22 A BOOK ABOUT THE GARDEN. 



a poor clerk in Liverpool than I am now with 

 my grand houses, and gardens, and servants, and 

 equipages, half-a-million of money, and nothing 

 to do." 



No restoration so sure as this honest rest, and 

 accordingly when you have been two or three days 

 " downstairs " your benign physician comes to you on 

 a sunny afternoon, opens your prison door, and allows 

 you half-an-hour in your garden. So fresh, so 

 sweet, so beautiful, that you feel like Linnaeus when 

 he saw for the first time an English common, all 

 aglow with golden gorse, or like Longfellow, when he 

 stood on the bridge at midnight, and a flood of 

 thoughts came gushing, and filled his eyes with tears. 

 The rooks seem to caw congratulations, and a mellow 

 ouzel, fluting in the elm, to welcome nith musical 

 honours. Some lovely visitors are gone. The last 

 roseate blossoms have floated from the almond tree, 

 that gracious harbinger, which sets the first and 

 fairest smile of spring, not only on our country, but 

 on our city and suburban gardens. Forsythia suspensa, 

 pronounced by one of our most reliable authorities, 

 Mr. W. Robinson, in his " English Flower-garden," to 

 be "the most charming hardy deciduous shrub we 

 possess," has lost its golden bells. Pyrus malus 

 floribunda, another gem of purest ray serene in Flora's 

 vernal coronet no gardener forgets his glad surprise, 

 when he first saw it completely covered with its white 

 pink and red efflorescence, how he murmured mentally 

 " must have that," made a memorandum, wrote to his 

 nurseryman has put off its gay garments, and now, 

 in workday dress, is forming its tiny fruit, miniature 



