24 A BOOK ABOUT THE GABDEN. 



executioners with our axes hacking at trees on which 

 we ought to have been hanged, and shedding their 

 innocent sap over the land. We grubbed, and 

 stubbed, and made bonfires, and all but danced, 

 like wild Indians, around the wooden tenements 

 which the white men had built for their abode. 

 Were we not assured that our floral forefathers, of 

 course with the most amiable intentions and delight- 

 ful sentiments, knew nothing whatever of horticul- 

 ture, and that it had been reserved for us to reveal to 

 an astonished world the true grandeur and glory of a 

 garden ? Wherefore we cleared away beds and borders, 

 turfing and levelling, and then with measuring tape 

 and iron skewers, and other instruments of torture, 

 we traced our great geometrical design of circles and 

 semicircles, quadrangles and triangles, rhomboids 

 and parallelograms, stars, tadpoles, and snakes. And 

 now, let cannons roar their feu de joie, as on the 

 coronation of a king ! let bells peal forth from every 

 tower, " ring out the old, ring in the new ! " let huge 

 trombones and monster drums declare the advent of 

 "the conquering hero! " for the time of "bedding- 

 out " is here, and the royal procession comes on in 

 wheelbarrows ! right Royal, nevertheless, in scarlet 

 and gold (pelargonium and calceolaria), Imperial, 

 Episcopal, in purple (verbena), accompanied by their 

 attendants, wearing, in flower or in leaf, all other 

 hues, the darkest, by perilla, almost black, and coleus 

 the lightest b} T centauria and cineraria maritima, 

 blue by lobelia, grey by dwarf ageratum, shades of 

 yellow by pansies, gazanias, and tagetes, rose and 

 pink by verbenas and pelargoniums. Added to these, 



