THE MANSE GARDEN. 201 



is a source of melancholy, always bringing the little- 

 ness 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 de- 

 veloped on a large scale : nothing can exceed the 

 soft beauty of the rhododendron, spread over a large 

 space, or, flowering at an opposite season, the pink 

 and snowy laurustinus, fit to fill a room with its clus- 

 tered blossoms. These I would not clip for the best 

 eyed polyanthus. It is supposed, as formerly planned, 

 that the outer wall of shrubs, dense and high with 

 hollies and laurels, is already furnished. And here 

 it may be proper to mention some of the more delicate 

 sorts which may be selected for growing within the 

 defence : phylerea, of several varieties ; alaternus, 

 gold and silver variegated, grows by layers certainly, 

 by slips pretty well ; arborvitse, easily propagated in 

 the same way, and which will grow a large tree where 

 it has room, but having no beauty except in good 

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