Flowers and Flower-Gardens With an Appendix of Practical Instructions and Useful Information Respecting the Anglo-Indian Flower-Garden — Inside the Classic

Romans had neither. But though, some of our Spitalfields weavers have shown a deeper love, and perhaps even a finer taste, for flowers, than were exhibited by the citizens of Rome, abundant evidence is furnished to us by the poets in all ages and in all countries that nature, in some form or another has ever charmed the eye and the heart of man. The following version of a famous passage in Virgil, especially the lines in Italics, may give the English reader some idea of a Roman's dream of

Ah! happy Swains! if they their bliss but knew, Whom, far from boisterous war, Earth's bosom true With easy food supplies. If they behold No lofty dome its gorgeous gates unfold And pour at morn from all its chambers wide Of flattering visitants the mighty tide; Nor gaze on beauteous columns richly wrought, Or tissued robes, or busts from Corinth brought; Nor their white wool with Tyrian poison soil, Nor taint with Cassia's bark their native oil; _Yet peace is theirs; a life true bliss that yields; And various wealth; leisure mid ample fields, Grottoes, and living lakes, and vallies green, And lowing herds; and 'neath a sylvan screen, Delicious slumbers. There the lawn and cave With beasts of chase abound._ The young ne'er crave A prouder lot; their patient toil is cheered; Their Gods are worshipped and their sires revered; And there when Justice passed from earth away She left the latest traces of her sway.

Lord Bacon was perhaps the first Englishman who endeavored to reform the old system of English gardening, and to show that it was contrary to good taste and an insult to nature. "As for making knots or figures," he says, "with divers colored earths, that may lie under the windows of the house on that side on which the garden stands, they be but toys: you may see as good sights many times in tarts." Bacon here alludes, I suppose, to the old Dutch fashion of dividing flowerbeds into many compartments, and instead of filling them with flowers, covering one with red brick dust, another with charcoal, a third with yellow sand, a fourth with chalk, a fifth with broken China, and others with green glass, or with spars and ores. But Milton, in his exquisite description of the garden of Eden, does not allude to the same absurd fashion when he speaks of "curious knots,"

Which not nice art, In beds and _curious knots_, but nature boon Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain.

By these _curious knots_ the poet seems to allude, not to figures of "divers colored earth," but to the artificial and complicated arrangements and divisions of flowers and flower-beds.

Though Bacon went not quite so freely to nature as our latest landscape-gardeners have done, he made the _first step_ in the right direction and deserves therefore the compliment which Mason has paid him in his poem of _The English Garden_.

On thy realm Philosophy his sovereign lustre spread; Yet did he deign to light with casual glance The wilds of Taste, Yes, sagest Verulam, 'Twas thine to banish from the royal groves Each childish vanity of crisped knot[008]

And sculptured foliage; to the lawn restore Its ample space, and bid it feast the sight With verdure pure, unbroken, unabridged; For verdure soothes the eye, as roseate sweets The smell, or music's melting strains the ear.

Yes--"_verdure soothes the eye_:"--and the mind too. Bacon himself observes, that "nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn." Mason slightly qualifies his commendation of "the sage" by admitting that he had not quite completed his emancipation from the bad taste of his day.

Witness his high arched hedge In pillored state by carpentry upborn, With colored mirrors decked and prisoned birds. But, when our step has paced the proud parterre, And reached the heath, then Nature glads our eye Sporting in all her lovely carelessness, There smiles in varied tufts the velvet rose, There flaunts the gadding woodbine, swells the ground In gentle hillocks, and around its sides Through blossomed shades the secret pathway steals.

_The English Garden_.

In one of the notes to _The English Garden_ it is stated that "Bacon was the prophet, Milton the herald of modern Gardening; and Addison, Pope, and Kent the champions of true taste." Kent was by profession both a Painter and a Landscape-Gardener. Addison who had a pretty little retreat at Bilton, near Rugby, evinces in most of his occasional allusions to gardens a correct judgment. He complains that even in _his_ time our British gardeners, instead of humouring nature, loved to deviate from it as much as possible. The system of verdant sculpture had not gone out of fashion. Our trees still rose in cones, globes, and pyramids. The work of the scissors was on every plant and bush. It was Pope, however, who did most to bring the topiary style into contempt and to encourage a more natural taste, by his humorous paper in the _Guardian_ and his poetical Epistle to the Earl of Burlington. Gray, the poet, observes in one of his letters, that "our skill in gardening, or rather laying out grounds, is the only taste we can call our own; the only proof of original talent in matters of pleasure. This is no small honor to us;" he continues, "since neither France nor Italy, has ever had the least notion of it." "Whatever may have been reported, whether truly or falsely" (says a contributor to _The World_) "of the Chinese gardens, it is certain that we are the first of the Europeans who have founded this taste; and we have been so fortunate in the genius of those who have had the direction of some of the finest spots of ground, that we may now boast a success equal to that profusion of expense which has been destined to promote the rapid progress of this happy enthusiasm. Our gardens are already the astonishment of foreigners, and, in proportion as they accustom themselves to consider and understand them will become their admiration." The periodical from which this is taken was published exactly a century ago, and the writer's prophecy has been long verified. Foreigners send to us for gardeners to help them to lay out their grounds in the English fashion. And we are told by the writer of an interesting article on gardens, in the _Quarterly Review_, that "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 known," adds the same writer, "that among our exportations every year is 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."

Pomfret, a poet of small powers, if a poet at all, has yet contrived to produce a popular composition in verse--_The Choice_--because he has touched with great good fortune on some of the sweetest domestic hopes and enjoyments of his countrymen.

If Heaven the grateful liberty would give That I might choose my method how to live; And all those hours propitious Fate should lend In blissful ease and satisfaction spend; Near some fair town I'd have a private seat Built uniform; not little; nor too great: Better if on a rising ground it stood, On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood.

Pomfret perhaps illustrates the general taste when he places his garden "_near some fair town_." Our present laureate, though a truly inspired poet, and a genuine lover of Nature even in her remotest retreats, has the garden of his preference, "_not quite beyond the busy world_."

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love, News from the humming city comes to it In sound of funeral or of marriage bells; And sitting muffled in dark leaves you hear The windy clanging of the minster clock; Although between it and the garden lies A league of grass.

Even "sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh" are often pleasing when mellowed by the space of air through which they pass.

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the _sound_.

Shelley, in one of his sweetest poems, speaking of a scene in the neighbourhood of Naples, beautifully says:--

Like many a voice of one delight, The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, _The city's voice itself is soft_, like solitude's.

No doubt the feeling that we are _near_ the crowd but not _in_ it, may deepen the sense of our own happy rural seclusion and doubly endear that pensive leisure in which we can "think down hours to moments," and in

This our life, exempt from public haunt, Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

Besides, to speak truly, few men, however studious or philosophical, desire a total isolation from the world. It is pleasant to be able to take a sort of side glance at humanity, even when we are most in love with nature, and to feel that we can join our fellow creatures again when the social feeling returns upon us. Man was not made to live alone. Cowper, though he clearly loved retirement and a garden, did not desire to have the pleasure entirely to himself. "Grant me," he says, "a friend in my retreat."

To whom to whisper solitude is sweet.

Cowper lived and died a bachelor. In the case of a married man and a father, garden delights are doubled by the presence of the family and friends, if wife and children happen to be what they should be, and the friends are genuine and genial.

All true poets delight in gardens. The truest that ever lived spent his latter days at New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. He had a spacious and beautiful garden. Charles Knight tells us that "the Avon washed its banks; and within its enclosures it had its sunny terraces and green lawns, its pleached alleys and honeysuckle bowers," In this garden Shakespeare planted with his own hands his celebrated Mulberry tree. It was a noble specimen of the black Mulberry introduced into England in 1548[009]. In 1605, James I. issued a Royal edict recommending the cultivation of silkworms and offering packets of mulberry seeds to those amongst his subjects who were willing to sow them. Shakespeare's tree was planted in 1609. Mr. Loudon, observes that the black Mulberry has been known from the earliest records of antiquity and that it is twice mentioned in the Bible: namely, in the second Book of Samuel and in the Psalms. When New Place was in the possession of Sir Hough Clopton, who was proud of its interesting association with the history of our great poet, not only were Garrick and Macklin most hospitably entertained under the Mulberry tree, but all strangers on a proper application were admitted to a sight of it. But when Sir Hough Clopton was succeeded by the Reverend Francis Gastrell, that gentleman, to save himself the trouble of showing the tree to visitors, had "the gothic barbarity" to cut down and root up that interesting--indeed _sacred_ memorial--of the Pride of the British Isles. The people of Stratford were so enraged at this sacrilege that they broke Mr. Gastrell's windows. That prosaic personage at last found the place too hot for him, and took his departure from a town whose inhabitants "doated on his very absence;" but before he went he completed the fall sum of his sins against good taste and good feeling by pulling to the ground the house in which Shakespeare had lived and died. This was done, it is said, out of sheer spite to the towns-people, with some of whom Mr. Gastrell had had a dispute about the rate at which the house was taxed. His change of residence was no great relief to him, for the whole British public felt sorely aggrieved, and wherever he went he was peppered with all sorts of squibs and satires. He "slid into verse," and "hitched in a rhyme."

Sacred to ridicule his whole life long, And the sad burden of a merry song.

Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker, got possession of the fragments of Shakespeare's Mulberry tree, and worked them into all sorts of elegant ornaments and toys, and disposed of them at great prices. The corporation of Stratford presented Garrick with the freedom of the town in a box made of the wood of this famous tree, and the compliment seems to have suggested to him his public festival or pageant in honor of the poet. This Jubilee, which was got up with great zeal, and at great expense and trouble, was attended by vast throngs of the admirers of Shakespeare from all parts of the kingdom. It was repeated on the stage and became so popular as a theatrical exhibition that it was represented night after night for more than half a season to crowded audiences.

Upon the subject of gardens, let us hear what has been said by the self-styled "melancholy Cowley." When in the smoky city pent, amidst the busy hum of men, he sighed unceasingly for some green retreat. As he paced the crowded thorough-fares of London, he thought of the velvet turf and the pure air of the country. His imagination carried him into secluded groves or to the bank of a murmuring river, or into some trim and quiet garden. "I never," he says, "had any other desire so strong and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them and the study of nature," The late Miss Mitford, whose writings breathe so freshly of the nature that she loved so dearly, realized for herself a similar desire. It is said that she had the cottage of a peasant with the garden of a Duchess. Cowley is not contented with expressing in plain prose his appreciation of garden enjoyments. He repeatedly alludes to them in verse.

Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil's praise) The old Corycian yeoman passed his days; Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent; Th' ambassadors, which the great emperor sent To offer him a crown, with wonder found The reverend gardener, hoeing of his ground; Unwillingly and slow and discontent From his loved cottage to a throne he went; And oft he stopped, on his triumphant way: And oft looked back: and oft was heard to say Not without sighs, Alas! I there forsake A happier kingdom than I go to take.

_Lib. IV. Plantarum_.

Here is a similar allusion by the same poet to the delights which great men amongst the ancients have taken in a rural retirement.

Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walk In the Salonian garden's noble shade Which by his own imperial hands was made, I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk With the ambassadors, who come in vain To entice him to a throne again.

"If I, my friends," said he, "should to you show All the delights which in these gardens grow, 'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay, Than 'tis that you should carry me away: And trust me not, my friends, if every day I walk not here with more delight,

Than ever, after the most happy sight In triumph to the Capitol I rode, To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god,"

Cowley does not omit the important moral which a garden furnishes.

Where does the wisdom and the power divine In a more bright and sweet reflection shine? Where do we finer strokes and colors see Of the Creator's real poetry. Than when we with attention look Upon the third day's volume of the book? If we could open and intend our eye _We all, like Moses, might espy, E'en in a bush, the radiant Deity_.

In Leigh Hunt's charming book entitled _The Town_, I find the following notice of the partiality of poets for houses with gardens attached to them:--

"It is not surprizing that _garden-houses_ as they were called; should have formerly abounded in Holborn, in Bunhill Row, and other (at that time) suburban places. We notice the fact, in order to observe _how fond the poets were of occupying houses of this description. Milton seems to have made a point of having one_. The only London residence of Chapman which is known, was in Old Street Road; doubtless at that time a rural suburb. Beaumont and Fletcher's house, on the Surrey side of the Thames, (for they lived as well as wrote together,) most probably had a garden; and Dryden's house in Gerard Street looked into the garden of the mansion built by the Earls of Leicester. A tree, or even a flower, put in a window in the streets of a great city, (and the London citizens, to their credit, are fond of flowers,) affects the eye something in the same way as the hand-organs, which bring unexpected music to the ear. They refresh the common-places of life, shed a harmony through the busy discord, and appeal to those first sources of emotion, which are associated with the remembrance of all that is young and innocent."

Milton must have been a passionate lover of flowers and flower-gardens or he could never have exhibited the exquisite taste and genial feeling which characterize all the floral allusions and descriptions with which so much of his poetry is embellished. He lived for some time in a house in Westminster over-looking the Park. The same house was tenanted by Jeremy Bentham for forty years. It would be difficult to meet with any two individuals of more opposite temperaments than the author of _Paradise Lost_ and the Utilitarian Philosopher. There is or was a stone in the wall at the end of the garden inscribed TO THE PRINCE OF POETS. Two beautiful cotton trees overarched the inscription, "and to show" says Hazlitt, (who subsequently lived in the same house himself,) "how little the refinements of taste or fancy entered Bentham's system, he proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the garden, where he had breathed an air of truth and heaven for near half a century, into a paltry Chreistomathic School, and to make Milton's house (the cradle of _Paradise Lost_) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and forwards to it with their cloven hoofs!"

No poet, ancient or modern, has described a garden on a large scale in so noble a style as Milton. He has anticipated the finest conceptions of the latest landscape-gardeners, and infinitely surpassed all the accounts we have met with of the gardens of the olden time before us. His Paradise is a

Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned Or of revived Adonis or renowned Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son Or that, not mystic, where the sapient King Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse[010]

The description is too long to quote entire, but I must make room for a delightful extract. Familiar as it must be to all lovers of poetry, who will object to read it again and again? Genuine poetry is like a masterpiece of the painter's art:--we can gaze with admiration for the hundredth time on a noble picture. The mind and the eye are never satiated with the truly beautiful. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."