HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE. 75 



ableness of suggestions for design that have as 

 much regard for the veracities of Nature, and the 

 dictates of common-sense, as for the nice elegan- 

 cies and well-calculated audacities of consummate 

 Art. 



" I only sound the clarion, but I enter not into 

 the battle." Even so, Master ! we will hold thy 

 hand as far as thou wilt go ; and the clarion thou 

 soundest right well, and most serviceably for all 

 future gardeners ! 



I like the ring of stout challenge in the opening 

 words, which command respect for the subject, and, 

 if rightly construed, should make the heretic " land- 

 scape gardener," who dotes on meagre country- 

 grass and gipsy scenery pause in his denunciation 

 of Art in a garden. " God almighty first planted a 

 Garden ; and indeed it is the purest of humane 

 pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the 

 Spirits of man, without which Buildings and Palaces 

 are but gross Handy works. And a man shall ever 

 see, that when ages grow to Civility and Elegancy, 

 men come to build stately sooner than to garden 

 finely : as if Gardening were the Greater Perfection." 



This first paragraph has, for me, something of 

 the stately tramp and pregnant meaning of the 

 opening phrase of "At a Solemn Music." The praise 

 of gardening can no further go. To say more were 

 impossible. To say less were to belittle your sub- 

 ject. I think of Ben Jonson's simile, " They jump 

 farthest who fetch their race largest." For Bacon 

 "fetches" his subject back to "In the beginning," 



