Part 40 (1/2)

[109] These are the initial letters of the Latin names of the plants, they will be found at length on the lower column.

[110] Hampton Court was laid out by Cardinal Wolsey. The labyrinth, one of the best which remains in England, occupies only a quarter of an acre, and contains nearly a mile of winding walks. There is an adjacent stand, on which the gardener places himself, to extricate the adventuring stranger by his directions. Switzer condemns this plan for having only four stops and gives a plan for one with twenty.--_Loudon_.

[111] The lower part of Bengal, not far from Calcutta, is here described

[112] Sir William Jones states that the Brahmins believe that the _blue_ champac flowers only in Paradise, it being yellow every where else.

[113] The wild dog of Bengal

[114] The elephant.

[115] Even Jeremy Bentham, the great Utilitarian Philosopher, who p.r.o.nounced the composition and perusal of poetry a mere amus.e.m.e.nt of no higher rank than the game of Pushpin, had still something of the common feeling of the poetry of nature in his soul. He says of himself--”_I was pa.s.sionately fond of flowers from my youth, and the pa.s.sion has never left me._” In praise of botany he would sometimes observe, ”_We cannot propagate stones_:” meaning that the mineralogist cannot circulate his treasures without injuring himself, but the botanist can multiply his specimens at will and add to the pleasures of others without lessening his own.

[116] A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures that the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a picture and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in a description, _and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in the possession_.--_Spectator_.

[117] Kent died in 1748 in the 64th year of his age. As a painter he had no great merit, but many men of genius amongst his contemporaries had the highest opinion of his skill as a Landscape-gardener. He sometimes, however, carried his love of the purely natural to a fantastic excess, as when in Kensington-garden he planted dead trees to give an air of wild truth to the landscape.

In Esher's peaceful grove, Where Kent and nature strove for Pelham's love,

this landscape-gardener is said to have exhibited a very remarkable degree of taste and judgment. I cannot resist the temptation to quote here Horace Walpole's eloquent account of Kent: ”At that moment appeared Kent, painter and poet enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays. He leaped the fence and saw that all nature was a garden[143]. He felt the delicious contrast of hill and valley changing imperceptibly into each other, tasted the beauty of the gentle swell, or concave swoop, and remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament, and while they called in the distant view between their graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by delusive comparison.”--_On Modern Gardening_.

[118] When the rage for a wild irregularity in the laying out of gardens was carried to its extreme, the garden paths were so ridiculously tortuous or zig-zag, that, as Brown remarked, a man might put one foot upon _zig_ and the other upon _zag_.

[119] The natives are much too fond of having tanks within a few feet of their windows, so that the vapours from the water go directly into the house. These vapours are often seen hanging or rolling over the surface of the tank like thick wreaths of smoke.

[120] Broken brick is called _kunkur_, but I believe the real kunkur is real gravel, and if I am not mistaken a pretty good sort of gravel, formed of particles of red granite, is obtainable from the Rajmahal hills.

[121] Pope in his well known paper in the _Guardian_ complains that a citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews but he entertains thoughts of erecting them into giants, like those of Guildhall. ”I know an eminent cook,” continues the writer, ”who beautified his country seat with a coronation dinner in greens, where you see the Champion flouris.h.i.+ng on horseback at one end of the table and the Queen in perpetual youth at the other.”

When the desire to subject nature to art had been carried to the ludicrous extravagances so well satirized by Pope, men rushed into an opposite extreme. Uvedale Price in his first rage for nature and horror of art, destroyed a venerable old garden that should have been respected for its antiquity, if for nothing else. He lived to repent his rashness and honestly to record that repentance. Coleridge, observed to John Sterling, that ”we have gone too far in destroying the old style of gardens and parks.” ”The great thing in landscape gardening” he continued ”is to discover whether the scenery is such that the country seems to belong to man or man to the country.”

[122] In England it costs upon the average about 12 s.h.i.+llings or six rupees to have a tree of 30 feet high transplanted.

[123] I believe the largest leaf in the world is that of the Fan Palm or Talipot tree in Ceylon. ”The branch of the tree,” observes the author of _Sylvan Sketches_, ”is not remarkably large, but it bears a leaf large enough to cover twenty men. It will fold into a fan and is then no bigger than a man's arm.”

[124] Southey's Common-Place Book.

[125] The height of a full grown banyan may be from sixty to eighty feet; and many of them, I am fully confident, cover at least two acres.--_Oriental Field Sports_.

There is a banyan tree about five and twenty miles from Berhampore, remarkable for the height of the lower branches from the ground. A man standing up on the houdah of an elephant may pa.s.s under it without touching the foliage.

A tree has been described as growing in China of a size so prodigious that one branch of it only will so completely cover two hundred sheep that they cannot be perceived by those who approach the tree, and another so enormous that eighty persons can scarcely embrace the trunk.--_Sylvan Sketches_.

[126] This praise is a little extravagant, but the garden is really very tastefully laid out, and ought to furnish a useful model to such of the people of this city as have s.p.a.cious grounds. The area of the garden is about two hundred and fifty nine acres. This garden was commenced in 1768 by Colonel Kyd. It then pa.s.sed to the care of Dr. Roxburgh, who remained in charge of it from 1793 to the date of his death 1813.

[127] Alphonse Karr, bitterly ridicules the Botanical _Savants_ with their barbarous nomenclature. He speaks of their mesocarps and quinqueloculars infundibuliform, squammiflora, guttiferas monocotyledous &c. &c. with supreme disgust. Our English poet, Wordsworth, also used to complain that some of our familiar English names of flowers, names so full of delightful a.s.sociations, were beginning to be exchanged even in common conversation for the coldest and harshest scientific terms.

[128] _The Hand of Eve_--the handiwork of Eve.

[129] _Without thorn the rose_: Dr. Bentley calls this a puerile fancy.

But it should be remembered, that it was part of the curse denounced upon the Earth for Adam's transgression, that it should bring forth thorns and thistles. _Gen._ iii. 18. Hence the general opinion has prevailed, that there were _no thorns_ before; which is enough to justify a poet, in saying ”_the rose was without thorn_.”--NEWTON.