3.

of their delicious scent, as the summer same pleasure and personal triumph in evening falls, the curious schizopetalon, our success. Then, too, each year the and the better known mathiola, or night- intelligent gardener will arrange new scented stock.

combinations, grow new varieties of plants, and aim after a perfection which he can never hope to reach.

But, besides its flowers, the garden is alive with other happy forms of life. The blackbird, as the laureate tells us, will But the garden has no less also a sci"warble, eat, and dwell" among the espa- entific interest. Fresh species of plants liers, and the thrush, as Mr. Browning are constantly enriching our flower-beds, reminds us, "sings each song twice over,' and botanists are constantly searching from some blossoming pear-tree. Then the wildest and most remote corners of the bees are busy all summer long, rifling the world on behalf of the English stove. for themselves the flowers, and setting house, conservatory, and garden. They for us the fruit. "The butterflies flutter endure untold hardships, and risk many from bush to bush, and open their wings dangers, if only they may secure some to the warm sun," and a peacock or red new treasure. Often they have caught admiral, or, better still, a humming-bird deadly fever, or met with fatal accidents moth, is always a welcome guest. Only the other day we heard a delightful story (we wish we were satisfied that it was a fact) of a lady who got some chrysalises of butterflies from Italy and elsewhere, and, planting in a corner of her garden the herbs and flowers in which they most delighted, had hovering around, for many weeks of summer, these beautiful, strange visitors from the south.

in their search, and, true martyrs of science as they are, they pass away forgotten, except perchance when some unwonted designation of a plant may recall, not their memory indeed, but their name. But as one drops off, another will succeed; and so, among far coral islands of the Pa cific, in the tropical recesses of a South American forest, in the heart of Asiatic mountains, or the unexplored mysteries One great charm of a garden lies in the of New Guinea, these lovers of nature are certainty that it will never be the same at work, laboring for our pleasure and two years running. If we were only con- instruction, and procuring for us new fident that each year was to be precisely forms of vegetable life and beauty. And like the last, it may fairly be doubted meanwhile science is working at home in whether we could feel the same interest another and a happier way. Not content in our task. It is really no paradox when with finding new species of plants, she is we say, that it is fortunate that gardening | forever developing fresh varieties. The should be always more or less of a strug- art is no new one, and in old days the gle, for the very struggle, as should always simpler minds of men were not quite happen, has the element of pleasure sure of its propriety. It was unnatural, about it. Each year there will be success they used to say. It is in vain that on one side, if something of failure on Polixenes tells Perdita that there is an another. And there are always difficul- art that does mend nature, and, therefore, ties enough. There are difficulties aris- is nature. She evidently thinks it all ing from bad seasons, from climate, or sophistry, and not a gilly-flower will she from soil. There are weeds that worry, have. and seeds that fail. There are garden pests of every variety. The mice nibble The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them. away the tulip-bulbs: the canker gets into

I'll not put

The pink grew then as double as his mind;

With strange perfumes he did the roses taint,
The nutriment did change the kind;

the rosebud, and the green fly infests the | And so, too, Andrew Marvell's mower rose. Wireworms destroy the roots of complains of the gardener that tender annuals, and slugs breakfast upon their sprouting leaves. Moles and birds and caterpillars have each and all their peculiar plans for vexing the gardener's heart. Then again certain plants are attacked by special diseases of their own. The gladiolus turns yellow and comes to nothing, and a parasitic fungus destroys the hollyhock. And yet, if there were no difficulties to contend against, no forethought to be exercised, no ingenuity to be displayed, no enemies to conquer, it is surely impossible that we could feel the

And flowers themselves were taught to paint. He thinks it a wicked extravagance, as it certainly was, to sell a meadow for the sake of a tulip-root, and he thinks it an absurdity, as it certainly was not, that we should have brought the marvel of Peru over so many miles of ocean; but all this might be forgiven, but not the "forbidden mixtures" which grafting and

hybridizing have brought about. Meanwhile, as we are now untroubled by such scruples, we may not only enjoy the results of the art of the skilful florist, but may even take an intelligent interest in the art itself. It lets us into many secrets of nature. It helps to explain problems of much higher significance than the brief existence of a garden flower. It makes us understand, in some small degree, how, in every form of life, a higher type may be produced from one of inferior order.

And the results are really wonderful. It is difficult to know what class of plants has in late years most profited by the artful nature, or unnatural art, of the skilful gardener; but, certainly, some of the most striking successes have been among roses, clematis, begonias, and rhododendrons.

system of Linnæus has still its use and votaries.

The most recent investigators into botanical science are not classifying plants, but they are examining into the meaning of their structure. The mere task of description and enumeration has been done, and so they have set themselves to find out why certain structures exist, and why certain habits (if we may use the word) have been formed. Why do the climbing plants climb at all, and why do some twine, and others cling? Why do the fly-catching plants cause the death of numbers of unlucky insects? Why are the stamens and pistils in plants of such various lengths and sizes? Why have some flowers a hairy fringe, and others drops of nectar in their calyces? What is the meaning of the scent of flowers, and what is the object of the night-opening flowers? The key to many of these questions is in the relationship of flowers to insects; and Charles Darwin, Sir John Lubbock, and others, have done very much to explore and then to popularize the subject. Much that is most important has thus been made known to us, but these eminent naturalists would be the first to own that there is much more still to do. The secrets of nature open out but slowly, and after long and patient wooing. It would sometimes appear too as if there might be danger, not indeed of adapting facts to theory, but of taking it too readily for granted that all facts must eventually fit into some favorite theory. This tendency may not be so apparent in the leaders as in their less cautious disciples in these scientific researches. From some of their expressions they would almost seem to imply that insects were made for the sake of fertilizing flowers. They attribute the bright color and beauty of flowers not to the same good purpose that gives beauty elsewhere, but as if it were merely that insects may be attracted, and do their duty among the ripening polAnd then the illustrators took the mat- len. They are contemptuous at the idea ter up, and in Thornton's "New Illustra- of a flower being intended for the selfish tions of the Sexual System of Linnæus," pleasure of man, and not for its own purwhich is perhaps one of the most beau- poses, and they point to plants of beauty tiful botanical works ever published, we that "blush unseen " where man cannot have pictures of plants with Cupid' aim-admire them, forgetting, however, that ing a shaft at them, and with a letterpress man has seen them, or he would not know of love-verses. Into the new system, in- of their existence. They will learn nothtroduced by Jussieu, and now generally ing of the affluence of nature, and nothing adopted for purposes of classsification, is quite accepted unless its use can be we need not enter. The natural system, established, though on this principle it is as it is called, which is certainly the sen- hard to explain why, as Bishop Hall sible system, has now held its own for pointed out long ago, "there is many a many years, though the more artificial rich stone laid up in the bowels of the

But it is not the florist only who has been helping on the cause of botanical science at home. Within the last few years the botanists, or rather perhaps the naturalists, have been increasingly busy among both the English field and garden flowers. The old botanists indeed had examined with every minuteness the structure and economy of the blossom, had counted the stamens and the pistils, and known the origin of the swelling of the seed-vessel. And what Linnæus had systematized, Erasmus Darwin endeavored to turn into a romance. Science was to be made popular in a long didactic poem, and "The Loves of the Plants" was the curious result. But to treat the various organs of a plant as if they were human beings, and endowed with human passions, was obviously too far-fetched a conceit to give real pleasure, and it was not wonderful that Mathias, and many others, should have laughed at those, who

In sweet tetrandrian monogynian strains
Pant for a pistil in botanic pains.

09

earth, many a faire pearl laid up in the bosome of the sea, that never was seen, nor never shall be." They will not allow that there has ever been a Divine Wisdom "rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth,' even before "his delights were with the sons of men."

the summer air. Time and change may have been busy since some long-absent member of the family has revisited his old home, but the flowers and their fragrance, still the same as ever, will call up all the past. There is the corner where the first violets were always found; there It is curious how apparent extremes is the rosebush from which a flower may will meet. The very men, who would once have been gathered, of which the most readily throw over the old theologi- poor faded petals still remain; there is cal argument of "design," which be- the lavender, which supplied the oaken lieved that everything was done in the presses where the house-linen was always most perfect way for the most perfect kept. And, apart from all such fond and ends, will now in the interests of evolu- foolish private memories, there are all the tion show the necessity of each curve of associations with which literature has cona flower-cup, and for each marking on secrated the old garden flowers. Pelara petal. We cannot be too thankful goniums, calceolarias, verbenas, and the to them, if only they will make their rest of the new-comers have but few ground sure at every step, but it will not friends, but not an old flower but is do to generalize too rapidly. For in-loaded with a thought," as Emerson stance, we saw it stated the other day says of the asters on the slopes at Conthat veins on a flower were probably cord. Roses, lilies, violets, primroses, guides to lead insects down into the and daffodils, have been written about honey-cup below, and that night-blowing flowers were without them, because at night they would be invisible and useless. Unfortunately it has since been shown that the Enothera_taraxicifolia, and probably other night-flowers are deeply marked with veins. Again, why in some cherry-blossoms is the pistil longer than the stamens, so that the fertilization must be effected differently to what it is in the more ordinary varieties, where the stamens and pistils are of equal length? Why have blossoms gradually developed properties to attract insects, when it is obvious that those properties were not originally required for the perpetuation of the species? Why should some flowers of magnificent size, like the magnolia, require scent to attract insects, if

we

must indeed admit that use and not pleasure is the end and aim of every attraction of the garden? And if scent is necessary in this case, why is it not so where the flower is small and insignificant? Why among roses has La France a delicious perfume, and Baroness Rothschild none?

But such questionings are inevitable as yet: meanwhile facts are accumulating,

and

the whole truth, thanks to the patient and laborious workers of our time, may one day be known.

But quite apart from scientific interests, a real old garden, unaltered and unspoiled, has a peculiar interest of its

own.

It is sure to be haunted by associations, and nothing calls up associations so quickly and certainly as a sudden scent of flowers coming and going upon VOL. XXX. 1558

LIVING AGE.

over and over again, and the words of great poets rise unbidden to the memory at sight of them. And then certain flowers will recall an entire scene, and Marguerite asks her fate from the large white daisy whose name she bears, or Corisande, in her garden of every perfume, gathers but not for herself her choicest rose.

While a garden owes so much to the poet's pen, it is strange that it should owe comparatively little to the artist's brush. Who can recall a single picture of gardens or of flowers that ever gave him any great amount of pleasure. Is Watteau an exception? But it is the figures in the foreground, not the garden, for which one really cares. And of flower-painters, there are Van Huysum and the Dutchmen, with their piles and masses of blossom, of large size, but generally of dull color, and without light or warmth about them. Then there are our English flowerpainters; with some the flowers are only subsidiary to the picture, and they seem to have adopted Gilpin's advice that

by a nice representation of such trifles, he [the painter] would be esteemed puerile and pedantic. Fern-leaves perhaps, or dock, if his piece be large, he might condescend to imitate; but if he wanted a few touches of red or blue or yellow, to enliven and enrich any particular spot on his foreground, instead of aim. ing at the exact representation of any natural plant, he will more judiciously give the tint he wants in a few random general touches of something like nature, and leave the spectator, if he please, to find out a resemblance. Botanical precision may please us in the flowerpieces of Van Huysum, but it would be paltry

and affected in the landscapes of Claude or | Salvator.

let it be when the plant is still growing,
and as it grows. Any garden will give
subjects enough, if they are only sought
for. Here is a bank of daffodils; here the
white narcissus and the red anemone have
formed a group; here a blue forget-me-not
looks up into the bell of the snake's-head
fritillary; here is a great peony bowed
down with its crimson globes; here a
nasturtium trails its bright yellow blos-
soms along a bit of grey old rock; here a
cluster of hollyhocks keeps watch by a
garden walk; here the purple clematis
clings to the orchard hedge.
flowers such as these, if only the artist
have some sense of color and some refine-
ment of taste, would give a real and almost
a new pleasure to us all.

Pictures of

But there must be no artistic grouping, or representing of things as they should be, rather than as they are. The work must be conscientious, as in the case of a great living sculptor who, having to carve an ivy-plant upon a tablet, went himself to study the form of growing ivy, and found how entirely different it is from the conventional wreaths of the ordinary marble-mason.

brought indoors and placed in some blue jar or Salviati vase, and the artist shows But even when the flower or plant is how carefully he can draw, not so much something better than a "touch" of color, the petals of the flowers, as the texture of there is often some gross carelessness, or the porcelain or the iridescence of the ignorance, which gives a sense of annoy-glass. It is difficult enough worthily to ance rather than of pleasure. Each re- paint the light and glow of color in any turning year, the Gardeners' Chronicle beautiful flower, but, if it is to be painted, reviews the Royal Academy from a botanical point of view, and nothing can be droller than the blunders it points out. Sometimes all sorts of flowers of various seasons are growing together, or a wood, through which a knight is riding, is adorned with agarics and fungi that belong to different periods of the year. Sometimes places, no less than times, are set at nought, as in an instance quoted by Mr. Rossetti from the Exhibition of 1868, where a Greek maiden is gathering blossoms from a pot of (American) azaleas. But, indeed, such instances are only too common. In how many modern classical pictures, for example, has not the large sunflower of America been introduced? But when the flower itself is one important part of the picture, how curiously unsatisfactory is too often the result! No one has tried more earnestly to set our painters right in these matters than Mr. Ruskin, and how little even now have they profited by his teaching! They catch bold of a suggestion, as when he once told them (showed them, we might say) that a spray of pink apple-blossom against a blue sky was beautiful, and the next exhibition or two abounded in blossoming apple-boughs: but they seem unable to grasp a principle. It was in 1851, in his tract on Pre-Raphaelitism," that he urged the painting of "the heather as it grows, and the foxglove and the harebell as they nestle in the clefts of the rocks," and this very year, while speaking of the same artist, Mr. Hunt, he has had to repeat the same lesson, that plants that grow are pleasanter objects than flowers that are gathered. And, indeed, the reason is not far to seek. A bunch of garden roses thrown carelessly down upon a mossy bank and there is scarcely an exhibition without one not only gives one a feeling of incongruity (as though the fashionable flowers were out at a picnic), but a stronger feeling still of coming death. We know those roses must wither and die, almost, we fancy, as we look upon them. No dew that falls can now keep them alive, as it will the humble so much better than they-on which they rest. And it is almost worse when the poor, gathered flowers are

moss

66

It is mere matter

There is one question in connection with English horticulture, to which at first sight it does not seem quite easy to give a satisfactory answer. Are the flower-shows, the number of which is constantly increasing, an advantage or not? They certainly stimulate the production of magnificent fruit, of beautiful floristflowers, and of handsome stove and greenhouse plants. But how do they affect the gardens in which these prize specimens are grown? of fact that, when a gardener begins to think of exhibiting, he is very apt to pay undue attention to the plants which will secure him prizes and reputation. If his master is satisfied with the usual monotony of garden-beds, why should the gar dener give special attention to what can be of no service to himself? So he throws his whole strength into some bunches of grapes, some dozen roses, some trained chrysanthemums. And this is not the worst of it. The "dressing of particular blooms has recently become an art, and little curling-irons are em

majority of cases it is the wiser course for PREPARING FOR THE YERING MEETING.

any one who really cares about his garden, and would rather have a succession of well-cultured flowers than some merely exceptional success, to discourage his gardener from exhibiting.

In conclusion, we can only repeat that "the English flower-garden" may afford far greater pleasure than it does at pres