128 Gleanings from the 



a layer of fheet lead from the moifture above. 

 " The afcent to the garden was by fteps. On the 

 way up among the arches which fuftained the 

 building were {lately apartments, which muft have 

 been pleafant from their coolnefs. There was alfo 

 a chamber within the ftructure containing the 

 machinery by which the water was raifed." Pro- 

 feflbr Rawlinfon has put together in thefe few 

 fentences a mafs of information from different 

 claflical authorities. 



Turning to fome of the celebrated gardens of 

 the ancients, partly mythical, partly proverbial, we 

 come nrft to the Gardens of Adonis, which partook 

 of both thefe characters. The myth belongs 

 originally to Phoenicia ; and the ftory of Adonis, 

 the favourite of Venus, killed while hunting, and 

 allowed to fpend fix months alternately with 

 Proferpine and Venus, points not obfcurely to the 

 return of fummer after winter. Hence " the 

 Gardens of A donis " is only a poetical expreffion 

 for fummer flowers, and foon paffed into a proverb 

 intimating fhort-lived pleafures. At Athens, the 

 term was ufed of fmall pots in which crefs and 

 fuch-like quick-growing herbs were raifed. So 

 Plato makes Socrates aik whether any hufbandman 

 of fenfe would wifh to fee his feeds fpring up and 

 flourim with a brief eight-day life in Gardens of 

 Adonis, or would leave them to children and the 

 decoration of feafts, and would fow at the fitting 

 time and be contented if, at the end of eight 

 months, he received his harveft. 1 The Gardens of 



1 " Phzedrus," 276 B. 



