ll nature was a garden[143]. He felt the
delicious contrast of hill and valley changing imperceptibly into each
other, tasted the beauty of the gentle swell, or concave swoop, and
remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament,
and while they called in the distant view between their graceful stems,
removed and extended the perspective by delusive comparison."--_On
Modern Gardening_.

[118] When the rage for a wild irregularity in the laying out of gardens
was carried to its extreme, the garden paths were so ridiculously
tortuous or zig-zag, that, as Brown remarked, a man might put one foot
upon _zig_ and the other upon _zag_.

[119] The natives are much too fond of having tanks within a few feet of
their windows, so that the vapours from the water go directly into the
house. These vapours are often seen hanging or rolling over the surface
of the tank like thick wreaths of smoke.

[120] Broken brick is called _kunkur_, but I believe the real kunkur is
real gravel, and if I am not mistaken a pretty good sort of gravel,
formed of particles of red granite, is obtainable from the Rajmahal
hills.

[121] Pope in his well known paper in the _Guardian_ complains that a
citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews but he entertains
thoughts of erecting them into giants, like those of Guildhall. "I know
an eminent cook," continues the writer, "who beautified his country seat
with a coronation dinner in greens, where you see the Champion
flourishing on horseback at one end of the table and the Queen in
perpetual youth at the other."

When the desire to subject nature to art had been carried to the
ludicrous extravagances so well satirized by Pope, men rushed into an
opposite extreme. Uvedale Price in his first rage for nature and horror
of art, destroyed a venerable old garden that should have been respected
for its antiquity, if for nothing else. He lived to repent his rashness
and honestly to record that repentance. Coleridge, observed to John
Sterling, that "we have gone too far in destroying the old style of
gardens and parks." "The great thing in landscape gardening" he
continued "is to discover whether the scenery is such that the country
seems to belong to man or man to the country."

[122] In England it costs upon the average about 12 shillings or six
rupees to have a tree of 30 feet high transplanted.

[123] I believe the largest leaf in the world is that of the Fan Palm or
Talipot t