THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 85 



strangeness, and variety. To be the possessor of a unique 

 pansy, the introducer of a new specimen of the Orchi- 

 dacese, or the cultivator of five hundred choice varieties of 

 the dahlia, is now the only claim to gardening celebrity 

 and Horticultural medals. 



And then our lot has fallen in the evil days of System. 

 We are proud of our natural or English style ; and scores 

 of unmeaning flower-beds, disfiguring the lawn in the 

 shapes of kidneys, and tadpoles, and sausages, and leeches, 

 and commas, are the result. Landscape-gardening has 

 encroached too much upon gardening-proper ; and this has 

 had the same effect upon our gardens that horticultural 

 societies have had on our fruits, to make us entertain the 

 vulgar notion that size is virtue. 



The picturesquians have fortunately had their day, and 

 wholesale manufacturers of by-lanes and dilapidated cot- 

 tages are no longer in vogue in our parks ; but they seem 

 yet to linger about our parterres, though they have far less 

 business here, and indeed should never for a moment have 

 been allowed a footing, for there are no greater extremes 

 in art than a garden and a picture. 



If we review the various styles that have prevailed in 

 England, from the knotted gardens of Elizabeth, the pleach- 

 work and intricate flower-borders of James I., the painted 

 Dutch statues and canals of William and Mary, the wind- 

 ing gravel walks and lake-making of Brown, to poor Shen- 

 stone's sentimental farm, and the landscape-fashion of the 

 present day, we shall have little reason to pride ourselves 

 on the advance which national taste has made upon the 

 earliest efforts in this department. 



If I am to have a system at all, give me the good old 

 system of terraces and angled walks, and dipt yew-hedges, 

 against whose dark and rich verdure the bright old-fashioned 



