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From that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, 

 Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, 

 With mazy error under pendant shades 

 Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed 

 Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art 

 In beds and curious knots, but nature boon 

 Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, 

 Both where the morning sun first warmly smote 

 The open field, and where the unpierc'd shade 

 Imbrown'd the noon-tide bowers. Thus was this place 

 A happy rural seat of various view. 



Sir William Temple, in his Essay on Gardening, 

 has the following passage. " If we believe the 

 Scriptures/' he observes, " we must allow that God 

 Almighty esteemed the life of a man in a garden 

 the happiest he could give him, or else he would 

 not have placed Adam in that of Eden ; it was 

 the state of innocence and pleasure, and the life 

 of husbandry and cities came after the fall, with 

 guilt and labour." 



It is impossible, also, to read Pope's works, and 

 not to be aware of the great delight he took in his 

 garden, or not to perceive that he had imbibed 

 some taste for ornamental gardening. The descrip- 

 tion of his grotto, in his letter to Mr. Blount 

 (1725) is altogether charming. Alas! to see his 

 garden now, divided and subdivided his walks 

 covered with weeds the urn he erected to the 

 memory of his mother, with its affecting inscrip- 

 tion, scrawled upon and defaced and his grotto, 

 his charming and interesting grotto, where he 



