258 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



the very sight of the weeds and litter, for then I think how much 

 improved the place will be when they are removed ; and it is very 

 delightful to watch the progress of any work of this sort, and 

 observe the gradual change from disorder and neglect to neatness 

 and finish. In the course of the autumn I have done much in 

 planting and altering, but these labours are now over, and I have 

 now only to hope for a mild winter as far as the shrubs are con- 

 cerned, that they may not all be dead when the Spring comes. 

 Letter to J. T. Coleridge, Esq.) Laleham. Nov. 29, 1819. 



WILLIAM HpHE reader need hardly be reminded that in the early periods 

 f man's mental culture, he acquires those opinions on 

 which he loves to dwell, not by the exercise of observation sub- 

 ordinate to teason ; but, far more, by his fancy and his emotions, 

 his love of the marvellous, his hopes and fears. It cannot 

 surprise us, therefore, that the earliest lore concerning plants, 

 which we discovered in the records of the past, consists of mytho- 

 logical legends, marvellous relations, and extraordinary medicinal 

 qualities. To the lively fancy of the Greeks, the Narcissus, which 

 bends its head over the stream, was originally a youth who in such 

 an attitude, became enamoured of his own beauty ; the hyacinth, 1 

 on whose petals the notes of grief were traced (AI, AI,), 2 recorded 

 the sorrow of Apollo for the death of his favourite Hyacinthus ; 

 the beautiful Lotus of India, 3 which floats with its splendid flower 

 on the surface of the water, is the chosen seat of the goddess 

 Lackshmi, the daughter of Ocean. 4 In Egypt, too, 5 Osiris swam 

 on a lotus-leaf, and Harpocrates was cradled in one. The lotus- 



1 Lilium Martagon. 



2 al, a? : the Greek expression of woe. 



Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit et AI, AI, 



Flor habet inscriptum funestaque litera ducta est. Ovid. 



3 Nelumbium Speciosum. 



4 Sprengel, Geschichte der Botanik, i. 27. 5 Ibid. i. 28. 



