8 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



up the rear with the villas of Cicero and Pliny, the 

 fruits of Lucullus, the roses of Psestum, and Caesar's 



" Private arbours and new-planted orchards 

 On this side Tiber." 



To how different a scene in each of these instances 

 the term " garden " has been applied we have now 

 no time to inquire ; but we may perhaps be allowed, 

 before entering upon the fresher and more inviting 

 scene of the English parterre, to say one word in 

 correction of an error common to all writers on the 

 horticulture of the ancients. They would have us 

 consider all classical gardens as little more than 

 kitchen-gardens or orchards to use the expression 

 of Walpole, " a cabbage and a gooseberry -bush." 

 This is a great mistake. The love of flowers is as 

 clearly traceable in the poets of antiquity as in those 

 of our own times, and their allusions to them plainly 

 show that they were cultivated with the greatest 

 care. Fruit-trees no doubt were mingled with their 

 flowers, but in the formal, or indeed in any style, 

 this might be made an additional beauty. The very 

 order* indeed of their olive-groves had a protecting 

 deity at Athens, and with such exactness did they 

 set out the elms which supported their vines that 

 Virgil compares them to the rank and file of a 

 Roman legion. But the " fair-clustering " f narcis- 

 sus and the " gold-gleaming " crocus were reckoned 

 among the glories of Attica as much as the nightin- 

 gale, and the olive, and the steed ; and the violet J 



* Soph. (Ed. Col. 705. f Ibid. 682. 



J Aristoph. Equit. 1324. Acharn. 637. 



