complished prince. Napoleon used to say | that he should know his father's garden in Corsica blindfold by the smell of the earth; and the hanging gardens of Babylon are said to have been raised by the Median queen of Nebuchadnezzar on the flat and naked plains of her adopted country, to remind her of the hills and woods of her childhood: Why should we speak of the plane-trees of Plato-Shakspeare's mulberry-treePope's willow-Byron's elm? Why describe Cicero at his Tusculum-Evelyn at Wooton-Pitt at Ham Common-Walpole at Houghton-Grenville at Dropmore? Why dwell on Bacon's 'little tufts of thyme,' or Fox's geraniums? There is a spirit in the garden as well as in the wood, and 'the lilies of the field' supply food for the imagination as well as materials for sermons. Talke of perfect happiness or pleasure,' says old Gerarde to the 'courteous and well-willing reader,' from his house in Holborn, within the suburbs of London'and what place was so fit for that as the garden-place wherein Adam was set to be the herbalist? Whither did the poets hunt for their sincere delights but into the gardens of Alcinous, of Adonis, and the orchards of the Hesperides? Where did they dream that heaven should be but in the pleasant garden of Elysium? Whither doe all men walke for their honest recreation but thither where the earth hath most beneficially painted her face with flourishing colours? And what season of the yeare more longed for than the spring, whose gentle breath enticeth forth the kindly sweets, and makes them yield their fragrant smells?' And what country,we may add, so suited, and climate so attempered, to yield the full enjoyment of the pleasures and blessings of a garden, as our own? Everybody knows the remark of Charles II., first promulgated by Sir W. Temple, 'that there were more days in the year in which one could enjoy oneself in the open air in England than in any other portion of the known world.' This, which contains so complete an answer to the weather-grumblers of our island, bears also along with it a most encouraging truth to those who love to live in gardens.' There is no country that offers the like advantages to horticulture. Perhaps there is not one plant in the wide world wholly incapable of being cultivated in England. The mosses and lichens dragged from under the snows of Iceland, and the tenderest creepers of the tropical jungles, are alike subject to the art of the British gardener. Artificial heat and cold, by the due application of steam and manure, sun and shade, hot and cold water, and even ice-mattings, flues in every variety of pit, frame, conservative wall, conservatory, greenhouse, hothouse, and stove, seem to have realized every degree of temperature from Kamskatka to Sincapore. But apart from artificial means, the natural mildness of our sky is most favourable to plants brought from countries of either extreme of temperature; and, as their habits are better known and attended to, not a year passes without acclimatizing many heretofore deemed too tender for the open air. Gardeners are reasonably cautious in not exposing at once a newly-introduced exotic; and thus we know that when Parkinson wrote, in 1629, the larch, and the laurel-then called baycherry-were still protected in winter. We are now daily adding to the list of our hardy plants; hydrangeas, the tree-peony, fuchsias, salvias, altromarias, and Cape-bulbs, are now found, with little or no protection, to stand our mid-England winters. Then we alone have in perfection the three main elements of gardening, flowers apart, in our lawns, our gravel, and our evergreens. It is the greatest stretch of foreign luxury to emulate these. The lawns at Paris, to say nothing of Naples, are regularly irrigated to keep up even the semblance of English verdure; and at the gardens of Versailles, and Caserta, near Naples, the walks have been supplied from the Kensington gravel-pits. It is not probably generally known that among our exportations are every year a large quantity of evergreens for the markets of France and Germany, and that there are some nurserymen almost wholly engaged in this branch of trade. This may seem the more remarkable to those who fancy that, from the superiority of foreign climates, any English tree would bear a continental winter; but the bare appearance of the French gardens, mostly composed as they are of deciduous trees, would soon convince them of the contrary. It is not the severity or length of our December nights that generally destroys our more tender exotic plants, but it is the late frosts of April and May, those nipping frosts,' which, coming on after the plant has enjoyed warmth enough to set the sap in action, freeze its life-blood to the heart's core, and cause it to wither and die. late winter of 1837-8 proved this fact distinctly, which had hardly been sufficiently remarked before. That year, which cut down even our cypresses, and china-roses, and from which our gorse-fields have hardly The gardens of the Isle of Wight. Again and again she fixes upon them as the most pleasing and striking feature in a land where everything was new to her. Long may they so continue! It is a trait of which England may well be proud; for it speakswould we could trace it everywhere!-of peace, and of the leisure, and comfort, and contentedness of those who 'shall never cease from the land.' yet recovered, while it injured nearly the passing whiff of a hawthorn bush, a cloevery plant and tree on south walls and in ver or bean field, or a gorse-common. sheltered borders, and in all forward situa- With such hedgerow flowers within his tions, spared the tenderest kinds on north reach, and in so favourable a climate, it is walls and exposed places; and in Scotland not to be wondered that the garden of the the destruction was hardly felt at all. It English cottager has been remarked among was the backwardness of their growing our national distinctions. These may be state that saved these plants; and the know- said to form the foreground of that peculiar ledge of this fact has already been brought English scenery, which is filled up by our to bear in several recent experiments. The hedge-rows and our parks. The ingenious double yellow rose, for instance, one of the authoress of Leila in England '* makes the most delicate of its class, is now flowered little new-landed girl exclaim for the want with great success in a northern exposition. of fountain-trees' and 'green parrots.' It has led men also to study the hyberna- This is true to nature-but not less so the tion of plants-perhaps the most important real enthusiasm of Miss Sedgwick, on her research in which horticulturists have of first arriving in England, at the cottagelate engaged; and it has been ascertained that this state of winter-rest is a most important element in their constitution; but no doubt it will also be found that-as the dormouse, the sloth, the snake, the mole, &c., undergo a greater or less degree of torpidity, and some require it not at all so in plants, the length and degree will vary much in different species, and according to their state of artificial cultivation. As a general rule, young gardeners must take heed not prematurely to force the juices into action in spring, nor to keep them too lively in winter, unless they are well prepared with good and sufficient protection till all the frosts are over. The practical effect of these observations will be, that many plants which have hitherto only been cultivated by those who have had flues and greenhouses at their command, will now be grown in as great or greater perfection by those who can afford them a dry, though not a warm shelter. One instance may serve as an example: the scarlet geranium, one of the greatest treasures of our parterres, if taken up from the ground in autumn, after the wood is thoroughly ripened, and hung up in a dry room, without any soil attaching to it, will be found ready, the next spring, to start in a new life of vigour and beauty. One characteristic of our native plants we must mention, that if we miss in them something of the gorgeousness and lustre of more tropical flowers, we are more than compensated by the delicacy and variety of their perfume; and just as our woods, vocal with the nightingale, the blackbird, and the thrush, can well spare the gaudy feathers of the macaw, so can we resign the oncidiums, the cactuses, and the ipomæas of the Tropics, for the delicious fragrance of our wild banks of violets, our lilies-ofthe-valley, and our woodbine, or even for We would make gardens in general a test of national prosperity and happiness. As long as the British nobleman continues to take an interest in his avenues and hothouses-his lady in her conservatories and parterres-the squire overlooks his labourers' allotments-the 'squiresses and squirinas' betake themselves and their flowers to the neighbouring horticultural show-the citizen sets up his cucumber-frame in his back-yard-his dame her lilacs and almondtrees in the front court--the mechanic breeds his prize-competing auriculas-the cottager rears his sun-flowers and Sweet-Williams before his door-and even the collier sports his 'posy jacket'-as long, in a word, as this common interest pervades every class of society, so long shall we cling to the hope that our country is destined to outlive all her difficulties and dangers. Not because, like the Peris, we fight with flowers, and build amaranth bowers, and bind our enemies in links of roses--but because all this implies mutual interest and intercourse of every rank, and dependence of one class upon another--because it promotes an interchange of kindnesses and favours--because it speaks of proprietors dwelling on their hereditary acres, and the poorest labourer having an interest in the soil; because it gives a local attachment, and healthy exercise and innocent recreation, and excites a love of the country and love of our own country, and a spirit of emulation, devoid of bitterness; because it tells of wealth wisely spent, and competence widely dif fused, of taste cultivated, and science practically applied; because, unlike Napoleon's great lie, it does bring peace to the cottage, while it blesses the palace, and every virtuous home between those wild extremes; because it bespeaks the appreciation of what is natural, and simple, and pure; teaches men to set the divine law of excellence above the low human standard of utility; and because, above all, in the most lovely and bountiful of God's works, it leads them up to Him that made them, not in a mere dumb, inactive admiration of His wonderful designs, but to bless Him that He has given them pleasures beyond their actual necessities; the means of a cheerful countenance, as well as of a strong heart. Gardening not only affords common ground for the high and low, but like Christianity itself, it offers peculiar blessings and privileges to the poor man, which the very possession of wealth denies. The Spitalfields weaver may derive more pleasure from his green box of smoked auricuChatsworth, or Stowe. or Alton, from their las,' than the lordly possessors of Sion, or hundreds of decorated acres; because not only personal superintendence, but actual work is necessary for the true enjoyment of a garden. We must know our flowers, as well as buy them. Our great-grandmothers, who-before they were greatgrandmothers-flirted on the sunny terraces, or strolled along the arched and shaded alleys' of our old manor-houses, had their own little garden, where they knew every flower, because they were few; and every name because they were simple. Their rosebushes and gilliflowers were dear to them, because themselves had pruned, and watered. and watched them-had marked from day to ing blossoms-and had cherished each choicest day their opening buds, and removed their fadspecimen for the posy to be worn at the christening of the squire's heir, or on my lord's birthday.' In a like strain the wise and good author of Human Life' beautifully says Still more-because-if ours be not too rude a step to venture within such hallowed ground-it speaks of a Christian people employed in an occupation, which, above all others, is the parable that conveys the deepest truths to them--which daily reads them silent lessons, if their hearts would hear, of the vanity of earthly pomp, of the beauty of heavenly simplicity, and purity, and lowliness of mind, of contentment and unquestioning faith-which sets before them, in the thorns and thistles, a remembrance of their fallen state-in the cedar, and the olive, and the palm-tree, the promise of a better country-which hourly recalls to their mind the Agony and the Bu'I would not have my garden too extended; not because flowers are not the most delicious rial of Him who made a garden the scene things, speaking to the sentiments as well as to of both, and who bade us mark and consider the senses, but on account of the intrinsic and such things, how they bud, and how they superior value of moderation. When interests grow, giving us in the vine a type of His are divided, they are not so strong. Three Church, and in the fig-tree of His Coming. acres of flowers and a regiment of gardeners Again, we would ask those who think bring no more pleasure than a sufficiency. Bethat national amelioration is to be achieved more room for the mental pleasure to step in sides which, in the smaller possession, there is by dose upon dose of Reform or Red-tapery, and refine all that which is sensual. We bewhere should we now have been without come acquainted, as it were, and even form our savings-banks, our allotment system, friendships, with individual flowers. We beand our cottage gardens? And lest we stow more care upon their bringing up and proshould be thought to have been led They seem sensible of our favour, gress. away from flowers to the more general subject, absolutely to enjoy it, and make pleasing returns In this we will add that when we see a plot set by their beauty, health, and sweetness. respect a hundred thousand roses, which we apart for a rosebush, and a gilliflower, and look at en masse, do not identify themselves in a carnation, it is enough for us: if the jas- the same manner as even a very small border; mine and the honeysuckle embower the and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly porch without, we may be sure that there attuned, the little cottage-garden may give him is a potato and a cabbage and an onion for more real delight than belongs to the owner of a thousand acres. All this is so entirely nature, within: if there be not plenty there, that give me a garden well kept, however pot at least there is no want; if not happiness, small, two or three spreading trees, and a mind the nearest approach to it in this world-at ease, and I defy the world.' the content. Nor do we find anything contravening he was most proud of his garden, said also, this, in Cowley's wish that he might have with more nature and truth, that he 'pitied a small house and large garden, few the man who had completed everything in friends, and many books.' Doubtless he his garden.' To pull down and destroy is coveted neither the Bodleian nor Chats- quite as natural to man as to build up and worth, and intended his garden to be improve, and this love of alteration may 'large' only in comparison with his other help to account for the many changes of possessions. style in gardening that have taken place. The course of the seasons, the introduction of new flowers, the growth of trees, will always of themselves give the gardener enough to do; and if the flower-garden is perfect, and there is a nook of spare ground at hand, instead of extending his parterres, which cannot be kept too neat, he had better devote it to an arboretum for choice trees and shrubs; or take up with some one extensive class-as for a thornery or a pinery; or make it a wilderness-like mixture of all kinds. Such ground will not require mowing more than twice or thrice in the year, and will afford much pleasure, without much labour and expense. If there is a little damp nook or dell, with rock-work and water at command, let it by all means be made a fernery, for which Mr. Newman's book will supply plenty of materials. It is this unlimited expenditure and unlimited interest which a garden requires, combined with the innocence of the amusement, that renders it so great a blessingmore even than to the cottager himself to the country clergyman. We must leave to the novelist to sketch the happy party which every summer's evening finds busied on many an English vicarage-lawn, with their trowels and watering-pots, and all the paraphernalia of amateur gardeners; though we may ask the utilitarian, if he would deign to scan so simple a group, from the superintending vicar to the water-carrying schoolboy, where he would better find developed the greatest happiness of the greatest number,' than among those very objects and that very occupation where utility is not only banished, but condemned. But we are straying too far from our imWe would have our clergy know that mediate subject of flower-gardens and flowthere is no readier way to a parishioner's ers, and with a few more remarks upon the heart-next to visiting his house, which, latter, we must bring this dissertation to a done in health and in sickness, is the key-close: otherwise we should have something stone of our blessed parochial system-than to say of the unique beauties of Redleaf, to visit his garden, suggesting and super- and the splendid Italian garden lately deintending improvements, distributing seeds, signed at Trentham by the genius of Mr. and slips, and flowers, and lending or giving Barry; something more, too, of the gorgeous such gardening books as would be useful new importations which every day is now for his limited domain. And many a poor bringing, some for the first time, into blosscholar, in some obscure curacy, out of the som. We are even promised new varieties way of railroads and book-clubs, of orchideous plants from Mr. Rollisson's experiments in raising seedlings for the first time in this country. In life's stillest shade reclining, To produce new seedling varieties of one's own, by hybridizing and other mys has made the moral and intellectual wilder-teries of the priests of Flora, is indeed the ness in which he is cast bloom for him in his trees, and herbs, and flowers; and if unable, from the narrowness of his means and situation, 'To raise the terrace or to sink the grot,' highest pleasure and the deepest esotericism of the art. The impregnating them is to venture within the very secrets of creation, and the naming them carries us back to one of the highest privileges of our first parents. has found his body refreshed and his spirits The offspring becomes our own ipyor; which, lightened, in growing the salad to give a according to Aristotle, claims the highest. relish to his simple meal, and the flower to degree of our love. We should feel that, bedeck his threadbare button-hole,--ena- in leaving them, we were leaving friends, bled by these recreations to bear up against and address them in the words of Eve, those little every-day annoyances which, though hardly important enough to tax our faith or our philosophy, make regulated or unemployed mind the chief ills of life. up in an ill Pope, who professed that of all his works 'O flowers, My early visitation and my last At even, which I had bred up with tender hand, Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?' We cannot but admire the practice of the | ART. VIII.-Diary and Letters of Madame Church of Rome, which calls in the aid off D'Arblay, Author of Evelina,'' Cecifloral decorations on her high festivals. If lia,' &c. Edited by her Niece. Vols. I., we did not feel convinced that it was the II., II. London. 1842. most bounden duty of the Church of England, at the present moment, to give no WHEN we reviewed, ten years ago, that unnecessary offence by restorations in in- strange display of egotism which Madame different matters, we should be inclined to D'Arblay was pleased to call Memoirs of advocate, notwithstanding the denunciations her Father,' we expressed a wish that she of some of the early Fathers, some slight would exception in the case of our own favourites. We shall not easily forget the effect of a condense and simplify into a couple of interestlong avenue of orange-trees in the Cathe-ing (and interesting they would be) volumes her dral of St. Gudule at Brussels, calling to own story and her contemporaneous notes and mind as it did the expression of the psalm- which she moved from 1777 to 1793. We lay bona fide recollections of that brilliant society in ist-Those that be planted in the house some stress on the words bona fide-not as of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of imputing to Madame D'Arblay the slightest inour God.' The white lily is held through- tention to deceive, but because we think that we out Spain and Italy the emblem of the see in almost every page abundant proof that Virgin's purity, and frequently decorates the habit of novel-writing has led her to colour, her shrines; and many other flowers, dedi- and, as she may suppose, embellish, her aneccated to some saint, are used in profusion tails which, however, we venture to assure her, dotes with sonorous epithets and factitious deon the day of his celebration. The oak-leaf not only biunt their effect, but discredit their and the palm-branch have with us their loyal authority.'-Quart. Rev., vol xlix., p. 125. and religious anniversary, and the holly still gladdens the hearts of all good Churchmen We were not then in the secret of Maat Christmas-a custom which the Puritans dame D'Arblay's having from her earliest never succeeded in effacing from the most youth kept the diary now presented to us ; cant-ridden parish in the kingdom. Latter- but we guessed, from many passages in the ly, flowers have been much used among us Memoirs of Dr. Burney,' that she was in in festivals, and processions, and gala-days possession of copious contemporaneous of all kinds--the dahlia furnishing, in its materials for her own, and we candidly symmetry and variety of colouring, an ex- forewarned her of the kind of errors into cellent material for those who, perhaps, in which she was likely to fall in preparing their young days sowed their own initials her notes for publication. Our conjectures in mustard-and-cress, to inscribe in their are now too fully verified; the interest is maturer years their sovereign's name in indeed much less than we anticipated, but flowers. Flowering plants and shrubs are in all the rest--the diffuseness--the pompat the same time becoming more fashiona-osity-the prolixity-the false colouring— ble in our London ball-rooms. No dread the factitious details--and, above all, the of noxious exhalations' deters mammas personal affectation and vanity of the aufrom decorating their halls and staircases thor, this book exceeds our worst apprehenwith flowers of every hue and fragrance, sions. nor their daughters from braving the headAt first sight the Diary seems a minute aches and pale cheeks, which are said to record of all that she saw, did, or heard, arise from such innocent and beautiful and we find the pages crowded with names causes. We would go one step further, and teeming with matters of the greatest and replace all artificial flowers by natural apparent interest-with details of the soones, on the dinner-table and in the hair. cial habits and familiar conversation of the Some of the more amaranthine flowers, as most fashionable, most intellectual, and, in the camellia and the hoya, which can bear every sense, most illustrious personages of the heat of crowded rooms, or those of re- the last age. No book that we ever opened, gular shapes, as the dahlia and others, not even Boswell's 'Johnson,' promised at would, we are sure, with a little contrivance the first glance more of all that species of in adjusting and preserving them, soon entertainment and information which meeclipse the most artistical wreaths of Natier moir-writing can convey, and the position or Forster, and we will venture to promise and respectability of the author, with her a good partner for a waltz and for life to supposed power of delineating character, all the first fair débutante who will take courage tended to heighten our expectation; but to adopt the natural flower in her 'sunny never, we regret to say, has there been a locks.' more vexatious disappointment. We have |