"Je voudrois echauffer tout l'univers de mon
gout pour les jardins. Il me semble qu'il est impossible, qu'un mechant
puisse l'avoir. Il n'est point de vertus que Je ne suppose a celui qui
aime a parler et a faire des jardins. Peres de famille, inspirez la
jardinomanie a vos enfans.[21] When a taste for gardening (as Mr. Cobbet
observes) "is much more innocent, more pleasant, more free from
temptation to cost, than any other; so pleasant in itself! It is
conducive to health, by means of the irresistible temptation which it
offers to early rising; it tends to turn the minds of youth from
amusements and attachments of a frivolous or vicious nature; it is a
taste which is indulged at home; it tends to make home pleasant, and to
endear us to the spot on which it is our lot to live." When Mr. Johnson
forcibly paints the allurements to a love for this art, when concluding
his energetic volume on gardening, by quoting from Socrates, that "it is
the source of health, strength, plenty, riches, and of a thousand sober
delights and honest pleasures."--And from Lord Verulam, that amid its
scenes and pursuits, "life flows pure, and the heart more calmly beats."
And when M. le V. H. de Thury, president de la Societe d'Horticulture de
Paris, in his Discours d'Installation says: "Dans tous les temps et dans
tous les pays, les hommes les plus celebres, les plus grands capitaines,
les princes, et les rois, se sont livres avec delices, et souvent avec
passion, a la culture des plantes et des jardins." And among other
instances he cites "Descartes, qui se livrait avec une egale ardeur a la
science des astres et a la culture des fleurs de son jardin, et qui
souvent, la nuit, quittait ses observations celestes pour etudier le
sommeil et la floraison de ses plantes avant le lever du soliel."[22]
Petrarch, too, who has enchanted every nation and every age, from his
endeared Vaucluse, thus speaks of his garden: "I have formed two; I do
not imagine they are to be equalled in all the world: I should feel
myself inclined to be angry with fortune, if there were any so beautiful
out of Italy. I have store of pleasant green walks, with trees shadowing
them most sweetly." Indeed, what Cicero applies to another science, may
well apply to horticulture: "nihil est _agriculturae_ melius, nihil
uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine, nihil libero dignius." Let me
close with a most brilliant name;--the last resource in the _Candide_ of
Voltaire is,--_cultivate y