266 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



there a single point in the whole pleasaunce, where the keenest 

 eye could have detected a limit. Sometimes you wandered in 

 those arched and winding walks dear to pensive spirits : some- 

 times you emerged on a plot of turf blazing in the sunshine, a 

 small and bright savannah, and gazed with wonder on the group 

 of black and mighty cedars that rose from its centre, with their 

 sharp and spreading foliage. The beautiful and the vast blended 

 together ; and the moment after you had beheld with delight a 

 bed of geraniums or of myrtles, you found yourself in an amphi- 

 theatre of Italian pines. A strange exotic perfume filled the air ; 

 you trod on the flowers of other lands ; and shrubs and plants, 

 that usually are only trusted from their conservatories, like 

 Sultanas from their jalousies, to sniff the air and recall their 

 bloom, here learning from hardship the philosophy of endur- 

 ance, had struggled successfully even against northern winters, and 

 wantoned now in native and unpruned luxuriance. Sir Ferdinand, 

 when he resided at Armine, was accustomed to fill these pleasure- 

 grounds with macaws, and other birds of gorgeous plumage ; but 

 these had fled away with their master, all but some swans, which 

 still floated on the surface of a lake which marked the centre of 

 this paradise. — Henrietta Temple. 



NATHANIEL HPHESE gardens of New College are indescribably beautiful, — 

 r 1807186 ) ^■^^^ gardens in our American sense, but lawns of the richest 



green and softest velvet grass, shadowed over by ancient trees, 

 that have lived a quiet life here for centuries, and have been 

 nursed and tended with such care, and so sheltered from rude 

 winds, that certainly they must have been the happiest of all 

 trees. Such a sweet, quiet, sacred, stately seclusion — so age-long 

 as this has been, and, I hope, will continue to be — cannot exist 

 anywhere else. 



We concluded the rambles of the day by visiting the gardens 

 of St John's College \ and I desire, if possible, to say even more 



