GARDENS AND GARDENING. 
15 
climbers, is an ornamental addition to any garden. For a 
purpose like this, the beautiful clematis Jacksonii is scarcely 
so well known as it should be; and the fiery autumn 
blushes of the Virginia-creeper touch up with just .the 
right hue the passe charms of summer verging into fall. 
But, whatever else the owner of a small garden may see 
fit to do, let him not, as Mr. Wegg would put it, “drop 
into ” statuary. Staring plaster casts, unless veiled and 
draped with abundant green, are, however good in them¬ 
selves, horribly discordant in a garden. Mr. Lowell says 
that it is only in such a climate as that of Italy, “that it does 
not seem inhuman to thrust a naked statue out of doors. 
Not to speak of their incongruity, how dreary do those 
white figures look at Fountain Abbey in that shrewd York¬ 
shire atmosphere ! ” If statuary must be used, it should 
be bronzed or of some tint other than white. Occasional¬ 
ly, in extensive grounds, a Naiad by a retired fountain or 
a Flora may be a rather pleasant object; but, after all, the 
most harmonious figures, where Nature is supposed to hQld 
sway, are those of veritable flesh and blood—even if not 
after the Greek models. 
Garden associations, and especially the characters that 
have always seemed to belong to certain plants and flowers, 
are something quite mysterious, and “our impressions of 
flowers are largely built up of these broken, multitudinous 
hintings, often exceedingly vague and indefinite, but by no 
means wholly arbitrary. It is from these dim suggestions 
that our ancestors have drawn our present names of flowers, 
sometimes with deep insight and poetic truth, sometimes 
with all sorts of flights and fantastic coloring, lent by 
medicine, astrology, or alchemy.” Many of the homely 
names thus bestowed are still preserved in England. 
From time immemorial, the violet and the lily of the 
valley have been the favorite types of modesty and sweet¬ 
ness, and these, with mignonette—:the “little darling”— 
