280 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



garden and greenhouse brings a new surprise a new delight; 

 and the man who becomes a thorough gardener will often recall 

 Cowley's famous line : 



* God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain.' 



The leaves of autumn are flying before rain and wind. They 

 drive athwart my lawn, a versi-coloured shower. The copper- 

 beech is burning its deepest russet, the Canadian oak is a 

 tangled web of shivering saffron; soon the turf will be clear 

 swept, to the weary gardener's high delight, and the eye's chief 

 solace will be the glossy green of laurel and holly. Thoughts in 

 my Garden. 



T. JAMES in C\^ a ^ tne vam assumptions of these coxcombical times, that 

 ' The Carthusian' \J which arrogates the pre-eminence in the true science of 

 gardening is the vainest. True, our conservatories are full of the 

 choicest plants from every clime; we ripen the grape and the 

 pine-apple with an art unknown before, and even the mango, the 

 mangosteen, and the guava are made to yield their matured fruits ; 

 but the real beauty and poetry of a garden are lost in our efforts 

 after rarity, and strangeness, and variety. To be the possessor 

 of a unique pansy, the introducer of a new specimen of the 

 Orchidaceae, or the cultivator of 500 choice varieties of the dahlia, 

 is now the only claim to gardening celebrity and Horticultural 

 medals. 



And then our lot has fallen in the evil days of system. We are 

 proud of our natural or English style ; and scores of unmeaning 

 flower-beds, disfiguring the lawn in the shapes of kidneys, and 

 tadpoles and sausages, and leeches, and commas, are the result. 

 Landscape-gardening has encroached too much upon gardening 

 proper ; and this has had the same effect upon our gardens that 

 horticultural societies have had on our fruits, to make us enter- 

 tain the vulgar notion that size is virtue. ... If we review the 

 various styles that have prevailed in England, from the knotted 



