THE USE OF GARDENS 



HERE is a passage by an old writer which 

 might well be taken as a text for a Sermon 

 on Gardens: — "As the use of Gardens hath 

 been the Inclination of Kings and the Choice 

 of Philosophers, so it hath been the common 

 Favourite of publick and private men ; a 

 pleasure of the Greatest, and the Ease of the 

 Meanest ; and, indeed, an Employment and 

 a Possession, for which no man is too High 

 or too Low." It expresses happily what can be called the sentiment 

 of garden making, the feeling by which the lovers of gardening 

 are inspired; and it asserts with evident conviction the universality 

 of this sentiment. The quotation, indeed, sums up with a quaint 

 comprehensiveness the virtues and merits of the gardener's art, 

 its power of appeal to all classes of men, and its value as a means 

 of satisfying all shades of aesthetic inclination. 



For it must be remembered that the worship of gardens is essen- 

 tially an expression of an aesthetic instinct. It is founded, of 

 course, upon that love of nature which is so deeply implanted 

 in all men who are not merely gross materialists ; but it has 

 grown into something far more complex than the simple desire 

 to bring nature more closely into contact with human life. At 

 first the garden was regarded as a place, apart from the world, 

 where men could rest and take their ease in quiet surroundings : 

 the spot dedicated to wholesome relaxation in which the worker 

 could for a while forget his cares and renew his energies. Its 

 privacy was one of its greatest charms, and one of the chief 

 sources of its popularity in all countries and at all times. The 

 idea ot seclusion, indeed, as the Rev. W. Tuckwell points out in 

 his book, "Tongues in Trees," "is embalmed in the names which 

 men have given to gardens. The Hebrew Gan, of Genesis ii. 8, 

 means 'sheltered.' Paradise, a Zend word, occurring rarely in 

 the Bible, and with no reference to Eden, is 'enclosure.' In the 

 Greek and Latin Hortus we have the same notion of ' enclosed, 

 secured'; while the "Jardin, Garten, Garden, of our modern tongues, 

 means 'guarded'; retired, secluded, shielded, separate, shut off: a 

 still, removed place, hidden from the day's garish eye, sacred to 

 tranquillity, retirement, repose." 



It is easy to follow the mental process by which this " still, re- 

 moved place," with all its agreeable associations, came to be 

 accepted as one in which the gratification of the senses by 



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