Vol. X.-No. 30. 



AND HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 



235 



on enibrging from barbarism, so is the flower, or at 

 least the lamlscape garden, as an art of design, one 

 of the last inventions for the display of wealth and 

 taste in periods ofluxury and retiiiemcnt. 



Lord Bacon observes that 'when ages grow to 

 civility and elegancy, men come to build stately, 

 sooner tlian to garden finely ; as if gardening were 

 the greater perfection.' 



I propose to make this sentence the theme of my 

 discourse ; and crave your indulgent attention 

 while I attempt to investi;;ate the causes of tliis tar- 

 dy progress of horticultural impiovcment, and 

 point out the way to obviate them. 



Notwithstanding the aversion most savages 

 manifest to working in the soil, and which in them 

 is but the result of education, the sentiment of the 

 love of a srarden is indubitably natural to man. 

 We see it developed in children at a very early 

 age. Both boys and girls, almost so soon as they 

 are masters of sufficient language to e.xpress such 

 a want, desire a few square feet — some nook of 

 the garden or courtyard, to be assigned them for 

 their exclusive tillage ; and they soon learn to em- 

 ulate each other in the taste and neatness with 

 which it is planted and kept. Often in the closest 

 lanes of the city, we see children of a very tatter- 

 demalion appearance sedulously nursing their mis- 

 erable little rose-bush, or sickly tuft of daisies. 

 This cannot be altogether referred to the propensi- 

 ty for imitation, or to the love of property, but 

 must be ascribed to another, equally innate, and 

 far more amiable principle. It is that the human 

 heart is prone to sympathy. It must have some- 

 thing, — some sensitive, if possible, or at least some 

 animale being, to cheris!i and look forward to with 

 hope. ' Even every Cockney,' say the Scottish 

 reviewers, ' must have his grtrJen, consisting of a 

 pot of geranium and a box of mignionette.' 



Captain Lyon, after noticing a fact which might 

 strike some as very extraordinary, viz. that on 

 leaving his winter quarters in one of the most de- 

 solate, inhospitable regions on earth, where he had 

 been imprisoned for nine dark and dreary months, 

 his own sensations certainly bordered closely on 

 regret; — and giving as a reason, that, miserable 

 as it was, it had still afforded him a kind of home, 

 and some spots there had from habit be<'ome jios 

 eessed of many points of interest, — mentions 'the 

 garden' of each ship, as having been, of all such 

 places, the favorite lounge. These 'gardens' 

 were two small hotbed frames, which had been 

 brought out from England for the purpose, ami set 

 up on a sunny hill-side. 'The attempt,' says he, 

 'at rearing a variety of vegetables, succeeded to ad 

 miration ; l)y dint of coaxing, mustard andcre,-s — 

 peas two inches high, and radishes the thickness 

 Of threads, crowned our endeavors in the Heckla, 

 to the weiglit of three pounds when all mixed to- 

 gether. I5ut the gardens, nevertheless, answered 

 one excellent purpose, by making many of our peo- 

 ple walk to observe their progress, who otherwise 

 would have taken no exercise.' On their return to 

 England the next year, they passed near Winter 

 Island about the first qf September, and Captain 

 Parry could not resist the temptation, though at- 

 tended with some risk, of sending a boat ashore to 

 see what had become of their gardens ; and on 

 their return, they brought with them radishes, 

 mustard and onions, which had survived the win- 

 ter, and were still alive, seventeen months from 

 the time tirey were planted. 



If this senlitnent was so strong in the breasts of 



these sailors, where it scarcely could be the effect 

 of education and habit, how powerful must it prove 

 under more propitious circumstances ! The enjoy- 

 ment of a garden is, in truth, so congenial to our 

 ideas of happiness, as to be desired by all men, of 

 all ranks and professions. Those who toil hanl in 

 the pursuit of g«in amid the dust and- turmoil of 

 cities, commonly solace tliemselves by hoping, with 

 the poet Cowley, ' one day to retire to a sjnall 

 house and a large garden.' The care of a garden 

 is a source of agreeable domestic recreation, espe- 

 cially to the female sex, whose sen.sibilities are 

 keenly alive to the placid beauty of the objects it 

 presents to the eye ; and the air of retirement, 

 tranquillity and repose which settles on such a 

 scene, is favorable to contemplations full of tender- 

 ness and hope. ' Our first most endearing and sa- 

 cred associations,' Mrs Hotfland observes, 'are 

 connected with gardens ; our most simple and most 

 refined perceptions of beauty are combined with 

 them, and the very condition of our being compels 

 us to the cares, and rewards us with the pleasures 

 attached to them.' 



To the valetudinarian the garden is a source of 

 health, and to the aged a source of interest ; for it 

 has been remarked of a taste for gardening, that, 

 uidike other tastes, it remains with us to the very 

 close of life. Where this has been duly nurtured 

 and suffered to produce its best effects, the grace 

 of a refined and practical wisdom will prove an 

 ample recompense for the loss of the livelier ener- 

 gies of youth ; and one glimpse of nature will re- 

 pay the mind for the failure of its early visions, and 

 tlie destruction of the airy architecture of romance. 

 What a redeeming, and, at the same time, beauti- 

 ful touch of natural feeling may be discerned in 

 Mistress Qiiickly's description of the death of the 

 inimitable philosopher, Falstaff — v.hom when all 

 the glories of unequalled wit, and the raptures of a 

 riotous sensuality were exhausted — we are told 

 that the white headed veteran of the world, even 

 in the last moment of his life, 'played with flow- 

 ers,' and ' babbled of green fields !' 



Such, then, being the innate force and univer- 

 sality of this passion, we may well wonder at the 

 apparently inadequate effects which it has produc- 

 ed. The deficiencies of the ancients are certainly 

 very striking, if we compare their attempts in this 

 departrrent, with their glorious achievements in 

 poetry, eloquence, history and morals, — in sculp- 

 ture and architecture, — not only in those arts in 

 which chiefly the taste and imagination are con- 

 cerned, but also in those which demand a more 

 vigorous exercise of the understanding, such as 

 mathematics, logic and metaphysics. The writings 

 of Cato and Varro, of yElian and Columella, are 

 now almost useless on account of the want of pre- 

 cision in their descriptions of the objects and the 

 processes about which they treat; and it would 

 seem that during the sad lapse of time, of more 

 than fourteen hundred years which succeeded 

 them, the class of men whose minds were not al- 

 together oc<"pied with rapine and bloodshed, 

 scarcely ventijred to see with their own eyes ; or 

 rather disdained to condescend to aught lower than 

 the workings of their own fantastic iniaginations. 

 Mature, — the boundless exhibition of the inefi'able 

 power, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator, — 

 was almost totally neglected, except for purposes 

 of poetic illustration ; or if referred to with other 

 views, it was rather to support some idol of the 

 mind, than to discover the true character of her 

 operations. 



It is worthy of remark, however, that the early 

 religious devotees, who austerely secluded them- 

 selves from nine tenths of the enjoyments of life, 

 nevertheless permitted the pleasures of a garden; 

 and we are constrained to admit that the Catholic 

 clergy have in all ages rendered the most valuable 

 services to Horticulture. They not only wrought 

 with their own hands, but were the cause of indus- 

 try inolher. The monks of St Basil and St Benedict 

 restored many extensive tracts to feriility in Italy, 

 Spain and the south of France, which had lain in 

 desolation and neglect ever since the first incur- 

 sions of the Gauls and Saracens. No longer ago 

 than in 1826, the Curate of Montagano, in the 

 kingdom of Naples, gave as a penance to the far- 

 mers who confessed to him, that they should plant 

 so many vines, olives, or other trees in certain 

 naked parts of the country ; the consequence was, 

 that, in a very short lime, wliat before was a des- 

 ert, had the appearance and productiveness of an 

 orchard. A recent writer asserts that there proba- 

 bly would not have been a fruit-tree in Scotland till 

 the sixteenth century, had it not been for the la- 

 bors of the peaceful monks. 'Whoever,' says he, 

 ' has seen an old abbey, where for generations, 

 destruction only has been at work, must have, al- 

 most invariably, found it situated U\ one of the 

 choicest spots, both as to sod and aspect ; — and if 

 the hand of injudicious improvement has not swept 

 it away, there is still " the abbey garden." Even 

 though it be wholly neglected — though its walls be 

 in ruins, covered with stone-crop, and wall-flower, 

 and its area produce but the rankest weeds, — 

 there are still the remains of the aged fruit-trees, 

 the venerable pears, the delicate little apples, and 

 the luscious black cherries. The chesnuts and 

 the walnuts may have yielded to the axe, and the 

 vines and the fig-trees died away ; — but sometimes 

 the mulberry is lefl, and the strawberry and the 

 raspberry will struggle among the ruins.' 



The author of Waverley is allowed to be a fiiith- 

 ful painter of the manners of the times, and of the 

 scenes he represents in his novels ; and he tells us, 

 that an old monk, to beguile a tedious hour which 

 the impatient Quentin Durward was obliged to 

 wait at the palace of the Bishop of Liege, before 

 he could be admitted to an audience, led him 

 through the garden, where he was entertained 

 with an enumeration of the plants, herbs, and 

 shrubs pointed out to him by his venerable conduc- 

 tor, — oi^ which, ' some were remarkable for the deli- 

 cacy and brilliancy of their flowers, — some were 

 choice, because of prime use in medicine, — others 

 more choice, for yielding a rare flavor to pottage, — 

 and others choicest of all — because they pos- 

 sessed no merit whatever, but their extreme 

 scarcity.' 



In comparatively modern times, according to 

 Humboldt, the Jesuits, in an incredibly short period 

 spread the knowledge and the enjoyment of all our 

 common culinary vegetables from one end of the 

 American continent to the other, and from the 

 shore of either ocean to the foot of the Cordilleras. 

 It seems but fair, therefore, to infer from these 

 facts, that, although Horticulture may have lan- 

 guished in common with all those branches of 

 knowledge whicli rest on the basis of experiment 

 and observation, yet we cannot accuse the ecclesi- 

 astics of the middle ages with paralysing and sup- 

 pressing it, as they undoubtedly did those sciences 

 the extension of which would either directly or in- 

 directly tend to the subversion of their power. 



To be coBtiQued. 



