NGLAND FARUE: 



PUBLISHED BY GEO. C. BARRETT, NO. 6E, NORTH MARKET STREET, (at the Agr. cultural Warehouse.)— T. G. FESSENDEN EDITOR. 



VOL. XII. 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 20, 1S34. 



NO. 33. 



AN ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE MASSACHUSETTS HOItTICTJI,- 

 TUltAL. SOCIETY ; 



Jit their Fifth Annual Festival, Stpti mber IS, 1S33. 

 BY ALEXANDER IT. EVERETT. 



PUBLISHED BY REDDEST " t THE SOCIETY. 

 (Concluded from p. 353.) 



II. The disposition of grounds and gardens, 

 whether for the purpose of private recreation or 

 public utility nml ornament, is another application 

 of Horticulture, not less interesting and important 

 than the immediate care of fruits and flowers. 

 Under this aspect, it is justly regarded as one ol 

 the elegant arts, and has engaged the attention and 

 employed the pens of some of the greatest men ol 

 ancient and modern times. Among the English 

 writers on the suhject, we find Horace Walpole, 

 Sir William Temple, and the illustrious Lord Chan- 

 cellor Bacon, who has devoted to it one of the 

 longest and must agreeable of his Essays. This 

 department of the art has not yet been much stud- 

 ied among us ; but as wealth and population in- 

 crease, it will gradually attract mure attention, ami 

 will cover the hanks of our beautiful streams and 

 lakes, the southern slopes of our hills, and the 

 promontories and islands along our coast, with 

 ornamented grounds. Notwithstanding the com- 

 parative sterility of the soil, there are few regions 

 better fitted for this purpose, by varieties in the 

 surface of the landscape^-the abundance of water, 

 and the frequently wild and picturesque beauty ol 

 the scenery, than New-England. Lake Champlain, 

 — Lake Winnepiseogee,with the neighboring Whfta 

 Hills, — the charming valley of the Connecticut, 

 and a thousand other hills and streams of less ce- 

 lebrity, but not inferior beauty, — the islands south 

 of the Cape, and in our own harbor, — all present 

 the most attractive natural situations, and only re- 

 quire the magical touches of art, to he converted 

 into scenes, as elegant as any that grace the most 

 cultivated regions of Europe, or bloom perennially 

 in the pages of the poets. 



In this, as in all the other arts, the progress of 

 taste has been slow and gradual. It is a striking 

 proof of the simple state of Horticulture in the 

 time of Homer, that, in describing the gardens of 

 Alcinoits, King of Phceacia, a prince to whom he 

 has given a palace with brazen walls and silver 

 columns; — describing them, too, with so much lati- 

 tude of imagination, that he has enriched them 

 willi the gift of perpetual spring; — he can still 

 imagine nothing more magnificent than an enclo- 

 sure of four acres devoted exclusively to fruit. 



Four acres was the allotted space of ground, 



Fenced willi a green enclosure all around; 



Tall thriving trees confessed the fruitful mould, 



The reddening apple ripens into gold. 



Here the blue rig with luscious juice o'erflows ; 



Willi deeper red the full pomegranate glows ; 



The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear, 



And verdant olives llourish round the year ; 



Beds of all various kinds, forever green, 



In beauteous order terminate the scene. 



It is curious to compare with this simple scene, 

 the superb decorations of Paradise by Milton, who 

 found, in his own correct natural taste, a guide 

 which the practice of the art was, in his time, far 

 from affording : 



the crisped brooks. 



Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, 

 With mazy error under pendant shades 

 Ran ncciar, visiting each plant, and fed 

 Flowers worthy ol Paradise, which not nice Art 

 In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon 

 Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain. 



It was long, however, before the art reached in 

 practice the point of correct taste indicated by this 

 fine passage. Among the Rumans, and in modern 

 limes, until a very recent period, the prevailing 

 taste was for grounds ornamented in a formal and 

 fantastic way. Pliny, who was one of the wealth- 

 iest and must distinguished, as well as most ac- 

 coinpljsned persons of his time, has given in his. 

 works a description of two of his villas, which ap- 

 pear to havi; been ornamented very nearly in the 

 mine way with the Dutch ami French gardens of 

 the time of Lewis XIV. They were laid out in 

 regular walks, adorned with artificial flowers and 

 basins, statues, obelisks, and evergreens, cut into 

 fantastic shapes. In the time of Lewis XIV. this 

 was the taste which prevailed throughout Europe 

 and extended even into England. But the belter 

 spirits, as we have seen from the passage in Milton, 

 foresaw, by the instinctive light of their own good 

 taste, the improvement that occurred shortly after. 

 Tope, in one of his Moral Essays, finely ridicules 

 the style of the day, and predicts that its tasteless 



♦Kg'.itions would soon be restored to a more natural 



"""ndition. 





The lime shall come that sees the golden ear 

 Embrown the waste or nod on the parterre ; 

 Dark fori sts covei w hai y our pride has planned. 

 And laughing Ceres re-assert the land. 



The most beautiful work which was produced 

 under the influence of this formal style, was un- 

 doubtedly Versailles, the residence of the re- 

 markable sovereign who gave his name to the age 

 when it prevailed. The palace at Versailles was 

 constructed by Lewis XIV. when at the height of 

 his power, without regard to expense ; and the 

 gardens, though arranged in accordance with the 

 taste of the day, correspond with the magnificence 

 of the master. The principal ornaments were the 

 artificial fountains. The water for the supply of 

 them was brought several miles in an aqueduct 

 from the Seine, where it was raised by a cum- 

 brous piece of machinery, which, at the time when 

 it was erected, was celebrated as a wonder of art. 

 under the name of the Machine of Marly. A 

 steam-engine has recently been substituted for it. 

 The fountains are annually played on the festival 

 day of St. Lewis, which is the 24th of August, and 

 the whole population of Paris goes out to witness 

 the spectacle, which is certainly very magnificent. 



During the latter part of the life of Lewis XIV. 

 Versailles was his favorite abode, anil its groves 

 and walks were thronged by the nobles and beau- 

 ties of the most brilliant court ever known in Eu- 

 rope. It continued to be the residence of the royal 

 family until the memorable days of the 5th and 6th 

 of October, 1790, when the populace of Talis took 

 the palace by storm, and, after slaughtering the 

 guard, penetrated to the Queen's bed-chamber, and 

 carried oft' the family in triumph to the capital. It 

 was here that Burke had seen the snmu unhappy 

 Princess, only a few years before, on her first ap- 

 pearance at court, as the Daupbincss, "glittering 



like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and 

 joy." While the place was under her direction 

 she added to the embellishments a small garden 

 laid out in imitation of a Swiss dairy. Since the 

 fattd days of October Versailles has been abandon- 

 ed as a resideTice, and the gardens have been in 

 some degree neglected. I saw them for the first 

 time at the hour of sunrise, on a fine May morning, 

 in the year 18T2. The palace of Lewis XIV. was 

 then a ruin ; the last of his successors had perish- 

 ed on the scaffold : his sceptre had passed into the 

 hands of a Corsican adventurer, who was rulin« 

 the greater part of Europe with a rod of iron, un- 

 der the name of the Emperor Napoleon. The very 

 hones of the Bourbon family hail been torn from 

 their consecrati d resting-place, by the mad rage of 

 in infuriate mob, and scattered to the four winds 

 of heaven. Ten years after, when I saw Versailles 

 airniu, the scene had already changed. The Bour- 

 bons again inlial.iicil the palace, and possessed the 

 power of their ancestors. The Emperor'Napoleon 

 had fallen from his high estate, and, under the 

 name of General Bonaparte, expired, in exj^e and 

 misery, on a burning rock in a distant ocean. His 

 remains, in turn, had been denied a resting-place 

 in the land which he had so long governed. Ten 

 years more have produced another change in the 

 actors and decorations of the great drama. An- 

 other hand now wields the sceptre of Lewis, Na- 

 poleon, and Charles X. ; and another family of 

 royal exiles are wandering in beggary through all 

 the courts of Europe. In the mean time the gar- 

 dcnsof\ ;" have annually bloomed as freshly 

 as before, and the nightingales that frequent them 

 have sung as gaily as if nothing had happened. 

 These violent and sudden changes in the political 

 world, contrasted with the steadiness and order 

 that distinguish the course of nature, may serve, 

 perhaps, to recommend to us as our chief pursuits 

 and pleasures those that consist in the study of her 

 works and the enjoyment of her beauties. 



When Lewis XIV. was at the height of his 

 power he made it a part of his magnificence, — as 

 his successor, Napoleon, afterwards did, — to place 

 one of his family upon the throne of Spain. 

 Philip V. after establishing himself in his new 

 kingdom, was ambitious to imitate the splendor of 

 the royal residences of that which he had left, and 

 undertook to create a new Versailles, on the sum- 

 mit of the Guadarrama mountain, at the distance 

 of about sixty miles from Madrid and at the height 

 of three thousand six hundred feet above the level 

 of the sea. This freak of fancy cost the Spanish 

 people forty millions of dollars, and produced, as 

 its result, the palace and gardens of La Granja, or, 

 as they are often called, from the name of the 

 neighboring village, St. Ildefonso. Notwithstand- 

 ing the enormous expense at which they were con- 

 structed, there is little in the architecture of the 

 buildings, or the general appearance of the place, 

 to remind one of the splendid residence of the old 

 French court ; but the gardens, and especially the 

 fountains, are considered by many as even supe- 

 rior to those of Versailles. They are situated on 

 the declivity of the mountain, and are abundantly 

 supplied with pure and pellucid water from the 

 springs above them. One of them, called the 

 Fouutain of Fame, throws up a stream of water to 



