188 REMARKS ON THE I ILAC. 



Lillach, or Lilac, and some Syringa." This author tells us, that the 

 lilacs were then growing in his garden in very great plenty, where 

 they flowered in April and May : and he adds, " But as yet they haue 

 not home any fruite in my garden, though in Italic and Spaine their 

 fruite is ripe in September ;" from which we learn it was then 

 common in Europe ; hut we have no means of ascertaining by whom 

 and in what year it was introduced into England. However, as it 

 reached Germany in the second year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, it is 

 probable that plants were soon afterwards sent to her gardener; as 

 we find by the survey of the royal gardens of Nonsuch, in Surrey, 

 which were planted in the time of Henry the Eighth, and were one 

 of the favourite residences of Elizabeth, that in the privy-gardens of 

 that palace there were fountains and basins of marble, one of which 

 was " set round with six lilac trees, which bear no fruit, but only a 

 very pleasant smell." This survey was made in the time of Charles 

 the Second, who gave the palace and gardens of Nonsuch to one of 

 his mistresses, who pulled it down and sold the materials. 



Gerard considered the lilac to he a species of privet ; later writers 

 took it for a kind of jasmine ; and M. Jussieu, in his " Natural 

 Classification of Plants," also makes it one of the jasmine family. 



In the shrubbery the lilac is amongst the first that announce the 

 return of spring ; and no flowering tree makes known the welcome 

 tidings in a more pleasing garb, for the beauty of its foliage, and 

 particularly that of the white variety, is scarcely less agreeable than 

 ' its girandoles of flowers, that shed their perfume so delightfully over 

 our May-day walks. 



The praise which Eudosia bestowed on the swan, we may safely 



borrow for the white lilac, as it is equally an 



" Emblem of modest grace, 

 Of unaffected dignity and ease, 

 Of pure and elegant simplicity." 



Many persons complain of the lilac for shedding its flowers so 

 early, without taking into consideration at what an acceptable period 

 the blossoms appear, and that it lends its beauties, with those of the 

 laburnum, to fill up the space between the flowering of the almond 

 and the arrival of the rose, which leaves us nothing to regret. 



The most beautiful variety of the common purple lilac is that 

 known by the title of the Scotch lilac, from its having been first men- 



