JANUARY. 23 



at Captain Hawksley's, at Englefield Green, made something in this 

 way. He has thrown the soil up, forming a bank round the garden, 

 the walks and beds being nearly level, so that all the water that runs 

 off the banks runs into the beds ; and for us in the south, we rarely 

 ever get too much rain in the summer for Roses. A garden made after 

 this fashion looks very beautiful, especially one with sunk Grass banks. 



Bagshot, Surrey. Jno. Standish. 



AN ARTICLE WITHOUT A NAME. 



" But how the subject theme may gang 

 Let time and chance determine ; 

 Perhaps it may turn out a sang, 

 Perhaps turn out a sermon." 



Burns, in a poetical epistle to a young friend, concludes the opening 

 stanza with these lines, expressive of his doubt as to what the exact 

 nature of the epistle may be in its complete form. Now in this pre- 

 dicament am I, the writer of this paper. I sit down to write it under 

 the combined and invigorating influences of tooth-ache, swelled face, 

 mutton broth, &c, so that I may fairly calculate on the indulgence of 

 the reader, if my ideas, as here expressed, should appear somewhat con- 

 fused and ill-arranged. And, moreover, I have been urged and incited 

 to perpetrate a paper for this month's Florist by a gentleman connected 

 with that admirable periodical, upon whcse head, therefore, oh, indig- 

 nant reader ! pour out the vials of your wrath. 



I have always had a partiality for a book or an article beginning with 

 an anecdote, even though it should, as is often the case, have little ox- 

 no connection with the subject matter of the book itself. It always 

 creates an interest at the outset, a desideratum by no means to be 

 despised ; for a work well begun — as the old adage hath it — is half 

 accomplished. 



Well, then ; one evening in the last century a number of friends 

 were assembled at a country house in the west of England. The topics 

 of conversation were landscape gardening and the then popular artist, 

 Brown, who was expected on the morrow, to advise on improving the 

 grounds and remodelling the garden. A gentleman of the party, a 

 heretic to the Brownonian philosophy, offered to wager (for wagers 

 were by no means uncommon in drawing-rooms in those days), that he 

 would immediately, and upon the spot, sketch a design that should, in 

 all essential particulars, be identical with the plan which Brown would 

 send in after his visit. The wager was laid, the designs made and 

 compared, and so nearly did they resemble each other, that the carrying 

 out of one would have been literally to execute the other.* 



To those familiar with Brown's designs this will appear by no means 

 improbable, for most assuredly did he copy himself ad nauseam, great 

 artist as he was. His first great work, flooding the valley and appro- 

 priating the gigantic bridge at Blenheim, made him famous. If he had 



* For the authority for this see " Price on the Picturesque." 



