270 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



Then I enjoy all alone and in advance the pleasures of 

 surprise, which the solitary dreamer will feel, who chances 

 in his walks upon these beautiful flowers or luscious fruits. 



That will one day afford some learned botanist, who will go 

 and herborize thereabouts a hundred years hence, long after my 

 death, opportunity to publish a ridiculous system. All these 

 beautiful flowers will have grown common in the country, and 

 will give it a quite unique look, and maybe chance and wind will 

 cast some of their seeds amid the grass which hides my lonely 

 grave. Vale. — A Voyage round my Garden, 



OLIVER T KNOW this, that the way Mother Earth treats a boy shapes 

 Hm^l^F^^ °^^ ^ ^^^^ °^ natural theology for him. I fell into 

 (1809-1894). Manichean ways of thinking from the teaching of my garden 

 experiences. Like other boys in the country, I had my patch 

 of ground, to which, in the spring-time, I intrusted the seeds 

 furnished me, with a confident trust in their resurrection and 

 glorification in the better world of summer. 



But I soon found that my lines had fallen in a place where a 

 vegetable growth had to run the gauntlet of as many foes and 

 trials as a Christian pilgrim. Flowers would not blow ; daffodils 

 perished like criminals in their condemned cups, without their 

 petals ever seeing daylight ; roses were disfigured with monstrous 

 protrusions through their very centres, — something that looked 

 like a second bud pushing through the middle of the corolla; 

 lettuces and cabbages would not head ; radishes knotted them- 

 selves until they looked like centenarian's fingers \ and on every 

 stem, on every leaf, and both sides of it, and at the root of every- 

 thing that grew, was a professional specialist in the shape of a 

 gnat, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose business it was 

 to devour that particular part, and help murder the whole attempt 

 at vegetation. Such experiences must influence a child born to 

 them. A sandy soil, where nothing flourishes but weeds and 

 evil beasts of small dimensions, must breed different qualities 



