52 THE GARDENER. [Feb. 



dreadful earthly darkness ! dazzling heavenly light ! The morning 

 Cometh, as also the night. 



But what do I see, as the mist clears ? A garden which, like a 

 thousand others, has obeyed the command of imperious Fashion, — 

 Away with your borders, your mounds, and your clumps ! Away 

 with walks and with grottoes, nooks, corners, and light and shade. 

 Down with your timber ! To the rubbish-heap with your Lilacs, Labur- 

 nums, and blossoming trees ! Stub, lay bare, level, and turf ; then 

 cover the whole by line and measure with a geometrical design. Do 

 you require examples 1 — Copy your carpet, or the ornaments on your 

 pork-pie. Then purchase or provide — for the spring, Bulbs by the sack ; 

 for the summer, Pelargoniums by the million ; for the winter, baby 

 Evergreens and infant Conifers — brought prematurely from the nursery 

 into public life, like too many of our precocious children — by the 

 waggon-load. 



I am well aware that the geometrical system, especially w^hen it is 

 combined with terraces, staircases, balustrades, and edgings of stones, 

 is very effective and appropriate around our palaces, castles, and other 

 stately homes. For these it forms a beautiful floor and fringe. It 

 prevents too sudden a transition from architecture to horticulture. 

 With the pleasure-grounds around opening upon the park, and with 

 the general landscape in the distance beyond, the amalgamation of art 

 and nature is excellent. Nor do I deny for a moment that in all gar- 

 dens, if introduced in modest and due proportion, it is the most becom- 

 ing framework for our summer flowers ; but my complaint is, that this 

 giant Geometry has taken possession of our small gardens not as an 

 ally, but as an autocrat — ejecting old tenants and dismissing old ser- 

 vants, like some heartless conceited heir, extruding them disdainfully, 

 as the usurping cuckoo eggs from a sparrow's nest. 



True art hides itself, and every man in laying out a garden 

 should remember the precept, Ai's est celare artem. He should, more- 

 over, cause to be painted on his case of mathematical instruments, and 

 printed largely on the cover of his sketch-book, those two lines, written 

 by a true gardener and poet (must not every true gardener be a poet, 

 though it may be of songs without words ?) : — 



** He wins all points, who pleasingly confounds, 

 Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds." 



But what, it may be asked, has all this to do with the Eosary 1 

 And I answer, Everything, because nowhere is the formal, monoton- 

 ous, artificial system of arrangement more conspicuously rampant. A 

 dead level, a set pattern, stars and garters generally encircling the 

 Rose Temple ! over which the disgusted Rose-trees invariably object to 



