MARCH OF GARDENING.

51

for, flower-gardening as this. With the addition of the botanical volume of Dr. Lindley, Mr. Paxton, or Mrs. Loudon, the beginner's gardening library would be complete. He would afterwards like to add the Encyclopædias of Plants and Gardening; the first of which is a typographical as well as scientific wonder, the second a perfect treasure-house of information on every subject connected with horticulture.

The rapid progress made in horticultural studies we have already alluded to in the immense increase of works devoted to these subjects, especially of those addressed to ladies and treating immediately of flowers. And it is this particular turn which gardening taste at the present moment is taking. We first had the Herbalist with his simples-" temperature" of every plant given, hot or cold in the second or the third degree-and a "table of virtues" for both body and mind—“ against the falling-sickness

:

-"to glue together greene wounds "_" to comfort the heart, to drive away care, and increase the joy of the mind," and the like. Then came the Kitchengardener, with his sallet-herbs and fruit-trees-then the Botanist with his orders and classes-then the Florist with his choice bulbs and thousand and one varieties meanwhile sprang up the critical school of essayists, which produced the Landscape-gardener ; the modern march of intellect has added the Vegetable Physiologist; and, latest of all, the Agricultural Chemist. All these seem at the present moment to have centred their exertions in a single point, and to be giving in each his contribution to

make up the perfection of the Flower-gardener. A very different spirit is now abroad from that when Sir W. Temple wrote "I will not enter upon any account of flowers, having only pleased myself with seeing or smelling them, and not troubled myself with the care, which is more the lady's part than the man's, but the success is wholly with the gardener." Now not only have we beat the old herbalists, kitchen-gardeners, and botanists on their own ground-for "the leaf," " the root," and "the weed," tea-potatoes-tobacco *-were either unknown or hardly noticed by the earlier writers on these very subjects-but governments, and companies, and societies, vie with men of science, and commerce, and wealth, in gladdening our British gardens with a new flower. Without dwelling on the dahlia, brought into fashion by Lady Holland in 1804, and the pansies first patronised and hybridized by Lady Mary Monk in 1812, what treasures have the last few years added to our gardens in the splendid colours of the petunias, calceolarias, lobelias, phloxes, tropœolums, and verbenas-the azure clematis-the blue salvia-the fulgent fuchsia! What gorgeous masses of geraniums,—the "Orange-boven

* Parkinson, in 1629, says only of tobacco-"With us it is cherished as well for the medicinal qualities as for the beauty of its flowers;" not a word of smoking. Gerarde, in 1633, though he knows "the dry leaves are used to be taken in a pipe, set on fire, and suckt into the stomache, and thrust forth againe at the nostrils," yet "commends the syrup, above this fume or smoky medicine." Of the potato, he mentions its being "a meat for pleasure" as secondary to its "temperature and vertues ;" and that its "too frequent use causeth the leprosie." Neither of them, of course, mentions "tea."

CHISWICK SHOWS.

53

and "Coronation" and "Priory Queen" for instance -and what rich and endless bouquets of roses—for there are more than 2000 varieties of "the flower" in cultivation-did the last horticultural fête at Chiswick produce!

These exhibitions of the London Horticultural Society have done wonders in improving public taste and exciting the emulation of nurserymen. It is something, even if the prize is missed, to know that your flower will be gazed at by five or six thousand critical admirers. But they have done more than this: they have brought together, on one common scene of enjoyment, an orderly and happy mass, from the labourer of the soil to the queen upon the throne. We could only have wished that royalty had been pleased to have paid a public as well as private visit to the gardens. Her Majesty would have gratified the loyalest and best-conducted portion of her subjects, and would have seen, on the only occasion, perhaps, when she could have done so without annoyance, a sight, as beautiful even as the flowers the cheerful faces of thousands of welldressed and happy-looking people of every degree, making the most innocent and enjoyable of holidays out of such simple elements as Music and Flowers. The "Derby day" is certainly a glorious display of Old England, from the proprietor of the aristocratic drag to the hirer of the Whitechapel cart; but the line of distinction, both on the road and the course, is too strongly marked between the drinker of champagne and of bottled stout, and it is rather

the jostling than the amalgamation of ranks that is seen here. If we wished to show an "intelligent foreigner" what every-day England really is what we mean by the middle classes-what by the wealth, the power, the beauty of the gentry of Englandwhat by the courtesy and real unaffectedness of our nobility-we would take him on a horticultural fêteday to see the string of well-ordered carriages and well-filled omnibuses, the fly, the hackney, and the glass-coach taking up their position with the britzcha, the barouche, and the landau, in one unbroken line from Hyde Park Corner to Turnham Green-bid him look at the good-humoured faces of those who filled them, and say whether any other country in the world could, or ever would, turn out a like population. Sir Robert Peel need not fear the return to be made to his property-tax, if he will cast his eye on the Windsor road about three o'clock on the first fine Saturday of May or June. Last year more than 22,000 persons visited these exhibitions; and from the way in which they have commenced this year, there is no reason to apprehend any falling off of numbers. We rejoice in this; and trust that the same good arrangements will be continued, that the interest may be kept up in the only meeting where our artificial system tolerates the assemblage of every rank and class upon an equal footing.

The formal style which we have already advocated for the private garden seems even much more adapted to the public one; and that there are many neglected features in the Old English style which

OLD ENGLISH STYLE.

55

might with peculiar propriety be restored in any new grounds laid out for public use-not, as has been done in some tea-gardens on the Croydon Railroad, cutting up the picturesque wildness of the beautiful Penge Wood by hideous right-angled walks. and other horrors too frightful to name-but where no natural scenery already exists, a place of promenade and recreation may be much more expeditiously, and, we think, more appropriately formed, in the Continental and Old English style, by long avenues, terraces, mounds, fountains, statues, monuments, prospect - towers, labyrinths, and bowlinggreens, than by any attempt of a "picturesque" or "natural" character.

We have before us Lord Bacon's sketch for his "prince-like" garden, and Sir William Temple's description of his "perfect" one; but though we would recommend them, the first especially, to the student of ancient gardens, and though Dr. Donne considered the second "the sweetest place" he had ever seen, yet neither of them is so well suited to our present purpose of assisting the formation of garden-making in the present age, as the description given in fanciful style in The Poetry of Gardening.'*

If we rightly understand the plan here described, it is intended to combine the chief excellences of

[In place of the extract given in the Quarterly, we have appended the whole Essay on 'The Poetry of Gardening,' which appeared originally in the Carthusian, as being generally difficult of access, and appropriate on the whole to the subjects of this volume. The passage immediately referred to above is from p. 100 to 106.]