OUR QUEEN OF BEAUTY. 41 



horrible mutilations of evergreen shrubs, hacked 

 by a diabolical process, which they called the A7's 

 ToJ>mria, into figures of fishes and beasts and 

 fowls, such as our own forefathers once rejoiced 

 in, under the system of gardening surnamed the 

 Dutch. The Roman gardener was actually called 

 Topiarins ; and this terrible tree-barber went 

 proudly round his arboric menagerie with the 

 trenchant shears, pointing snouts, docking tails, 

 and gaily disfiguring the face of nature, with the 

 pleased demeanor of some cheerful savage clev- 

 erly tattooing his dearest friend. And history, 

 repeating itself, tells us, through Mr. Pope in The 

 Guai'dian, how an eminent cook beautified his 

 country-seat with a coronation dinner done in 

 evergreens, the Champion flourishing in hornbeam 

 at one end of the table, and the Queen in per- 

 petual yew at the other. '* But I, for my part," 

 writes Lord Bacon, " do not like to see images 

 cut out in junipers and other garden-stuff: they 

 be for children." 



It is, however, enough to have shown that al- 

 though the floral light of these Greeks and 

 Romans was dim and feeble, it revealed to them 

 the supreme beauty of the Rose ; and we shall 

 find, as we pass down the highways of history 

 from their times to our own, that against this 



