1878.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



196 



globe on the mountain top, how small a place 

 has it taken up on our inner shelves I But this 

 narrow picture and the likes of it, how they fill 

 and how they feed our eyes and our mind ! 



So we may conclude that grandeur and sub- 

 limity on this, our parent planet, can be but 

 rare moments, and that the true nourishment of 

 our soul admits only objects of comparatively 

 small dimensions, such as will develop feelings 

 of goodness, of taste, of pleasure, of enjoyment, 

 of comfort, running down the scale of our harp 

 from the divine to the human. 



Happy the man whose lot is cast in a spot with 

 a pretty view, no larger than his eyes can digest — 

 not so small as to dwarf the capacity of his eyes. 

 His craving for the beautiful will be daily satis- 

 fied; the pitch of his soul will be strengthened 

 and maintained, and the demon of meanness is 

 less likely to find a hold on him there. 



Unfortunately, the spots with pretty views are 

 comparatively rare. We cannot, all of us, live 

 in a rolling, undulating country, drained by 

 numerous streams and brooks,pleasantly wooded. 

 On the contrary we, most of us, live on spots, 

 stale and flat, but profitable. Not to satisfy the 

 angel in us do Ave settle on the interminable 

 prairie, but to satisfy the inner and the outer 

 animal ; to make a living ; to earn plenty of 

 food and of warm clothing for self and family; 

 and, these obtained, to get for self and family as 

 much of mental food as circumstances will per- 

 mit — and sometimes there is but scant measure of 

 that article. In proportion, however, that the 

 animal gets appeased, the angel — heaven be 

 thanked — will strive to get the upper hand. And 

 so the well-to-do man will try to ^improve the 

 looks of his fruitful, but otherwise uninteresting 

 home. He will seize on whatever little aid 

 nature will lend him ; he will plant trees on a 

 bare hillock ; will cut a vista through a cane- 

 brake ; clear symmetrically apiece in the woods, 

 teach a wayward spring to run its fantastic rip- 

 ple through his meadow ; or, if he does nothing 

 better, he will plant a living screen before his 

 manure-heap. His eyes, the windows of his soul, 

 demand it; to them he ministers. But what is 

 the unfortunate individual to do, who has of 

 God's own earth only as little as to "farm a pig" 

 or to "swing a cat" in ? or who is cramped up in 

 a city lot in the city ? 



Nature will out. That unfortunate individual, 

 unable to reproduce on his ground even the 

 smallest features of nature, one fine Spring 

 morning, standing in the full light of the glorious 



sun on his small and bare patch, was overheard 

 to say : "There is not the space for a landscape 

 here, nor the elements for it, sufficient for the 

 aesthetic wants of a field mouse. But there is 

 enough of it to have with me a good many of 

 the flowers of the moderate zone of this cr any 

 other country, with here and there a bush and 

 here and there an evergreen." 



This, patient reader, I believe was the origin 

 of the garden, and this is the aim and end of a 

 garden. In default of living in a delightful spot, 

 where nature spreads her beauties, both in the 

 landscape and in the vegetation, we try to make 

 ourselves that landscape and that vegetation ; or 

 where landscape is impossible, at least to raise 

 that vegetation as far as it can be coaxed into — a 

 garden. How far man has succeeded may, per- 

 haps, form the subject of another and a later 

 paper. 



THE CELASTRUS SCANDENS-BITTER 

 SWEET A STAFF TREE. 



BY GEN. W. H. NOBLE, BRIDGEPORT, MASS. 



The name of Bitter-sweet of right belongs, sole- 

 ly, to the Solanum dulcamara. Some likeness of 

 its red fruitage, to the fiery crop of the Celastrus, 

 doubtless made our climber its namesake. But 

 our Bitter-sweet will not now readily give up a 

 name so long and lovingly borne. 



The Celastrus is sometimes also called the 

 Staff tree. This name comes from the fancy by 

 many, in a cane of that spiral twist by which the 

 Bitter-sweet lifts itself up any handy sapling. 

 But its wood is hardly staunch enough to help 

 much as a staff. 



Our Bitter-sweet is one of the loveliest of 

 climbers. It is a blithesome plant, either in its 

 woodland home or beside the threshold. Its 

 summer color and shelter, and its blazing crown 

 of wintry garlands, should be made a feature in 

 all decorative planting ; yet, either to home or 

 grounds, it has won but a sparse and stingy wel- 

 come. Perhaps its lavish woodland fruitage, 

 within easy reach of so many, has much to do 

 with this neglect. 



The trouble is, it is a native, and by nature 

 largely planted along the forest borders and the 

 hedge, and beside the rippling stream; it shares 

 lovingly with the grape, the lift of low down 

 trees. The children, coming home with the nuts 

 rattled down by the early frosts, joyfully round 

 their baskets with the Bitter-sweet's golden treas- 

 ure. So, like many other lovely plants to be had 

 for the digging, we too rarely welcome its cheer 



