of his oratory
was dignity; this presided in every respect, even to his sallies of
pleasantry."

[17] Sir Walter Scott's attachment to gardens, breaks out even in his
Life of Swift, where his fond enquiries have discovered the sequestered
and romantic garden of _Vanessa_, at Marley Abbey.

[18] So thought Sir W. Raleigh;

Sweet violets, love's paradise, that spread
Your gracious odours ...
Upon the gentle wing of some calm-breathing wind,
That plays amidst the plain.

The lines in Twelfth Night we all recollect:

That strain again;--it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of _violets_,
Stealing and giving odour.

That these flowers were the most favourite ones of Shakspeare, there can
be little doubt--Perditta fondly calls them

----sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath.

When Petrarch first saw Laura: "elle avail une robe verte, sa coleur
favorite, parsemee de _violettes_, la plus humble des fleurs."--Childe
Harold thus paints this flower:

The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes
(Kiss'd by the breath of heaven) seems colour'd by its skies.

[19] One almost fancies one perceives Lord Bacon's attachment to
gardens, or to rural affairs, even in the speech he made before the
nobility, when first taking his seat in the High Court of Chancery; he
hoped "that these same _brambles_ that _grow_ about justice, of needless
charge and expence, and all manner of exactions, might be rooted out;"
adding also, that immediate and "_fresh_ justice was the _sweetest_."
Mr. Mason, in a note to his English Garden, after paying a high
compliment to Lord Bacon's picturesque idea of a garden, thus concludes
that note:--"Such, when he descended to matters of more elegance (for,
when we speak of Lord Bacon, to treat of these was to descend,) were the
amazing powers of this universal genius."

[20] Mr. Pope's delight in gardens, is visible even in the condensed
allusion he makes to them, in a letter to Mr. Digby; "I have been above
a month strolling about in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, from garden
to garden, but still returning to Lord Cobham's, with fresh
satisfaction. I should be sorry to see my Lady Scudamore's, till it has
had the full advantage of Lord Bathurst's improvements."

[21] A biographer thus speaks of the Prince de Ligne: "Quand les rois se
reunirent a Vienne en 1814, ils se firent tous