THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 87 



confinement ? And who lately, in reading Scott's life, but 

 must have mourned in sympathy with the poet over the 

 destruction of " the huge hill of leaves," and the yew and 

 hornbeam hedges of the " Garden " at Kelso ? 



In those days of arbours and bowers, Gardening was 

 an art, not a mystery ; and such an art that the simplest 

 maid could comprehend it. They who loved could learn. 

 The only initiation required was into the arcana of the 

 herb-garden, and the concoction of simples. This was as 

 necessary a part of education then, as to sing Italian now. 

 All the rest was as easy and plain as Nature herself. 

 There was no need to study Monogynia and Icosandria, to 

 pore over the difference of Liliacese and Aristolochiae ; 

 Linngean and Jussieuan factions contorted not pretty 

 mouths with crackjaw words of Aristophanic length and 

 difficulty ; nor did blundering gardeners expose their igno- 

 rance and conceit by barbaric compounds and insufferable 

 misnomers. They had no new plants introduced from 

 Mexico with the euphonic and engaging designation of 

 Iztactepetzacuxochitl Icoliueyo* to be rechristened with some 

 more scientific but scarcely less ponderous synonym. 



In those days ladies were neither botanists nor florists, 

 but simple gardeners, and not landscape-gardeners, with 

 their fifty acres of shrubberies and a gardener to every acre ; 

 but they had their own little garden, where they knew 

 every flower, because they were few, and every name, be- 

 cause they were simple. Their rose-bushes and their 

 gilliflowers were dear to them, because themselves had 

 pruned and watered and watched them had marked from 

 day to day their opening buds, and removed their faded 

 blossoms, and had cherished each choicest specimen for the 



* Vide Bot. Reg., No. 13, and Harrison's Flor. Cab. for April, 

 1838. 



