We all "uphold Adam's profession": we are all gardeners, either
practically or theoretically. The love of trees and flowers, and shrubs
and the green sward, with a summer sky above them, is an almost
universal sentiment. It may be smothered for a time by some one or other
of the innumerable chances and occupations of busy life; but a painting
in oils by Claude or Gainsborough, or a picture in words by Spenser or
Shakespeare that shall for ever
Live in description and look green in song,
or the sight of a few flowers on a window-sill in the city, can fill the
eye with tears of tenderness, or make the secret passion for nature
burst out again in sudden gusts of tumultuous pleasure and lighten up
the soul with images of rural beauty. There are few, indeed, who, when
they have the good fortune to escape on a summer holiday from the
crowded and smoky city and find themselves in the heart of a delicious
garden, have not a secret consciousness within them that the scene
affords them a glimpse of a true paradise below. Rich foliage and gay
flowers and rural quiet and seclusion and a smiling sun are ever
associated with ideas of earthly felicity.
And oh, if there be an Elysium on earth,
It is this, it is this!
The princely merchant and the petty trader, the soldier and the sailor,
the politician and the lawyer, the artist and the artisan, when they
pause for a moment in the midst of their career, and dream of the
happiness of some future day, almost invariably fix their imaginary
palace or cottage of delight in a garden, amidst embowering trees and
fragrant flowers. This disposition, even in the busiest men, to indulge
occasionally in fond anticipations of rural bliss--