ffensive to the eye of taste, that object is assuredly very
completely effected by these swarthy artists when they arrange, with
such worse than Dutch precision and formality, the ill-selected,
ill-arranged, and tightly bound treasures of the parterre for the
classical vases of their British masters. I am often vexed to observe the
idleness or apathy which suffers such atrocities as these specimens of
Indian taste to disgrace the drawing-rooms of the City of Palaces. This is
quite inexcusable in a family where there are feminine hands for the
truly graceful and congenial task of selecting and arranging the daily
supply of garden decorations. A young lady--"herself a fairer
flower"--is rarely exhibited to a loving eye in a more delightful point of
view than when her delicate and dainty fingers are so employed.

If a lovely woman arranging the nosegays and flower-vases, in her
parlour, is a sweet living picture, a still sweeter sight does she
present to us when she is in the garden itself. Milton thus represents
the fair mother of the fair in the first garden:--

Eve separate he spies.
Veil'd in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood,
Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round
About her glow'd, oft stooping to support
Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay,
Carnation, purple, azure, or speck'd with gold,
Hung drooping unsustain'd; them she upstays
Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while
Herself, though fairest unsupported flower,
From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.
Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed
Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm;
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen,
Among thick woven arborets, and flowers
Imborder'd on each bank, the hand of Eve[128]

_Paradise Lost. Book IX_.

Chaucer (in "The Knight's Tale,") describes Emily in her garden as
fairer to be seen

Than is the lily on his stalkie green;

And Dryden, in his modernized version of the old poet, says,

At every turn she made a little stand,
And thrust among the thorns her lily hand
To draw the rose.

Eve's roses were without thorns--

"And without thorn the rose,"[129]

It is pleasant to see flowers plucked by the fairest fingers for some
elegant or worthy purpose, but it is not pleasant to see them _wasted_.
Some people pluck them wantonly, and then fling them away and litter the
garden walks wit