JANUARY. 25 



Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day 



That must be mortal to us both. O, flowers, 



That never will in other climate grow, 



My early visitation and my last 



At even, which I bred up with tender hand 



From the first opening bud, and gave ye names ! 



Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank 



Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount '. 



But Milton, as in other respects, so he is un- 

 rivalled in his painting of garden scenery. One 

 cannot but remark, how in that, as in every- 

 thing else, he outwent his own times. In those 

 days of tortured trees, and stiff, formal fences 

 and garden-plots, what a magnificent but free, 

 and naturally beautiful wilderness he has 

 sketched in the 4th book of Paradise Lost ! 

 From him, and Lord Bacon, whose taste how- 

 ever was far inferior, we may date the regene- 

 ration of English pleasure-gardens ; and now 

 such delightful spots have we scattered through 

 the country, that the East from which we 

 borrowed them can scarcely rival them. The 

 imaginative mind cannot contemplate the as- 

 semblage, which, from all far-off lands, is there 

 brought together, without being carried by 

 them into their own fair regions, nor the reflec- 

 tive one, without being struck with the innu- 

 merable benefits we have derived from art and 

 commerce. 



