98 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



the edict of modern taste, that banishes such beautiful 

 nosegays from the spring, because of their almost equal 

 beauties in autumn. Surely we might, with the best effect, 

 recall from the slovenly orchard, and the four unpoetical 

 walls of the kitchen-garden, some of those fruit-trees which 

 graced the gardens of antiquity. 



At least, about our farm-houses and our villas, the wal- 

 nut and the mulberry would afford as good a shelter, and 

 as pleasing an effect, as the everlasting plantations of firs 

 and larches. I can fancy a fair lawn, mown by the scythe, 

 or cropped by sheep, as the case may be, in which fruit- 

 trees might be so grouped, with reference to their blossom 

 and foliage, as to produce a beautiful garden-scene the 

 whole year round ; if cattle were excluded, there is no 

 reason why honeysuckles and climbing roses should not 

 twine around the stems ; and who would wish for fairer 

 pleasure-ground than this? 



If indeed we would imitate the most perfect specimens 

 of nature's gardening ; if we would realize the most beau- 

 tiful visions of the poets (generally indeed alleged as the fore- 

 shadow ers of the modern style) ; if the fabled regions of 

 the Hesperides and Adonis, the Homeric picture of 

 Calypso's grot, and the gardens of Alcinous and Laertes, 

 Petrarch's Vaucluse, and Tasso's garden of Armida, if 

 Milton's Paradise, if these, or any of them, are to be the 

 types of our pleasure-grounds, we shall not fear to mix our 

 fruits with our flowers ; a new feature will be added to 

 the English style, the garden will be made to rejoice in 

 an ornament that it knew not before : 



" Miraturque novos frondes et non sua poma." 



And I have been writing on, all this long and weary 

 time, and never asked you, reader, " whether you were 



