These though unseen are ever on the wing,
Hang o'er the box, _and hover o'er the Ring_.
It was here that the gallantries of the "Merry Monarch" were but too
often exhibited to his people. "After dinner," says the right garrulous
Pepys in his journal, "to Hyde Parke; at the Parke was the King, and in
another Coach, Lady Castlemaine, they greeting one another at every
turn."
The Gardens at Kew "Imperial Kew," as Darwin styles it, are the richest
in the world. They consist of one hundred and seventy acres. They were
once private gardens, and were long in the possession of Royalty, until
the accession of Queen Victoria, who opened the gardens to the public
and placed them under the control of the Commissioners of Her Majesty's
Woods and Forests, "with a view of rendering them available to the
general good."
She hath left you all her walks,
Her private arbors and new planted orchards
On this side Tiber. She hath left them you
And to your heirs for ever; common pleasures
To walk abroad and recreate yourselves.
They contain a large Palm-house built in 1848.[036] The extent of glass
for covering the building is said to be 360,000 square feet. My
Mahomedan readers in Hindostan, (I hope they will be numerous,) will
perhaps be pleased to hear that there is an ornamental mosque in these
gardens. On each of the doors of this mosque is an Arabic inscription in
golden characters, taken from the Koran. The Arabic has been thus
translated:--
LET THERE BE NO FORCE IN RELIGION.
THERE IS NO OTHER GOD EXCEPT THE DEITY.
MAKE NOT ANY LIKENESS UNTO GOD.
The first sentence of the translation is rather ambiguously worded. The
sentiment has even an impious air: an apparent meaning very different
from that which was intended. Of course the original text _means_,
though the English translator has not expressed that meaning--"Let there
be no force _used_ in religion."
When William Cobbett was a boy of eleven years of age he worked in the
garden of the Bishop of Winchester at Farnham. Having heard much of Kew
gardens he resolved to change his locality and his master. He started
off for Kew, a distance of about thirty miles, with only thirteen pence
in his pocket. The head gardener at Kew at once engaged his services. A
few days after, George the Fourth, then Prince of Wales, saw the boy
sweeping the lawns, and laughed heartily at his blue smock frock and
long red knotted garters. But the poor gardener's boy became a public
writer, whose productions were not exactly calculated to excite the
merriment of princes.
Most poets have a painter's eye for the disposition of forms and
colours. Kent's practice as a painter no doubt helped to make him what
he was as a landscape-gardener. When an architect was consulted about
laying out the grounds at Blenheim he replied, "you must send for a
landscape-painter:" he might have added--"_or a poet_."
Our late Laureate, William Wordsworth, exhibited great taste in his
small garden at Rydal Mount. He said of himself--very truly though not
very modestly perhaps,--but modesty was never Wordsworth's
weakness--that nature seemed to have fitted him for three callings--that
of the poet, the critic on works of art, and the landscape-gardener.
The poet's nest--(Mrs. Hemans calls it 'a lovely cottage-like
building'[037])--is almost hidden in a rich profusion of roses and ivy
and jessamine and virginia-creeper. Wordsworth, though he passionately
admired the shapes and hues of flowers, knew nothing of their fragrance.
In this respect knowledge at one entrance was quite shut out. He had
possessed at no time of his life the sense of smell. To make up for this
deficiency, he is said (by De Quincey) to have had "a peculiar depth of
organic sensibility of form and color."
Mr. Justice Coleridge tells us that Wordsworth dealt with
shrubs, flower-beds and lawns with the readiness of a practised
landscape-gardener, and that it was curious to observe how he had imparted
a portion of his taste to his servant, James Dixon. In fact, honest James
regarded himself as a sort of Arbiter Elegantiarum. The master and his
servant often discussed together a question of taste. Wordsworth
communicated to Mr. Justice Coleridge how "he and James" were once "in a
puzzle" about certain discolored spots upon the lawn. "Cover them with
soap-lees," said the master. "That will make the green there darker than
the rest," said the gardener. "Then we must cover the whole." "That will
not do," objects the gardener, "with reference to the little lawn to
which you pass from this." "Cover that," said the poet. "You will then,"
replied the gardener, "have an unpleasant contrast with the foliage
surrounding it."
Pope too had communicated to his gardener at Twickenham something of his
own taste. The man, long after his master's death, in reference to the
training of the branches of plants, used to talk of their being made to
hang "_something poetical_".
It would have grieved Shakespeare and Pope and Shenstone had they
anticipated the neglect or destruction of their beloved retreats.
Wordsworth said, "I often ask myself what will 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.[038] 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:--