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ON THE PROGRESS AND PRINCIPLES OF ORNAMENTAL GARDENING. 



France, where the climate is not at all better than that of England, indeed in 

 some respects worse, for the common laurel will not there stand the winter as it 

 does with us : we must therefore find some other cause than the mere influence 

 of climate, and I give the following hypothesis as a probable and, as far as I know, 

 somewhat novel solution of the question. I cannot find that the love of flowers 

 and gardening is innate with us ; I find no very early traces of the passion which 

 is now so general, and am induced to consider it not so much a part of the 

 national character as a result of certain national habits and circumstances. I 

 find it to have been a gradually increasing taste for three or four centuries, and 

 find that its increase has been about in the same ratio as the increased con- 

 sumption of coals for domestic and manufacturing purposes ; from which fact I 

 draw the following inferences, viz. that in the large towns the trees and other 

 vegetation in the open places were gradually injured and disfigured, if not totally 

 destroyed, by the sulphuric acid gas emitted in the combustion of coals in large 

 and increasing quantities : an effect which was early observed ; and even so far 

 back as the reign of Henry II. an alarm lest it might prove as injurious to 

 animal as vegetable life, led to the issuing of an edict by which the burning of 

 coal in London, and I believe other large towns, was prohibited. The advantages 

 however of coal fires were not thus to be extinguished by a royal mandate ; the 

 order was soon disregarded, and despite of that and other oppositions the consump- 

 tion of coal went on increasing. The consequence eventually was, that all healthy 

 vegetation within the limits of the thickly populated parts of large towns was 

 prevented, as any one who has seen a luckless geranium or more wretched pot 

 of mignonette struggling into, or rather out of, its miserable existence in any one 

 of the narrow smoky streets of London or Birmingham, will easily admit ; and 

 very unpleasant would be the contemplation of such an object were it not for 

 the strong conviction that an early release must soon put it out of its misery. 

 From these circumstances we may trace the delight experienced by the cockney 

 at the sight of green fields and waving trees, and his ecstacies at the bare idea of 

 the existence of such places as Hampstead or Highgate ; the next step was to obtain 

 the means of possessing, if but in the smallest proportion, some of the objects 

 rendered so desirable from being beheld but occasionally at perhaps long intervals. 

 This was effected by renting a small patch of ground for a garden at a sufficient 

 distance to ensure the success of vegetation ; and at one period scarcely any 

 inhabitant of a large town was without his garden in the suburbs. As luxury 

 and wealth increased, a house was added to the garden, not for the sake of the 

 house, for better were to be had within the town, but that the garden (a luxury 

 impossible to be had in the coal-burning city) might be more constantly enjoyed. 

 Thus originated with us as I imagine the national taste for gardening ; and as all 

 will acknowledge that the fashions of the towns govern those of the country, the 

 suburban gardens of the great towns it may be supposed were soon copied around 

 the cottages of the peasantry, and a taste so uncostly, and capable of yielding so- 



