312 



THE DELIGHTS OF GARDENING. 



glory above the lofty cedars of his park of 

 Montbard! Be assured that the owner of 

 thousands of acres, planted, laid out in 

 walks and irrigated as gardens, on the hill- 

 sides of England, of Scotland, or in the 

 environs of Paris, has no feeling of nature 

 more delicious, more overflowing, more 

 pious, than you, when, on Sunday, you take 

 your rest in your little enclosure, at the foot 

 of some blossoming tree that your hands 

 have grafted, near your two or three bee- 

 hives humming in the sunshine, on the 

 borders of the bed where you have laid down 

 the spade, to be resumed to-morrow. 



And who more than myself has felt this 

 delight ? For if you understood Latin as 

 well as you understand the universal lan- 

 guage of the vegetable world, I could ex- 

 claim in your midst, with the shepherd in 

 Virgil, '■'■ Et in Arcadia ego ;^^ which may 

 be rendered, I too am a garde?ie7: Yes : I 

 too had, for the cradle of my young days, a 

 little country garden, fenced in with a dry 

 stone wall, on one of the arid and sombre 

 hills which you may, from this spot, per- 

 ceive in the distant horizon. There was 

 no large extent (the more than moderate 

 mediocrity of my father's fortune permitted 

 it not), no majestic shade, no spouting 

 waters, no rare flowers, nor precocious fruits 

 nor plants of luxury : there were some 

 narrow walks, covered with a reddish sand, 

 bordered by wild pinks, and violets and 

 primroses surrounded the beds where grew 

 the vegetables which supported the family. 

 Well : there it was, and not in the gardens 

 of Italy, or of the great landowners of 

 France, of Germany, of England, that I 

 enjoyed the earliest and the most intense 

 gratifications which nature can bestow upon 

 the sensitive and imaginative being of a 

 child or a young man. I now dwell amid 

 more extensive and more artistically laid 

 out gardens ; but I have retained my pre- 

 dilections for the first one. I preserve it 

 carefidly in its original poverty, of shade, 

 of water, of flowers and of fruits ! Ah ! 

 when I can rescue some rare moments of 

 liberty and of solitude from the engrossing 

 claims of public duty or literary pursuits, 

 to commune alone with myself, it is to that 

 garden I fly to pass them. (Emotion in the 

 audience.) Yes, gentlemen, you will par- 



don these details of the intimacy of private 

 life : they are not out of place here. We 

 are all fellow citizens, friends ; all of the 

 same fibre, the same flesh ! Let us for a 

 moment have in common but one soul, as 

 we have but one country. Yes : it is in 

 this humble enclosure, long since made 

 desolate and empty by death ; it is in these 

 walks overrun with weeds, with moss, with 

 the wild violets straying from their borders ; 

 it is under these old trunks, exhausted al- 

 most of their sap, but not of their memories ; 

 it is upon this unraked sand, that I still, as 

 it were, watch for the footfall of my mo- 

 ther, my sisters, of former friends, of old 

 family servants ; and that, as the sun is 

 setting, I go and seat myself against the 

 fence facing the house, each year more and 

 more concealed beneath the climbing ivy — 

 plunged in reverie, amidst the hum of in- 

 sects, the faint disturbance of the lizards 

 of the old wall, that seem to me like old 

 tenants of the garden, with which I am al- 

 most tempted to fancy sometimes I might 

 hold communication about the days that 

 are past. (General and prolonged signs of 

 emotion.)' 



Gentlemen, it was these first pleasures of 

 man at his entrance upon life ; these early 

 habits, this young enthusiasm of contempla- 

 tion, those first tender emotions in life, in 

 the rustic abode, the home of the family of 

 which now the hearth is cold and extinct, 

 that early gave me, for gardens and the 

 simple and intelligent men who cultivate 

 them, that predilection which brings me 

 back so naturally and so agreeably to these 

 annual meetings with you. The spade, the 

 hoe, the rake, the watering pot, even the 

 simple flower-pot in the window of the 

 poorest laborer, are inseparably bound up 

 in my heart with these recollections of my 

 young life in the country, in the midst of 

 the labors and occupations of a rustic abode 

 and a modest garden. Excuse me, then, if 

 I have spoken as one without knowledge. 

 You are practical gardeners, by the labor 

 of your hands, by study, by science : I am 

 only one through my sensibilities and tender 

 memories. 



(The speaker then, turning to the gentle- 

 men seated around the stand, said ) : And. 

 now, gentlemen, let us depart each to his 



