194 



Garden and Forest. 



[NUMKF.R 2lS. 



surrounding scenes impressgs even the dLillest eye and ap- 

 peals through it to the most sluggish imagination. Even 

 the roughest dweller in the tenement-house district admires 

 the shores of the Hudson River when he sees them on 

 some summer excursion, and is impressed b)r the beauty 

 of the sea when for the first time he stands on a beach 

 where giant waves are breaking. 



This instinctive admiration for the beauties of the natu- 

 ral world is what many persons understand by the love of 

 nature. But it is not, in the truest sense, the love of nature. 

 It is distinctively a love for natural things which are beau- 

 tiful, of course, but which are also unfamiliar and there- 

 fore striking. Let the dweller in tenement-houses inhabit 

 a lodge in the Central Park for a while, and he might seek 

 his Sunday entertainment in a down-town street. Let him 

 work on a North River schooner, and he would quickly 

 forget to notice the beauty of the shores. The same atti- 

 tude toward nature can be observed in the case of persons 

 of wider cultivation. Familiar natural features soon grow 

 uninteresting. The artisans who crowd the park on Sun- 

 day enjoy its unfamiliar beauty more truly than most of 

 the wealthier folk who drive there almost daily. It is cu- 

 rious, indeed, to see how few of these turn from the fash- 

 ionable East Drive into the much more beautiful West 

 Drive. And it is still more curious to tind that hundreds 

 of New Yorkers, who have made pilgrimages in search of 

 natural beauty from the Nile to the Sierras and from the 

 St. Lawrence to INIexico, have never left their carriages to 

 see what the pathways in their own park might reveal. 

 The Ramble is as unknown to them as if it lay in China, 

 and they e.xclaim with surprise when you tell them that 

 they might travel a thousand miles and see nothing prettier. 



What people of this kind usually care about is not nature 

 itself, but those conspicuous natural effects which are called 

 scenery. Scenery is not the whole of natural beauty ; it is 

 only one manifestation of it ; and a person vi'ho delights in 

 a magnificent view, but finds all flat regions hopelessly 

 tiresome, or who feels the grandeur of a rocky coast, but 

 not the loveliness of a green-fringed quiet shore, docs not 

 really love nature. His attitude is like that of one who 

 should profess to love flowers, but, while admiring a Rose, 

 should despise a Forget-me-not. The true test of a love of 

 nature is that one who gives interested attention to all 

 natural effects and forms, and finds beauty where the 

 average eye sees none. 



Of course, there are grades and degrees of natural beauty, 

 and for each grade the true lover will have the correspond- 

 ing amount of admiration. He will not call a Belgian plain 

 as beautiful as the valley of the Rhone, or declare that a 

 Nettle has the charm of a branch of Apple-blossoms. But 

 there are few plants which have no beauty of any sort ; 

 and there are few spots on earth where man's hand has not 

 obliterated Nature's intentions entirely, so wholly devoid 

 of charm that the sensitive eye and mind cannot enjoy 

 them keenly. 



Admiration, says a French writer upon art, "is the active 

 EESthetic form of curiosity." And this means that he who 

 really admires the works of God will be lovingl)' curious 

 about the Hyssop on the wall as well as about the Cedar of 

 Lebanon ; will see more to please him in a rough bit of 

 pasture-land than the average person sees in a whole fertile 

 valley. Who can love nature better than the landscape- 

 painter who spends his whole life in transferring its beauty 

 to canvas for the instruction and pleasure of his fellow- 

 men .' But no one is less in need than the landscape- 

 painter of what is called scenery. It is not he who greatly 

 prefers the canon of the Yellowstone to the banks of the 

 little river near his home. When he is brought to face 

 magnificent scenery he experiences keen delight, but he 

 gladly comes back to his quiet plains, his placid pools, his 

 little forest-glades. Nor is it merely because these things 

 are better fitted than grander things for transferring to his 

 canvas. His own small corner of the world is enough for 

 him, as a thing to enjoy no less than as a thing to paint. 

 Delacroix was not a landscape-painter, and so cannot be 



suspected of looking at inanimate nature with an eye for 

 good subjects ; and there has never been a painter whom 

 we could more easily credit with an inborn love for strik- 

 ing and even spectacular kinds of beauty. But fine 

 scenery was not essential to his enjo3'ment of nature. 

 "The poorest little alley," he wrote one day fromashabby 

 suburb of Paris, " with its straight little leafless saplings, 

 in a dull and flat horizon, can say as much to the imagina- 

 tion as the most bepraised of sites. This tiny cotyledon 

 piercing the earth, this Violet shedding its first whiff of per- 

 fume, are enchanting. I love such things as much as the 

 Pines of Italy." 



This is the voice of the true lover of nature, and like it 

 was Corot's voice, which constantly praised not the 

 grandeurs which he had seen on his travels, but the ten- 

 der, subtile beauties around his homeatVille d'Avray, and, 

 more than anything else, the humblest of them all, "my 

 leaves and my little birds." If one is born to love nature, 

 or learns to love nature, as these great men did, and as all 

 true artists do, the quietest scenes are impressive — the most 

 familiar are ever new. A Blackberry-vine trailing over a 

 gray rock gives one an emotion as delightful as the sight 

 of a giant mountain ; and custom cannotstale one's pleasure, 

 for it is as infinitely varied, as perpetually renewed, as the 

 leaves on the trees, the blades of grass in the field, the tints 

 in the sunset sky. 



Notes of a Summer Journey in Europe. — XIH. 



'T~'HE Botanic Garden at Brussels is probably most famous 

 -*- and Ijest known through the work and writings of its 

 present Director, Professor F. Crepin, the distinguished rho- 

 dologisl, who has made the species of Roses a special study 

 for thirty years. It is very nearly a hundred years since the 

 first botanic garden was established in this cily, and it was 

 for a time an adjunct to the School of Medicine. The site of 

 the garden of to-day was acquired in 1826 by a private associa- 

 tion havinsf the name of the " Royal Society of Horticulture of 

 the Low Countries," which was changed eleven years later 

 to its present title of tlie Royal Society of Horticulture of 

 Belgium. 



The garden passed through several periods of success, mis- 

 fortune and embarrassment until 1870, when it became the 

 property of the Government, and it is from this time that it 

 has taken high rank as a scientific institution. Previously, 

 being private property, it was of comparatively little use to the 

 public, and the work carried on was chiefly horticulture pure 

 and simple. The total area of tlie garden is only about sixteen 

 acres, but, although it is not so large as some others, it takes 

 rank among the best-kept and best-equipped public gardens in 

 Europe. But it is not given so much to the formation of a 

 collection of rarities or novelties as it is to furnishing a fair 

 representative and instructive botanical collection within its 

 small area. The aim has been to get typical examples of the 

 different genera and to introduce the most remarkable species, 

 preference being given to those which are native. 



In addition to the open-air collections, those of the green- 

 houses contain a larger and more varied assortment than 

 might be expected, and in very good order. These, added to 

 the botanical museum and valuable herbarium, afford excel- 

 lent opportunities for study by students of the university and 

 others. The Victoria regia house contains some very fine 

 specimens of the great Amazon Lily and also a good repre- 

 sentation of other aquatic plants. 



The larger portion of this botanic garden is as freely open 

 to the public as is compatible with good order, and it is as 

 freely used as a park by the populace. A small portion is 

 given up to the "School of Botany," or a collection of plants, 

 arranged according to the classification of Dumortier, which 

 is available to all regular students and those really interested 

 in the study of plants from the botanical standpoint. Plants 

 of a tender or alpine nature are often protected from the hot 

 rays of the sun by small wicker hood-like screens about two 

 feet in height. 



A portion set apart as a " School of Floriculture " is designed 

 to furnish practical information about live plants to gardeners, 

 Horists or any who may be at all interested in a garden, and it is 

 freely open to the public. Into this collection the most notable of 

 the new introductions are annually introduced, so that the 

 amateur may see and appreciate the' merits or demerits of a 

 novelty before purchasing it for himself. Some of the beds 

 make a handsome show, and the condition of the plants goes 



