208 THE BAMBOO GARDEN CHAP. 
to forget that those very Elms and Chestnuts which they look 
upon as the legitimate ornament and pride of their landscape 
are themselves aliens, the one an Italian, the other an Asiatic. 
“Time,” say the objectors, “ has washed them from the stain of 
birth and given them the rights of citizenship ;” time will per- 
form the same kindly office for many another beautiful plant. 
Sadly, indeed, would our plantations be shorn of their glories 
if all evergreens save those which are indigenous were to be 
banished from them, and we were restricted to the natives 
which you may count on the fingers of your two hands. No! 
our gardens, like our race and our language, owe their merits 
to the continual infusion of new blood. Indeed, it would seem 
as though race and language were in far greater danger from 
intruders than our Flora, for every steamer that reaches our 
ports discharges a load of indigent aliens, while even in the 
days when Dryden was king over the wits of the coffee-houses, 
he complained that “if so many foreign words are poured in 
upon us, it looks as if they were designed not to assist the 
natives, but to conquer them.” 
In rightly using, then, the great gifts which we have 
received from beyond the seas, we should, to borrow Dryden’s 
phrase, “assist the natives,” not “conquer them.” For there 
are undeniably certain characteristics peculiar to the English 
landscape with which it would be treason to interfere. As I 
write, I look out upon a great rolling tract of park land 
studded with patriarchal Oaks that were saplings in Planta- 
genet and Tudor days, giant Ash-trees, Elms, and Thorns 
planted in the reign of good Queen Anne. Far be it from me 
to introduce any change in such a scene. It is thoroughly 
English and perfect of its kind; no impious hand should dare 
