HORTICULTURAL PROGRESS DURING THE 19th CENTURY. 335 
monotony of those books which are written to instruct them. I even 
venture to plead for occasional gleams of humour. Half a century ago 
it seemed to me that the garden promoted the greatest joy and usefulness 
of my life, and I tried to communicate to others the happiness which 
I had found myself. I wrote accordingly to the Gardeners' Chronicle 
and to the Florist, and although I was denounced as frivolous by a few 
stolid philosophers, I received such encouragement on the whole that I 
spread my wings and took a higher flight, and in a little book which 
I wrote about Roses I have, from that time to this, achieved the influence 
which I most desire to possess. I think that we have great reason to be 
thankful, and to congratulate each other that not only has the love of 
gardening increased, but there is a far more refined ambition as to the 
arrangement of the garden. Some people say that it is a retrograde 
movement, but I say when you go back to our old style, the English or 
the natural style, it may be retrograde, but it is the return of the vaga- 
bond to the right way. I do not depreciate for a moment the value of the 
introduction of half-hardy plants. I think there are places in which they 
are most appropriate. I do not fail to admire their combination with 
stonework around the palace, the castle, or other spacious mansion. 
These form a beautiful frame, but this arrangement is not a garden ; a 
garden is a place of seclusion, of meditation, and restful peace. A garden 
is a place in which you collect the most beautiful things that you can 
procure, and in which you arrange them to be as like nature as ever you 
can make them. And it is gaining influence in the minds of the public 
that this horticulture, this beautiful blessing with which God has en- 
riched your life and mine, should not be restricted to the rich or even to 
the middle classes, but it should be offered to the working man. I rejoice 
in the efforts which are being made by the great landed proprietors and 
by the County Councils to promote this object. I will only say of it from 
long experience, that if you can once get a man to see that he can grow 
things pleasant to the eye and good for food, and at the same time teach, 
as the County Councils in many instances are trying to teach, his wife 
how to cook them — you will have done more to keep that man from the 
public-house than by any other process. For the gardener. 
He wanders away and away, with Nature, the dear old nurse, 
And she sings to him, night and day, the hymns of the universe ; 
And if ever the way seems long, and his heart begins to fail. 
She sings him a yet more wonderful song or tells a more wonderful tale." 
One of the great advantages of a love of gardening is the break it 
makes in the continuous strain of business thought. No real lover of a 
garden ever died of insomnia. This is a disease which follows those by 
night who cannot throw off the thoughts of daily life ; they retire to think, 
instead of to sleep, and the darkness and quietness of the night favour the 
thought. To leave behind the business of the city for the pleasures of 
the trees and flowers of the suburbs has saved numerous lives that would 
have otherwise been broken down. 
Societies. 
As a natural consequence, following upon the remarkable expansion 
in the interest taken in gardening, comes the fact that the number of 
