142 A BOOK ABOUT THE GAEDEN. 



from the sunny walk, the natural development of its 

 beauty from the first snowdrop in spring to the last 

 rose of summer, so varied, so ample, and so sure. 

 They sang, like the birds, heart-music, from its 

 fragrant bowers; but who has sung or can sing in 

 or concerning those treeless, shrubless, exposed and 

 shadeless squares, to which the blackbird comes only 

 for his worm, and flies to seek in some more favoured 

 garden a twig on which to chant his grace ? The 

 'Muse can only weep and wail, because the Muse must 

 be aware that Flora, whom she loves, is here but 

 decked and exhibited to catch the public eye, and 

 behind the scenes she is starved and beaten. The 

 Muse is aware that for a considerable portion of 

 the year herbaceous ghosts, arboric apparitions, and 

 bulbous bogies, haunt this now gaudy ground. She 

 is not to be deceived, my brother, no more than you 

 or I when we see some silly wench on a Sunday with 

 half a year's wages on her back, and a month's ditto 

 on her shining hair, as full of oil as a salad, and know 

 that to-rnorrow she will be a slipshod sloven, indolent, 

 morose, and grimy. 



Denouncing the summer system, where it has a 

 monopoly, as destructive of sentiment and of amiable 

 associations, let me tell you an incident which 

 happened within my observance, and which con- 

 demned it in my eyes, and in the eyes of one yet 

 more nearly interested, as the desecration of an 

 English home. Some years ago I held the situation 

 of under-gardener at a country place, where an old- 

 fashioned garden, full of beautiful shrubs and plants, 

 was suddenly sacrificed to the fashion of the day and 



