xxxn 



very delightful to be set under a parlour, or lower 

 chamber window; but those which perfume the air 

 most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being 

 trodden upon and crushed, are three that is, burnet, 

 wild thyme, and water-mints ; therefore you are to 

 set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when 

 you walk or tread."* Or when Mr. Evelyn, in the 

 joy of his enthusiasm, exultingly transposed from Vir- 

 gil=- 



O fortunatos nimium, bona si sua norint 

 Horticulas ! 



and who declared, that the employ and felicity of an 

 excellent gardener was preferable to all other diver- 

 sions. When Mr. Addison says that a garden "fills 

 the mind with calmness and tranquillity, and lays all 

 its turbulent passions at rest." When Sir William Tem- 

 ple (who infused into his writings the graces of some 

 of the best writers of ancient times), thus allures his 

 readers : " Epicurus, whose admirable wit, felicity of 



* One almost fancies one perceives Lord Bacon's attachment to 

 gardens, or to rural affairs, even in the speech he made before the 

 nobility, when first taking his seat in the High Court of Chancery ; 

 he hoped " that these same brambles that grow about justice, of 

 needless charge and expence, and all manner of exactions, might 

 be rooted out ;" adding also, that immediate and "fresh justice was 

 the sweetest." Mr. Mason, in a note to his English Garden, after 

 paying a high compliment to Lord Bacon's picturesque idea of a 

 garden, thus concludes that note : " Such, when he descended to 

 matters of more elegance (for, when we speak of Lord Bacon, to 

 treat of these was to descend,) were the amazing powers of this 

 universal genius." 



