in all countries, in all creeds, a garden is represented as
the scene not only of earthly but of celestial enjoyment. The ancients
had their Elysian Fields and the garden of the Hesperides, the Christian
has his Garden of Eden, the Mahommedan his Paradise of groves and
flowers and crystal fountains and black eyed Houries.
"God Almighty," says Lord Bacon, "first planted a garden; and indeed it
is the purest of all pleasures: it is the greatest refreshment to the
spirits of man." Bacon, though a utilitarian philosopher, was such a
lover of flowers that he was never satisfied unless he saw them in
almost every room of his house, and when he came to discourse of them in
his Essays, his thoughts involuntarily moved harmonious numbers. How
naturally the following prose sentence in Bacon's Essay on Gardens
almost resolves itself into verse.
"For the heath which was the first part of our plot, I wish it to be
framed as much as may be to a natural wildness. Trees I would have none
in it, but some thickets made only of sweet briar and honeysuckle, and
some wild vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, strawberries
and primroses; for these are sweet, and prosper in the shade."
"For the heath which was the third part of our plot--
I wish it to be framed
As much as may be to a natural wildness.
Trees I'd have none in't, but some thickets made
Only of sweet-briar and honey-suckle,
And some wild vine amongst; and the ground set
With violets, strawberries, and primroses;
For these are sweet and prosper in the shade."
It has been observed that the love of gardens is the only passion which
increases with age. It is generally the most indulged in the two
extremes of life. In middle age men are often too much involved in the
affairs of the busy world fully to appreciate the tranquil pleasures in
the gift of Flora. Flowers are the toys of the young and a source of the
sweetest and serenest enjoyments for the old. But there is no season of
life for which they are unfitted and of which they cannot increase the
charm.
"Give me," says the poet Rogers, "a garden well kept, however small, two
or three spreading trees and a mind at ease, and I defy the world." The
poet adds that he would not have his garden, too much extended. He seems
to think it possible to have too much of a good thing. "Three acres of
flowers and a regiment of gardeners," he says, "bring no more pleasure
than a sufficiency." "A hundred thousand roses," he adds, "which we look
at _en masse_, do not identify themselves in the same manner as even a
very small border; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly
attuned, the little cottage-garden may give him more real delight than
belongs to the owner of a thousand acres." In a smaller garden "we
become acquainted, as it were," says the same poet, "and even form
friendships with, individual flowers." It is delightful to observe how
nature thus adjusts the inequalities of fortune and puts the poor man,
in point of innocent happiness, on a level with the rich. The man of the
most moderate means may cultivate many elegant tastes, and may have
flowers in his little garden that the greatest sovereign in the world
might enthusiastically admire. Flowers are never vulgar. A rose from a
peasant's patch of ground is as fresh and elegant and fragrant as if it
had been nurtured in a Royal parterre, and it would not be out of place
in the richest porcelain vase of the most aristocratical drawing-room in
Europe. The poor man's flower is a present for a princess, and of all
gifts it is the one least liable to be rejected even by the haughty. It
might he worn on the fair brow or bosom of Queen Victoria with a nobler
grace than the costliest or most elaborate production of the goldsmith
or the milliner.
The majority of mankind, in the most active spheres of life, have
moments in which they sigh for rural retirement, and seldom dream of
such a retreat without making a garden the leading charm of it. Sir
Henry Wotton says that Lord Bacon's garden was one of the best that he
had seen either at home or abroad. Evelyn, the author of "Sylva, or a
Discourse of Forest Trees," dwells with fond admiration, and a pleasing
egotism, on the charms of his own beautiful and highly cultivated estate
at Wooton in the county of Surrey. He tells us that the house is large
and ancient and is "sweetly environed with delicious streams and
venerable woods." "I will say nothing," he continues, "of the air,
because the pre-eminence is universally given to Surrey, the soil being
dry and sandy; but I should speak much of the gardens, fountains and
groves that adorn it, were they not generally known to be amongst the
most natural, and (till this later and universal luxury of the whole
nation, since abounding in such expenses) the most magnificent that
England afforded, and which indeed gave one of the first examples to
that elegancy, since so much in vogue and followed, for the managing of
their waters and other elegancies of that nature." Before he came into
the possession of his paternal estate he resided at _Say's Court_, near
Deptford, an estate which he possessed by purchase, and where he had a
superb holly hedge four hundred feet long, nine feet high and five feet
broad. Of this hedge, he was particularly proud, and he exultantly asks,
"Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the
kind?" When the Czar of Muscovy visited England in 1698 to instruct
himself in the art of ship-building, he had the use of Evelyn's house
and garden, at _Say's Court_, and while there did so much damage to the
latter that the owner loudly and bitterly complained. At last the
Government gave Evelyn L150 as an indemnification. Czar Peter's favorite
amusement was to ride in a wheel barrow through what its owner had once
called the "impregnable hedge of holly." Evelyn was passionately fond of
gardening. "The life and felicity of an excellent gardener," he
observes, "is preferable to all other diversions." His faith in the art
of Landscape-gardening was unwavering. It could _remove mountains_. Here
is an extract from his Diary.
"Gave his brother some directions about his garden" (at Wooton
Surrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, for
which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and
thickets and a moat within ten yards of the house."
No sooner said than done. His brother dug down the mountain and
"flinging it into a rapid stream (which carried away the sand) filled up
the moat and levelled that noble area where now the garden and fountain
is."
Though Evelyn dearly loved a garden, his chief delight was not in
flowers but in forest trees, and he was more anxious to improve the
growth of plants indigenous to the soil than to introduce exotics.[007]
Sir William Temple was so attached to his garden, that he left
directions in his will that his heart should be buried there. It was
enclosed in a silver box and placed under a sun-dial.
Dr. Thomson Reid, the eminent Scottish metaphysician, used to be found
working in his garden in his eighty-seventh year.
The name of Chatham is in the long list of eminent men who have enjoyed
a garden. We are told that "he loved the country: took peculiar pleasure
in gardening; and had an extremely happy taste in laying out grounds."
What a delightful thing it must have been for that great statesman, thus
to relieve his mind from the weight of public care in the midst of quiet
bowers planted and trained by his own hand!
Burton, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, notices the attractions of a
garden as amongst the finest remedies for depression of the mind. I must
give the following extracts from his quaint but interesting pages.
"To see the pleasant fields, the crystal fountains,
And take the gentle air amongst the mountains.
"To walk amongst orchards, gardens, bowers, mounts, and arbours,
artificial wildernesses, green thickets, arches, groves, lawns,
rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, (like that
Antiochian Daphne,) brooks, pools, fishponds, between wood and water, in
a fair meadow, by a river side, _ubi variae avium cantationes, florum
colores, pratorum frutices_, &c. to disport in some pleasant plain, or
park, run up a steep hill sometimes, or sit in a shady seat, must needs
be a delectable recreation. _Hortus principis et domus ad delectationem
facta, cum sylva, monte et piscina, vulgo la montagna_: the prince's
garden at Ferrara, Schottus highly magnifies, with the groves,
mountains, ponds, for a delectable prospect; he was much affected with
it; a Persian paradise, or pleasant park, could not be more delectable
in his sight. St. Bernard, in the description of his monastery, is
almost ravished with the pleasures of it. "A sick man (saith he) sits
upon a green bank, and when the dog-star parcheth the plains, and dries
up rivers, he lies in a shady bower," _Fronde sub arborea ferventia
temperat astra_, "and feeds his eyes with variety of objects, herbs,
trees, to comfort his misery; he receives many delightsome smells, and
fills his ears with that sweet and various harmony of birds; _good God_,
(saith he), _what a company of pleasures hast thou made for man!_"
* * * * *
"The country hath his recreations, the city his several gymnics and
exercises, May games, feasts, wakes, and merry meetings to solace
themselves; the very being in the country; that life itself is a
sufficient recreation to some men, to enjoy such pleasures, as those old
patriarchs did. Dioclesian, the emperor, was so much affected with it,
that he gave over his sceptre, and turned gardener. Constantine wrote
twenty books of husbandry. Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him,
bragged of nothing more than of his orchard, _hi sunt ordines mei_. What
shall I say of Cincinnatus, Cato, Tully, and many such? how they have
been pleased with it, to prune, plant, inoculate and graft, to show so
many several kinds of pears, apples, plums, peaches, &c."
The Romans of all ranks made use of flowers as ornaments and emblems,
but they were not generally so fond of directing or assisting the
gardener, or taking the spade or hoe into their own hands, as are the
British peasantry, gentry and nobility of the present day. They were not
amateur Florists. They prized highly their fruit trees and pastures and
cool grottoes and umbrageous groves; but they expended comparatively
little time, skill or taste upon the flower-garden. Even their love of
nature, though thoroughly genuine as far as it went, did not imply that
minute and exact knowledge of her charms which characterizes some of our
best British poets. They had no Thompson or Cowper. Their country seats
were richer in architectural than floral beauty. Tully's Tuscan Villa,
so fondly and minutely described by the proprietor himself, would appear
to little advantage in the eyes of a true worshipper of Flora, if
compared with Pope's retreat at Twickenham. The ancients had a taste for
the _rural_, not for the _gardenesque_, nor perhaps even for the
_picturesque_. The English have a taste for all three. Hence they have
good landscape-gardeners and first-rate landscape-painters. The old
Romans had neither. But though, some of our Spitalfields weavers have
shown a deeper love, and perhaps even a finer taste, for flowers, than
were exhibited by the citizens of Rome, abundant evidence is furnished
to us by the poets in all ages and in all countries that nature, in some
form or another has ever charmed the eye and the heart of man. The
following version of a famous passage in Virgil, especially the lines in
Italics, may give the English reader some idea of a Roman's dream of