y the Median Queen in the hanging gardens of
Babylon. There is no reason, indeed, to suppose that even the first
parents of mankind looked on finer flowers in Paradise itself than are
to be found in the cottage gardens that are so thickly distributed over
the hills and plains and vallies of our native land.

The red rose, is the red rose still, and from the lily's cup
An odor fragrant as at first, like frankincense goes up.

_Mary Howitt_.

Our neat little gardens and white cottages give to dear old England that
lovely and cheerful aspect, which is so striking and attractive to her
foreign visitors. These beautiful signs of a happy political security
and individual independence and domestic peace and a love of order and a
homely refinement, are scattered all over the land, from sea to sea.
When Miss Sedgwick, the American authoress, visited England, nothing so
much surprised and delighted her as the gay flower-filled gardens of our
cottagers. Many other travellers, from almost all parts of the world,
have experienced and expressed the same sensations on visiting our
shores, and it would be easy to compile a voluminous collection of their
published tributes of admiration. To a foreign visitor the whole country
seems a garden--in the words of Shakespeare--"a _sea-walled garden_."

In the year 1843, on a temporary return to England after a long Indian
exile, I travelled by railway for the first time in my life. As I glided
on, as smoothly as in a sledge, over the level iron road, with such
magical rapidity--from the pretty and cheerful town of Southampton to
the greatest city of the civilized world--every thing was new to me, and
I gave way to child-like wonder and child-like exultation.[002] What a
quick succession of lovely landscapes greeted the eye on either side?
What a garden-like air of universal cultivation! What beautiful smooth
slopes! What green, quiet meadows! What rich round trees, brooding over
their silent shadows! What exquisite dark nooks and romantic lanes! What
an aspect of unpretending happiness in the clean cottages, with their
little trim gardens! What tranquil grandeur and rural luxury in the
noble mansions and glorious parks of the British aristocracy! How the
love of nature thrilled my heart with a gentle and delicious agitation,
and how proud I felt of my dear native land! It is, indeed, a fine thing
to be an Englishman. Whether at home or abroad, he is made conscious of
the claims of h