expression, excellence of nature, sweetness of conversation, temperance of life, and constancy of death, made him so beloved by his friends, admired by his scholars, and honoured by the Athenians, passed his time wholly in his garden; there he studied, there he exercised, there he taught his philosophy; and indeed no other sort of abode seems to contribute so much to both the tranquillity of mind, and indolence of body, which he made his chief ends. The sweetness of air, the pleasantness of smells, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercises of working or walking; but above all, the exemption from cares and solitude, seem equally to favour and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease both of the body and mind." When the industrious Switzer says:-" "Tis in the quiet enjoyment of rural delights, the refreshing and odoriferous breezes of garden air, that the deluge of vapours, and those terrors of hypochondraism, which crowd and oppress the head are dispelled." When the industrious and philosophic Bradley observes, that "though the trouble of the mind wears and destroys the constitution even of the most healthful body, all kinds of gardens contribute to health." When Pope,* who loved to breathe the sweet and fragrant air of gardens, in one of his letters says, "I am in my garden, amused and easy; this is a scene where

* Mr. Pope's delight in gardens, is visible even in the condensed allusion he makes to them, in a letter to Mr. Digby; "I have been above a month strolling about in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire,

e

one finds no disappointment."

When that "univer

sally esteemed and beloved man," the Prince de Ligne, declares, "Je voudrois échauffer tout l'univers de mon gout pour les jardins. Il me semble sible, qu'un mechant puisse l'avoir.

qu'il est imposIl n'est point de

vertus que Je ne suppose à celui qui aime à parler et à faire des jardins. Péres de famille, inspirez la jardinomanie à vos enfans.* When a taste for gardening (as Mr. Cobbet observes)" is much more innocent, more pleasant, more free from temptation to cost, than any other; so pleasant in itself! It is con

from garden to garden, but still returning to Lord Cobham's, with fresh satisfaction. I should be sorry to see my Lady Scudamore's, till it has had the full advantage of Lord Bathurst's improvements."

* A biographer thus speaks of the Prince de Ligne: "Quand les rois se reunirent a Vienne en 1814, ils se firent tous un devoir de l'accuellier avec distinction, et furent enchanté de la vivacité de son esprit, et de son intarissable gaieté, qui malgré ses infirmités et son grand âge, ne l'avoit pas encore abandonné. Ses saillies, et ses bon mots etoient comme autrefois répétés pour tous.' His generous heart thus speaks of the abused and unfortunate Marie Antoinette : "The breath of calumny has not even respected the memory of the loveliest and best of women, of whose spotless heart and irreproachable conduct, no one can bear stronger evidence than I. Her soul was as pure as her face was fair; yet neither virtue nor beauty could save the victim of sanguinary liberty." In relating this (says his biographer), his voice faultered, and his eyes were suffused with tears. He thus briefly states, with his usual humour and vivacity, his conversation with Voltaire as to the garden at Ferney:

P. de L.-Monsieur, Monsieur, cela doit vous coupé beaucoup, quel charmant jardin !

Volt.-Oh! mon jardinier est un bête: c'est moi meme qui ait fait tout.

P. de L.-Je le croi.

ducive to health, by means of the irresistible temptation which it offers to early rising; it tends to turn the minds of youth from amusements and attachments of a frivolous or vicious nature; it is a taste which is indulged at home; it tends to make home pleasant, and to endear us to the spot on which it is our lot to live." When Mr. Johnson forcibly paints the allurements to a love for this art, when concluding his energetic volume on gardening, by quoting from Socrates, that "it is the source of health, strength, plenty, riches, and of a thousand sober delights and honest pleasures.”— And from Lord Verulam, that amid its scenes and pursuits, “life flows pure, and the heart more calmly beats." And when M. le V. H. de Thury, président de la Société d'Horticulture de Paris, in his Discours d'Installation says: "Dans tous les temps et dans tous les pays, les hommes les plus célèbres, les plus grands capitaines, les princes, et les rois, se sont livrés avec délices, et souvent avec passion, à la culture des plantes et des jardins." And among other instances he cites "Descartes, qui se livrait avec une égale ardeur à la science des astres et à la culture des fleurs de son jardin, et qui souvent, la nuit, quittait ses observations célestes pour étudier le sommeil et la floraison de ses plantes avant le lever du soliel."* Petrarch, too, who has enchanted every

* Monsieur Thomas, in his eulogy of Descartes says, it should have been pronounced at the foot of Newton's statue: or rather, Newton himself should have been his panegyrist. Of this eulogy, Voltaire, in a most handsome letter to Mons. Thomas, thus speaks: -" votre ouvrage m'enchante d'un bout à l'autre, et Je vais le relire

nation and every age, from his endeared Vaucluse, thus speaks of his garden: "I have formed two; I do not imagine they are to be equalled in all the world: I should feel myself inclined to be angry with fortune, if there were any so beautiful out of Italy. I have store of pleasant green walks, with trees shadowing them most sweetly." Indeed, what Cicero applies to another science, may well apply to horticulture: "nihil est agricultura melius, nihil uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine, nihil libero dignius." Let me close with a most brilliant name;-the last resource in the Candide of Voltaire is,-cultivate your garden.

In my transient review of the gardens of ancient times, at the commencement of the following work, I have not even glanced at those of the Saxons, in this island; when one should have thought that the majestic name of ALFRED alone, would have made a search of this nature interesting, even if such search were unavailing. I have also inadvertently omitted any allusion to those of the Danes and the Normans. I have only then now to say, that Mr. Johnson's researches, as to these gardens, in pp. 31, 37, 38,

39

dès que J'aurai dicté ma lettre." The sleep and expanding of flowers are most interestingly reviewed by Mr. Loudon in p. 187 of his Encyclop., and by M. V. H. de Thury, in the above discourse, a few pages preceding his seducing description of the magnificent garden of M. de Boursault.

So late ago as the year 1804 it was proposed at Avignon, to erect an obelisk in memory of Petrarch, at Vaucluse: "il a été décidé, qu'on l'élevera vis-avis l'ancien jardin de Petrache, lieu où le lit de sorgue forme un angle."

and 40 of his lately published History of English Gardening, with his elegant language and the flow of sentiment that pervades those pages, would make any search or review of mine presumptuous. In those

pages, he dwells on the tendency which the then introduction of the christian religion had to soften the manners of the people, and by thus rendering them more domestic, gardening became an art congenial to their feelings; and whilst the country at large was devastated by war, the property of the religious establishments was held sacred, and varieties of vegetables preserved, which otherwise would soon have become extinct, if cultivated in less hallowed ground. He then traces the existence of many gardens, orchards, and vineyards, belonging to our monasteries, proving, that even in the time of the Danes, horticulture continued "silently to advance," and that at the time of the arrival of the Normans, gardens were generally in the possession of the laity, as well as of the ecclesiastics; and he refers to Doomsday Book for his assertion, that "there is no reason to doubt, that at this period, every house, from the palace to the cottage, was possessed of a garden of some size." He concludes with interesting references to the gardens, vineyards, and orchards, of the Abbot of Ely and other monks.

The above work of Mr. Johnson's is the result of original thought, and of an ardent and extended scientific research. Mine is a compilation, "made with a pair of scissors," to copy the words of Mr. Ma