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THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ November, 
a refined and cultivated taste, is the difference between art and no art, and is no 
less than that between different creations of the *poet, the sculptor, and the 
painter. But surely if w r e meet with a poem, a statue, or a painting in which 
there is no art, we should not be justified in asserting that poetry, sculpture, and 
painting were not properly classed among the Arts :— 
“ Tlio poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, 
Ancl, as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name.” 
Well, does not the imagination of the landscape gardener, as well as that of 
the poet, the sculptor, and the painter, body forth “ the forms of things unknown,” 
and what is this but art ? The late Archbishop Whately, in his annotation on 
Bacon’s Essay on Gardens, says, “ What is now called landscape gardening is, of 
all the fine arts (of which it may fairly be accounted one), the latest in its origin, 
having arisen not very early in the last century.” Washington Irving remarks 
that “ the rudest habitation, the most unpromising and scanty portion of land in 
the hands of an Englishman of taste becomes a little paradise.” England, we 
know, is above all others the country of such paradises, and here is valuable 
testimony to the art which has created them. 
Next of gardening as a science. Possibly no one will dispute that gardening, 
as regards the production of fruits, vegetables, and flowers, is fast becoming a 
science, but many may not agree with me that it already is one. In support of 
that opnnion, I would adduce in evidence the fact that the same individuals pro¬ 
duce year after year, almost with unerring certainty, and this notwithstanding the 
Variable nature of our climate, the most perfect examples of the special fruits, 
Vegetables, and flowers to which they devote particular attention. And passing 
from the known to the unknown, it is for the most part the same individuals who 
are working out successfully year by year the improvement of the particular races 
of plants which they have taken in hand. Is not this science ? 
I admit that gardening, both as an art and as a science, is at present in an 
infantile state; but this is the state in which all arts and sciences once were ; 
there are here, as there were there, ample materials lying hither and thither with 
which to assert and vindicate the positions I am contending for ; the materials 
only want collecting, assorting, and moulding into form. What our countrymen 
Bacon and Newton did for certain sciences in their day, we are wanting some one 
to do for gardening in ours. And if we cannot find all the necessary qualifications 
for the work in one man, may we not hope to find them separately in many, but 
capable of combination so as to work out this particular end ? In the sixteenth 
century, Bubens, Snyders, and Jordaens painted in company for the realisation of 
a particular end, and the same experiment has been repeated in our own day by 
Cooper and Lee. 
This brings me to inquire how far this particular work may be considered to 
