COTTAGE GARDENS.
OUTSIDE a grey stone cottage by a weir in a southern county there is a group of blood-red hollyhocks growing in careless abandonment with a glorious richness unknown in a gardener's garden, not stiffly tied to stakes—their height irregular and picturesque—making a spot of colour in the landscape which the weary wayfarer stops to contemplate and then travels on refreshed. " God Almighty first planted a garden, and it is indeed the purest of all human pleasures," said Lord Bacon, and the purest,—it may be added,—because all things that are beautiful in nature betray the maker's perfection of thought and delight in them. In the rustic mind this thought is struggling to the surface as civilisa- tion creeps down to the root of beings whose environ- ment is narrowed by circumstances and intellect deadened by hereditary dullness. The love that a cottager has for his garden is the most purifying influence which can be brought to bear upon him, and in many cases, as Washington Irving says, "the residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends to the lowest class. The very labourer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellish- ment." Flowers need love and care lavished upon them with an ungrudging hand; and they repay the care unhesitatingly,
more abundantly in the cottage garden than in the gorgeous parterre of the rich,—little plots " made beautiful by the pathetic expedients of the poor." Nowhere do the tall, white lilies grow so luxuriantly as in the cottage garden, lifting their fair, spotless beads with a loftier majesty than when placed by an expert in a crowded border where existence becomes a struggle for the survival of the fittest.
Pictures of cottage gardens hang in the memory of the present writer, to which only a poet could do justice. One is of a thatched cottage, with windows peeping under the gables, the little garden bordering the Wey, where white ducks paddle and plume themselves in the sun ; a great gnarled apple-tree spreads weird arms across the potato-patch, covered in spring with a pink-tipped white wealth of blossom. By the little path leading to the open doorway is a border one mass of blue nemophila, looking like a little bit of sky dropped down to earth ; here and there a plant of copper- and-gold wallflower, and a stray red tulip. " Do you see those flowers, Sir? " said a farmer only a brief space back ; "it's those flowers, Sir, which keep me out of the public-house. You see, Sir, flowers take a deal of fiddling after," and he looked with pride round the miniature green- house, where geraniums shone in the sun. Another picture is of an old-fashioned cottage garden separated from the outside world by a thick yew hedge. Across the little plot of grass, dotted with jewelled beds, in fancy you pass under a honey- suckle arch which fills the air with its sweetness. Then there is on the left of the picture a turf-walk bordered on each side with flowers which bloomed in olden days. Giant red poppies, loose careless blossoms, simply ablaze with gladness ; by their side, and yet failing to hurt even an artist's eye, grow blue larkspurs, each sapphire spire pointing heavenward. There are peonies white and red, and orange lilies making the pinks beside them almost afraid to burst their buds. There are snapdragon, lupins, and London-pride, and then another arch covered with roses and purple clematis, with a flame bush of Austrian briar at its side for colour, and a maple shining white against a clipped yew for contrast. "I sometimes think," said the poet, "there are flowers that refuse to decorate the superba eivium potentiorum, litnina, the porches and parterres of the well-to-do, and, with the discriminating partiality of true kindness, reserve their full beauty for the narrow territory of the poor. You cannot want me,' they seem to say, for you have so many other flowers and shrubs.' Here, I am the only flower dearly prized and exclusively honoured. Must I not therefore do my best for those who entertain me so tenderly ? " There is a vignette of a pathway wending between a maze of soft pink mallows and gaudy marigolds, to a porch round which everlasting peas cling lovingly, and a giant sunflower towers with the dark heather-thatch for back- ground, while the air is scented with the fragrance from a ragged bush of "old man." "Scents are the souls of flowers; they can be perceived even in the land of shadows," writes Joseph Joubert ; and the scents of flowers conjure up images in the shadowland of hearts as no eight can do. In cottage gardens flowers flourish and go to seed just when they like, no other duty being required of them; and up they come again at Spring's command, with flaunting vigour, having been lavishly "cared for" in the winter. Why do not great people—philanthropists or no, let it he asked—when their gardeners divide and hed-ont and plant, send their surplus 'stock to cottages, instead of enriching the waste heap P A little more thought, a little more kindness, and the world might be beautified a hundredfold. "The trim hedge, the grass. plot before the door, the little flower-bed bordered with snug box; the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms over the lattice ; the pot of flowers in the window; the holly, providently planted about the house to cheat winter of its dreariness, and to throw in a semblance of green summer to cheer the fireside,—all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources, and per. wading the lowest levels of the public mind. If ever Love, as poets sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an English peasant." This and more can be said in praise of gardens, but there is yet much to be done.
In these days, extremes meet in literature, Nature-studies treating of Nature's treasures, and realistic life-studies, gaunt pictures in flaunting colours of all that is dark and vile. There is a craze for garden books, old treatises on flora culture, old editions of rare books on the art of " jardinage," folios of designs of old French and Dutch masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Quaint old names of flowers are revived, and Lord Bacon's essay " Of Gardens " is well-nigh learnt by heart. Evelyn's "Sylva " lies on the table, and gardens are patterned after Spenser's mode. As so much is being given rip to the gardens of the rich, could not more be done for the gardens of the poor P Dull lives need sunshine and relaxation, and flowers bring brightness in a marvellous degree. A cottage garden, almost without exception, will prove a sure test of character; a tangled wilderness of weeds conjures up a vision of a neglected wife and children, and a hard-earned wage wasted in wanton drink. While a gay garden plot—with herbs and rose bushes, sweet-peas running riot over bushes, cover- ing them with their butterflies, white and red, and white and violet—betokens thrift and care and thoughtfulness. " The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world. It is pleasant to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothing more than a, head of lettuce or an ear of corn," writes Charles Dudley Warner; "the principal virtue of a garden is to teach patience and philosophy," and the culture of flowers is to teach love. Gardens, however small, cannot be gay without flowers, so let those who have, give to those who have not,—a homely maxim which every one can digest at will.
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