n 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
where nature waters them with the tricklings of glaciers ; 
or from the dry lava of volcanic sites, where, perhaps, rain 
never falls, to compel them to shake hands as friends, 
and cease all disputes about the superiority of their 
native lands and seasons, in full content with the circum¬ 
stances with which the vigilant gardener has surrounded 
them. 
It is at this point that gardening rises to the dignity of 
an art. Let any one take a survey of one of the best modern 
gardens, in the height of the season, and say whether 
gardening should not be classed as one of the highest 
of the fine arts, for it paints not from life, but with life; it 
models not after a form, but into endless forms of grace, 
and symmetry, and power, and it performs its best works 
by the aid of subjects that are foreign to our soil, our 
seasons, and even, in some cases, to the very sunshine 
under which they grow ; yet the gardener has so moulded 
their habit and altered their constitution, that they take 
to their conditions as if they were “ to the manner born.” 
Then, if we go a step higher, and consider how a few 
poor pelargoniums, dahlias, chrysanthemums, tulips, 
hyacinths, and other such things, which at their first 
introduction were not much more attractive than the 
commonest weeds, have, under the manipulations of the 
hybridizer, become the parents of thousands of varieties, 
to which every season makes additions of still better 
ones, we shall see that, in a secondary sense, the gardener 
is a creator as well as a modeller of beauty. Give him a 
thin, ragged, and almost colourless weed, and as soon as 
his sharp eye detects its capability for improvement, he 
marries it to some kindred flower, or to one of its own 
