HAM HOUSE DESCRIBED.

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seem to have been erected for no other purpose than to divide Lovelace from Clarissa-they look so stern and so unrelenting. If there were any Clarissas now-a-days, they would be found at Ham House. And the keeping is so perfect. The very flowers are old-fashioned. No American borders, no kalmias or azaleas, or magnolias, or such heathen shrubs. No flimsy China roses.

Nothing new-fangled.

None but flowers of the olden time,

arranged in gay, formal knots, staid, and trim, and regular, and without a leaf awry.

I may add that Camden, a contemporary of Spenser, mentions Guy-Cliffe, in Warwickshire, with unusual animation; and Sir William Temple bestows a panegyric on Sir Henry Fanshawe's

flower-garden at Ware Park, and his artistic arrangement of colours. "He did so precisely examine the tinctures and seasons of his flowers, that in their settings the inwardest of which that were to come up at the same time should be always a little darker than the utmost, and so serve them for a kind of gentle shadow." Temple also mentions, as the "perfectest figure of a garden” he ever saw, "either at home or abroad," the one made by the Countess of Bedford, who was the theme of Donne and his poetic brethren. It combined every excellence of the antique pleasureground; the terrace gravel-walk, three hundred paces long, and broad in proportion; "the border set with standard laurels, and at large distances, which have the beauty of orange-trees, both of flower and fruit;" the stone-steps, in three series, leading to extensive parterres; the fountains and statues and summer-houses; and a cloister facing the south and covered with vines. These, with the ivied balustrade, and

Walls mellowed into harmony by time,

composed a garden that suited, while it encouraged, the meditative temper of our ancestors. Levens, near Milnthorpe in Westmoreland, is a pleasing example; there the horn-beam hedges and the figures in box and holly may still be seen.

The English garden of the sixteenth century was the Latin reproduced. Lord Bacon's walks and topiary work at Gorhambury were reflections of Pliny's Tusculan Villa. The solemn terrace, sloping lawn, little flower-garden, with fountain in the centre, and sculptured trees, were common to both. Evelyn's garden delighted Cowley. Perhaps the antique system had more than one feature worthy of preservation. It is pleasant to look at Pliny, through one of his own amusing letters, sitting in a room shaded by plane-trees, and, like Sidney—

Deaf to noise and blind to light;

DRYDEN AT DENHAM COURT.

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or sauntering beneath an embowered walk of vines, so soft that his uncovered feet suffered no inconvenience. Pope describes such a path :—

There in bright drops the crystal fountains play,
By laurels shaded from the piercing day;
Where summer's beauty, midst of winter strays,
And winter's coolness spite of summer's rays.

And Milton shows our first parents, in Eden, rising with the early dawn to dress the

alleys green,

Their walk at noon, with branches overgrown.

Dryden gratefully commended the garden at DENHAM COURT, which had been planned by Sir William Bowyer; he believed it to be one of the most delicious spots of ground in England, although it contained only five acres. In those pleasant shades Dryden translated the first Georgic, and the greatest part of the last 'Eneid.' Bowyer had been his companion at Cambridge. Few of these quaint gardens are now preserved; but Bacon carried his rich fancy into their beautifying, and suggested, in addition to the common fountain, a bathing pool, which might admit of curious adornment. The bottom was to be "finely paved, and with images; the sides likewise, and withal embellished with coloured glass, and such things of lustre; encompassed also with fine railes of low statues." Spenser has the same thought:

through the waves one might the bottom see,

All pav'd beneath with jasper shining bright.

Bacon rejoiced in choicer visions than these, and in gardening, as in philosophy, had the prophetic eye. He foresaw the charm of ornamental scenery, which was to delight the refined taste of another generation. Mason praises him for banishing the crisped knot and artificial foliage, while he restored the ample lawn,

to feast the sight

With verdure pure, unbroken, unabridged.

Bacon and Milton were the prophet and the herald, Pope and Addison the reformer and the legislator, of horticulture-Pope in the Spectator, Addison in the Guardian. Neither was a mere theorist. Addison made a few experiments in landscape-decoration at his rural seat, near Rugby; and Pope created a little Elysium at Twickenham. However modern rhymers about green fields may deride him, he loved Nature and understood her charms. In a letter to Richardson, written in the freshness of a summer morning, he invites him to pass the day among his shades, "and as much of the night as a fine moon allows." From the heat of noon he retreated into his grotto-fit haunt for poetry and wood-nymphs! Sails gliding up and down the river cast a faint, vanishing gleam through a sloping arcade of trees; and when the doors of the grotto were closed, the changeful scenery of hills, woods, and boats was reflected on the wall. As the sun sank behind the branches, his terrace tempted him abroad: it commanded the finest reach of the river. At Richmond, in the words of Thomson,

the silver Thames first rural grows,

Fair winding up to where the Muses haunt,

In Twit'nam's bowers.

The leafy walks of Ham were opposite, and Petersham-wood lent a dark frame to the bright hill of Richmond, of which the Saxon name, Shene, or brilliancy, is so happily descriptive. Not a foot of ground was overlooked or unembellished. Within the small inclosure of five acres, Pope had a charming flower-garden-his own work-an orangery, bowling-green, and vineyard. There he feasted his friends, Swift saying grace, as Dr. Wharton declares, with remarkable devotion: