ON THE THEORY OF A GARDEN. 13 



The garden is, first and last, made " for delectation's 

 sake." 



So we arrive at these conclusions. A garden is 

 made to express man's delight in beauty and to 

 gratify his instincts for idealisation. But, lest the 

 explanation savour too much of self-interest in the 

 gardener, it may be well to say that the interest of 

 man's investment of money and toil is not all for 

 himself. What he captures of Nature's revenues he 

 repays with usury, in coin that bears the mint-mark 

 of inspired invention. This artistic handling of 

 natural things has for result " the world's fresh orna- 

 ment,"* and for plant, shrub, or tree subject to it, it 

 is the crowning and completion of those hidden pos- 



* "If you look into our gardens annexed to our houses" (says 

 William Harrison in Holinshed's "Chronicles") "how -wonderful is 

 their beauty increased, not only with flowers, which Columella calleth 

 Terrena Sydera, saying * Pingit et in varias terrestria, sydera flores, 3 

 and variety of curious and costly workmanship, but also with rare and 

 medicinable herbs. . . . How Art also helpeth Nature in the daily 

 colouring, doubling and enlarging the proportions of our flowers it is 

 incredible to report, for so curious and cunning are our gardeners now 

 in these days that they presume to do, in a manner, what they list 

 with Nature, and moderate her course in things as if they were her 

 superiors. It is a world also to see how many strange herbs, plants, 

 and annual fruits are daily brought unto us from the Indies, Ameri- 

 cans, Taprobane, Canary Isles, and all parts of the world, the which, 

 albeit that his respect of the constitutions of our bodies, they do not 

 grow for us (because God hath bestowed sufficient commodities upon 

 every country for her own necessity) yet for delectation's sake unto the 

 eye, and their odoriferous savours unto the nose, they are to be 

 cherished, and God also glorified in them, because they are His good 

 gifts, and created to do man help and service. There is not almost 

 one nobleman, gentleman, or merchant that hath not great store of 

 these flowers, which now also begin to wax so well acquainted with 

 our evils that we may almost account of them as parcel of our own 

 commodities." (From "Elizabethan England," pp. 26-7.) 



