Who were but borne
Just as the modest morne

Teem'd her refreshing dew?

Alas, you have not known that shower,
That marres a flower,

Nor felt th' unkind

Breath of a blasting wind,

Nor are ye worne with yeares;

Or warpt, as we,

Who think it strange to see,

Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young,
To speak by teares before ye have a tongue.

Speak, whimp'ring younglings, and make known
The reason why

Ye droop and weep,

Is it for want of sleep,

Or childish lullabie?

Or that ye have not seen as yet
The violet?

Or brought a kisse

From that sweet-heart to this?

No, no, this sorrow shown

By your teares shed

Wo'd have this lecture read

That things of greatest, so of meanest worth,

Conceived with grief are, and with teares brought forth.

My garden takes up half my daily care,
And my field asks the minutes I can spare.

HARTE.

ADDISON remarked, that he considered the pleasure we take in a garden, as one of the most innocent delights in human life. Evelyn, also, said that the happiness of a person fond of his garden was preferable to what was founded on all other enjoyments. Cowley evidently was of the same opinion, for he exclaims

Blest be the man (and blest he is) whome'er
Plac'd far out of the roads of hope and fear

A little field, and little garden, feeds :

The field gives all that frugal nature needs;
The wealthy garden liberally bestows

All she can ask

Milton, also, described the delights of a garden in the most eloquent language; and although he was unable to see what he so beautifully pourtrayed, yet his intellectual eye, his fine imagination, and his correct taste, enabled him not only to reject factitious ornaments, and artificial conceits, but to give the following beautiful description of a garden, made by the hand of Nature herself

From that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy error under pendant shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierc'd shade
Imbrown'd the noon-tide bowers. Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view.

Sir William Temple, in his Essay on Gardening, has the following passage. "If we believe the Scriptures," he observes, "we must allow that God Almighty esteemed the life of a man in a garden the happiest he could give him, or else he would not have placed Adam in that of Eden; it was the state of innocence and pleasure, and the life of husbandry and cities came after the fall, with guilt and labour."

It is impossible, also, to read Pope's works, and not to be aware of the great delight he took in his garden, or not to perceive that he had imbibed some taste for ornamental gardening. The description of his grotto, in his letter to Mr. Blount (1725) is altogether charming. Alas! to see his garden now, divided and subdivided his walks covered with weeds- the urn he erected to the memory of his mother, with its affecting inscription, scrawled upon and defaced—and his grotto, his charming and interesting grotto, where he

"found a spring* of the clearest water, which fell in a perpetual rill, that echoed through the cavern night and day," and from which, "looking down through a sloping arcade of trees, the sails on the river might be seen passing suddenly and vanishing," is now mutilated and pillaged of its shells, flints, and "simple pebbles." In addition to this devastation, how much is it to be regretted that so soon after his death his garden should have been spoilt by bad taste. When Lord Nugent wrote those well-known lines to Sir William Stanhope, on his enlargements and improvements of Pope's grounds, which I cannot but consider as equally sycophantic and ignorant

But fancy now displays a fairer scope,

And Stanhope's plans unfold the soul of Pope,

we should rather read

And Stanhope's wealth destroys the taste of Pope.

Would that his villa, his garden, and his grotto, had fallen into the hands of one who would have duly appreciated them-of one who would have kept up and cherished what others have so wantonly destroyed or altered. That one is the author of the Pleasures of Memory, who not only possesses much of the genius of Pope, and all his

* This spring, which had disappeared for many years, and indeed was quite forgotten, suddenly burst out last Summer, and again has become the ornament of the grotto. J. MITFORD, 1843.

SIR W. STANHOPE'S GARDEN.

249

taste, but who has the greatest veneration for everything which belonged to that immortal poet.

Horace Walpole formed a just estimate of Sir William Stanhope's bad taste, and grieved over the alterations he had made, and the sort of sacrilege he had committed. In one of his letters, he says, "I must tell you a private woe that has happened to me in my neighbourhood. Sir William Stanhope bought Pope's house and garden. The former was so small and bad, one could not avoid pardoning his hollowing out that fragment of the rock Parnassus into habitable chambers; but would you believe it, he has cut down the sacred groves themselves! In short, it was a little bit of ground of five acres, enclosed with three lanes, and seeing nothing. Pope had twisted and twirled, and rhymed and harmonized this, till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick impenetrable woods. Sir William, by advice of his son-in-law, Mr. Ellis, has hacked and hewed these groves, wriggled a winding gravel-walk through them with an edging of shrubs, in what they call the modern taste, and in short, desired the three lanes to walk in again, and now is forced to shut them out again by a wall, for there was not a muse could walk there, but she was spied by every country fellow that went by with a pipe in his mouth."

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