THE DELIGHTS OF GARDENING. 



309 



there are no chimeras in vegetation : rigor- 

 ous, attentive, daily observation is your 

 learning. Happily for you, you have not, 

 like us who deal with the world of thought, 

 of history, of politics and other departments 

 of human knowledge ; you have not to do 

 with the uncertainties of the human mind, 

 with the mania of systems, with the pas- 

 sions, the reveries, the prejudices, some- 

 times with the wild fancies of schools, of 

 sects, which render every thing obscure, 

 which lead men on for centuries in error or 

 in doubt, to those late awakenings, or some- 

 times to the brink of those abj-sses, where 

 man stumbles in the paths of false know- 

 ledge, and only gathers himself up again to 

 run after some fresher delusion. No : your 

 pursuit gives no play to such errors, or to 

 such repentance ; and again why? Because 

 in your science, you always, as it were, will 

 have your hand upon Nature, and upon her 

 laws, visible, palpable, mysterious indeed, 

 but )'et evident : j'ou work, so to speak, side 

 by side with God ! You are but co-operators 

 with the divine laws of vegetation. But 

 divine laws bend not to our vain caprices. 



God, in his changeless works, heeds not 

 our chimeras. Nature has no complaisance 

 for our false systems. She is sovereign and 

 absolute as her author. She resists our 

 foolish attempts ; she overthrows — some- 

 times rudely enough — our illusions. She 

 seconds our efforts, aids them, and rewards 

 them abundantly if directed in the right 

 sense ; but if we make a mistake, or attempt 

 to force her, to compel her out of her course, 

 she at once asserts her power, and blasts 

 our labors with sterility, by the wasting 

 away and the death of every thing we have 

 attempted to effect in opposition to her laws, 

 and in her despite. We others may with 

 impunity make mistakes, and for ages at a 

 lime, in history, in philosophy, in religious 

 and in social systems, even in astronomy. 

 We may devise on these heads the most 

 absurd chimeras, and impose them upon the 

 world for a long time as truth. That can- 

 not you do, gardeners and agriculturists. 

 Your longest error cannot outlast a single 

 season (Applause), the period of a crop, one 

 spring, one year at most. Such is the term 

 of your error ; for it is the term of your 

 experiments. That once past, Nature pre- 



vails, sets you right. She reveals her will 

 to you, that you may make haste to conform 

 your labors to it. You interrogate her un- 

 ceasingly, respectfully, experimentally; and 

 she alwa\'s makes true and prompt replies. 

 You register those replies in your memoirs, 

 in your books, in your manuals ; and from 

 this intercepted dialogue between man that 

 questions, and Nature that replies, j-ou form 

 those catechisms of the farmer and the 

 gardener, which become the science of 

 vegetation (Applause). 



Thus it is through these elementary 

 books, and these congresses of cultivators 

 of nature, such as this now assembled, that 

 your science is deep-rooted, extended, im- 

 proved and wide-spread. Thus it has been 

 since Pliny, who made a catalogue of all 

 the plants within the Roman empire ; since 

 Charlemagne, who, in his Capitularies, 

 which were in some sort his charter or con- 

 stitution, particularized the sorts and the 

 number of vegetables he wished cultivated; 

 since Cato, the most severe of statesmen, 

 requiring that each Roman citizen, however 

 poor he might be, should cultivate some 

 flowers in his plot, in order (hat the ele- 

 gance of such culture should contribute 

 elegance and refinement to the manners of 

 the people ; for though he aimed at correct- 

 ing the excessive luxuriousness of the Re- 

 public, he desired no suviptitarrj law in ve- 

 getation — down to the various maritime and 

 plant-seeking expeditions of the Crusaders, 

 the Dutch, the English, to gather, one by 

 one, from all parts of the globe, those ninety- 

 eight vegetables or flowers, with which 

 your kitchen garden or flower beds are now 

 enamelled — the art of gardening, rudely 

 sketched by the Romans ; greatly extended 

 and carried almost to marvellous perfection 

 by the Chinese ; taking, in England, the 

 character and proportions of an aristocratic 

 luxury ; depreciated and belittled in Hol- 

 land, down almost to the 'adoration of a 

 tulip ; elevated in Italy to the dignity of a 

 splendid art, associated with statuary, sculp- 

 ture and architecture ; rendered useful in 

 France by its alliance with the higher walks 

 of agriculture, of which it is the pathfinder 

 — has finally, thanks to your efforts, reached 

 in various parts of Europe the condition of 

 a National Industry, giving employment to 



