ii 4 FROM A MIDDLESEX GARDEN 



There is nothing in it to remind of the bustle of political 

 life, and it requires neither a sanguine disposition nor the 

 prospect of a long life to justify the expectation of a beautiful 

 result from the slight and easy care which it exacts. Is it too 

 much to say that the mind which can, with genuine taste, 

 occupy itself in gardening, must have preserved some portion 

 of youthful purity; that it must have escaped, during its 

 passage through the active world, its deeper contaminations, 

 and that no shame nor remorse can have found a seat in it ? " 



In the garden a thrush sits singing in the rain ! So beauti- 

 ful, so brief has been the shower ! And now that the glamour 

 of the sunshine is over all, the trees shake themselves free of 

 the big rain-drops, bidden to do so by the breath of the first 

 tender wind, which touches each branch lightly, littering the 

 floor of the orchard, scattering silver and ivory. And how 

 opulent is the blossom at this period the Eastertide of 

 Nature when the first fair flowers rise from their graves, 

 blossoms that are pure and palely tinted ; and notice what 

 a beautiful mingle are the early petals and the silver rain ! 

 The first pale star to light the hedge it is even now in its 

 beauty is that of the hawthorn ; it is exquisite in its 

 natural setting of green leaves. 



"The freshe Hawthorne 

 In white motley that so sote doth ysmell," 



sang Chaucer centuries ago, the joy of the countryside then, 

 a joy still. And it is the hedgerow 



" Little lines of sportive wood run wild " 



that gives this country its character, and if Nature could 

 speak, or rather, if we could read her aright, she would say 



