fl76 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the heart is so inspired " with vernal delight and joy able to drive 

 all sadness but despair." If ever you suffer from the sadness which 

 borders on despair, don't seek sympathy from the Greeks. If you are sound 

 in heart and limb and with a brain to match, and are almost proof 

 against exhaustion, then Greek can meet Greek, but they provide no 

 garden hiding-places for such as poor Yorick. Alas poor Yorick ! do you 

 know him, outmanned in the struggle, bewildered in the turmoil? 

 They provided few places — 



Where good men disappointed in the quest 

 Of wealth, and power, and honours, long for rest ; 

 Or having known the splendours of success, 

 Sigh for the ohscurities of happiness. 



These enclosures, it seems to me, were all too morbid for those who 

 spent their time out of doors on the qui vive to see or hear some new 

 thing. 



1 think the majority have an erroneous idea of the country of Greece 

 and its configuration. The general impression is that it resembles Italy. 

 The following from the pen of Mr. Ormerod, a recent traveller, will convey 

 a better idea of the country than a quarter of a volume of ordinary writing : — 

 " A journey through Greece shows you at once why the people made for 

 the sea. Greece never could have supported its population. The moun- 

 tains come right down to the coast and tumbled the Greeks into the 

 water. A people cannot hang for ever on those bare hills, and once in 

 the sea they had either to make themselves boats, and quick too, or sink. 

 They chose boat-building. And that briefly explains Greek foreign 

 exploit. For Greece is mere rugged mountain. Here and there where 

 the mountains miss each other, bits of valleys slip in, and, taking their 

 chance, elbow themselves out into plains. You will see no oxen knee- 

 deep in grassy meadow ponds, with an evening sun setting in mild glory 

 at their feet, nor will you inhale the smell of the rich brown earth after 

 rain. But yet Greece is very beautiful. The jagged crags strike against 

 the perfect arc of the heavens and print themselves masterfully along it ; 

 the great sun pierces irresistibly into every valley, robbing shadows of 

 their depth and gloom. In the Corinthian Gulf stretches of vivid green 

 finish off into a straight line, and bands of deep blue suddenly begin. In 

 little creeks white-crested greenish waves run inland and dissolve in 

 lagoons of winey red, and the islands gleam on the waters like plates of 

 burnished gold." 



This traveller helped me to solve the problem that I had set myself — 

 namely, the why and wherefore of the lack of attention to garden design 

 in &noient Greece, and the scant references to it in their literature, since 

 he confirmed me in my surmise that only the great and the best were 

 acclaimed by them, and their national demand was for perpetual youth- 

 fulness. He says : " Ruins in Greece are not good, except the best, but 

 they are very good. The Propyla?a is the grandest portal through which 

 a triumphal procession ever filed, and the Parthenon the most majestic 

 of all temples. One gets a strange impression of finality about it all. 

 • These beautiful old buildings,' I heard an enthusiastic gentleman exclaim. 

 I cannot tell you how wrong that seemed, for to me the whole appeal 



