38 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



Life : and so for the Birds too, especially if any way remark- 

 able. . . . Eu. Here's an indifferent fair Garden cut into two : 

 the one's for the Kitchin, and that's my Wife's ; the other is a 

 Physick Garden. Upon the left hand, you have an open green 

 Meadow enclosed with a Quickset-Hedge, (septum est sepe 

 perpetua e spinis implexis, sed vivis contexta). There do I 

 take the Air sometimes, and divert myself with good Company. 

 Upon the right hand there's a Nursery (Orchard) of foreign 

 Plants, which I have brought by degrees to endure this Climate. 

 At the end of the upper Walk, there's an Aviary : at the further 

 end of the Orchard, I have my Bees, which is a sight worth your 

 Curiosity. 



This Summer Hall, I suppose, you have had enough of. It 

 looks three ways, you see ; and which way soever you turn your 

 Eye, you have a most delicate Green before ye. ... Here do I 

 eat in my House, as if I were in my Garden ; for the very Walls 

 have their Greens and their Flowers intermixt, and 'tis no ill 

 Painting. . . . You shall now see my Library : 'tis no large one, 

 but furnish'd with very good Books. ... To my Library there 

 belongs a Gallery, that looks into the Garden. Let's go those 

 three Walks now above the other, that I told you look'd into 

 the Kitchen-Garden. These upper Walks have a Prospect into 

 both Gardens, but only through Windows with Shutters. . . . 

 At each Corner there's a Lodging-Chamber, where I can repose 

 myself, within sight of my Orchard, and my little Birds. 

 Colloquia : * Convivium Religiosum.' 1 (Translated by Sir Roger 

 L Estrange, Kt.} 



""pHEY set great store by their gardeins. In them they have 

 MORE vineyardes, all manner of fruite, herbes and flowres, so 



(1480-1535). pleasaunt, so well furnished, and so fynely kepte, that I never 

 sawe thynge more frutefull, nor better trimmed in anye place. 

 Their studie and deligence herein commeth not onely of pleasure, 

 but also of a certen strife and contention that is between strete 

 and strete, concerning the trimming, husbanding, and furnishing 



