224 EVERGREEN SHRUBS. 



grassy and fibrous, bulbous, and tuberous, annual, 

 biennial, and perennial, hardy, semihardy, and 

 tender, indigenous and exotic, be otherwise than 

 frightful and sickening. The sight is a source of 

 melancholy, always bringing the littleness of our 

 time into contact with an infinity of little things 

 craving the attention that is due to other matters 

 in hand ; and may not lady florists, whose neat 

 fingers take pleasure in tying a carnation, enjoy 

 the beauty of flowers without shuddering at the 

 Greek with which they are aspersed? Surely in 

 their eyes such garden catalogues of unmeasured 

 length and dead language have all the sterility and 

 the ugliness of a Hebrew lexicon. 



It is supposed, though the manse be not in the 

 garden, that around the doors are other things than 

 oats, potatoes, or pasturage. We suppose shrubs, 

 agreeably to what has been previously written; and 

 with these we associate the flowers, as having, in 

 their juxtaposition, the same agreement as of sisters, 

 of whom the elder cherish and help to rear the 

 younger. Of shrubs, many are to be regarded as 

 flowers developed on a large scale ; nothing can 

 exceed the soft beauty of the rhododendron, spread 

 over a large space, or, flowering at an opposite sea- 

 son, the pink and snowy laurustinus, fit to fill a 

 room with its clustered blossoms. These 1 would 

 not clip for the best eyed polyanthus. It is sup- 

 posed, as formerly planned, that the outer wall of 

 shrubs, dense and high with hollys and laurels, is 

 already furnished. And here it may be proper to 



