called by the country
people in England _the four o'clock flower_, from its opening regularly
at that time. There is a species of broom in America which is called the
American clock, because it exhibits its golden flowers every morning at
eleven, is fully open by one and closes again at two.

[106] Marvell died in 1678; Linnaeus died just a hundred years later.

[107] This poem (_The Sugar Cane_) when read in manuscript at Sir Joshua
Reynolds's, had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when
after much blank-verse pomp the poet began a paragraph thus.--

"Now, Muse, let's sing of rats."

And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company who slyly
overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally
_mice_ and had been altered to _rats_ as more dignified.--_Boswell's
Life of Johnson_.

[108] Hazlitt has a pleasant essay on a garden _Sun-dial_, from which I
take the following passage:--

_Horas non numero nisi serenas_--is the motto of a sun dial near Venice.
There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought
unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. "I count
only the hours that are serene." What a bland and care-dispelling
feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial plate as the sky
looms, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked
by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a
fine lesson is conveyed to the mind--to take no note of time but by its
benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate,
to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the
sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations,
unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self
tormenting! For myself, as I rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone
hot upon its sluggish, slimy waves, my sensations were far from
comfortable, but the reading this inscription on the side of a glaring
wall in an instant restored me to myself, and still, whenever I think of
or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and
blissful abstraction.

[109] These are the initial letters of the Latin names of the plants,
they will be found at length on the lower column.

[110] Hampton Court was laid out by Cardinal Wolsey. The labyrinth, one
of the best which remains in England, occupies only a quarter of an
acre, and contains nearly a mile of win