502 FLOWER-GARDENS AND SONG-BIRDS. 



Thus, in days of yore, old Apollo advised his son Phaeton to let his 

 face be will smeared with celestial ointment, in order to make it fire- 

 proof, ere he mounted on the box of the solar chariot. 



*' Turn pater ora sui, sacro medicamine, nati 

 Contigit, et rapidse fecit patientia flammse." 



But, notwithstanding this precaution, the lad got himself into a 

 sad broil; and we know not what disasters his folly might have 

 brought upon the world, had not mother Earth bestirred herself and 

 persuaded Jupiter to stop his wild career. At her urgent entreaties, 

 Jupiter felled him with a thunderbolt into the river Po, where, I 

 understand, he got pretty well cooled. Would that we had a Jupiter 

 here in England, with a birch rod in his hand, to tickle some of our 

 zoological Phaetons ! I would willingly act the part of mother Earth ; 

 and I would undertake to show, by sundry documents which have 

 reached me through the medium of the press, that, if they be allowed 

 to drive their new-fashioned vehicles on our good old zodiac much 

 longer, they will disfigure it in such a manner that, at last, we shall 

 not be able to distinguish the bull from the ram, or the beautifully 

 tapering fingers on the hand of the virgin from the rough and crooked 

 claws which arm the shell-bound body of the crab. 



FLOWER-GARDENS AND SONG-BIRDS. 



" Inutilesque falce ramos amputans, 



Felicioris inserit." HORACE. 



With pruning-knife, the useless branch he cuts, 

 And in its place a graft prolific puts. 



How I prize the gardener ! He is nature's primest jeweller ; and he has 

 the power of placing within our reach all that is nutritive, and luscious, 

 and lovely in the enchanting domains of Flora and Pomona. With- 

 out his assistance, nature would soon run out into uncurbed luxuri- 

 ance; the flowery lawn would soon disappear, and erelong the hemlock 



