176 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



plans for three more days in London, I went home 

 that morning with, the Rosebud in my coat. 



Ah, my brothers ! of the many blessings 

 which our gardens bring, there is none more 

 precious than the contentment with our lot, the 

 deeper love of home, which makes us ever so 

 loath to leave them, so glad to return once more. 

 And I would that some kindly author who knew 

 history and loved gardens too, would collect for 

 us in one book (a large one) the testimony of great 

 and good men to the power of this sweet and 

 peaceful influence — of such witnesses as Bacon 

 and Newton, Evelyn and Cowley, Temple, Pope, 

 Addison, and Scott. Writing two of these names, 

 I am reminded of words particularly pertinent to 

 the incident which led me to quote them, and 

 which will be welcome, I do not doubt, even to 

 those gardeners who know them best. 



" If great delights," writes Cowley, *' be joined 

 with so much innocence, I think it is ill done of 

 men not to take them here, where they are so 

 tame and ready at hand, rather than to hunt for 

 them in courts and cities, where they are so wild, 

 and the chase so troublesome and dangerous. We 

 are here among the vast and noble scenes of 

 nature, we are there among the pitiful shifts of 

 policy ; we work here in the light and open ways 



