with that sweet and various harmony of birds; _good God_,
(saith he), _what a company of pleasures hast thou made for man!_"

* * * * *

"The country hath his recreations, the city his several gymnics and
exercises, May games, feasts, wakes, and merry meetings to solace
themselves; the very being in the country; that life itself is a
sufficient recreation to some men, to enjoy such pleasures, as those old
patriarchs did. Dioclesian, the emperor, was so much affected with it,
that he gave over his sceptre, and turned gardener. Constantine wrote
twenty books of husbandry. Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him,
bragged of nothing more than of his orchard, _hi sunt ordines mei_. What
shall I say of Cincinnatus, Cato, Tully, and many such? how they have
been pleased with it, to prune, plant, inoculate and graft, to show so
many several kinds of pears, apples, plums, peaches, &c."

The Romans of all ranks made use of flowers as ornaments and emblems,
but they were not generally so fond of directing or assisting the
gardener, or taking the spade or hoe into their own hands, as are the
British peasantry, gentry and nobility of the present day. They were not
amateur Florists. They prized highly their fruit trees and pastures and
cool grottoes and umbrageous groves; but they expended comparatively
little time, skill or taste upon the flower-garden. Even their love of
nature, though thoroughly genuine as far as it went, did not imply that
minute and exact knowledge of her charms which characterizes some of our
best British poets. They had no Thompson or Cowper. Their country seats
were richer in architectural than floral beauty. Tully's Tuscan Villa,
so fondly and minutely described by the proprietor himself, would appear
to little advantage in the eyes of a true worshipper of Flora, if
compared with Pope's retreat at Twickenham. The ancients had a taste for
the _rural_, not for the _gardenesque_, nor perhaps even for the
_picturesque_. The English have a taste for all three. Hence they have
good landscape-gardeners and first-rate landscape-painters. The old
Romans had neither. But though, some of our Spitalfields weavers have
shown a deeper love, and perhaps even a finer taste, for flowers, than
were exhibited by the citizens of Rome, abundant evidence is furnished
to us by the poets in all ages and in all countries that nature, in some
form or another has ever charmed the eye and the heart of