6 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



noble personages whom old Grerarde enumerates in. 

 his ' Herbal ' as having either " loved to live in gar- 

 dens," or written treatises on the subject. We know 

 that Solomon " spoke of plants, from the cedar that 

 is in Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth out of the 

 wall:" though here the material surpassed the 

 workmanship, for in all his wisdom he discoursed not 

 so eloquently, nor in all his glory was he so richly 

 arrayed, as " one lily of the field." The vegetable 

 drug mithridate long handed down the name of the 

 King of Pontus, its discoverer, " better knowne," 

 says Grerarde, " by his soveraigne Mithridate, than 

 by his sometime speaking two-and-twenty lan- 

 guages." " What should I say," continues the old 

 herbalist, after having called in the authorities of 

 Euax king of the Arabians, and Artemisia queen of 

 Caria, " what should I say of those royal personages, 

 Juba, Attalus, Climenus, Achilles, Cyrus, Masynissa, 

 Semyramis, Dioclesian " all skilled in " the excel- 

 lent art of simpling ? " We might easily swell the 

 list by the addition of royal patrons of horticulture 

 in modern times. Among our own sovereigns, 

 Elizabeth, James I., and Charles II. are mentioned 

 as having given their personal superintendence to 

 the royal gardens, while a change in the style of lay- 

 ing out grounds is very generally attributed to the 

 accession of William and Mary though we doubt 

 whether a horticultural genius would have met with 

 any better or more fitting reception from the hero of 

 the Boyne than did the great wit to whom he offered 

 a cornetcy of dragoons. The gardens of Tzarsco-celo 



