HENRY HALLAM 245 



it), and we should invite our Naiads to dance along the green a 

 good half-mile from our windows. 



The English are more zealous of introducing new fruits, shrubs 

 and plants, than other nations ; you Italians are less so than any 

 civilised one. Better fruit is eaten in Scotland than in the most 

 fertile and most cultivated parts of your peninsula. As for flowers, 

 there is a greater variety in the worst of your fields than in the 

 best of your gardens. As for shrubs, I have rarely seen a lilac, 

 a laburnum, a mezereon, in any of them : and yet they flourish 

 before almost every cottage in our poorest villages. I now come 

 among the ordinary fruits. The currant, the gooseberry, and the 

 raspberry the most wholesome and not the least delicious were 

 domesticated among you by the French in some few places : 

 they begin to degenerate already. I have eaten good apples in 

 this country, and pears and cherries much better than ours ; the 

 other kinds of fruitage appeared to me unfit for the table, not to 

 say uneatable ; and as your gentlemen send the best to market, 

 whether the produce of their own gardens or presents, I have 

 probably tasted the most highly-flavored. Although the sister 

 of Bonaparte introduced peaches, nectarines, and apricots from 

 France, and planted them at Marlia, near Lucca, no person cares 

 about taking grafts from them. 



We wonder in England, when we hear it related by travellers, 

 that peaches in Italy are left under the trees for swine; but, when 

 we ourselves come into the country, our wonder is rather that the 

 swine do not leave them for animals less nice. 



I have now, Signer Marchese, performed the conditions you 

 imposed on me, to the extent of my observation ; hastily I con- 

 fess it, and pre-occupied by the interest you excited. Ibid. 

 (Marchese Pallavicini and Walter Landor.) 



A FAR superior performance is the poem on Gardens by the HENRY 

 -** Jesuit Rene Rapin. For skill in varying and adorning his HALLAM 

 subject, for a truly Virgilian spirit in expression, for the exclusion 

 of feeble, prosaic, or awkward lines, he may perhaps be equal to 



