simple. Their rose-bushes and gilliflowers were dear to them, because themselves had pruned, and watered, and watched them-had marked from day to day their opening buds, and removed their fading blossoms-and had cherished each choicest specimen for the posy to be worn at the christening of the squire's heir, or on my lord's birthday."

In a like strain the wise and good author of ‹ Human Life' beautifully says—

"I would not have my garden too extended; not because flowers are not the most delicious things, speaking to the sentiments as well as to the senses, but on account of the intrinsic and superior value of moderation. When interests are divided, they are not so strong. Three acres of flowers and a regiment of gardeners bring no more pleasure than a sufficiency. Besides which, in the smaller possession there is more room for the mental pleasure to step in and refine all that which is sensual. We become acquainted, as it were, and even form friendships, with individual flowers. We bestow more care upon their bringing up and progress. They seem sensible of our favour, absolutely to enjoy it, and make pleasing returns by their beauty, health, and sweetness. In this respect a hundred thousand roses, which we look at en masse, do not identify themselves in the same manner as even a very smali border; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly attuned, the little cottage-garden may give him more real delight than belongs to the owner of a thousand acres. All this is so entirely nature, that, give me a garden well kept, however small, two or three spreading trees, and a mind at ease, and I defy the world."

Nor do we find anything contravening this in Cowley's wish that he might have "a small house and large garden, few friends and many books." Doubtless he coveted neither the Bodleian nor Chats

worth, and intended his garden to be "large" only in comparison with his other possessions.

It is this limited expenditure and unlimited interest which a garden requires, combined with the innocence of the amusement, that renders it so great a blessing—more even than to the cottager himself— to the country clergyman. We must leave to the novelist to sketch the happy party which every summer's evening finds busied on many an English vicarage-lawn, with their trowels and watering-pots, and all the paraphernalia of amateur gardeners; though we may ask the utilitarian, if he would deign to scan so simple a group, from the superintending vicar to the water-carrying schoolboy, where he would better find developed "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" than among those very objects and that very occupation where utility is not only banished, but condemned.

We would have our clergy know that there is no readier way to a parishioner's heart-next to visiting his house, which, done in health and in sickness, is the keystone of our blessed parochial system-than to visit his garden, suggesting and superintending improvements, distributing seeds, and slips, and flowers, and lending or giving such gardening books as would be useful for his limited domain. And many a poor scholar, in some obscure curacy, out of the way of railroads and book-clubs,

"In life's stillest shade reclining,
In desolation unrepining,

Without a hope on earth to find
A mirror in an answering mind,"

has made the moral and intellectual wilderness in which he is cast bloom for him in his trees, and herbs, and flowers; and if unable, from the narrowness of his means and situation,

"To raise the terrace or to sink the grot,"

has found his body refreshed and his spirits lightened, in growing the salad to give a relish to his simple meal, and the flower to bedeck his threadbare button-hole,-enabled by these recreations to bear up against those little every-day annoyances which, though hardly important enough to tax our faith or our philosophy, make up, in an ill-regulated or unemployed mind, the chief ills of life.

Pope, who professed that of all his works he was most proud of his garden, said also, with more nature and truth, that he "pitied that man who had completed everything in his garden." To pull down and destroy is quite as natural to man as to build up and improve, and this love of alteration may help to account for the many changes of style in gardening that have taken place. The course of the seasons, the introduction of new flowers, the growth of trees, will always of themselves give the gardener enough to do; and if the flower-garden is perfect, and there is a nook of spare ground at hand, instead of extending his parterres, which to be neat must needs be circumscribed, he had better devote it to an arboretum for choice trees and shrubs; or take up with some one extensive class-as for a thornery or a pinery; or make it a wilderness-like mixture of all

kinds. Such ground will not require mowing more than twice or thrice in the year, and will afford much pleasure, without much labour and expense. If there is a little damp nook or dell, with rockwork and water at command, let it by all means be made a fernery, for which Mr. Newman's book will supply plenty of materials.

But we are straying too far from our immediate subject of flower-gardens and flowers, and with a few more remarks upon the latter we must bring this dissertation to a close otherwise we should have something to say of the unique beauties of Redleaf, and the splendid Italian garden lately designed at Trentham by the genius of Mr. Barry; something more too of the gorgeous new importations which every day is now bringing, some for the first time, into blossom. We are even promised new varieties of orchideous plants from Mr. Rollisson's experiments in raising seedlings for the first time in this country.

To produce new seedling varieties of one's own, by hybridizing and other mysteries of the priests of Flora, is indeed the highest pleasure and the deepest esotericism of the art. The impregnating them is to venture within the very secrets of creation, and the naming them carries us back to one of the highest privileges of our first parents. The offspring becomes our own spyov; which, according to Aristotle, claims the highest degree of our love. We should feel that, in leaving them, we were leaving friends, and address them in the words of Eve,

"O flowers,

My early visitation and my last

At even, which I had bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names,
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
Par. Lost, xi.

We cannot but admire the practice of the Church of Rome, which calls in the aid of floral decorations on her high festivals. Though we feel convinced that it is the most bounden duty of the Church of England, at the present moment, to give no unnecessary offence by restorations in indifferent matters, we should be inclined to advocate, notwithstanding the denunciations of some of the early Fathers, an exception in the case of our own favourites. We shall not easily forget the effect of a long avenue of orange-trees in the Cathedral of St. Gudule at Brussels, calling to mind as it did the expression of the Psalmist" Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God." The white lily is held throughout Spain and Italy the emblem of the Virgin's purity, and frequently decorates her shrines; and many other flowers, dedicated to some saint, are used in profusion on the day of his celebration. The oakleaf and the palm-branch have with us their loyal and religious anniversary, and the holly still gladdens the hearts of all good Churchmen at Christmas-a custom which the Puritans never succeeded in effacing from the most cant-ridden parish in the kingdom. Latterly, flowers have been much used among us in festivals, and processions, and gala-days