98 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



training and opportunities, the incessant 

 demands on him from official and social 

 duties, and his manifold literary engage- 

 ments. Yet what minute and affectionate 

 attention to all the details of the garden, 

 what a wide and inexhaustible sympathy with 

 the beauties and wonders of Nature, these 

 pages of the Sylva Sylvarum disclose to us ! 

 No point is too minute to attract and deserve 

 his notice ; and the operations conducted 

 under his eye are described as copiously and 

 enthusiastically, although they may refer to 

 some comparatively trivial matter, as if they 

 formed the key-stone to a new system of 

 philosophy. Of this we have witnessed 

 evidence in the passages already cited, and 

 we shall meet with abundance of similar 

 traits as we proceed. 



After a series of elaborate directions for 

 grafting roses, Bacon refers to a common 

 notion of his time in relation to fruit trees. 



" Men have entertained a Conceit," says he, "that 

 sheweth prettily, Namely, that if you graft a Late- 

 comming Fruit upon a Stocke of a Fruit-tree that 

 commeth early, the Graft will beare Fruit Early ; as a 



