152 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



freshly picked from the garden to the saucepan. They who are accostomed to eat 

 salads and vegetables which have accomplished a second vegetation from exposure 

 to the sun, the infection of the streets, and fermentation in the shops, which have 

 been watered by the marketman to give them a deceitful freshness, know nothing 

 about the exquisite flavor of these products to which nature has conflded virtues,, 

 fugitive, yet powerful, when they are eaten, as it were, alive." 



THE POETRY OF THE GARDEN. 



This helps to introduce my idea of a garden, but as flowers must be planted 

 to adorn and enliven it, I may be excused, perhaps, if poetry is intermingled with 

 plain prose, as shadow and sunshine, clear sky and rainstorm alternate in the 

 changing moods of nature. In the poem " Maud," one of the sweetest poetic con- 

 ceptions of the late English laureate, is found the following melodious stanza : 



' 'Come into the garden , Maud, 



For the black bat, night, has flown, 

 And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, 



And the musk of the roses blown. 

 There has fallen a splendid tear 



From the passion flower at the gate; 

 The red rose cries "She is near, she is near," 



And the white rose weeps "She is late;" 

 The larkspur listens : "1 hear, I hear, ' ' 



And the lily whispers "I wait." 



As we read these lines, we ask ourselves, " What would be poetry ? What 

 would be song? What would be home? and what would be our conceptions of 

 heaven were there no gardens and no flowers ? " It is, then, not only permissible » 

 but natural, that we should weave into the fabric of our essay a little poetry to- 

 adorn and brighten it, as the flowers planted among vegetables adorn and vivify a 

 composite garden. 



I know no author, ancient or modern, who more closely touches the spirit of 

 nature, none who for her is a sweeter interpreter, than is the French author before 

 quoted, Balzac. For a most artistic picture of a garden as it should be, I would 

 recommend every one to read his " Tragedy of the Peasantry." He finds soul and 

 spirit where less observing men see only plain, inanimate nature; and the artist 

 who talks of " still life" should hear him speaking of " birches and poplars and all 

 the rest of that intelligent family of trees, with graceful limbs and elegant forms, 

 whose leaves tremble constantly." And again he declares that " Nature with its 

 silence and its tranquil joys, has taken possession of me ;" and this he says is true 

 literature. " There is never any fault of style in a meadow." 



What a pity it is that so few of her sons and daughters should comprehend 

 and enjoy nature's loveliness, that the glories of the rising and the setting sun, 

 the purity of the air, the grand auroral concert of woods and the singing waters 

 should seem common things, and not what they really are, things full of Divine 

 thought, showing love of the Creator for man, the culmination of his work. 



THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 



We go about with blinded eyes, while the world is radiant with sublime pic- 

 tures. We talk rapturously about "•fine arts," and stand in almost breathless awe 

 before a faint and smattering copy of one of nature's master-pieces, yet see not the 

 glories everywhere spread out by her hand for our entertainment. We talk of 

 orchestras and do not hear the bird choruses in the spring-time, nor the tender 

 whispering of the winds among the tree-tops. 



