ation that it was intended by Solomon as a direct imitation of what he had seen within the recesses of Lebanon, Well-spring of all in Lebanon that meets! and the commentators almost invariably point to the following passage in Maundrell as painting the very scene which the monarch was anxious to emulate. "There is,” says the traveller, "a very deep rupture in the side of Libanus, running at least seven hours travel directly up into the mountain. It is on both sides exceedingly steep and high, clothed with fragrant greens from top to bottom, and every where refreshed with fountains falling down from the rocks in pleasant cascades-the ingenious work of nature. The streams all uniting at the bottom, make a full and rapid torrent, whose agreeable murmuring is heard all over the place, and adds no small pleasure to it."* This is, in fact, a scene which contains within its own bosom nearly all the constituents of picturesque beauty, and in serving as a model to the Jewish sove * Good's Song of Songs, p. 127. reign, could scarcely fail to infuse, however mingled with the features of art, much of its peculiar wild character and charm. In general, however, gardening among the ancients, especially amongst the Greeks and Romans, was limited as in the gardens of Alcinous and Laertes in Homer, to the production of herbs, and fruits, and flowers; and if among the opulent, effect were aimed at, it was that resulting from undisguised art, from geometric order and architectural symmetry. Not that the inhabitants of Greece and Italy were in the slightest degree deficient in a just taste for the beauties of natural scenery, as their best writers have sufficiently proved; but as, in fact, the country around them was a perfect landscape in nature's most alluring dress, such indeed as our parks and pleasure-grounds can but faintly rival, novelty and contrast were sought after almost necessarily, by the introduction of artificial, and correctly regular forms, so that in the most flourishing period of the Roman empire, the gardens or pleasure grounds of the consul Pliny, exhibited not only terraces, parterres, and water-works, but even trees sheared and dressed into a multitude of whimsical and grotesque forms, bearing a strong resemblance to what, in this country was the fashionable style of gardening in the reign of William and Mary. It would appear, indeed, that in proportion as the gardens of the ancients became more ornamented and magnificent, in the like proportion they deviated from nature; and that it was only in the very circumscribed grounds of the man of small property, where economy and simplicity were to be studied, that she was left in any degree free and unshackled. Such a retreat had been the dearest wish of Horace, Hortus ubi, et tecto vicinus jugis aquæ fons, and such was the garden of the old Corycian planter, so exquisitely described by Virgil, a picture not to be contemplated without the utmost complacency and delight, and from which, contrary to the avowal of the anonymous translator of De Lille, it is, I think, scarcely possible to part, without deeply regretting, that the bard had not made gardening the express subject of a separate poem, notwithstanding it is probable that the celebration of this, his favourite theme, might, as far as strictly related to the art itself, have been confined to the production of fruits and flowers; yet with what never-to-be-forgotten episodes would not the genius of Virgil have diversified such a subject. As it is, the transient sketch which he has given us, is, beyond all comparison, the most pleasing and interesting delineation of a garden to be found in the whole compass of ancient poetry, and as such, and as alluded to in the extract from De Lille, I shall be pardoned, I trust, introducing it here in by far the best version to which, in any nation, the inimitable original has given birth. The poet is naturally led into the subject whilst recommending the breathing sweets of the garden, as the means best calculated to invite the roving bees to settle, and he then adds, in a tone of tender regret, which cannot fail to excite a similar emotion in the minds of his readers, Ah fav'rite scenes! but now with gather'd sail Sung, twice each year, how Pæstan roses blow, And myrtle blooming on the sea-beat shore. His flood dark winding through the golden meads, Where never lab'ring yoke subsistence gain'd, |