CHAPTER XI. GARDENING AND AGRICULTURE. Charles Lamb-Cowley-Sir Robert Peel-Lord Althorp— Henry Erskine -Shenstone- - Addison Sir Walter Scott Earl of Chatham Lord Macaulay - Lord Collingwood-Earl Bute-C. J. Fox-Lord Bolingbroke-Sir Richard Steele-Horace Walpole - Dr. Arnold-Walter Savage Landor - Charles R. Leslie, Norman Macleod - Bishop Thirlwall Wedgwood George Stephenson - William Wilberforce-Warren Hastings-John Howard-James Watt-John LockeSir Joseph Banks-Wm. Roscoe-George Crabbe-Dr. Carey-Cowper-Archbishop Whately-Leigh HuntLord John Russell-Burke-John Horne Tooke-Duke of Bridgewater-Sir Ralph Abercromby-Wm. Cobbett -Lord Lyndhurst-Lord Eversley. "GIVE me but a garden!" is a wish which— adapted to all sorts and conditions of men-bas been often sighed forth by many of our great and eminent workers, anxious to quit the busy path of life and the smoke-laden air of the town for the fresh breezes and quiet repose of the country. But even in this respect tastes do not agree. "Live always in the spring-time in the country," writes Mr. Ruskin; "you do not know what leafform means unless you have seen the buds burst, and the young leaves breathing low in the sunshine, and wondering at the first shower of rain." On the other hand, Charles Lamb called the country odious and detestable, and actually maintained that a garden was the primitive prison till man, with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it." 66 Lamb's idea, however, of the country was very limited, for when he wrote the above passage to Wordsworth he was was living in in a street in Enfield, with "Shops two yards square, half-a-dozen apples, and two penn'orth of overcooked gingerbread, for the lofty fruiterers of Oxford street; and for the immortal book and print stalls, a circulating library that stands still, where the show picture is a last year's valentine." Such a locality found no attraction for Lamb, who, next to the Temple, made Covent Garden his favourite resort. Surely such instances are the exception! If Dr. Johnson, again, would not stop to inquire "whether landscape gardening demands any great powers of the mind," yet time would fail to tell of all those royal, and noble, personages whom old Gerarde enumerates in his "Herbal" as having either "loved to live in gardens," or written treatises on the subject. Thus James I. and Charles II. are mentioned as having given their personal superintendence to the royal gardens; while a change in the style of laying out grounds is very generally attributed to the accession of William and Mary. In short, "as gardening has been the inclination of kings, and the choice of philosophers," writes Sir W. Temple, "so it has been the common favourite of public and private men; a pleasure of the greatest, and the care of the meanest; and, indeed, an employment and a possession for which no man is too high nor too low.' Cowley's aspiration, too, will always find an echo so long as the struggle for wealth, and distinction, necessitates incessant application in every sphere of life. Thus, "I never had any other desire so strong and so like to covetousness as that one which I have always had," he writes, "that I might be master at last of a small house, and large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them, and study of nature "And there, with no design beyond my wall, In no inactive ease, and no unglorious poverty. An existence of this kind may well be envied by those engaged in the busy turmoil of life, and we know how Earl Beaconsfield loved to snatch a few days' repose in that charming spot which he made his country home, Hughenden Manor. Similarly, too, Sir Robert Peel, in the the intervals of public business, generally retired to Drayton Manor, where he found constant and congenial employment in the supervision of the management of his estates, and in the pursuits peculiar to the country, of which he was devotedly fond. Lord Althorp, on resigning office, in the year 1832, spent part of the next day in a nursery garden, choosing and buying flowers, brought home five large packages in his carriage, and devoted a long time to considering where they should be planted in the garden at Althorp, writing directions, and drawing plans, for that arrangement. Office, indeed, had been the reverse of Paradise to Lord Althorp. And the relief he felt at the prospect of a little rest may be gathered from the following amusing incident, related by Mr. Jeffrey, the oracle of the Scotch Whigs, who had visited him in Downing Street, with the view of asking him what course should be taken with the Scotch Reform Bill. "I had," he writes, "a characteristic scene with that most frank, true, and stout-hearted of God's creatures. He had not come down stairs, and I was led up to his dressing-room, where I found him sitting on a stool, in a dark duffel dressing-gown, with his arms bare above the elbows, and his beard half-shaved, with a desperate razor in one hand and a great soap brush in the other. He gave me the loose finger of his brush hand, and, with the usual twinkle of his bright eye, and a radiant smile, he said, 'You need not be anxious about your Scotch Bills to-night, as I have the pleasure to tell you we are no longer His Majesty's Ministers.'"* In the same way, Henry Erskine, when he gave up the Bar, and retired to his country house at Ammondell, soon became absorbed in rural pursuits, and landscape gardening. In September, 1812, he was visited by Horner, who writes:-"He is living among the plantations he has been making for the last twenty years in the midst of all the bustle of business. He has the banks of the river Almond for about four miles. He told me he has thrown away the law like a dirty clout, and had forgotten it altogether. It is delightful to see the same high spirits which made him such a favourite in the world while he was in the career of ambition, and prosperity still attending him, after all the disappointments that would have chagrined another man to death." Cockburn's "Memoirs of Lord Jeffrey," Vol. i., 330. |