a GARDEN MANAGEMENT. 



beyond the river Pliasis at the risk of being eaten up himself while 

 battling with wild beasts and trying to take a pheasant, he exclaims, 

 " And yet, by Hercules ! how little do the productions of the garden 

 cost in comparison with these!" Pliny goes on to utter bitter com- 

 plaints that these cheap and simple luxm-ies are being placed beyond 

 the reach of the poor by the luxurious demands of the rich for mon- 

 strosities of high cultivation, "We might be contented to allow of 

 fruits being grown of exquisite flavour. We might allow wines being 

 kept till they were mellowed with age, or enfeebled by being passed 

 through cloth strainers ; but do we not find that these refined dis- 

 tinctions are extended to the very herbs ? The cabbages are pampered 

 to such an extent, that the poor man's table is not large enough to 

 hold them. Asparagus Nature intended to grow wild, so that all 

 might gather it; but, lo and behold! we find it in such a state of 

 cultivation that Eavenna produces heads weighing as much as three 

 to the pound. Alas ! for the monstrous gluttony." 



2. After an exordium deprecating such high cultivation as a direct 

 means of depriving the poor of their natural food, in the course of which 

 we learn that the women were the chief cultivators of the kitchen- 

 garden among the Eomans; that its appearance in the days of Cato 

 the Censor was considered as the test of a good or careless housewife ; 

 and that the lower classes in Kome had their mimic gardens in the 

 windows, as we have our window gardening; he concludes thus: "Let 

 the garden, then, have its due meed of honour; let not its products, 

 because they are common, be deprived of a due share of our con- 

 sideration; for have not men of the highest rank been content to 

 borrow their surnames from it ? Have the Lactucini thought them- 

 selves disgraced by taking their name from the Lettuce, or the Fabii 

 and Lentilii from the Bean and the Lentils ? But we are ready to 

 admit, with Virgil, that it is difficult by language to ennoble a subject, 

 BO humble in itself, — 



*' * In tenui, at tenuis non gloria.' " 



3. It thus appears that early in Roman history, garden cultivation had 

 not only made considerable progi-ess, but that it had a tolerably ex- 

 tensive literature. Caesar had his — 



" Private arbours and new planted orchards " 

 On this side Tiber." 

 Cicero had his villa and gardens, in which flowers were one of hia 

 delights, and — 



*' The Psestan roses, with their double spriug," 

 were as celebrated as the fruits from the fp-arden of Lucullus. 



