THE NEW SCIENCE AND PROSE 151 



hundred feet in length, nine feet high, and five in diameter, which 

 I can show in my now ruined Gardens at Sayes Court at any time 

 of the year, glittering with its armed and varnished leaves? Tlie 

 taller standards at orderly distances, blushing with their natural 

 coral: It mocks the rudest assaults of the weather, or hedge- 

 breakers."^' 



The new science may claim the content and inception of this 

 book. Its purpose is practical, its method is scientific ; if literature 

 claims it all at the last the reason is that the pleasure of the author 

 has been imparted through its pages to the reader. Silva is one 

 of those rare instances where a delight is given by sugar-coating 

 instruction. There is plenty of learning in the book; botanical 

 names and Latin phrases abound. And there is the emotion of a 

 discoverer and of a religious observer who wonders at the infinite 

 handiwork of God. "And what Mortal is there so perfect an 

 Atomist, who will undertake to detect the one thousandth part, 



or point, of so exile a Grain, as that in sensible rudiment 



which brings forth the lofty Fir-tree and the spreading Oak? 

 That trees of so enormous an height and magnitude, as we find 

 some Elms, and Cypresses; that others hard as iron and solid as 



marble should be swaddled and involved within so weak 



and feeble a substance, without the least luxation, confusion, and 

 disorder of parts ! That when they are buried in the moist womb 

 of Earth, which so easily dissolves and corrupts substances so 

 much harder, yet this should be able in time to displace and rend 

 asunder whole rocks of stone, and sometimes to cleave them be- 

 yond the force of iron wedges, so even to remove mountains ! That 

 our trees, like man (whose inverted symbol he is) being sown in 

 corruption, rise in glory, and little and little ascending into an 

 hard erect figure of comely dimensions, become a solid tower, as 

 it were ! And that which but lately a single ant could easily have 

 borne to his little cavern, should now become capable of resisting 

 the fury, and braving the rage of the most impetuous storms. ' '^^ 



This early and splendid appreciation the new philosophy found 

 in Walton and Evelyn. These two books are among the "re- 

 nowned victories of peace". They have the merits of spontaneity, 



^^ Silva, p. 386. 

 ^ Silva, p. 645. 



