Sept. 6, 1884. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
9 
maidenly ears. Sacred, too, is it to that Sabbath 
rest which all of us so much need, so much prize. 
Here in the settles that the porch so gently shelters 
from the heat of summer and from the bleak winds 
of winter, the wearied husbandman and the not less 
»industrious matron love to occasionally take their 
well-earned ease. Nay, even to old age too is the 
cottage porch sacred, for here on sunny days do 
the decripit patriarchs of the family love to linger, 
gazing dreamily over the fields and scenes so fami¬ 
liar in life, yet looking as it were into the dim dis¬ 
tance for an eternal future. 
Clothed in its covering of Ivy that the co ating may 
be as warm in winter as it is cool and pleasant in 
creation even in labour in his garden. There are 
matters of fact aspects to cottage life, as well as 
sentimental ones, and these must have their sea¬ 
sons of regard. Beneath that richly foliaged vine, 
bearing as it does myriads of clusters of fruit that 
will presently ripen and render to the cottagers 
acceptable fruit, or material for the manufacture 
of some home-made wine, there lies hidden a 
rugged mass of brickwork that encloses so inelegant 
an essential to domestic life as an oven. Heated 
perhaps once or twice a week that the family 
may have an abundance of the staff of life, yet 
doth its warmth thus intermittently given tend to 
the production of such grapes as ordinary walls 
efforts to beautify otherwise ugly, though neces¬ 
sary, objects. 
How strange by contrast stands out the garish 
brick red or stucco cottage—or villa as perchance 
the owner will have it—the walls of which rude 
nails shall not enter nor vulgar climbers cover. The 
garden is laid out in severe primness, the turf 
is of the flattest and most closely shaven, the beds 
and borders are of the most gaudy and unsuitable 
hues of colour, the walks are of the yellowest of 
gravel, and kept painfully clean ; the very hedge¬ 
rows are kept prim and even by shearing, and 
the trees are equally under the blighting influ¬ 
ence of the knife and saw. There may be here 
A COTTAGE PORCH. (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MR. VERNON HEATH.) 
the summer, or perhaps embowered densely by many 
flowered climbers, the porch is now, and we trust will 
ever remain, the chief feature of beauty and of in¬ 
terest in our cottage scene. But if in such a flower- 
covered home there is love and happiness there must 
not less be good sense and industry, and an abundant 
display of the domestic virtues. The good house¬ 
wife cannot be always resting in the pretty porch, 
nor may her maidens be ever dreaming of sweet¬ 
hearts and lusty bridegrooms. They must dis¬ 
charge the internal duties of the household in 
the day, just as at eventide the head of the family, 
home from his daily toil, and now refreshed by the 
pleasant evening meal, finds not unwelcome re- 
would not gis r e. Here is the unsig'htly object 
hidden from view, and yet it positively forms 
in the garden scenery a pleasing feature P Even 
that usually ugly object the water-butt — huge 
receptacle as it is of heavens rain which falls upon 
the housetop, and must needs not be wasted, for is 
not the water acceptable to the family for purifica¬ 
tion, conducing to comfort and health, without 
which other blessings become poor indeed. This 
butt is hidden from view by a creeper-covered 
trellis, as too is that dubious adjunct to cottage 
homes the ash-pit, for it must be a part of the 
economy of any well-regulated garden that the best 
features of horticulture are found in their humblest 
some evidence of money spent, but of comfort, of 
picturesque ness, of sweetne ss, loveliness, and beauty 
there is none. It is all lacquer without one particle 
of nature in the surroundings. Happily the pure 
taste for the picturesque and the beautiful, the 
rural, and the homely, largely predominates. 
Myriads whose lives perchance have been passed in 
scenes as far removed from rurality, yet dream of a 
climber covered cottage home, just as we have pic¬ 
tured, as a sort of earthly paradise, a spot which can 
they but find to end their days in, those later days 
shall assuredly be happy. May that love for the 
cottage homes of England never die out, nay rather 
may it increase and intensify to the end of time. 
