That voice yet speaketh, heed it well--
But not in tones of wrath it chideth,
The moss rose, and the lily smell
Of God--in them his voice abideth.
There is a blessing on the spot
The poor man decks--the sun delighteth
To smile upon each homely plot,
And why? The voice of God inviteth.
God knows that he is worshipped there,
The chaliced cowslip's graceful bending
Is mute devotion, and the air
Is sweet with incense of her lending.
The primrose, aye the children's pet,
Pale bride, yet proud of its uprooting,
The crocus, snowdrop, violet
And sweet-briar with its soft leaves shooting.
There nestles each--a Preacher each--
(Oh heart of man! be slow to harden)
Each cottage flower in sooth doth teach
God walketh with us in the garden.
I am surprized that in this city (of Calcutta) where so many kinds of
experiments in education have been proposed, the directors of public
instruction have never thought of attaching tasteful Gardens to the
Government Colleges--especially where Botany is in the regular course of
Collegiate studies. The Company's Botanic Garden being on the other side
of the river and at an inconvenient distance from the city cannot be
much resorted to by any one whose time is precious. An attempt was made
not long ago to have the Garden of the Horticultural Society (now
forming part of the Company's Botanic Garden) on this side of the river,
but the public subscriptions that were called for to meet the necessary
expenses were so inadequate to the purpose that the money realized was
returned to the subscribers, and the idea relinquished, to the great
regret of many of the inhabitants of Calcutta who would have been
delighted to possess such a place of recreation and instruction within a
few minutes' drive.
Hindu students, unlike English boys in general, remind us of Beattie's
Minstrel:--
The exploit of strength, dexterity and speed
To him nor vanity, nor joy could bring.
A sort of Garden Academy, therefore, full of pleasant shades, would be
peculiarly suited to the tastes and habits of our Indian Collegians.
They are not fond of cricket or leap-frog. They would rejoice to devote
a leisure hour to pensive letterings in a pleasure-garden, and on an
occasional holiday would gladly pursue even their severest studies, book
in hand, amidst verdant bowers. A stranger from Europe beholding them,
in their half-Grecian garments, thus wandering amidst the trees, would
be reminded of the disciples of Plato.
"It is not easy," observes Lord Kames, "to suppress a degree of
enthusiasm, when we reflect on the advantages of gardening with respect
to virtuous education. In the beginning of life the deepest impressions
are made; and it is a sad truth, that the young student, familiarized to
the dirtiness and disorder of many colleges pent within narrow bounds in
populous cities, is rendered in a measure insensible to the elegant
beauties of art and nature. It seems to me far from an exaggeration,
that good professors are not more essential to a college, than a
spacious garden, sweetly ornamented, but without any thing glaring or
fantastic, is upon the whole to inspire our youth with a taste no less
for simplicity than for elegance. In this respect the University of
Oxford may justly be deemed a model."
It may be expected that I should offer a few hints on the laying out of
gardens. Much has been said (by writers on ornamental and landscape
gardening) on _art_ and _nature_, and almost always has it been implied
that these must necessarily be in direct opposition. I am far from being
of this opinion. If art and nature be not in some points of view almost
identical, they are at least very good friends, or may easily be made
so. They are not necessarily hostile. They admit of the most harmonious
combinations. In no place are such combinations more easy or more proper
than in a garden. Walter Scott very truly calls a garden the child of
Art. But is it not also the child of Nature?--of Nature and Art
together? To attempt to exclude art--or even, the appearance of
art--from a small garden enclosure, is idle and absurd. He who objects to
all art in the arrangement of a flower-bed, ought, if consistent with
himself, to turn away with an expression of disgust from a well arranged
nosegay in a rich porcelain vase. But who would not loathe or laugh at
such manifest affectation or such thoroughly bad taste? As there is a
time for every thing, so also is there a place for every thing. No man
of true judgment would desire to trace the hand of human art on the form
of nature in remote and gigantic forests, and amidst vast mountains, as
irregular as the billows of a troubled sea. In such scenery there is a
sublime grace in wildness,--_there_ "the very weeds are beautiful." But
what true judgment would be enchanted with weeds and wildness in the
small parterre. As Pope rightly says, we must
Consult the genius of the place in all.
It is pleasant to enter a rural lane overgrown with field-flowers, or to
behold an extensive common irregularly decorated with prickly gorse or
fern and thistle, but surely no man of taste would admire nature in this
wild and dishevelled state in a little suburban garden. Symmetry,
elegance and beauty, (--no _sublimity_ or _grandeur_--) trimness,
snugness, privacy, cleanliness, comfort, and convenience--the results of
a happy conjunction of art and nature--are all that we can aim at within
a limited extent of ground. In a small parterre we either trace with
pleasure the marks of the gardener's attention or are disgusted with his
negligence. In a mere patch of earth around a domestic dwelling nature
ought not to be left entirely to herself.
What is agreeable in one sphere of life is offensive in another. A dirty
smock frock and a soiled face in a ploughman's child who has been
swinging on rustic gates a long summer morning or rolling down the
slopes of hills, or grubbing in the soil of his small garden, may remind
us, not unpleasantly, of one of Gainsborough's pictures; but we look for
a different sort of nature on the canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds or Sir
Thomas Lawrence, or in the brilliant drawing-rooms of the nobility; and
yet an Earl's child looks and moves at least as _naturally_ as a
peasant's.
There is nature every where--in the palace as well as in the hut, in the
cultivated garden as well as in the wild wood. Civilized life is, after
all, as natural as savage life. All our faculties are natural, and
civilized man cultivates his mental powers and studies the arts of life
by as true an instinct as that which leads the savage to make the most
of his mud hut, and to improve himself or his child as a hunter, a
fisherman, or a warrior. The mind of man is the noblest work of its
Maker (--in this world--) and the movements of man's mind may be quite
as natural, and quite as poetical too, as the life that rises from the
ground. It is as natural for the mind, as it is for a tree or flower to
advance towards perfection. Nature suggests art, and art again imitates
and approximates to nature, and this principle of action and reaction
brings man by degrees towards that point of comparative excellence for
which God seems to have intended him. The mind of a Milton or a
Shakespeare is surely not in a more unnatural condition than that of an
ignorant rustic. We ought not then to decry refinement nor deem all
connection of art with nature an offensive incongruity. A noble mansion
in a spacious and well kept park is an object which even an observer who
has no share himself in the property may look upon with pleasure. It
makes him proud of his race.[116] We cannot witness so harmonious a
conjunction of art and nature without feeling that man is something
better than a mere beast of the field or forest. We see him turn both
art and nature to his service, and we cannot contemplate the lordly
dwelling and the richly decorated land around it--and the neatness and
security and order of the whole scene--without associating them with the
high accomplishments and refined tastes that in all probability
distinguish the proprietor and his family. It is a strange mistake to
suppose that nothing is natural beyond savage ignorance--that all
refinement is unnatural--that there is only one sort of simplicity. For
the mind elevated by civilization is in a more natural state than a mind
that has scarcely passed the boundary of brutal instinct, and the
simplicity of a savage's hut, does not prevent there being a nobler
simplicity in a Grecian temple.
Kent[117] the famous landscape gardener, tells us that _nature_ _abhors
a straight line_. And so she does--in some cases--but not in all. A ray
of light is a straight line, and so also is a Grecian nose, and so also
is the stem of the betel-nut tree. It must, indeed, be admitted that he
who should now lay out a large park or pleasure-ground on strictly
geometrical principles or in the old topiary style would exhibit a
deplorable want of taste and judgment. But the provinces of the
landscape gardener and the parterre gardener are perfectly distinct. The
landscape gardener demands a wide canvas. All his operations are on a
large scale. In a small garden we have chiefly to aim at the
_gardenesque_ and in an extensive park at the _picturesque_. Even in the
latter case, however, though
'Tis Nature still, 'tis nature methodized:
Or in other words:
Nature to advantage dressed.
for even in the largest parks or pleasure-grounds, an observer of true
taste is offended by an air of negligence or the absence of all traces
of human art or care. Such places ought to indicate the presence of
civilized life and security and order. We are not pleased to see weeds
and jungle--or litter of any sort--even dry leaves--upon the princely
domain, which should look like a portion of nature set apart or devoted
to the especial care and enjoyment of the owner and his friends:--a
strictly private property. The grass carpet should be trimly shorn and
well swept. The trees should be tastefully separated from each other at
irregular but judicious distances. They should have fine round heads of
foliage, clean stems, and no weeds or underwood below, nor a single dead
branch above. When we visit the finest estates of the nobility and
gentry in England it is impossible not to perceive in every case a
marked distinction between the wild nature of a wood and the civilized
nature of a park. In the latter you cannot overlook the fact that every
thing injurious to the health and growth and beauty of each individual
tree has been studiously removed, while on the other hand, light, air,
space, all things in fact that, if sentient, the tree could itself be
supposed to desire, are most liberally supplied. There is as great a
difference between the general aspect of the trees in a nobleman's
pleasure ground and those in a jungle, as between the rustics of a
village and the well bred gentry of a great city. Park trees have
generally a fine air of aristocracy about them.
A Gainsborough or a Morland would seek his subjects in remote villages
and a Watteau or a Stothard in the well kept pleasure ground. The ruder
nature of woods and villages, of sturdy ploughmen and the healthy though
soiled and ragged children in rural neighbourhoods, affords a by no
means unpleasing contrast and introduction to the trim trees and
smoothly undulating lawns, and curved walks, and gay parterres, and fine
ladies and well dressed and graceful children on some old ancestral
estate. We look for rusticity in the village, and for elegance in the
park. The sleek and noble air of patrician trees, standing proudly on
the rich velvet sward, the order and grace and beauty of all that meets
the eye, lead us, as I have said already, to form a high opinion of the
owner. In this we may of course be sometimes disappointed; but a man's
character is generally to be traced in almost every object around him
over which he has the power of a proprietor, and in few things are a
man's taste and habits more distinctly marked than in his park and
garden. If we find the owner of a neatly kept garden and an elegant
mansion slovenly, rude and vulgar in appearance and manners, we
inevitably experience that shock of surprize which is excited by every
thing that is incongruous or out of keeping. On the other hand if the
garden be neglected and overgrown with weeds, or if every thing in its
arrangement indicate a want of taste, and a disregard of neatness and
order, we feel no astonishment whatever in discovering that the
proprietor is as negligent of his mind and person as of his shrubberies
and his lawns.
A civilized country ought not to look like a savage one. We need not
have wild nature in front of our neatly finished porticos. Nothing can
be more strictly artificial than all architecture. It would be absurd to
erect an elegantly finished residence in the heart of a jungle. There
should be an harmonious gradation from the house to the grounds, and
true taste ought not to object to terraces of elegant design and
graceful urns and fine statues in the immediate neighbourhood of a noble
dwelling.
Undoubtedly as a general rule, the undulating curve in garden scenery is
preferable to straight lines or abrupt turns or sharp angles, but if
there should happen to be only a few yards between the outer gateway and
the house, could anything be more fantastical or preposterous than an
attempt to give the ground between them a serpentine irregularity? Even
in the most spacious grounds the walks should not seem too studiously
winding, as if the short turns were meant for no other purpose than to
perplex or delay the walker.[118] They should have a natural sweep, and
seem to meander rather in accordance with the nature of the ground and
the points to which they lead than in obedience to some idle sport of
fancy. They should not remind us of Gray's description of the divisions
of an old mansion:
Long passages that lead to nothing.
Foot-paths in small gardens need not be broader than will allow two
persons to walk abreast with ease. A spacious garden may have walks of
greater breadth. A path for one person only is inconvenient and has a
mean look.
I have made most of the foregoing observations in something of a spirit
of opposition to those Landscape gardeners who I think once carried a
true principle to an absurd excess. I dislike, as much as any one can,
the old topiary style of our remote ancestors, but the talk about free
nature degenerated at last into downright cant, and sheer extravagance;
the reformers were for bringing weeds and jungle right under our parlour
windows, and applied to an acre of ground those rules of Landscape
gardening which required a whole county for their proper
exemplification. It is true that Milton's Paradise had "no nice art" in
it, but then it was not a little suburban pleasure ground but a world.
When Milton alluded to private gardens, he spoke of their trimness.
Retired Leisure
That in _trim_ gardens takes his pleasure.
The larger an estate the less necessary is it to make it merely neat,
and symmetrical, especially in those parts of the ground that are
distant from the house; but near the architecture some degree of finish
and precision is always necessary, or at least advisable, to prevent the
too sudden contrast between the straight lines and artificial
construction of the dwelling and the flowing curves and wild but
beautiful irregularities of nature unmoulded by art. A garden adjacent
to the house should give the owner a sense of _home_. He should not feel
himself abroad at his own door. If it were only for the sake of variety
there should be some distinction between the private garden and the open
field. If the garden gradually blends itself with a spacious park or
chase, the more the ground recedes from the house the more it may
legitimately assume the aspect of a natural landscape. It will then be
necessary to appeal to the eye of a landscape gardener or a painter or a
poet before the owner, if ignorant of the principles of fine art,
attempt the completion of the general design.
I should like to see my Native friends who have extensive grounds, vary
the shape of their tanks, but if they dislike a more natural form of
water, irregular or winding, and are determined to have them with four
sharp corners, let them at all events avoid the evil of several small
tanks in the same "compound." A large tank is more likely to have good
water and to retain it through the whole summer season than a smaller
one and is more easily kept clean and grassy to the water's edge. I do
not say that it would be proper to have a piece of winding water in a
small compound--that indeed would be impracticable. But even an oval or
round tank would be better than a square one.[119]
If the Native gentry could obtain the aid of tasteful gardeners, I would
recommend that the level land should be varied with an occasional
artificial elevation, nicely sloped or graduated; but Native _malees_
would be sure to aim rather at the production of abrupt round knobs
resembling warts or excrescences than easy and natural undulations of
the surface.
With respect to lawns, the late Mr. Speede recommended the use of the
_doob_ grass, but it is so extremely difficult to keep it clear of any
intermixture of the _ooloo_ grass, which, when it intrudes upon the
_doob_ gives the lawn a patchwork and shabby look, that it is better to
use the _ooloo_ grass only, for it is far more manageable; and if kept
well rolled and closely shorn it has a very neat, and indeed, beautiful
appearance. The lawns in the compound of the Government House in
Calcutta are formed of _ooloo_ glass only, but as they have been very
carefully attended to they have really a most brilliant and agreeable
aspect. In fact, their beautiful bright green, in the hottest summer,
attracts even the notice and admiration of the stranger fresh from
England. The _ooloo_ grass, however, on close inspection is found to be
extremely coarse, nor has even the finest _doob_ the close texture and
velvet softness of the grass of English lawns.
Flower beds should be well rounded. They should never have long narrow
necks or sharp angles in which no plant can have room to grow freely.
Nor should they be divided into compartments, too minute or numerous,
for so arranged they must always look petty and toy-like. A lawn should
be as open and spacious as the ground will fairly admit without too
greatly limiting the space for flowers. Nor should there be an
unnecessary multiplicity of walks. We should aim at a certain breadth of
style. Flower beds may be here and there distributed over the lawn, but
care should be taken that it be not too much broken up by them. A few
trees may be introduced upon the lawn, but they must not be placed so
close together as to prevent the growth of the grass by obstructing
either light or air. No large trees should be allowed to smother up the
house, particularly on the southern and western sides, for besides
impeding the circulation through the rooms of the most wholesome winds
of this country, they would attract mosquitoes, and give an air of
gloominess to the whole place.
Natives are too fond of over-crowding their gardens with trees and
shrubs and flowers of all sorts, with no regard to individual or general
effects, with no eye to arrangement of size, form or color; and in this
hot and moist climate the consequent exclusion of free air and the
necessary degree of light has a most injurious influence not only upon
the health of the resident but upon vegetation itself. Neither the
finest blossoms nor the finest fruits can be expected from an
overstocked garden. The native malee generally plants his fruit trees so
close together that they impede each other's growth and strength. Every
Englishman when he enters a native's garden feels how much he could
improve its productiveness and beauty by a free use of the hatchet. Too
many trees and too much embellishment of a small garden make it look
still smaller, and even on a large piece of ground they produce confused
and disagreeable effects and indicate an absence of all true judgment.
This practice of over-filling a garden is an instance of bad taste,
analogous to that which is so conspicuously characteristic of our own
countrymen in India with respect to their apartments, which look more
like an upholsterer's show-rooms or splendid ornament-shops than
drawing-rooms or parlours. There is scarcely space enough to turn in
them without fracturing some frail and costly bauble. Where a garden is
over-planted the whole place is darkened, the ground is green and slimy,
the grass thin, sickly and straggling, and the trees and shrubs
deficient in freshness and vigor.
Not only should the native gentry avoid having their flower-borders too
thickly filled,--they should take care also that they are not too broad.
We ought not to be obliged to leave the regular path and go across the
soft earth of the bed to obtain a sight of a particular shrub or flower.
Close and entangled foliage keeps the ground too damp, obstructs
wholesome air, and harbours snakes and a great variety of other noxious
reptiles. Similar objections suggest the propriety of having no shrubs
or flowers or even a grass-plot immediately under the windows and about
the doors of the house. A well exposed gravel or brick walk should be
laid down on all sides of the house, as a necessary safeguard against
both moisture and vermin.
I have spoken already of the unrivalled beauty of English gravel. It
cannot be too much admired. _Kunkur_[120] looks extremely smart for a
few weeks while it preserves its solidity and freshness, but it is
rapidly ground into powder under carriage wheels or blackened by
occasional rain and the permanent moisture of low grounds when only
partially exposed to the sun and air. Why should not an opulent Rajah or
Nawaub send for a cargo of beautiful red gravel from the gravel pits at
Kensington? Any English House of Agency here would obtain it for him. It
would be cheap in the end, for it lasts at least five times as long as
the kunkur, and if of a proper depth admits of repeated turnings with
the spade, looking on every turn almost as fresh as the day on which it
was first laid down.
Instead of brick-bat edgings, the wealthy Oriental nobleman might trim
all his flower-borders with the green box-plant of England, which would
flourish I suppose in this climate or in any other. Cobbett in his
_English Gardener_ speaks with so much enthusiasm and so much to the
purpose on the subject of box as an edging, that I must here repeat his
eulogium on it.
The box is at once the most efficient of all possible things, and the
prettiest plant that can possibly be conceived; the color of its leaf;
the form of its leaf; its docility as to height, width and shape; the
compactness of its little branches; its great durability as a plant; its
thriving in all sorts of soils and in all sorts of aspects; _its
freshness under the hottest sun_, and its defiance of all shade and
drip: these are the beauties and qualities which, for ages upon ages,
have marked it out as the chosen plant for this very important purpose.
The edging ought to be clipped in the winter or very early in spring on
both sides and at top; a line ought to be used to regulate the movements
of the shears; it ought to be clipped again in the same manner about
midsummer; and if there be _a more neat and beautiful thing than this in
the world, all that I can say is, that I never saw that thing_.
A small green edging for a flower bed can hardly be too _trim_; but
large hedges with tops and sides cut as flat as boards, and trees
fantastically shaped with the shears into an exhibition as full of
incongruities as the wildest dream, have deservedly gone out of fashion
in England. Poets and prose writers have agreed to ridicule all verdant
sculpture on a large scale. Here is a description of the old topiary
gardens.
These likewise mote be seen on every side
The shapely box, of all its branching pride
Ungently shorn, and, with preposterous skill
To various beasts, and birds of sundry quill
Transformed, and human shapes of monstrous size.
* * * * *
Also other wonders of the sportive shears
Fair Nature misadorning; there were found
Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers
With spouting urns and budding statues crowned;
And horizontal dials on the ground
In living box, by cunning artists traced,
And galleys trim, or on long voyage bound,
But by their roots there ever anchored fast.
_G. West_.
The same taste for torturing nature into artificial forms prevailed
amongst the ancients long after architecture and statuary had been
carried to such perfection that the finest British artists of these
times can do nothing but copy and repeat what was accomplished so many
ages ago by the people of another nation. Pliny, in his description of
his Tuscan villa, speaks of some of his trees having been cut into
letters and the forms of animals, and of others placed in such regular
order that they reminded the spectator of files of soldiers.[121] The
Dutch therefore should not bear all the odium of the topiary style of
gardening which they are said to have introduced into England and other
countries of Europe. They were not the first sinners against natural
taste.
The Hindus are very fond of formally cut hedges and trimmed trees. All
sorts of verdant hedges are in some degree objectionable in a hot moist
country, rife with deadly vermin. I would recommend ornamental iron
railings or neatly cut and well painted wooden pales, as more airy,
light, and cheerful, and less favorable to snakes and centipedes.
This is the finest country in the world for making gardens speedily. In
the rainy season vegetation springs up at once, as at the stroke of an
Enchanter's wand. The Landscape gardeners in England used to grieve that
they could hardly expect to live long enough to see the effect of their
designs. Such artists would have less reason, to grieve on that account
in this country. Indeed even in England, the source of uneasiness
alluded to, is now removed. "The deliberation with which trees grow,"
wrote Horace Walpole, in a letter to a friend, "is extremely
inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous
an age when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am
persuaded that 150 years hence it will be as common to remove oaks 150
years old as it now is to plant tulip roots." The writer was not a bad
prophet. He has not yet been dead much more than half a century and his
expectations are already more than half realized. Shakespeare could not
have anticipated this triumph of art when he made Macbeth ask
Who can impress the forest? Bid the tree
Unfix his earth-bound root?
The gardeners have at last discovered that the largest (though not
perhaps the _oldest_) trees can be removed from one place to another
with comparative facility and safety. Sir H. Stewart moved several
hundred lofty trees without the least injury to any of them. And if
broad and lofty trees can be transplanted in England, how much more
easily and securely might such a process be effected in the rainy season
in this country. In half a year a new garden might be made to look like
a garden of half a century. Or an old and ill-arranged plantation might
thus be speedily re-adjusted to the taste of the owner. The main object
is to secure a good ball of earth round the root, and the main
difficulty is to raise the tree and remove it. Many most ingenious
machines for raising a tree from the ground, and trucks for removing it,
have been lately invented by scientific gardeners in England. A
Scotchman, Mr. McGlashen, has been amongst the most successful of late
transplanters. He exhibited one of his machines at Paris to the present
Emperor of the French, and lifted with it a fir tree thirty feet high.
The French ruler lavished the warmest commendations on the ingenious
artist and purchased his apparatus at a large price.[122]
Bengal is enriched with a boundless variety of noble trees admirably
suited to parks and pleasure grounds. These should be scattered about a
spacious compound with a spirited and graceful irregularity, and so
disposed with reference to the dwelling as in some degree to vary the
view of it, and occasionally to conceal it from the visitor driving up
the winding road from the outer gate to the portico. The trees, I must
repeat, should be so divided as to give them a free growth and admit
sufficient light and air beneath them to allow the grass to flourish.
Grassless ground under park trees has a look of barrenness, discomfort
and neglect, and is out of keeping with the general character of the
scene.