650 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



to secure the curve of grace wherever we can consult taste, and allow the 

 generous eye and the easy foot to move in the line of beauty. He is happy 

 who can have enough of flowing or living water in his grounds to help him 

 to dream of the lake, the river and the ocean; enough of rise and fall on 

 the surface to relieve the scene from monotony, if not to suggest the images 

 of the hills and cliffs of his romantic rambles or reveries; enough of lawn 

 and grove to unite the charms of the open meadow with the forest shrubs; 

 flowers, shrubbery and orchard enough to present the useful and the beau- 

 tiful in judicious harmony, and to help the master and his friends to discern 

 distinctly the hand of God — the All- wise and the All-lovely — in the domain. 

 I believe most sincerely in making the garden thus a microcosm, an epi- 

 tome of nature, a chapter out of the great Cosmos. We read that Father 

 Adam heard the voice of God in the midst of the garden, and our faith is 

 that the same God is with us; and with all our illumination we are wretched 

 scholars if we have not learned to hear His word as it speaks to ns amidst 

 the flowers and trees. Lord Bacon well says, " God Almighty planted a 

 garden, and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures." Base surely is 

 the mind that forgets Him in this purest of pleasures, or fails to see His 

 wisdom and goodness in its riches. 



One glance at the science of horticulture prepares the way for looking 

 at the art, and so we pass from the garden as a school to regard it as a 

 work-shop. It is certainly the oldest of work-shops — older by far than the 

 carpenter's or smith's — and the place where man learned to earn his bread 

 by the sweat of the brow. Strength surely is born of this labor, and the 

 w ;rking power of the race comes mainly from the tillers of the ground. 

 Without undertaking to call farm labor wholly blessed, or to think it alto- 

 gether a luxury to work ten hours a day in the broiling sun, we may surely 

 say that no form of muscular activity is more beneficial than that which 

 belongs to a judicious round of gardening. It compels us to take every 

 attitude, and call every muscle into use. We read of, and sometimes see, 

 ingenious calisthenic exercises that are so contrived as to bring the whole 

 body into healthy motion, but no artificial ingenuity can compare with 

 gardening as a gymnastic exercise. What variety of implement, posture, 

 and movement there may be in a single morning's work I We may sit, or 

 stoop, or walk, or stand, with rake, hoe, trowel, spade or plow. I certainly 

 never knew what muscles I had till bringing them out in this various work. 

 There is a great deal that a gentle hand may do, and grace as well as 

 health attends the fair woman who plays the Flora or Pomona of the 

 domain, and tends her flowers, vines and trees as a good housewife only 

 can do. Beauty is lovelier at this task tlian at any play; and a rational 

 man on the way to matrimony might be more readily won by the charming 

 contrast between the delicate hand and foot of the fair amateur gardener, 

 and the brown earth and useful trowel or pruning-knife, than by the bril- 

 liant belle of the ball-room, with its surfeit of splendors and its monotony 

 of unbroken display. There is nothing, moreover, better for a sedentary 

 man, or student of delicate habit, than moderate practice in the garden. 

 There is variety enough to keep his attention, and eifort enough to stir his 

 blood, quicken his senses, and point his purpose. He may profitably try 

 once in a while the harder forms of labor, and learn from experience what 



