Project Gutenberg's My Garden Acquaintance, by James Russell Lowell

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Title: My Garden Acquaintance

Author: James Russell Lowell

Posting Date: July 31, 2008 [EBook #880]
Release Date: April 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE ***

Produced by Anthony J. Adam

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE

By James Russell Lowell

ONE of the most delightful books in my father's library was White's
"Natural History of Selborne." For me it has rather gained in charm with
years. I used to read it without knowing the secret of the pleasure I
found in it, but as I grow older I begin to detect some of the simple
expedients of this natural magic. Open the book where you will, it takes
you out of doors. In our broiling July weather one can walk out with
this genially garrulous Fellow of Oriel and find refreshment instead
of fatigue. You have no trouble in keeping abreast of him as he ambles
along on his hobby-horse, now pointing to a pretty view, now stopping to
watch the motions of a bird or an insect, or to bag a specimen for the
Honorable Daines Barrington or Mr. Pennant. In simplicity of taste and
natural refinement he reminds one of Walton; in tenderness toward
what he would have called the brute creation, of Cowper. I do not know
whether his descriptions of scenery are good or not, but they have made
me familiar with his neighborhood. Since I first read him, I have walked
over some of his favorite haunts, but I still see them through his eyes
rather than by any recollection of actual and personal vision. The book
has also the delightfulness of absolute leisure. Mr. White seems never
to have had any harder work to do than to study the habits of his
feathered fellow-townsfolk, or to watch the ripening of his peaches on
the wall. His volumes are the journal of Adam in Paradise,

"Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade."

It is positive rest only to look into that garden of his. It is vastly
better than to

"See great Diocletian walk
In the Salonian garden's noble shade,"

for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with them the noi