90 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the honeysuckle, and the wild hedgerow rose ? Who has 

 forgotten the cowslip-balls and daisy-chains ? 



And by the brook, and in the glade, 



Are all our wanderings o'er ? 

 Oh ! while those dear ones with us stayed 



Would we had loved them more. 



And our little flower-beds, in which we sowed pippins and planted 

 twigs, and expected apples and trees next day. Hard by, the 

 cemetery, in which a beloved white mouse was solemnly 

 interred, with a cigar-box for a coffin, and the dinner-bell tolled 

 at intervals ! 



Fascinations follow, which, like the Baron all covered with 

 jewels and gold, attract our affections so light and so vain, and 

 lure us from our first love. Although " the goddess Diana, sir, 

 who calls aloud for the chase," may be 1 £ as partickler in her 

 behaviour as Miss Sophie Wackles," she does not hesitate to 

 beguile us from our loyalty to Flora; and the jumping pony 

 and the new gun, the fishing-rod and the bat, seem to monopolise 

 our leisure hours and to exclude all other recreations. 



Such is the rule, and happy are the exceptional few who 

 retain amid these later excitements that appreciation of a garden 

 which makes our homes more beautiful and our lives more 

 bright ; or who, having lost it awhile, are mercifully restored (as I 

 was more than fifty years ago, on leaving Oxford) to a better 

 mind. 



Once for all — for when this love of a garden possesses us in 

 our maturer years, it leaves us only with life. 



The love of field sports comes and goes. There is a time 

 when the big stile, and the broad stream, and the high wall and 

 the awkward double seem to warn us, as sermons in stones and 

 books in the running brooks, that for the sake of others, in con- 

 sideration for our kinsfolk and friends, for the best interests of 

 the country, as husbands, as fathers, as members of the County 

 Council, we are forbidden to submerge ourselves in watery 

 graves, or to dislocate our spinal cord. Personally, we should 

 revel in the risk, but we can no longer disobey the stern voice of 

 J)uty, which commands us, as parents and patriots, to remember 

 our responsibilities and go at once to the gate. 



Too soon the time comes when that rocketing pheasant crows 

 derisively, as your shot passes three feet behind his tail ; when the 



