July 17.] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
235 
■sr* 
WEEKLY CALENDAR. 
M W 
JULY 17—23, 1851. 
Weather near London in 1850. 
Sun 
Sun 
Moon 
Moon’s 
Clock 
Day of 
D D 
Barometer. Thermo. 
Wind. Rain in In. 
Rises. 
Sets. 
R.&S. 
Age. 
bef. Sun. 
Year. 
17 Th 
Apricots ripe. 
29.865 — 29.849 80—54 
N. 
34 
4 a. 4 
7 a. 8 
10 
23 
18 
5 
45 
198 
18 F 
Yellow Centaury flowers. 
29 991—29.921] 76—59 
S.W. 
37 j 1 
5 
6 
10 
44 
19 
5 
60 
199 
19 S 
Sun’s declin. 20° 53' N. 
29.941 — 29.921! 67—54 
W. 
02 
6 
5 
11 
3 
20 
5 
54 
200 
20 Sun 
5 Sunday after Trinity. 
29.943 — 29.933 66—56 
E. 
8 
4 
11 
22 
21 
5 
59 
201 
21 M 
(Wheat harvest begins. 
129.946 — 29.938 78—50 
S.E. 
-T 
9 
3 
11 
42 
€ 
6 
2 
202 
22 Tc 
j Wild Cherries ripe. 
(29.943 — 29.911 85—60 
S. 
— 
10 
2 
morn. 
23 
6 
5 
203 
23 W 
Horehound flowers. 
! 29.901 — 29.809 88—55 
S.E. 
15 
12 
1 
0 
4 
24 
6 
7 
204 
If exterior circumstances and mental accomplishments could render a 
man supremely happy, Horace Walpole would have passed a blissful 
life, and Strawberry Hill would have been his terrestrial Paradise. Suffi¬ 
ciently learned, refined in taste, fond of literature, and the fine arts, of 
wealth wherewith to gratify his inclinations, and surrounded by gifted 
friends, who shared and aided his enjoyments—what could forbid him 
saying :—“ Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry ? ” Yet it was not 
so ; he was a discontented man. To account for this, we need but know 
that he was a Christian only in name, and destitute of the “sunshine 
from within,” which that only can bestow, he could withdraw from all 
the blessings around him, and seated in the halls of his ancestors, write 
thus :— 
“ Here I am at Houghton ! and alone ! In this spot, where (except 
two hours last month) I have not been for sixteen years 1 Think, what a 
crowd of reflections! No, Gray and forty church-yards could not 
furnish so many ; nay, I know one must feel them with greater indif¬ 
ference than I feel I possess to put them into verse. Here I am, probably 
for the last time of my life, though not for the last time. Every clock 
that strikes tells me I am an hour nearer to yonder church—that church 
into which I have not the courage to enter, where lies the mother on 
whom I doated, and who doated on me ! There are the two rival mis¬ 
tresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy it! There, 
too, lies he who founded its greatness, to contribute to whose fall Europe 
was embroiled. There he sleeps in quiet and dignity, vyhile his friend 
and his foe, rather his false ally and his real enemy, are exhausting the 
dregs of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets. When I had 
drunk tea, I strolled into the garden : they told me it was now called 
‘ the pleasure-ground.’ What a dissonant idea of pleasure! Those 
groves, those alleys, where I have passed so many charming moments, are 
now stripped up or overgrown : many fond paths I could not unravel, 
though with a very exact clue in my memory. I met two gamekeepers 
and a thousand hares 1 In the days when all my soul was turned to plea¬ 
sure and vivacity land you will think, perhaps, it is far from being out of 
tune yet), I hated Houghton and its solitude. Yet I loved this garden— 
as now, with many regrets, I love Houghton—Houghton, I know’ not 
what to call it, a monument of grandeur or ruin. How I wished this 
evening for Lord Bute : how I could preach to him ! For myself, I don’t 
want to be preached to. The servants wanted to lay me in the great 
apartmentwhat! to make me pass my night as I had done my evening ! 
It was like proposing to Margaret Roper to be a Duchess in the Court 
that cut off her father’s head, and imagining it would please her. I have 
chosen to sit in my father’s little dressing-room ; and am now by his 
escritoire, where, in the height of his fortune, he used to receive the 
accounts of his farmers, and deceive himself, or us, with the thoughts of 
his economy. How wise a man at once, and how weak I For what has 
he built Houghton ? For his grandson to annihilate, or for his son to 
mourn over.” 
Poor Walpole, for this Tantalus, indeed, deserves our pity to be mingled 
with our applause of his abilities, lingered on a martyr to the gout until 
he had entered his 80th year, and died as he had lived, in full possession 
of a frivolous intellect. Born in 1716 , he died on the 2nd of March, 
1797 , and these boundaries of life must be all that we record here of the 
usual topics of his biography. What he achieved as a politician, a 
conisseur, a romance writer, and a correspondent, must be sought for 
in other works, for we have only space to trace an outline of his sayings 
and doings in connection with gardening. 
His residence, Strawberry Hill, was originally a small tenement, built 
in 1698, by the Earl of Bradford’s coachman, as a lodging-house. Colley 
Cibber was one of its first tenants ; and, after him, successively, Talbot, 
Bishop of Durham, the Marquis of Carnarvon, Mrs. Chenevix, the toy- 
woman, and Lord John Philip Sackville. Mr. W. purchased it, 1747, 
began to fit it up in Gothic style, 1753, and completed it, 1776. He per¬ 
mitted it to be shown, by tickets, to parties of four, from May to October, 
between the hours of 12 and 3, and only one party a-day. 
Writing to Mr. Conway, in June, 1747, Walpole says:—“ You perceive 
by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at 
Windsor; it is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Cheven x’s 
shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled 
meadows with phillagree hedges. 
A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled, 
And little fishes wave their wings in gold. 
Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually 
with coaches and chaises ; barges, as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer, 
move under my windows; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my 
prospects ; but, thank God, the Thames is between me and the Duchess 
of Queensbury. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and 
Pope’s ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical 
moonlight. The Chevenix’s had tricked the cottage up for themselves.” 
The garden of about ten acres, was laid out chiefly as a fore-ground to a 
beautiful winding of the Thames, and Walpole’s surplus income was de¬ 
voted too deeply to antiquities, books, and pictures, for a margin to be left 
for high horticultural disbursements. Writing to Mr. Mason, early in the 
July of 1774, he says:—“ I know nothing but that we have deplorable 
weather ; the sun like you has called but once at Strawberry. To make 
amends the cold has brought on the winter fruits so fast, that I had a 
codlin tart to-dav, and expect pears and apples ripe before peaches and 
nectarines. I wish we had never imported those southern delicacies, 
unless we had brought their climate over too. We should have been very 
happy with our hips and haws and rainy days, and called it luxury. I 
cannot afford to have hot-houses, and glass-houses, and acres of tanner’s 
bark, as every tradesman has at his villa, or at his mistress’s villa. I kill 
my own strawberries and cream, and can aim no higher.” 
In 1771, appended to the fourth volume of his “ Anecdotes of Painting 
in England,” he printed his Essay on Modern Gardening. In this 
he traces and applauds the gradual progress of Landscape Gardening, 
and concludes with rejoicing that the mantle of Bridgeman had then 
descended upon Brown. The latter he lost no opportunity to applaud, 
and he evidently liked him the better because he thwarted the wishes of 
George III. “ Soon after the news of Brown’s death,” says Walpole, 
“ had reached the royal ear, he went over to Richmond Gardens, ana in a 
tone of great satisfaction, said to the under gardener — 1 Brown is dead : 
now, Mellicant, you and I can do here what we please.’ ” “ Are you not 
concerned,” he adds, “for the death of Brown? I made a bad epitaph 
for him, which if you please you may recolour with any tints that remain 
on your pallet, with which you repainted Fresnoy ; here it is :— 
With one lost Paradise the name 
Of our first ancestor is stained ; 
Brown shall enjoy unsullied fame 
For many a Paradise regained. 
I have a mind, should you (Mr. Mason) approve it, to call designers of 
gardens, gardenists, to distinguish them from gardeners, or landscapists. 
I wish you would coin a term for the art itself.” 
Meteorology of the Week. —At Chiswick, from observations 
during the last twenty-four years, the average highest and lowest tem¬ 
peratures of these days are 72 . 6 ° and 52.2° respectively The greatest 
heat, 94°, occurred on the 17 th in 1834, and the lowest cold, 41°, on the 
19 th in 1832. During the period 83 days were fine, and on 85 rain fell. 
The question no longer is, Shall the Glass Pavilion 
remain in Hyde Park ? but, Who will venture to recom¬ 
mend its removal? It has fulfilled its purpose admi¬ 
rably ; it has practically refuted nearly all its propliecied 
defects; the time is approaching when the World’s 
Exhibition must be re-distributed to the four quarters 
] of the globe; and then, who will say that this most 
splendid, and most vast of glass structures should be 
tom piece-meal? There is one man—and only one 
man—who, mistaking obstinacy for consistency, may 
vote in the House of Commons for such a Vandal-like 
destruction; but by the hundreds of thousands who 
I have visited this magnificent structure not one hand 
No. CXLVL, Vol. VI. 
would be held up to sustain such an injurious dictate of 
folly. No right-hearted Englishman, who is conscious 
of the capabilities of the structure, would vote that his 
countrymen should be deprived of the vast benefits it is 
so easily capable of conferring upon them. If, indeed, 
there be any one who wishes that the invalid should be 
deprived of a health-restoring place of exercise, and 
that the metropolitan inhabitant, be he peer or artizan, 
should have dashed from him a garden from which no 
inclemency of season could exclude him ; if there be such 
a person, then he will vote for the removal of the Glass 
Pavilion; and, if lie succeeds, the bitterest punishment 
that his worst enemy could invoke upon him, would be, 
