172 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



are in a window like those of a lodger up three pair of stairs in 

 Petticoat Lane or Camomile Street, and they go to bed regularly 

 under the same roof that I do : dear, how charming it must be to 

 walk out in one's own garden, and sit on a bench in the open air 

 with a fountain and a leaden statue and a rolling stone and an 

 arbour ! have a care of sore throat though, and the agoe. — Letter 

 to the Rev. JVorfon Nicholls. (^Pejnbroke College^ Jime 24, 1769.) 



\ A 7HEN I had drank tea I strolled into the garden. They 



(1717- I7Q7) ^^-^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^°^^ called the ''pleasure-ground.^ What 



a dissonant idea of pleasure ! Those groves, those alleys^ where 

 I have passed so many charming moments, are now stripped up, 

 or overgrown ; many fond paths I could not unravel, though with 

 a very exact clue in my memory. I met two gamekeepers and 

 a thousand hares ! In the days when all my soul was tuned to 

 pleasure and vivacity, I hated Houghton and its solitude ; yet 

 I loved this garden ; as now, with many regrets, I love Houghton ; 

 — Houghton, I know not what to call it : a monument of grandeur 

 or ruin ! — Letters. 



A cottage and a slip of ground for a cabbage and a gooseberry- 

 bush such as we see by the side of a common, were in all pro- 

 bability the earliest seats and gardens: a well and bucket succeeded 

 to the Pison and Euphrates.^ 



As settlements increased, the orchard and the vine-yard 

 followed ; and the earliest princes of tribes possessed just the 

 necessaries of a modern farmer. 



Matters, we may well believe, remained long in this situation ; 

 and though the generality of mankind form their ideas from the 

 import of words in their own age, we have no reason to think 

 that for many centuries the term garde?i implied more than a 

 kitchen-garden or orchard. When a Frenchman reads of the 



^ Two of the four rivers enclosing Paradise, the others being Gihon and 

 Hiddekel. 



