such a season; of that pure pleasure, which seems to snatch us away from all that is of the earth, to give us a foretaste of heaven. The verdure had a new freshness, and took beauty from the last rays of the sinking sun; all things were instinct with a soft splendour; the trees waved tenderly their majestic crests; the air was full of balm, and the nightingales interchanged sighs of love, which yielded to accents of pleasure and joy. I walked gently in an alley of young plane-trees, which I planted a few years since. Above all the vague incomplete impressions and images, which were born of the presence of the objects and my moods, hovered this feeling of the infinite which bears us onward sometimes towards a world superior to phenomena, towards this world of realities, which links itself to God, as the first and only reality. It seems in this condition, when all sensations without and within are calm and happy, as if there were a peculiar sense appropriate to heavenly things, which, wrapped up in the actual fashion of our existence, is destined perhaps to develop itself one day, when the soul shall have quitted its mortal husk.-His Life and Thoughts (May 17, 1815). ww TH `HERE has been a class of men, whose patriotic affection, or ISAAC whose general benevolence, have been usually defrauded of the DISRAELI (1767-1848). gratitude their country owes them: these have been the introducers of new flowers, new plants, and new roots into Europe; the greater part which we now enjoy was drawn from the luxuriant climates of Asia, and the profusion which now covers our land originated in the most anxious nursing, and were the gifts of individuals. Monuments are reared, and medals struck to commemorate events and names which are less deserving our regard than those, who have transplanted into the colder regions of the North, the rich fruits, the beautiful flowers, and the succulent pulse and roots of more favoured spots; and carrying into their own country, as it were, another Nature, they have, as old Gerard well expresses ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT (1769-1859). it, laboured with the soil to make it fit for the plants, and with the plants to make them delight in the soil.' There is no part of the characters of Peiresc and Evelyn, accomplished as they are in so many, which seems more delightful to me, than their enthusiasm for the garden, the orchard, and the forest. Curiosities of Literature. www ANDSCAPE-PAINTING, notwithstanding the multiplication of its productions by engravings, and by the recent improvements in lithography, is still productive of a less powerful effect than that excited in minds susceptible of natural beauty, by the immediate aspect of groups of exotic plants in hot-houses or in gardens. have already alluded to the subject of my own youthful experience, and mentioned that the sight of a colossal dragon-tree and of a fan-palm in an old tower of the botanical garden at Berlin, implanted in my mind the seeds of an irresistible desire to under take distant travels. He who is able to trace through the whole course of his impressions that which gave the first leading direction to his whole career, will not deny the influence of such a power.-Cosmos, Part I., § ii. CHAPTER IX THE GARDEN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WORDSWORTH LAYING out grounds, as it is called, may be considered as a WILLIAM YET SCOTT ET now that these ridiculous anomalies have fallen into SIR general disuse, it must be acknowledged that there exist WALTER gardens, the work of Loudon, Wise, and such persons as laid out (1771-1832). ground in the Dutch taste, which would be much better subjects for modification than for absolute destruction. Their rarity now entitles them to some care as a species of antiques, and unquestionably they give character to some snug, quiet, and sequestered situations which would otherwise have no marked feature of any kind. We ourselves retain an early and pleasing recollection of the seclusion of such a scene. A small cottage, adjacent to a beautiful village, the habitation of an ancient maiden lady, was for some time our abode. It was situated in a garden of seven or eight acres, planted about the beginning of the eighteenth century, by one of the Millars, related to the author of the Gardener's Dictionary, or, for aught we know, by himself. It was full of long straight walks between hedges of yew and hornbeam, which rose tall and close on every side. There were thickets of flowering shrubs, a bower, and an arbour, to which access was obtained through a little maze of contorted walks, calling itself a labyrinth. In the centre of the bower was a splendid Platanus, or oriental plane-a huge hill of leaves-one of the noblest specimens of that regularly beautiful tree which we remember to have seen.1 In different parts of the garden were fine ornamental trees which had attained great size, and the orchard was filled with fruit-trees of the best description. There were seats and trellis-walks and a banqueting house. Even in our time this little scene, intended to present a formal exhibition of vegetable beauty, was going fast to decay. The parterres of flowers were no longer watched by the quiet and simple friends under whose auspices they had been planted, and much of the ornament of the domain had been neglected or destroyed to increase its productive value. We visited it lately, after an absence of many years. Its air of retreat, the seclusion which its alleys afforded, was entirely gone; the huge Platanus had died, like most of its kind, in the beginning of this century; the hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed up and the whole character of the place so much destroyed, that I 1 It was under this Platanus that Scott first devoured Percy's Reliques. I remember well being with him, in 1820, or 1821, when he revisited the favourite scene, and the sadness of his looks, when he discovered that 'the huge hill of leaves was no more.'-J. G. Lockhart: Life of Sir Walter Scott. was glad when I could leave it.'-Essay on Landscape Gardening. (Quarterly Review, 1828.) BUT utility. Miss Allison and Betsey claimed the little garden (1774-1843)in front of the house for themselves. It was in so neglected a state when they took possession that, between children and poultry and stray pigs, not a garden flower was left there to grow wild and the gravel walk from the gate to the porch was overgrown with weeds and grass, except a path in the middle which had been kept bare by use. On each side of the gate were three yew-trees, at equal distances. In the old days of the Grange they had been squared in three lessening stages, the uppermost tapering pyramidally to a point. While the house had been shorn of its honours, the yews remained unshorn; but when it was once more occupied by a wealthy habitant, and a new gate had been set up and the pillars and their stone balls cleaned from moss and lichen and short ferns, the unfortunate evergreens were again reduced to the formal shape in which Mr Allison and his sister remembered them in their childhood. UT out of doors as much regard was shown to beauty as to ROBERT SOUTHEY This was with them a matter of feeling, which is a better thing than taste. And indeed the yews must either have been trimmed, or cut down, because they intercepted sunshine from the garden, and the prospect from the upper windows. The garden would have been better without them, for they were bad neighbours: but they belonged to old times, aud it would have seemed a sort of sacrilege to destroy them. Flower-beds used, like beds in the kitchen-garden, to be raised a little above the path, with nothing to divide them from it, till about the beginning of the seventeenth century; the fashion of bordering them was introduced either by the Italians or the French. Daisies, periwinkles, feverfew, hyssop, lavender, rosemary, rue, sage, wormwood, camomile, thyme, and box were used for this purpose: a German horticulturist observes that hyssop 1 See Note on page 234. |