January 4, 1883 ] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
4th 
Tn 
5th 
F 
6th 
s 
7th 
SUN 
1st Sunday after Epiphany. [Covent Garden. 
8th 
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Sale of Liliums and other Bulbs at Messrs. Stevens’s Rooms, 
9 th 
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Royal Horticultural Society, Fruit and Floral Committees at 
10 th 
W 
[11 A.H. 
THE PAST, PEE SENT, AND FUTURE. 
^^SgACIi one of these (past, present, and 
~ ■' future) lias a marvellous power over us, 
though it is sometimes said that the 
young live in the future, the old in the 
P as ^ 5 yet this, like all general expres- 
sions, is only partly true. The young 
’fyl have their past as well as the old. This was 
vividly brought before me by overhearing 
two little children at play—two quite little fel¬ 
lows, one six years old, the other only three. 
Having wearied themselves with romping they 
both sat down hot and dishevelled, the thought being 
“ What’s to be the next game ? ” when the elder broke 
in with the words, “ Willie, let’s talk of the dear old 
times.” “ What are they, Harry ?” said the lesser. 
“ Why, when you were at Weymouth and rode on a 
donkey.” And they talked of those dear old times— 
just a few months ago ! Verily these tiny ones had 
their past. So have all, whether young or middle- 
aged or old, mixing with their present, while something 
ahead, usually, we will hope, something bright, is in 
the future of almost all. 
But at no time of our lives are past, present, and 
future so much with us as at the beginning of another 
year. All three are with us. May they all be with us 
at this time for our good. The thoughtful gardener— 
and he alone is a good gardener—while he looks to im¬ 
mediate duty, yet naturally thinks of past successes or 
failures ; and even his very preparations for next season 
compel him to think of the future. A garden itself 
points forwards and backwards too, as saith the poet:—- 
“ Fruits are born of flowers ; 
Peach and roughest nut were blossoms in the spring.” 
To gardeners I would say, as their life is becoming 
more and more a struggle, when, as now, where one 
situation is vacant there are fifty applicants for it—The 
men to get on and hold on are those who are thoughtful 
as well as active. A notable result of thought I may 
mention in connection with this Journal. The past 
year has produced no papers of higher type in garden¬ 
ing than those entitled “ Vines at Longleat, their His¬ 
tory and Management,” and what thought they reveal ! 
How the writer is constantly referring to the past! 
Had he not noticed accurately, and perhaps “taken a 
note ” of his Vines of 1870, he would not have written 
so well in 1880. An observant mind necessarily stores 
up observations for future use. 
I had written thus far when the leading article of 
last week’s Journal came into my hand, and with this 
paper of mine in my mind I read the old spademan’s 
account of his experience of fifty years (a past, indeed, 
of no ordinary length) with unusual interest. With 
him I desire to sing no dirges over the past. The 
squires’ gardens, owing to the reduced rents on land, 
may be going down; but think of those around every 
city and large town, from swarthy Birmingham to fair 
Bath. If Cowper nearly a hundred years ago could 
say or sing— 
“ The villas with which London stands begirt, 
Like a dusk Indian with his belt of beads,” 
what would he say now, where there are hundreds of 
upper-class villas and, of course, gardens, when in his 
day there were units ? Like the letters now and then : 
now they are many and small, then they were the few 
and the large. So, of course, there are more places to 
fill, and may the best men always fill them. 
The love of flowers is ever increasing, and this goes 
hand-in-hand with refinement and a nicer attention, 
not only to people’s wants, but their wishes and 
cravings. If you take any popular history of England, 
say Knight’s, you will there learn how sparely houses 
were furnished two hundred years ago, not to go fur¬ 
ther back; how carpets were not, but floors covered 
with rushes or sand ; how a bedroom had little more 
than a bed, a table—a small one—and one of those 
oak chests now eagerly bought up by the curious. 
Then in after years in another century there were 
those better, but sparely, furnished rooms with which 
Mr. E. Caldecott’s little books have made all familiar. 
The oak chest gave place to the chest of drawers, and 
the one chair to several of more convenient size ; but 
now see what refinement and good taste have made 
bedrooms, to say nothing of drawing-rooms. And now 
I come to the special point. Flower vases of artistic 
shape are in all rooms. Refinement increases a sense 
of beauty in house and furniture, and with them a love 
of flowers and of their possession necessarily increase. 
Gardens are in themselves good things, pleasure-giving 
things, and the love of them goes hand-in-hand with 
better manners—in short, with increased civilisation. 
Never did man understand the comforts of life as now : 
better, more convenient, houses, and furnishing and 
adornments ; and what adornments so cherished as 
flowers ? and how many more receptacles for flowers one 
sees in shop windows ! Yet even to descend to the 
kitchen garden, man’s better understanding his own 
body makes him more value fruits and vegetables. 
But in praising the present let none slight, still less 
despise, the past men. To the men with the poor 
mechanical appliances of old times be all the praise. 
We need not go back to those whom Tennyson calls— 
“ The grand old gardener and his wife,” 
meaning Adam and Eve, but take those whose lives 
were only a few years since given in our Journal. 
Take only one, old Gerard : what a grand man he was 
of observation and knowledge—knowledge because of 
observation ! This age with all its advantages does 
not give any giants in any walk of life, no second 
Shalcespeares, or Bacons, or Newtons. Revere the past 
men, while you rejoice in the present means of carry¬ 
ing out great ideas. In olden days the men were often 
beyond the means, now the reverse full often. 
I think we need a little more variety in gardens, 
they are too much alike. Victor Hugo has said 
that “ Nothing stifles one like perpetual symmetry 
or sameness.” “Symmetry,” he goes on to say, “is 
Ho. 132.—yoL. VI., Third serie^. 
ho. 1788.—VOL. LXIS., Old Series, 
