Flowers And Flower-Gardens Part 36

THE END.

FOOTNOTES.

[001] Some of the finest _Florists flowers_ have been reared by the mechanics of Norwich and Manchester and by the Spitalfield's weavers.

The pitmen in the counties of Durham and Northumberland reside in long rows of small houses, to each of which is attached a little garden, which they cultivate with such care and success, that they frequently bear away the prize at Floral Exhibitions.

[002] Of Rail-Road travelling the reality is quite different from the idea that descriptions of it had left upon my mind. Unpoetical as this sort of transit may seem to some minds, I confess I find it excite and satisfy the imagination. The wondrous speed--the quick change of scene--the perfect comfort--the life-like character of the power in motion, the invisible, and mysterious, and mighty steam horse, urged, and guided, and checked by the hand of Science--the cautionary, long, shrill whistle--the beautiful grey vapor, the breath of the unseen animal, floating over the fields by which we pa.s.s, sometimes hanging stationary for a moment in the air, and then melting away like a vision--furnish sufficiently congenial amus.e.m.e.nt for a period-minded observer.

[003] "That which peculiarly distinguishes the gardens of England," says Repton, "is the beauty of English verdure: _the gra.s.s of the mown lawn_, uniting with, the gra.s.s of the adjoining pastures, and presenting _that permanent verdure_ which is the natural consequence of our soft and humid clime, but unknown to the cold region of the North or the parching temperature of the South. This it is impossible to enjoy in Portugal where it would be as practicable to cover the general surface with the snow of Lapland as with the verdure of England." It is much the same in France. "There is everywhere in France," says Loudon, "a want _of close green turf_, of ever-green bushes and of good adhesive gravel." Some French admirers of English gardens do their best to imitate our lawns, and it is said that they sometimes partially succeed with English gra.s.s seed, rich manure, and constant irrigation. In Bengal there is a very beautiful species of gra.s.s called Doob gra.s.s, (_Panic.u.m Dactylon_,) but it only flourishes on wide and exposed plains with few trees on them, and on the sides of public roads, Shakespeare makes Falstaff say that "the camomile the more it is trodden on the faster it grows" and, this is the case with the Doob gra.s.s. The attempt to produce a permanent Doob gra.s.s lawn is quite idle unless the ground is extensive and open, and much trodden by men or sheep. A friend of mine tells me that he covered a large lawn of the coa.r.s.e Ooloo gra.s.s (_Saccharum cylindric.u.m_) with mats, which soon killed it, and on removing the mats, the finest Doob gra.s.s sprang up in its place. But the Ooloo gra.s.s soon again over-grew the Doob.

[004] I allude here chiefly to the ryots of wealthy Zemindars and to other poor Hindu people in the service of their own countrymen. All the subjects of the British Crown, even in India, are _politically free_, but individually the poorer Hindus, (especially those who reside at a distance from large towns,) are unconscious of their rights, and even the wealthier cla.s.ses have rarely indeed that proud and n.o.ble feeling of personal independence which characterizes people of all cla.s.ses and conditions in England. The feeling with which even a Hindu of wealth and rank approaches a man in power is very different indeed from that of the poorest Englishman under similar circ.u.mstances. But national education will soon communicate to the natives of India a larger measure of true self-respect. It will not be long, I hope, before the Hindus will understand our favorite maxim of English law, that "Every man's house is his castle,"--a maxim so finely amplified by Lord Chatham: "_The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail--its roof may shake--the wind may blow through it--the storm may enter--but the king of England cannot enter!--all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement_."

[005] _Literary Recreations_.

[006] I have in some moods preferred the paintings of our own Gainsborough even to those of Claude--and for this single reason, that the former gives a peculiar and more touching interest to his landscapes by the introduction of sweet groups of children. These lovely little figures are moreover so thoroughly English, and have such an out-of-doors air, and seem so much a part of external nature, that an Englishman who is a lover of rural scenery and a patriot, can hardly fail to be enchanted with the style of his celebrated countryman.--_Literary Recreations_.

[007] Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his 'Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees,' &c. his name would have excited the grat.i.tude of posterity. The voice of the patriot exults in his dedication to Charles II, prefixed to one of the later editions:--'I need not acquaint your Majesty, how many millions of timber-trees, besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted throughout your vast dominions, at the instigation and by the sole direction of this work, because your Majesty has been pleased to own it publicly for my encouragement.' And surely while Britain retains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the 'Sylva' of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks. It was a retired philosopher who aroused the genius of the nation, and who casting a prophetic eye towards the age in which we live, has contributed to secure our sovereignty of the seas. The present navy of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted.--_D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature_.

[008] _Crisped knots_ are figures curled or twisted, or having waving lines intersecting each other. They are sometimes planted in box.

Children, even in these days, indulge their fancy in sowing mustard and cress, &c. in 'curious knots,' or in favorite names and sentences. I have done it myself, "I know not how oft,"--and alas, how long ago! But I still remember with what anxiety I watered and watched the ground, and with what rapture I at last saw the surface gradually rising and breaking on the light green heads of the delicate little new-born plants, all exactly in their proper lines or stations, like a well-drilled Lilliputian battalion.

Shakespeare makes mention of garden _knots_ in his _Richard the Second_, where he compares an ill governed state to a neglected garden.

Why should we, in the compa.s.s of a pale, Keep law, and form, and due proportion, Showing, as in a model, our firm estate?

When our sea-walled garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds; her finest flowers choked up, Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined, Her _knots_ disordered, and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars.

There is an allusion to garden _knots_ in _Holinshed's Chronicle_. In 1512 the Earl of Northumberland "had but one gardener who attended hourly in the garden for setting of erbis and _chipping of knottis_ and sweeping the said garden clean."

[009] Ovid, in his story of Pyramus and Thisbe, tells us that the black Mulberry was originally white. The two lovers killed themselves under a white Mulberry tree and the blood penetrating to the roots of the tree mixed with the sap and gave its color to the fruit.

[010] _Revived Adonis_,--for, according to tradition he died every year and revived again. _Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son_,--that is, of Ulysses, whom he entertained on his return from Troy. _Or that, not mystic_--not fabulous as the rest, but a real garden which Solomon made for his wife, the daughter of Pharoah, king of Egypt--WARBURTON

"Divested of harmonious Greek and bewitching poetry," observes Horace Walpole, "the garden of Alcinous was a small orchard and vineyard with some beds of herbs and two fountains that watered them, inclosed within a quickset hedge." Lord Kames, says, still more boldly, that it was nothing but a kitchen garden. Certainly, gardening amongst the ancient Greeks, was a very simple business. It is only within the present century that it has been any where elevated into a fine art.

[011] "We are unwilling to diminish or lose the credit of Paradise, or only pa.s.s it over with [the Hebrew word for] _Eden_, though the Greek be of a later name. In this excepted, we know not whether the ancient gardens do equal those of late times, or those at present in Europe. Of the gardens of Hesperides, we know nothing singular, but some golden apples. Of Alcinous his garden, we read nothing beyond figs, apples, olives; if we allow it to be any more than a fiction of Homer, unhappily placed in Corfu, where the sterility of the soil makes men believe there was no such thing at all. The gardens of Adonis were so empty that they afforded proverbial expression, and the princ.i.p.al part thereof was empty s.p.a.ces, with herbs and flowers in pots. I think we little understand the pensile gardens of Semiramis, which made one of the wonders of it [Babylon], wherein probably the structure exceeded the plants contained in them. The excellency thereof was probably in the trees, and if the descension of the roots be equal to the height of trees, it was not [absurd] of Strebaeus to think the pillars were hollow that the roots might shoot into them."--_Sir Thomas Browne.--Bohn's Edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Works, vol. 2, page_ 498.

[012] The house and garden before Pope died were large enough for their owner. He was more than satisfied with them. "As Pope advanced in years," says Roscoe, "his love of gardening, and his attention to the various occupations to which it leads, seem to have increased also. This predilection was not confined to the ornamental part of this delightful pursuit, in which he has given undoubted proofs of his proficiency, but extended to the useful as well as the agreeable, as appears from several pa.s.sages in his poems; but he has entered more particularly into this subject in a letter to Swift (March 25, 1736); "I wish you had any motive to see this kingdom. I could keep you: for I am rich, that is, have more than I want, I can afford room to yourself and two servants. I have indeed room enough; nothing but myself at home. The kind and hearty housewife is dead! The agreeable and instructive neighbour is gone! Yet my house is enlarged, and the gardens extend and flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have lost. I have more fruit trees and kitchen garden than you have any thought of; and, I have good melons and apples of my own growth. I am as much a better gardener, as I am a worse poet, than when you saw me; but gardening is near akin to philosophy, for Tully says, _Agricultura proxima sapientiae_. For G.o.d's sake, why should not you, (that are a step higher than a philosopher, a divine, yet have too much grace and wit than to be a bishop) even give all you have to the poor of Ireland (for whom you have already done every thing else,) so quit the place, and live and die with me? And let _tales anima concordes_ be our motto and our epitaph."

[013] The leaves of the willow, though green above, are h.o.a.r below.

Shakespeare's knowledge of the fact is alluded to by Hazlitt as one of the numberless evidences of the poet's minute observation of external nature.

[014] See Mr. Loudon's most interesting and valuable work ent.i.tled _Arboretum et Fruticetum Britanic.u.m_.

[015] All the rules of gardening are reducible to three heads: the contrasts, the management of surprises and the concealment of the bounds. "Pray, what is it you mean by the contrasts?" "The disposition of the lights and shades."--"'Tis the colouring then?"--"Just that."--"Should not variety be one of the rules?"--"Certainly, one of the chief; but that is included mostly in the contrasts." I have expressed them all in two verses[140] (after my manner, in very little compa.s.s), which are in imitation of Horace's--_Omne tulit punctum.

Pope.--Spence's Anecdotes_.

[016] In laying out a garden, the chief thing to be considered is the genius of the place. Thus at Tiskins, for example, Lord Bathurst should have raised two or three mounts, because his situation is _all_ plain, and nothing can please without variety. _Pope--Spence's Anecdotes_.

[017] The seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham, in Buckinghams.h.i.+re. Pope concludes the first Epistle of his Moral Essays with a compliment to the patriotism of this n.o.bleman.

And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath Shall feel your ruling pa.s.sion strong in death: Such in those moments as in all the past "Oh, save my country, Heaven!" shall be your last.

[018] Two hundred acres and two hundred millions of francs were made over to Le Notre by Louis XIV. to complete these geometrical gardens.

One author tells us that in 1816 the ordinary cost of putting a certain portion of the waterworks in play was at the rate of 200 . per hour, and another still later authority states that when the whole were set in motion once a year on some Royal fete, the cost of the half hour during which the main part of the exhibition lasted was not less than 3,000 .

This is surely a most senseless expenditure. It seems, indeed, almost incredible. I take the statements from _Loudon's_ excellent _Encyclopaedia of Gardening_. The name of one of the original reporters is Neill; the name of the other is not given. The gardens formerly were and perhaps still are full of the vilest specimens of verdant sculpture in every variety of form. Lord Kames gives a ludicrous account of the vomiting stone statues there;--"A lifeless statue of an animal pouring out water may be endured" he observes, "without much disgust: but here the lions and wolves are put in violent action; each has seized its prey, a deer or a lamb, in act to devour; and yet, as by hocus-pocus, the whole is converted into a different scene: the lion, forgetting his prey, pours out water plentifully; and the deer, forgetting its danger, performs the same work: a representation no less absurd than that in the opera, where Alexander the Great, after mounting the wall of a town besieged, turns his back to the enemy, and entertains his army with a song."

[019] Broome though a writer of no great genius (if any), had yet the honor to be a.s.sociated with Pope in the translation of the Odyssey. He translated the 2nd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 16th, 18th, and 23rd books. Henley (Orator Henley) sneered at Pope, in the following couplet, for receiving so much a.s.sistance:

Pope came clean off with Homer, but they say, Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.

Fenton was another of Pope's auxiliaries. He translated the 1st, 4th, 19th and 20th books (of the Odyssey). Pope himself translated the rest.

[020] Stowe

[021] The late Humphrey Repton, one of the best landscape-gardeners that England has produced, and who was for many years employed on alterations and improvements in the house and grounds at Cobham, in Kent, the seat of the Earl of Darnley, seemed to think that Stowe ought not to monopolize applause and admiration, "Whether," he said, "we consider its extent, its magnificence or its comfort, there are few places that can vie with Cobham." Repton died in 1817, and his patron and friend the Earl of Darnley put up at Cobham an inscription to his memory.

The park at Cobham extends over an area of no less than 1,800 acres, diversified with thick groves and finely scattered single trees and gentle slopes and broad smooth lawns. Some of the trees are singularly beautiful and of great age and size. A chestnut tree, named the Four Sisters, is five and twenty feet in girth. The mansion, of which, the central part was built by Inigo Jones, is a very n.o.ble one. George the Fourth p.r.o.nounced the music room the finest room in England. The walls are of polished white marble with pilasters of sienna marble. The picture gallery is enriched with valuable specimens of the genius of t.i.tian and Guido and Salvator Rosa and Sir Joshua Reynolds. There is another famous estate in Kent, Knole, the seat of

Dorset, the grace of courts, the Muse's pride.

The Earl of Dorset, though but a poetaster himself, knew how to appreciate the higher genius of others. He loved to be surrounded by the finest spirits of his time. There is a pleasant anecdote of the company at his table agreeing to see which amongst them could produce the best impromptu. Dryden was appointed arbitrator. Dorset handed a slip of paper to Dryden, and when all the attempts were collected, Dryden decided without hesitation that Dorset's was the best. It ran thus: "_I promise to pay Mr. John Dryden, on demand, the sum of 500. Dorset_."

[022] This is generally put into the mouth of Pope, but if we are to believe Spence, who is the only authority for the anecdote, it was addressed to himself.

[023] It has been said that in laying out the grounds at Hagley, Lord Lyttelton received some valuable hints from the author of _The Seasons_, who was for some time his Lords.h.i.+p's guest. The poet has commemorated the beauties of Hagley Park in a description that is familiar to all lovers of English poetry. I must make room for a few of the concluding lines.

Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow, The bursting prospect spreads immense around: And s.n.a.t.c.hed o'er hill, and dale, and wood, and lawn, And verdant field, and darkening heath between, And villages embosomed soft in trees, And spiry towns by surging columns marked, Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams; Wide stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt The hospitable genius lingers still, To where the broken landscape, by degrees, Ascending, roughens into rigid hills; O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds, That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.

It certainly does not look as if there had been any want of kindly feeling towards Shenstone on the part of Lyttelton when we find the following inscription in Hagley Park.

To the memory of William Shenstone, Esquire, In whose verse Were all the natural graces.

And in whose manners Was all the amiable simplicity Of pastoral poetry, With the sweet tenderness Of the elegiac.

There is also at Hagley a complimentary inscription on an urn to Alexander Pope; and, on an octagonal building called _Thomson's Seat_, there is an inscription to the author of _The Seasons_. Hagley is kept up with great care and is still in possession of the descendants of the founder. But a late visitor (Mr. George Dodd) expresses a doubt whether the Leasowes, even in its comparative decay, is not a finer bit of landscape, a more delightful place to lose one-self in, than even its larger and better preserved neighbour.

[024] Coleridge is reported to have said--"There is in Crabbe an absolute defect of high imagination; he gives me little pleasure. Yet no doubt he has much power of a certain kind, and it is good to cultivate, even at some pains, a catholic taste in literature." Walter Savage Landor, in his "Imaginary Conversations," makes Porson say--"Crabbe wrote with a two-penny nail and scratched rough truths and rogues' facts on mud walls." Horace Smith represents Crabbe, as "Pope in worsted stockings." That there is merit of some sort or other, and that of no ordinary kind, in Crabbe's poems, is what no one will deny. They relieved the languor of the last days of two great men, of very different characters--Sir Walter Scott and Charles James Fox.

[025] The poet had a cottage and garden in Kew-foot-Lane at or near Richmond. In the alcove in the garden is a small table made of the wood of the walnut tree. There is a drawer to the table which in all probability often received charge of the poet's effusions hot from the brain. On a bra.s.s tablet inserted in the top of the table is this inscription--"_This table was the property of James Thomson, and always stood in this seat._"

[026] Shene or Sheen: the old name of Richmond, signifying in Saxon _s.h.i.+ning_ or _splendour_.

[027] Highgate and Hamstead.

[028] In his last sickness

[029] On looking back at page 36 I find that I have said in the foot note that it is only within _the present century_ that gardening has been elevated into _a fine art_. I did not mean within the 55 years of this 19th century, but _within a hundred years_. Even this, however, was an inadvertency. We may go a little further back. Kent and Pope lived to see Landscape-Gardening considered a fine art. Before their time there were many good practical gardeners, but the poetry of the art was not then much regarded except by a very few individuals of more than ordinary refinement.