THE FLOWER GAEDEN. 



IF Dr. Johnson would not stop to inquire " whether 

 landscape-gardening demands any great powers of 

 the mind," we may surely be excused from the like 

 investigation on the humbler subject of gardening- 

 proper. But whether or not these pursuits demand, 

 certain it is that they have exercised, the talents of 

 as numerous and brilliant an assemblage of great 

 names as any one subject can boast of. Without 

 travelling into distant times or countries, we find 

 among our own philosophers, poets, and men of taste, 

 who have deemed gardening worthy their regard, 

 the names of Bacon, Evelyn, Temple, Pope, Addi- 

 son, Sir William Chambers, Lord Kames, Shenstone, 

 Horace Walpole, Alison, Hope, and Walter Scott. 

 Under the first and last of these authorities, omitting 

 all the rest, we would gladly take our stand in de- 

 fence of any study to which they had given their 

 sanction on paper and in practice. Even in its own 

 exclusive domain, gardening has raised no mean 

 school of literature in the works of Gilpin, Whateley, 

 the Masons, Knight, Price, and Eepton. 



Time would fail us to tell of all those royal and 



