THE DELIGHTS OF GARDENING. 



311 



chestnuts ; Gessner, under his Zurich pines; 

 Mde. DE Sevigne, in her garden of Roches, 

 or in her park at Livry, rendering her gar- 

 dener immortal by a touching line, worth 

 of itself a mausoleum, in one of her letters 

 — " Old Paul my gardener is dead, and the 

 trees are all sad inconsequence": and, nearer 

 to our time, Montesquieu, in the spacious 

 alleys of his chateau of Labrede, evoking 

 the shadows of dead empires and the spirit 

 of their laws, like Maciiiavel before him, 

 and greater than he, in his rustic hermitage 

 of Safi Miniato on the Tuscan hills ; A''ol- 

 TAiRE, alternating between Delices and 

 Ferney, comprehending Lake Leman and 

 the Italian Alps in the horizon of his gar- 

 den ; BuFFON at Mo7ibard, knowing how, 

 like Pliny in Rome, to enjoy, among the 

 magnificent living specimens in his park, 

 the magnificence of the nature which he 

 described ; finally, Rousseau, whom I was 

 near forgetting, he who desired that his 

 remains might repose beneath a poplar on 

 an islet, in the midst of the last garden ? 

 Ah ! that man, born to a laborious station, 

 and brought up almost in a servile state, 

 felt, doubtless, more intensely than another, 

 the retirements and the consolations of soli- 

 tude. How often in my early youth, in the 

 first fever of the imagination and the soul 

 for renowned names and genius ; how often 

 have I gone alone, or in company with a 

 friend whom I lost by the wayside, to visit 

 his loved Charmettes ; that small house, 

 that narrow garden, hidden in a ravine 

 rather than a valley of the hills of Cham- 

 berry, but shaded by the beautiful chestnuts 

 of Savoy! How many hours, how many 

 whole days have I not spent beneath that 

 little arbor of vines in which he so much 

 delighted, in thinking of him, in living his 

 life over again in imagination, in watching 

 the last rays of the fading day make their 

 way through the vine leaves already died 

 with the yellow hues of autumn ; as if 

 hoping still to find there the most sensitive, 

 the most eloquent worshipper and observer 

 of nature, of the vegetable creation, and of 

 God ! (Applause interrupts the orator). I 

 should not stop, gentlemen, if I were to 

 name all the illustrious men who have as- 

 sociated themselves with their gardens. In 

 truth one might almost rewrite the history 



of all men of great genius, by that of the 

 rural retreats where they have dwelt, and 

 which they loved and rendered illustrious 

 by their associations. So literally is man 

 allied to Earth, whether at his birth, during 

 life, or in the grave ; and thus truly does 

 nature reassert her place in the lives of 

 those who would have been the farthest 

 removed from her, and the least accessible 

 to the simple and pure enjoyments springing 

 from the cultivation of the soil (Applause). 

 And believe not, gentlemen, that those 

 enjoyments are reserved for the mighty of 

 the earth, to the real owners of riches, or of 

 gardens of celebrity like those of Versailles 

 or the Tuilleries ; of which, in all time, 

 governments have made presents to the 

 people, in order to excite in them admiration 

 of the power which creates such wonders, 

 in compelling the waters, the trees and the 

 flowers to take their places, like complaisant 

 courtiers, around their palaces. No : there 

 is no need of wealth, of magnificence, of 

 extended domain, to enjoy all that God has 

 hidden of happiness in the culture or spec- 

 tacle of vegetable life. These are pleasures, 

 which it is not given to fortune to appro- 

 priate and monopolize. Nature is never 

 aristocratic : she has not endowed the poor 

 with other perceptions than the rich, of 

 natural delights ; nor the idler, than the 

 laboring man. However vast or hoAvever 

 contracted the space devoted by man to this 

 pursuit, his soul can only receive the same 

 amount of delight and gratification from its 

 pleasures. The human soul is thus con- 

 stituted, because it is infinite. Yes : the 

 human soul is endowed with such a faculty 

 of extension or contraction, that it can over- 

 flow the universe, and, like Alexander, find 

 it too narrow for its desires ; or it can con- 

 centrate, and as it were fold itself up upon 

 a mere spot of earth, and exclaim with the 

 sage of Tibur, from his half acre sowed with 

 mallows and watered by a little streamlet, 

 " This little spot of earth is all the world to 

 me ! " Be assured that there was as much 

 real delight, enjoyment, sensibility and ten- 

 derness in the soul of Rousseau, watching 

 the last rays of the setting sun from beneath 

 the foliage of his little vine-covered arbor 

 at Charmette, as in the soul of Buflbn be- 

 holding the rising sun break forth in his 



