THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 V 
 
 
 

 
 THOUGHTS IN MY GARDEN. 

 
 Thoughts in My Garden. 
 
 BY 
 
 MORTIMER COLLINS. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 EDMUND YATES. 
 
 WITH NOTES BY THE EDITOR AND MRS. MORTIMER COLLINS. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, 
 
 publishers in (Drbinarn to gjcr ^Vujestii the (Queen. 
 
 1S80. 
 [All Rights Reserved.]
 
 ?K 
 
 v. / 
 
 CHAELE8 EEADE, 
 
 Dramatist and Novelist, 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCES COLLIXS. 
 
 ' The animosities perish : the humanities are eternal.'

 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MORTIMER COLLINS v 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. SUMMER, 1869 1 
 
 II. WINTER, I860 3S 
 
 in. 1870 ---.-.__ ,57 
 
 IV. 1871 98 
 
 V. 1872 148 
 
 vi. 1873 194 
 
 VII. 1873. JANUARY TO JUNE - 2-49 
 
 vni. summer, 1874 287
 
 MORTIMEK COLLINS. 
 
 It lias been deemed advisable that I should 
 preface this edition of Mortimer Colins's more 
 philosophical and quietly thoughtful essays, 
 which I have put together as a labour of love, 
 with a few words of introduction. Though 
 never on terms of great intimacy, I was well 
 acquainted with him for the last fifteen years 
 of his life, and during the whole of that 
 period our professional and social relations 
 were of the pleasantest description. It was 
 in the autumn of 1860, when, under Mr. Sala's 
 guidance, I was forming the staff of Temple 
 Bar, the first number of which appeared in 
 December of that year, that I wrote to 
 Mortimer Collins — whose fugitive verses in
 
 x Mortimer Collins. 
 
 various magazines I had always admired — and 
 asked him to be of our number. He assented 
 at once, and proposed coming to see me to 
 talk over the style and prospects of the new 
 venture. I looked forward to his visit with 
 some amusement, as I happened to know that 
 he had on several occasions been a very bitter 
 critic and assailant of mine, and that in a lite- 
 rary quarrel in which I had been engaged, and 
 which was at that time of very recent date, he 
 had, like many others, warmly espoused my 
 adversary's cause, and in commenting on my 
 conduct had compared me to ' a pert little 
 London sparrow.' He came' : a big, broad- 
 shouldered, heavily-built man — a noticeable 
 man from his leonine head, with earnest, 
 wistful eyes, and crisp curling beard, and an 
 odd, half-defiant, half-surprised look in his 
 face. The defiance changed into good temper, 
 but the air of surprise rather increased as I 
 rose from my chair and stretched out my 
 hand in welcome. ' I had no notion you were 
 so bio- !' were his first words as he glanced at 
 my thews and sinews, which were nearly 
 ecmal to his own. ' Not much of the London 
 sparrow type,' I replied. He had forgotten 
 the allusion, and when I had recalled it to his
 
 Mortimer Collins. xi 
 
 memory burst into a great hearty roar. We 
 shook hands again, and were friends thence- 
 forward. 
 
 For the first number of Temple Bar he 
 wrote one of his sweetest lyrics, ' Under the 
 Cliffs by the Sea,' and during my editorial 
 connection with the magazine he was a very 
 frequent contributor. In addition to his verse, 
 he wrote, at my suggestion, a series of prose 
 papers descriptive of his pedestrian rambles 
 through various English counties. I soon 
 learned to appreciate his quick observation of 
 Nature, and suggested that he should turn it 
 to account. This he did in those papers, 
 which are written con brio, and in a happy, 
 cheerful spirit, which carries the reader along 
 with them, and fully warrants the success 
 which in their collected shape they have 
 achieved. More than a dozen years after- 
 wards, when I was preparing to bring out the 
 World, Mortimer Collins was amongst the first 
 of those friends whose aid I sought to enlist 
 in the enterprise. He assented with the 
 utmost readiness, and wrote for the first 
 number the admirable lilting lyric which I 
 subjoin :
 
 xii Mortimer Collins. 
 
 THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL. 
 
 A TRILOGY. 
 
 Lo here, with our banner unfurled, 
 We are ready for tourney and revel ; 
 
 What in the world says the World 
 
 Of the World and the Flesh and the Devil ? 
 
 The World. 
 
 The World ! God made it, and fair it is ; 
 
 Ah, why do we spoil it — why ? 
 It is not merely the splutter and fizz, 
 
 Or the lurid light of a wicked eye ; 
 'Tis the world of men who are true and strong, 
 
 The world of women both sweet and fair ; 
 And the men of the world who sway the throng 
 
 Breathe healthful air. 
 
 The World ! where Science and Art alert 
 Have ample space of elbow-room ; 
 
 Where Fashion, the gay minx, comes to flirt, 
 Chasing away all forms of gloom ; 
 
 Where Genius easily finds his way, 
 And leads the life of the rapid hour ; 
 
 For the World is wiser grown to-day 
 
 And bends to power. 
 
 Beautiful World ! we will mirror you — 
 Catch every beauty, each gay caprice, 
 
 The ladies' latest changeable hue, 
 
 The fanciful follies that cannot cease, 
 
 Political epigram, opera-song, 
 
 The poet's madness, the bride's soft tear 
 
 All these things to the World belong — 
 
 You'll find them here.
 
 Mortimer Collins. xiii 
 
 The Flesh. 
 
 Youth, tell thy dream : is it indeed a glory 
 To waste thy appetite on husks of swine ? 
 
 Read in an ancient book an old old story, 
 
 True, though some cavillers deem it not divine. 
 
 Youth, in this day of fastness, mildly fast is ; 
 
 The model editor who writes for youth 
 Follows (a long way off) Ecclesiastes, 
 
 And modestly attempts to preach the truth. 
 
 He says : ' Although in thee the innate sin burn 
 "Which bother'd me and many other wights, 
 
 Don't spend your mornings gloating over Swinburne, 
 And don't stay out so very late o' nights. 
 
 You have not got Jack Falstaff s sterling sinew ; 
 
 These weaker da}-s have made you weakling cubs. 
 If to stay up to midnight you continue, 
 
 I'll hint to Mr. Cross to close the clubs. 
 
 Thus the new Solomon : experto crede, 
 His prototj-pe was caught in many a mesh ; 
 
 Youth, if you'd not be permanently seedy, 
 Eschew the gross temptations of the flesh. 
 
 The Devil. 
 
 The devil of old was Lucifer, 
 
 Bearer of light to the central throne ; 
 He set rebellious fire astir ; 
 
 He fell with a groan. 
 
 Now Lucifer seems to have had his day ; 
 
 He's out of the firm, and takes his ease, 
 And his junior partner comes into play — 
 Mephistopheles.
 
 xiv Mortimer Collins. 
 
 The Devil, who simpers, and sneers, and grins, 
 
 Reviews in the Saturday, does his worst 
 To make great crimes of our smallest sins, 
 A fiend accurst. 
 
 Let us kick him out, with an easy laugh, 
 
 From the rooms where our books and friends we 
 meet, 
 And our afternoons of classic chaff 
 
 Make life complete. 
 
 We'll have our picnics and kettledrums, 
 
 And lazy loiterings under the trees : 
 Be off, poor fiend, to the World's back slums, 
 Mephistopheles ! 
 
 From this time our intimacy increased. It 
 was not merely that he took great interest in 
 the newly-established journal, and was ready 
 to help me with it in any way, but I had 
 opportunities of personal intercourse with 
 him. I had a cottage for the summer months 
 on the Thames at Wargrave, within three 
 miles of Mortimer Collins's residence at 
 Knowle Hill, and I made a point of going 
 over once or twice a week and having a chat 
 with him. I would ride up to the green 
 wicket garden-gate leading into the high road 
 and shout his name, and he would come forth 
 in a minute or two in his never-failing velvet 
 coat, which was russet-colour from wear in all 
 weathers, his open shirt-collar and straw hat,
 
 Mortimer Collins. xv 
 
 generally with pen or book in his Land, fol- 
 lowed by his dogs, and lean over the gate and 
 chat with me for half-an-hour. We would dis- 
 cuss the current news ; or he would rally me 
 on the World's politics, with which he had no 
 sympathy ; or would suggest a subject for a 
 poem ; or disburden his mind of his grievances 
 against his rustic neighbours, which were 
 many — and, to me, very entertaining. He 
 did not seem to find them so, but spoke with 
 great bitterness of the annoyances to which 
 he was subjected.""' I fancy he was to the 
 
 villagers a great source of uneasiness and dis- 
 ci o 
 
 quietude ; they could not understand a man 
 who was evidently not rich and yet had no 
 visible means of livelihood, and they were 
 greatly incensed at the number of newspapers 
 and books which he received, and at the huge 
 packages which he sent through the post. 
 Moreover, they had some awe of him because 
 he would summon the police when guns were 
 used unlawfully, or birds shot that were pro- 
 
 * The frequent allusions to the ' bucolic lout ' throughout 
 these volumes will explain some of M. C.'s minor troubles ; 
 but he was subjected to no real annoyances until the arrival 
 of the new vicar of Knowl Hill, which will be easily dis- 
 covered by the reader. — FRANCES Collins.
 
 xvi Mortimer Collins. 
 
 tectecl by the Act, or trees on the common 
 mutilated, or turf stolen ; or if there were 
 rioting at any of the eleven public-houses to 
 which he so often alludes in these papers. 
 
 From an arch-Bohemian he had become the 
 most domestic of men. His happiness was 
 centred in his cottage, which he never quitted 
 for the last seven or eight years of his life. It 
 w T as during these years that the papers which 
 I have collected were written, and they form a 
 very good description of his life at this time. 
 They are like all his writings, wholesome and 
 natural ; and as I look them over I fancy I 
 can once more see the tall figure sitting; on the 
 lawn writing:, and hear the breezes rustling; the 
 tops of those lime-trees whose shade he loved 
 so much, and whose beauty he so often cele- 
 brated in verse. 
 
 The change in his life was perhaps due to 
 his second wife, who was at this time his 
 hourly companion, and shared his work as 
 well as his leisure. She was singularly well 
 qualified for her position, possessing not 
 merely a cultivated intellect, but a well- 
 balanced judgment, and much skill in adapt- 
 ing herself to his idiosyncrasy. Under her 
 guidance he weaned himself from the love of
 
 Mortimer Collins. xvii 
 
 so-called pleasure, and allowed his better in- 
 stincts and finer faculties to have proper play. 
 A better helpmate for such a man, a truer 
 friend, a more trustworthy guide and com- 
 forter, it would be impossible to find. 
 
 The only trace of his early life was to be 
 found in his abnormal hours for work. After 
 loitering about in his garden the best part of 
 the day, he would sit over his desk half the 
 night ; and to these late hours and the lack of 
 change and variety in his life may be ascribed, 
 I think, the suddenness of its close. 
 
 I was never more astonished than when I 
 heard of his death. It was just before my 
 annual migration in July, to the banks of the 
 Thames, and I was looking; forward to seeing him 
 again, when I took up the Observer, and found 
 in an obscure corner an intimation that Morti- 
 mer Collins was no more. His individuality 
 was so slightly touched upon, that I had some 
 doubt whether it was really my friend or some one 
 of the same name to whom allusion was made ; 
 but on the same afternoon I drove down to 
 Richmond, where it was mentioned lie had 
 expired, and found sad corroboration of the 
 fact. The rheumatic fever contracted some 
 years previously had left his heart affected ;
 
 xviii Mortimer Collins. 
 
 dangerous symptoms had within the last few 
 weeks rapidly developed, and he had delayed 
 seeking- rest and change of air and scene until 
 it was too late. I had never heard of this 
 latent heart affection, and had always looked 
 upon him as a model of health and strength, 
 so that it was with difficulty I could bring my- 
 self to believe that he had actually passed 
 away. Oddly enough he seemed to have pro- 
 phesied the time and place of his own death, 
 in these stanzas : 
 
 Stern hours have the merciless Fates 
 
 Plotted for all who die ; 
 
 But looking down upon Richmond's aits, 
 
 "Where the merles sing low to their amorous mates, 
 
 Who cares to ask them why ? 
 
 We'll have wit, love, wine, 
 
 Ere thy days divine 
 
 Wither, July. 
 
 For the blossoms of youth must fade, 
 
 And the vigour of life must fly ; 
 
 Yet to-day is ours, with its odorous shade, 
 
 And the loving eyes which soon betray 
 
 Dreams in the heart that lie : 
 
 Swif i, Life's stream flows 
 
 But, alas ! who knows 
 
 Whither, July ?' 
 
 In the July sunshine, with his ' fading eyes 
 looking down upon Eichmond's aits,' he passed
 
 Mortimer Collins. 
 
 xix 
 
 away. In the four years since his death new 
 singers have risen to claim the public ear; but 
 neither among his contemporaries nor those 
 who have succeeded him has there been a 
 sweeter lyrist than Mortimer Collins. 
 
 EDMUND YATES.
 
 THOUGHTS IN MY GARDEN. 
 
 ~-E-3C3< 
 
 CHAPTER L- 
 
 SUMMER, 1869. 
 
 Summer is sweet, ay, summer is sweet — 
 
 Minna mine with the brown brown eyes : 
 Red are the roses under his feet, 
 
 Clear the blue of his windless skies. 
 Pleasant it is in a boat to glide 
 
 On a river whose ripples to ocean haste. 
 With indolent fingers fretting the tide, 
 
 And an indolent arm round a darling waist- 
 And to see, as the western purple dies 
 Hesper mirrored in brown brown eyes. 
 
 Summer is fleet, ah, summer is fleet — 
 Minna mine with the brown brown eyes : 
 
 Onward travel his flying feet, 
 And the mystical colours of autumn rise. 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Clouds will gather round evening's star — 
 Sorrow may silence our first gay rhyme — 
 
 The river's swift ripples flow tardier far 
 
 Than the golden minutes of love's sweet time : 
 
 But to me, whom omnipotent lore makes wise, 
 
 There's endless summer in brown brown eyes. 
 
 What is pleasanter than to loiter ? I have in 
 my time loitered in many places — on the 
 Boulevards, on Brighton Pier, in St. James's 
 Street, in the gallery of the House of 
 Commons, in the ' Happy Island in Blooms- 
 bury,' on the terraces of Rydal Mount with 
 William Wordsworth, in the purlieus of Covent 
 Garden at sunrise with James Hannay, in the 
 depths of the New Forest, and by the margin 
 of the haunted river Dart, alone. In the 
 pleasant dialogue between Horace and his 
 slave Davus (Satire ii. 7), the slave tells his 
 master that there is no more harm in stopping 
 to look at the grotesque caricatures of the 
 time than in standing full of admiration before 
 a painting by Pausias — a real ' old master,' 
 since he lived about 370 B.C. Coninoton 
 translates : 
 
 1 Davus gets called a loiterer and a scamp ; 
 You (save the mark !) a critic of high stamp.'
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 I shall be content if readers of my future 
 ' loiterings* place me half-way between the 
 poet and Davus. 
 
 June 24, 1869. 
 
 What weather ! Did ever June misbehave 
 itself so abominably? Great authorities in- 
 form me that the reason of it all is that there 
 are spots on the sun. The centre of our solar 
 system suffers from some eruptive disease. 
 This is all very well : but one can't help 
 wishing that the celestial orbs were free from 
 sublunary diseases, and that it were possible 
 to get a little enjoyable sunshine during these 
 long Midsummer days. I recollect a letter of 
 Walpole's beginning — ' Summer has set in 
 with its usual severity.' The phrase would 
 apply well to the current year. Shall we 
 ever again have a cold Christmas and a hot 
 Midsummer ? Or have the four seasons 
 started a joint-stock company (limited), with 
 special arrangements that when Summer wants 
 to take holiday, Winter is to be his locum 
 ten ens ? 
 
 Among the abominable atrocities of middle-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 class life, few are worse than the frightful 
 decorations which are to be seen in fireplaces 
 when fires are not burning. When we con- 
 sider the variable nature of our climate ('tis 
 the 24th of June, and I am thawing myself as 
 I write by a fire of Wallsend and laurel logs), 
 it really seems unnecessary to block up fire- 
 places at all. Of the 365 days of the year, 
 are there five on which a fire would be un- 
 pleasant ? However, if people will cling to 
 the foolish old belief that there is sometimes 
 Summer in England — and will, therefore, shut 
 up their grates — I have a suggestion to make. 
 Instead of hideous aprons of coloured paper, 
 put in front of each a fender of ferns. I have 
 recently seen this done with admirable effect. 
 There is nothing commoner than the fern — 
 and nothing more beautiful. 
 
 The other day, walking along a solitary 
 rural lane, I met a fellow with a truck load of 
 tortoises. They were a shilling each, so I 
 bought one. The man assured me that 
 tortoises had a tremendous appetite for snails 
 and slugs, and that I had only to turn the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 reptile he sold me loose on my lawn in order 
 to sco his destructive power. 1 have turned 
 him loose on the lawn. He basks in the, 
 sunshine, when there is any : when there isn't, 
 he draws his head into his tortoise-shell den, 
 and sleeps serenely. As to eating snails, it is 
 simply a myth. I put a snail in front of him : 
 the creature, void of fear, walks over his head, 
 and proceeds to transact its own business* 
 However, a tortoise is an amusing animal to 
 watch : its laziness is perfection. 
 
 Being just now in villeggiatura, I hear many 
 wise remarks from my bucolic friends about 
 the weather. The farmer who got his hay in 
 before the recent rains rejoices over his 
 neighbours whose crop lies soaking over many 
 acres. However, it has been a great hay crop. 
 The momentous question is, how will this 
 weather affect the wheat ? Wheat wants 
 sunshine: and, although it may matter little 
 if it gets a small allowance thereof in June, a 
 deficiency of sunshine in duly would be a 
 heavy blow to the crop — and. therefore, to the 
 country. We want a good harvest. Specula-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 tion is paralysed: trade is bad: everybody 
 who isn't a millionaire is in difficulties. An 
 abundant harvest would at this crisis be a real 
 godsend — a word which I use reverently. 
 Heartily do I hope that we may now have 
 long weeks of sultry sunshine — that sunshine 
 which goes to the heart of man, and to the 
 root of every tree and plant — so that a plenti- 
 ful wheat-harvest, the gift of God, may to 
 some extent mitigate the troubles brought 
 upon us by the folly of mankind. 
 
 A^ - - -S*. .>'- JS. 
 
 «» »* ~* *» a 
 
 A contribution to Notes and Queries states 
 that 'for many years Mr. Upton resided in 
 the Dartford Priory, and farmed the lands 
 adjacent. In 1868 he died. After his decease, 
 his son told the writer that the herdsman went 
 to each of the kine and sheep and whispered 
 to them that their old master was dead.' A 
 superstition of this sort is prevalent in most 
 parts of England. There was a terrible 
 mortality among my bees this year. On 
 mentioning it to a Berkshire labourer skilled 
 in the management of those creatures, he
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 instantly asked me if there had been a death 
 in ni}' family. I called the other day on an 
 old lady in my neighbourhood who supplies 
 me with poultry, and noticed that an old- 
 fashioned clock in her kitchen did not go. 
 She assured me that it had refused to go since 
 some near relation died. She further informed 
 me that, when the said death occurred, one of 
 her brothers had gone out and awoke his bees 
 and told them of it, and the said bees had 
 prospered ever since. But another bee-keeping 
 brother had neglected to do this — and his bees 
 all died ! Well, my next informant on this 
 topic was the landlady of the village inn — a 
 singularly intelligent person, and cultivator of 
 rare flowers. She assured me that bees would 
 infallibly die after the death of anyone who 
 cared about them, unless they were told of the 
 event, and a piece of crape wrapped round 
 each hive. She also declared that on the 
 death of a relation of hers a clock which had 
 been stopped for thirty years revived and 
 struck the whole twelve hours. 
 
 Such is the belief of not unintelligent folk
 
 8 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 in the Royal County, within sight of Windsor 
 Castle, in a parish where the three R's arc 
 sedulously taught. What is the origin of 
 such superstitions ? That about the bees 
 appears immemorial : and the mysterious way 
 in which those insects fulfil their functions has 
 perplexed everybody, making Virgil philoso- 
 phise in a noble strain. But why should 
 clocks stop — or stopped clocks go on again — 
 when people die ? 
 
 July 15. 
 
 Summer at last ! I write — not without fear 
 that before the words are in print the aspect 
 of affairs may alter, and a cold east wind and 
 an iron sky supersede the present charming 
 state of things. Now let ice abound, and 
 throw blue flowers of borage into your claret 
 cup. This sestival perfection comes late. The 
 noon of summer should assuredly precede the 
 centre of July. The lime-trees are now in 
 full blossom, to the delectation of myriads of 
 bees : last year they were out just a month 
 earlier. Better late than never, says the 
 adage : but it is to be remarked that the days
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 are beginning to shorten, and that people who 
 sit out late on questionable nights arc likely 
 to suffer neuralgia and influenza. I like 
 .summer when summer is due : but at the 
 same time I try to enjoy it now I get it, 
 somewhat after date, like the popular appre- 
 ciation of a poet. 
 
 vit v $ -Si& 35 
 
 I see the New York ladies have started a 
 feminine club called Sorosis. Queer Latin ! 
 How is it derived from soror ? I have heard 
 of psoriasis, but that's doctor's Greek, and 
 means something quite different. Some 1 , man 
 was foolish enough to ask to become a member 
 of the Sorosis, and received a reply from which 
 I make a few excerpts : — ' Personally you have 
 been found very agreeable by several members 
 of the Sorosis. Reputation and position are 
 alike unexceptionable ; but the unfortunate 
 fact of your being a man outweighs these and 
 all other claims to membership.' Doesn't the 
 little Amazon put it 'elegantly"? ' We will- 
 ingly admit, of course, that the accident of 
 your sex is on your part a misfortune, and not
 
 io Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 a fault. Nor do we wish to arrogate, anything 
 to ourselves because we had the good fortune 
 to be born women. We sympathise most truly 
 and heartily with you and the entire male 
 creation in their present and prospective deso- 
 lation and unhappiness ; but this is all we can 
 do.' What more could they do ? There was 
 a poet in Crete called Epimenides (the original 
 Rip Van Winkle) who is said to have slept 
 fifty-seven years, awaking to find his youngest 
 brother old enough to be hig grandfather. 
 This gentleman had a daughter, whom he 
 brought up as a boy, and whom Apollo kindly 
 turned into a boy because a girl fell in love 
 with her. [So the legend; but St. Paul, 
 quoting that very Epimenides in his letter to 
 
 lltUS, Says : — ' Kpi^TiQ aei ^Eucrrai.'] Is it a 
 
 reverse process to this which the ladies of the 
 Sorosis contemplate ? Can men of careful 
 selection be improved into women ? 
 
 ***** 
 
 There seems to be a theory in the present 
 day that the Sovereign exists for the benefit of 
 tradesmen in the West-end of London. This
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. i i 
 
 notion cannot, we think, have a Long-estab- 
 lished precedent ; can hardly be older, indeed, 
 than the reign of that Prince who was famous 
 
 ' For regulating all the coats 
 And all the principles of millions.' 
 
 What Henry I. or Henry VIII. would have 
 thought of it we cannot guess ; Elizabeth, or 
 even Anne, would scarcely have deigned to re- 
 gard queenly duties as Victoria is asked to 
 regard them. As Regent Street was only 
 commenced a.d. 1813, the West-end trades- 
 man can scarcely consider himself an integral 
 part of the British Constitution. But the 
 theory is that her Majesty is not doing her 
 duty by the country because she chooses to 
 summer at Balmoral, and leave the great 
 shops of West London to get on as they may 
 without her. We find this reiterated usque 
 ad nauseam by various journals, fashionable, 
 or facetious, or both. 
 
 If the final cause of a Queen is to patronise 
 shopkeepers, who would !»•• a Queen \ The 
 argument is that, her .Majesty leaving town, 
 the great families of the aristocracy and pluto-
 
 1 2 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 cracy leave town likewise. If the question 
 
 were worth serious discussion, we might ask 
 
 whether an opulent family are not of far more 
 
 use at home in the country than at their town 
 
 house. Do not their tenants, and labourers, 
 
 and poor want them far more than do the 
 
 tradesmen of Piccadilly % Will not the 
 
 daughters he happier and healthier in the 
 
 enjoyment of this glorious summer than in 
 
 dancing through, all the balls of the season ? 
 
 London has too strong a magnetism. We 
 
 have no particular wish to see it assume the 
 
 same relation to England which Paris has to 
 
 France. People live more simply and quietly 
 
 in the country, of course ; but it is a mistake to 
 
 suppose that the progress of a nation is to be 
 
 measured by the money spent in luxury. If 
 
 this were so, Kome under Nero and Domitian 
 
 was superior to all other States of which we 
 
 have record. 
 
 Who are the men that complain so sorely 
 against the Sovereign of England? We see 
 their splendid shops in London's most magni- 
 ficent streets ; and, if we knew them per-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 13 
 
 sonally, we should be aware of their mansions 
 and villas at Dulwich, Norwood, and other 
 suburban vicinities — of their barouches and 
 mail-phaetons, their opera-boxes, their Conti- 
 nental tours, their sumptuous and Sybarite 
 life. Tradesmen, forsooth! Ay, but men who 
 by their trade live delicately, and who are, 
 therefore, infinitely sensitive to its fluctua- 
 tion-. Useful arc they, in their way ; but can 
 it be asserted that to maintain them at the 
 superfluous summit of luxury is the chief duty 
 of England's Queen ? 
 
 July 22. 
 Fireflies have been caught in Surrey, ac- 
 cording to various correspondents of the 
 Times. Why should we not acclimatise, those 
 beautiful insects'? Insects are as easily 
 naturalised as birds or flowers ; and it would 
 be quite worth while to introduce tlic firefly, 
 whose scintillating movements would add 
 beaut}" to the summer night. And, by the 
 way, what is the Acclimatisation Societ\ 
 doing'? Tis a good many years since I was 
 present at their last dinner, when Mr. Rferi-
 
 14 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 vale played chairman in lieu of the (late) 
 Duke of Newcastle, and Mr. Bernal Osborne 
 made great fun of the society, and I ate frogs 
 with Mr. Sala, and drank the Greek and Hun- 
 garian wines of Denman. Have the)* given 
 up their enterprise ? Am I never to have my 
 ostrich's egg for breakfast ? Are the wines of 
 
 GO 
 
 Greece and Hungary destined to give way 
 before Hamburg sherry and Gladstone claret ? 
 Is there never to be loin of eland smoking on 
 the hospitable board ? I cannot help regret- 
 ting the stagnant condition of this society. 
 Dining is a terribly monotonous business — 
 after eating beef and mutton for thirty or 
 forty years, it is pardonable to wish for some 
 new sensation on the palate. Hence I regret 
 the loss of acclimatising energy, and should 
 be glad to receive an invitation to a dinner of 
 the society before the season comes to an end. 
 I fear there is slight chance of it. 
 
 July 29. 
 
 This has been the week of the Goodwood 
 meeting — the only race-meeting which retains 
 any thoroughly pleasurable associations. And
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. \ 5 
 
 people tell me that even Goodwood lias sadly 
 fallen away, since I last was there — which was 
 in Tim Whiffler's year. Railways are great 
 levellers ; they have spoilt the poetry of Win- 
 dermere, and the luxury of Goodwood. Not 
 railways alone, however, in the latter case : 
 the Turf has become for the majority a mere 
 vulgar means of gambling, and scoundrels 
 have made enormous fortunes thereby, and 
 even noble names have been soiled by ignoble 
 practices. 
 
 'Tis a great pity : but, the moment any 
 pastime is infected with the lust of sold, its 
 best days are over. Without that hateful 
 taint, horse-racing would be a sport of the 
 highest order, since it produces a great 
 national benefit. Some foreiem writer has re- 
 marked that the finest combination of beauty 
 lie has ever seen is an English lady on an 
 English horse, under an English tree. That 
 racing has brought the English horse to its 
 present admirable condition is not to be de- 
 nied ; and it is equally certain that a race- 
 meeting held in a pleasant country offers
 
 1 6 Thoughts in mv Garden. 
 
 about as charming a holiday as can be con- 
 ceived. What better combination could there 
 be of utility and enjoyment ? 
 
 ' Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci.' 
 
 But when there comes in a third element, 
 neither useful nor pleasant — an element which 
 fills the summer air with shouts and bad lan- 
 guage, which takes the stripped welsher to the 
 nearest horse-pond, the embezzling shopboy to 
 the dock, the duke to the Bankruptcy Court — 
 then it is doubtful whether the sport is worth 
 continuance. I often think that if Dean Swift 
 could return to earth and see a Derby-day, he 
 would add a chapter of marvellous force to his 
 inimitable romance of the ' Houyhnhms and 
 Yahoos.' When you compare that perfect 
 creature, a first-class racer, with his trainer 
 and his jockey — aye, even sometimes with his 
 owner — you cannot help feeling that if there 
 are no Houyhnhms there certainly ought to 
 
 be . . . and that there certainly are Yahoos. 
 ***** 
 
 Sydney Smith, in one of his lectures on 
 
 moral philosophy, maintained that wit may be
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. \y 
 
 learnt like mathematics. He would undertake 
 to teach any man of ordinary intellect to be 
 witty in a very short time. Douglas Jen-old, 
 almost as witty a man as Sydney Smith him- 
 self, maintained the same thesis. Perhaps it 
 is that the number of witty combinations is 
 limited, and that thus it might be possible to 
 compile a Euclid of wit. There is scarcely 
 anything in Sheridan which there is not in 
 Charles II. 's time. Jerrold himself, whose wit 
 seemed always instantaneous, was a borrower. 
 In one of his plays, if I remember aright, he 
 makes a man say that whoever has a wife of 
 forty ought to be allowed to exchange her, 
 like a bank-note, for two twenties. Byron 
 was before him : 
 
 ' Wedded she was some years, and to a man 
 Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty : 
 And yet, I think, instead of such a one, 
 "Twere better to have two of five-and-twenty.' 
 
 Of course, by introducing the bank-note com- 
 parison, Jerrold improved on the poet. The 
 truth is that wit, though it attracts an im- 
 mense amount of attention by its sparkle, is 
 vol.. i. 2
 
 1 8 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 one of the minor intellectual faculties. It is 
 based upon readiness of recollection and of 
 application ; and I quite think Smith and 
 Jerrold were to some extent right in their 
 theory that an ordinary man might be edu- 
 cated into a wit. 
 
 Aug. 5. 
 
 Last week I referred to the decadence of 
 Goodwood, and my remarks have been verified 
 in more ways than one. The racing this year 
 has been contemptible — hollow from first to last. 
 This is bad enough, but it is not the worst. 
 The Enclosure, which has in previous years 
 been a sacred spot, was overrun by what illite- 
 rate writers persist in calling the demi-monde. 
 ' Goodness knows,' says the Globe, ' it is bad 
 enough to have these women driving and 
 riding about in our parks, jostling our wives 
 and daughters at theatre and opera, and lead- 
 ing our sons into bankruptcy, without permit- 
 ting them to come into closer contact. Whoever 
 it was that enabled the most notorious courtezan 
 of the season to gain admission to the private 
 lawn at Goodwood, deserves to be kicked out of
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 19 
 
 .all respectable society.' Precisely: but when 
 will that ' kicking out ' process be commenced ? 
 If the leaders of society would expel from their 
 exclusive circles men who are seen in the Row 
 or at Eichmond or Greenwich with females of 
 notorious character, there might be a chance 
 of reform. But the leaders of society won't 
 do this. Why ? Because the men who thus 
 outrage decency are men of rank, men of title, 
 men of vast income .... marriageable men, 
 in short. Yes ; there are high-bred women 
 who would willingly give their dainty, inno- 
 cent girls into the arms of men whom they 
 know to be hideously impure — but who have 
 the proper number of thousands a year. The 
 fiery verse of Juvenal, the indignant prose of 
 Swift, would not influence such people as 
 these. If the beauty and purity of an English 
 maiden are not sacred to that maiden's mother, 
 why, there is no more to be said. Let 
 Mammon reign, and Belial be his Prime 
 Minister — 
 
 ' Than whom a spirit more lewd 
 Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love 
 Vice for itself.' 
 
 2—2
 
 20 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Let us at once admit gold the chief good. 
 Tacitly, it is even now admitted throughout 
 society : it would be just as well to imitate the 
 King of Babylon, and set up a huge golden 
 idol and bow down before it. 
 
 Aug. 19. 
 
 An unpublished paper on ' Grub Street,' by 
 Mr. Henry Campkin, F.S.A., has just reached 
 me. It is a very pleasant account of that 
 famous haunt of authorship — which in the old 
 days may have been quite a habitable locality. 
 Its upper end opened upon Finsbury fields, 
 when there were fields at Finsbury, and, in 
 days before archery was a forgotten art, 
 bowyers and fletchers dwelt there. When 
 we wander into the ancient dingy corners of 
 London, it is hard for the imagination to pic- 
 ture them as they were before the immense 
 growth of the city stifled them. AVho, in the 
 Moorfields of to-day, thinks of the pleasant 
 green meadows where Brainworm met young 
 Kno'well and Master Stephen, and sold the 
 latter a worthless rapier as ' a most pure 
 Toledo'? Times are changed — changed also
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 2 1 
 
 since those later days when keen satirists de- 
 scribed Mr. CurlTs authors in such fashion as 
 the following;: 'At the Bedstead and Bolster, a 
 nmsick-house in Moorfields, two translators in 
 a bed tog-ether.' Two translators would 
 scarcely sleep amicably in one bed, since the 
 battle of the English hexameter began. How 
 would Mr. Ichabod Wright get on with Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold ? 
 
 Mr. Campkin's monograph on Grub Street — 
 now absurdly called Milton Street — is very 
 interesting. I could wish that competent 
 archaeologists would do more in this way. 
 London is full of minor histories which arc 
 rapidly dropping into oblivion. I have drunk 
 port at the Chapter Coffee House, the favourite 
 haunt of Tom Ingoldsby. I have known 
 Peele's when it was the rendezvous of quid- 
 nuncs and gossips. There was a curious old 
 gentleman at Peele's about twenty years ago. 
 He slept in Essex Street; he came in at nine 
 to breakfast on fish (preferably shellfish) and a 
 bottle of sparkling hock ; he spent the day in 
 the reading-room of tic British Museum, a
 
 oo 
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 very close, uncomfortable place in those times: 
 lie returned to dine at six on rump-steak and 
 a bottle of port — they had capital port there in 
 1848 ; and at ten, or thereabout, after smoking 
 a pipe and drinking a glass of some spirit- 
 uous mixture, he toddled off to his solitary 
 Essex Street chamber. This he had done for 
 years beyond the recollection of landlord and 
 waiters — indeed the former assured me that 
 when he took the- place he paid for him in the 
 goodwill ! I wonder whether the old gentle- 
 man lived to see his favourite haunt metamor- 
 phosed — and if so, how it affected him. 
 
 Aug. 26. 
 
 Ladybirds (place aux dames !) and the 
 British Association have been the chief ex- 
 citement of the past week. The B.A. have 
 been doing their itinerant science at Exeter — 
 and I confess I should like to have been with 
 them. Not to hear their papers ; for of a 
 truth they seem to me to write very learnedly 
 about questions which every sensible man has 
 settled quietly in his own mind. But I like 
 Exeter : I like all Devon, indeed. And
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 -o 
 
 Devon's metropolis is really a charming city. 
 Hence, if I wanted a scientific picnic, I know- 
 few places more pleasant than Exeter at which 
 to enjoy it — the cathedral, the river, the 
 Devonshire cream, the Devonshire maidens, 
 the divine sea-margin within a few miles, 
 combine to produce the perfection of delight. 
 Concernino- tin' actual doings of the Associa- 
 tion I know little ; hut there is a gentleman 
 who has been recording- them en amateur in 
 the Globe, to whose piujillaria I can conscien- 
 tiously refer any inquisitive reader. He tells 
 excellent well the story of how Sir John Lub- 
 bock's paper, designed to prove that men are 
 monkeys improved, received curious comment. 
 'A brilliant thought,' he writes, 'occurred to 
 the sympathising president of the section. 
 Ex-Governor Sir George Grey was in the 
 room. What might the pacificator of the 
 Caffres and the Maories think of his old ac- 
 quaintance '. The veteran did not care to 
 speak, but gallantly mounted the platform on 
 a second call, and soon made it plain that Ins 
 captors had got hold of a. Tartar. He spoke
 
 24 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 with the more hesitation, he said, as he hardly 
 knew in what civilisation or savagery con- 
 sisted. Since he had lived in London, under 
 the walls of the Queen's palace, he had heard 
 brutal words, and marked deeds done, such as 
 no foreign barbarian could equal. He knew 
 that by the side of all the polish of ancient 
 Kome flourished the abomination of gladia- 
 torial sports. He had never seen a people 
 pure or gentle, or truthful, except so far as 
 religious principles were known and valued 
 among them. He judged, therefore, that 
 faith in a Supreme Maker and Governor, not 
 mere superficial refinement, was the real test 
 of civilisation.' I fear the Darwinites and 
 Lubbockites did not particularly like this bit 
 of prae-scientific commentary ; but it is just as 
 well that the voice of common sense should 
 now and then be heard in the halls of science. 
 To turn to the ladybirds .... whose true 
 name is the harvest-bug. The pretty little 
 insects came across Channel in miraculous 
 multitudes on the shores of Kent and Sussex : 
 I am told by eye -witnesses that in man}' of
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 the hop-gardens the bine is scarcely visible for 
 the .swarms of them which arc devouring the 
 aphides. I can hear witness that, a hundred 
 miles from the sea, these insects are doing 
 excellent work in the destruction of various 
 forms of blight ; and that the flowers in a 
 myriad parterres are blooming delightfully, 
 because this invading army has destroyed 
 insects more noxious. However, there seem 
 to be people to whom ladybirds are an in- 
 tolerable nuisance. Here is an example, taken 
 from a patrician periodical : — ' We will just 
 mention where insects are getting extremely 
 troublesome. We allude to the row of trees 
 destined at some distant day to o'ershadow the 
 Thames Embankment. These diminutive 
 specimens of our native timber have been of 
 late literally covered with ladybirds, many of 
 which keep constantly alighting on passers-by, 
 much to their annoyance and disgust. Dhese 
 little insects may be all very well when 
 employed in cleansing the hop-bines of Kent 
 from aphides, but they are decidedly out of 
 place in London.' No doubt: we wonder that
 
 26 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 the writer does not suggest the interference of 
 the police. If they can do no heavier duty, 
 they might take ladybirds into custody. 
 
 Sept. 2. 
 ' If the present weather lasts, we have yet 
 to taste " the sweet o' the year." Such were 
 my words a week ago, and lo the east wind set 
 in on Sunday, and has been blowing with 
 pertinacious persistence ever since. 
 
 ' Wben the wind is in the east, 
 'Tis good for neither man nor beast.' 
 
 Of all proverbs this is the one most obviously 
 true. Now, in these days of science (social 
 and otherwise) one would like to know why the 
 east wind is so malignant. No satisfactory 
 explanation has ever been offered by the scien- 
 tific gentlemen who profess to explain every- 
 thing. Why do men, dogs, cattle, birds, even 
 insects, droop when the bitter east is upon 
 them ? Mr. Charles Kingsley once wrote a 
 short poem in praise of the east wind ; but I 
 am told that he seeks a warmer climate when- 
 soever it beoins to blow. 
 
 In a brief report of the proceedings of one
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 27 
 
 of the various itinerant societies which attempt 
 to make autumn amusing I find the following : 
 ' Lord Houghton defended the landlords from 
 the charge against them of indifference to the 
 
 © © 
 
 education of the poor on their territories. 
 
 Landlords were no more obliged to supply 
 
 the people living on their domains with 
 
 education than with food or the luxuries of 
 
 life.' For a peer and a poet, this is rather a 
 
 harsh way of expressing a truism. There is 
 
 no legal obligation on a landlord to educate his 
 © © 
 
 dependents, or to feed them. But, if it were 
 known that the people on the estates of any 
 landlord were starving, I suspect that public 
 opinion would soon compel him to do some- 
 thing for them. Lord Houghton should con- 
 © o 
 
 sider two things. First, a man is not placed 
 in possession of estates without having to 
 fulfil certain duties which pertain to such a 
 position. The theory which made a, man 
 absolute and irresponsible possessor of what 
 he chanced to inherit is quite out of date. 
 There are unhappily many great Landowners 
 who do not understand that they are nothing
 
 28 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 more than stewards, and will have to give an 
 account of their stewardship. Lord Houghton, 
 however, who is described in ' Men of the Time' 
 as having written ' some volumes of poems 
 after the manner of Wordsworth,' ought to 
 know better. He might remember the saying 
 of the mighty master — 
 
 ' Love hath he found in huts where poor men lie.' 
 
 Secondly, there is the appeal to human selfish- 
 ness. Landlords whose ' territories' and ' do- 
 mains' are inhabited by a starving and ignorant 
 population are likely to feel the evil effects 
 thereof. He is a wise owner of the soil who 
 saves his dependents from pauperism, and who 
 gives their children education. Whether it be 
 his duty or not is a question we may leaxe un- 
 discussed : it is assuredly his interest. The 
 true wealth of a nation is represented by the 
 well-being of the people : and this likewise is 
 true in smaller communities. Far be it from 
 me to contradict Lord Houghton : doubtless 
 his political economy is at least equal to his 
 poetry ; but I very heartily pity the landlord 
 who deems it in nowise his duty to rescue his
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 29 
 
 dependents from starvation or from ignorance. 
 Rather would I be 
 
 ' The swarthy, sunburnt hind 
 Who sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and at night 
 Sleeps in Elysium,' 
 
 than such an aristocrat. 
 
 Sept. 9. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin, in his latest Look, maintains 
 that tobacco does immense injury to the young 
 men of the present day, by enabling them to 
 be idle without growing weary of idleness. I 
 incline to agree with him. The short pipe is 
 an institution among our youth. They begin 
 at about sixteen, I suppose. Whether reading 
 at a university or engaged in City business, 
 out comes their consoler at every available 
 moment. Look at the vouns; clerks o-oiny- into 
 town in the morning on the roofs of omnibuses: 
 every mouth holds a pipe. These pipes will 
 reappear after the mid-day chop ; will come 
 back fuming on the omnibus roofs at eventide; 
 will be refilled many times before their owners 
 go to bed. And the result of this is 1 hat these 
 young smokers never think. Tobacco saves
 
 30 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 them from the torture of thought— a torture 
 indescribable to those unaccustomed to it. The 
 consequence is that these young fellows all 
 grow up in the same pattern : they have no 
 ideas but what they get from their morning 
 papers, and are entirely without the power to 
 contribute to the mental wealth of the world. 
 It was noticed at a recent teetotal festival held 
 at the Crystal Palace that almost all the young 
 teetotalers of the male sex were smoking 
 throughout the day. Is it any gain, I wonder, 
 to give up alcohol entirely, and then to make 
 excessive use of tobacco % Young men require 
 very little of either the sedative or the. stimu- 
 lant : their nerves ought to be unfretted, their 
 energies unimpaired. But it seems to me that 
 if total abstinence from alcohol is productive 
 of an abuse of tobacco there is rather harm 
 
 than o-ood in it. A glass of sound ale is whole- 
 © © 
 
 somer than a dose of strong cavendish — a 
 bottle of Burgundy more healthful than a 
 long and powerful Partagas. However, it were 
 vain to protest : smoke penetrates everywhere, 
 and will not be excluded. When one hears of
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 31 
 
 sly cigarettes between feminine lips at croquet- 
 parties, there is no more to be said. Still, it 
 might be worth while for the young men who 
 are just beginning to form their habits to 
 inquire whether abstinence from tobacco might 
 not be wise — at any rate until they feel it 
 would be of use to them. For doubtless there 
 does come a period when a sedative of some 
 sort is needed to calm the brain amid the 
 strenuous and exciting life which many men 
 are compelled to lead in days like the present. 
 But I hold with Mr. Ruskin that our youths 
 begin much too early. 
 
 «■ % * * -;•• 
 
 ' Received of Mr. twelve birds' heads' 
 
 was the commencement of a half-printed form 
 which recently caught our eye at a wayside 
 hostelry. The village had, it seemed, its spar- 
 row club : and this is now the rase with a 
 great number of English villages. The farmers, 
 in many districts, have made up their minds 
 that sparrows do more harm than good, and, 
 as there is a mild excitement in shooting small 
 birds, the sparrow club is a popular institution
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 j- 
 
 in country villages. Should this continue, we 
 may too surely anticipate a terrible plague of 
 insects next year. In France the law has, we 
 believe, interfered to check the wholesale 
 destruction of small birds; and it is known 
 that the English sparrow has been a very wel- 
 come guest indeed in the State of New York. 
 But on these points the enthusiastic founders 
 of sparrow clubs are incredulous ; and the time 
 may perchance arrive when, maddened by 
 multitudes of worms and caterpillars, they 
 will be glad to bring back the exiled birds, 
 after the manner of certain passericidal villa- 
 gers whom Longfellow has immortalised. That 
 there are too many sparrows is doubtless true ; 
 but that is because gamekeepers ruthlessly 
 shoot down all the hawks. If they could 
 only leave falcon and kestrel and merlin alone 
 they would have fewer stoats and weasels, and 
 the sparrows would be kept within reasonable 
 limits. The sparrow-club policy is as short- 
 sighted as it is cruel. 
 
 Sept. 13. 
 
 The absence of international copyright be-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 tween England and the United States is un- 
 questionably a great misfortune to English 
 authors. At this moment we hear of a war 
 waged by two of the leading American pub- 
 lishers over the works of Mr. Charles Keade, 
 as determined as the conflict over the corpse 
 of Patroclus. Mr. Reade, however, is not 
 dead, by any means ; and we hope these pug- 
 nacious gentlemen will not be able to extin- 
 guish him. Greater sufferers than English 
 authors of standing are the young writers of 
 America. Imagine a novelist of real genius 
 arising across the Atlantic. How immensely 
 his chances of reputation are injured by the 
 fact that the works of Dickens, Thackeray, 
 and Georo-e Eliot are sold throughout the 
 States at very low prices ! The great Ameri- 
 can publisher obtains his literature from Eng- 
 land, paying nothing for it ; like the fellow in 
 the story, he ' steals his brooms ready-made.' 
 Is it likely that he will be liberal — or even 
 just — to the young and unknown author of 
 his own country who desires to sell the pro 
 ducts of his brain ? We really cannot under- 
 vol. i. 3
 
 34 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 •stand the reluctance of the Americans to enter 
 into a literary league with England. Forms 
 of government apart, we are one people, in- 
 alienably linked together by the fact that we 
 ' speak the tongue which Shakespeare spake.' 
 And any American who reads the works of a 
 popular Englishman, say Mr. Charles Dickens, 
 and who comes to love his author, which he 
 cannot well avoid — ought to consider that 
 every copy sold of the cheap edition which 
 he reads is a fraud upon the man he loves. 
 He pays less for it, because the writer is un- 
 paid. Does he deem this the right way to 
 treat those who instruct or those who amuse 
 the world 1 While on this topic, let us pro- 
 test against the introduction of Tauchnitz 
 editions to England. The baron — they make 
 publishers barons in Germany — is the most 
 elegant and gentlemanly of pirates. His books 
 are marvels of typography. And, being on 
 the Rhine, and hard up for a novel, we might 
 be induced to buy a Tauchnitz edition. But 
 the tourists who bring them wholesale over to 
 England oucdit to remember that they are rob-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 35 
 
 bing their countrymen. We do not write in 
 the interests of the publishers. Heaven for- 
 fend ! Well able are they to take care i >f 
 themselves. It is the author's small modicum 
 of profit which we desire to see undiminished. 
 Continental wanderers should consider it a 
 point of minor morals not to bring home a. 
 bagful of Baron Tauchnitz's yellow paper- 
 covered volumes, thereby decreasing the value 
 of the original English editions. 
 
 Oct. 13. 
 
 A poet who should preserve for us in verse 
 imperishable the rural customs of England 
 rapidly passing away, would do the world 
 some service. This month of October is the 
 month of ploughing matches. The farmer 
 sends his best team and his ablest ploughman. 
 The scene is Homeric. One is reminded of 
 the glorious graving on the shield of Achilles, 
 with many ploughmen on the fertile Held. 
 and the lord of the demesne ready t<» quench 
 their thirst from a miohtv Biwaq of wine — of 
 
 O J 
 
 Odysseus, insulted under his own roof by 
 Eurymachus, and challenging him to a plough- 
 
 3—2
 
 ■;6 Tlioiio-Jits in my Garden. 
 
 ing match, with strong oxen to drive, from 
 sunrise to sunset. These fine healthy contests 
 still exist, but how long will they continue to 
 exist ? How long will there be the plough- 
 man to drive a straight furrow, or the former 
 who will expend money on his team of four 
 strong-shouldered slender-legged chestnuts ? 
 The 'kittle o' steam,' so feared by Mr. Tenny- 
 son's agricultural hero, is already driving the 
 old-fashioned plough from all well-ordered 
 farms. The ancient implements of culture 
 will soon be as completely forgotten as the 
 stage coach of our fathers. As yet, there is 
 some good ploughing to be seen, but it will 
 soon be obsolete, so if any poet intends to give 
 us a series of English 'Georgics,' he had better 
 begin at once. There will not be much poetry 
 extractable from the steam era, and the 
 ' Devil's own team.' Anybody who happens 
 to see bucolic teams upon the road, will re- 
 mark two frightful barbarisms, the use of a 
 bearing-rein, and the use of blinkers. The 
 former is like the soldier's stock, it prevents 
 the horse from breathing freely and from get-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 37 
 
 ting his head and shoulders into the right 
 position for a steady pull. The latter spoils 
 his eyesight, teaches him to obey, and makes 
 him generally nervous. We should like- to 
 inflict the equivalents of bearing-rein and 
 blinkers on every blockhead who uses them 
 for his horses — to encircle his throat with an 
 apparatus that would prevent him from turn- 
 ing his head, and to smother his eyesight 
 with something which would prevent his look 
 iiio- either to the right or the left.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WINTER, 1869. 
 
 Fast falls the snow, O lady mine, 
 Sprinkling the lawn with crystals fine, 
 But by the gods we won't repine 
 
 While we're together, 
 We'll chat and rhyme and kiss and dine, 
 
 Defying weather. 
 
 So stir the fire and pour the wine, 
 And let those sea-green eyes divine 
 Pour their love madness into mine : 
 
 I don't care whether 
 'Tis snow or sun or rain or shine 
 
 If we're together. 
 
 Oct. 28. 
 
 Snow in the Pyrenees already, they say, and 
 multitudinous hordes of wolves prowling about 
 at night, and yelling for food, and making it 
 quite impossible for a gentleman who lives in 
 those parts to go out on a moonlight stroll —
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 39 
 
 in the company of either a cigar or a lady. 
 Why are there any wolves in France % Why 
 doesn't the Emperor offer a Napoleon for every 
 head that is brought to him'? In the court- 
 yard of the Pyrenean chateau they keep great 
 wolf-hounds, more than a match for the fero- 
 cious brutes they hunt down : and I should 
 think the fair damsels who dwell in those 
 same chateaux must feel great satisfaction on 
 wild winter nights at hearing the brave wolf- 
 hound's bay. I happen to be the possessor of 
 a dog of this breed, and I fancy he would 
 make an example of a wolf, if he came across 
 one : he marvellously combines power with 
 speed, and yet is as gentle as a dog can well 
 be. I suppose wolf-hunting is more exciting 
 than fox-hunting. 
 
 Nov. 18. 
 
 The pheasant has been naturalised in Europe 
 since the voyage of Jason, whose adventures 
 in search of the Golden Fleece are merely the 
 poet's way of putting an expedition for im- 
 porting wool. Did the Greeks want broad 
 cloth, 1 wonder? Alcibiades, in a suit built
 
 40 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 by Poole, does not quite realise one's idea of 
 that witty and wicked hero of the past. How- 
 ever, Jason brought back not only what he 
 travelled to find, but also a handsome and 
 eatable bird which he netted on the bank of 
 the river Phasis, and which is therefore to this 
 day called the pheasant. What says Martial, 
 Epicurean epigrammatist ? 
 
 ' Argivfi primura sum transportata carina ; 
 Ante mihi notum nil, nisi Phasis, erat.' 
 
 A gourmet among poets was Martial, and knew 
 all the daintiest morsels : though, perchance, 
 the more modern rhymer of the Vale of 
 Berkeley, who praised the back of a herring 
 and the poll of a tench, was quite his equal in 
 this department. 
 
 To return to the pheasant. Excellent good 
 is he upon the table; but does it not seem 
 shameful to kill him when he is so beautiful 
 upon the green sward ? I have just been 
 staying where, upon a lawn bitten close by 
 wild rabbits, shielded from a high road only 
 by laurel, and rhododendron, and holly, about 
 a hundred pheasants come twice daily to feed,
 
 ThougJits in my Garden. 41 
 
 and cluster around their master as he scatters 
 the grain. Near that lawn no gun is ever 
 fired, though I suspect that even while I write 
 the breech-loaders are busy in adjacent coverts. 
 The birds know they are safe on that island of 
 emerald, and do not start, though the shots 
 are quick and fast in the vicinage. I saw 
 twenty partridges come to be fed at three 
 o'clock, with a punctuality not to be sur- 
 passed by the wearer of a Dent chronometer. 
 ' Magister art'ts . . venter,' says Persius, the 
 art of accurate timekeeping is ventric. As to 
 the wild-fowl — among them many rare and 
 shy species — their knowledge of their master, 
 their tame confidence, was most admirable 
 Theirs was a pond sacred from shot, but all 
 down the valley I saw a long line of decoys 
 for their brethren. The confidence of these 
 wild creatures in their human friend was a 
 sight well worth seeing. I don't mention his 
 name; it would be a breach of his confidence 
 in me, and, besides, everyone who knows any- 
 body will at once know him.* n 
 
 The Hon. Grantley F. Berkeley.
 
 42 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Nov. 25. 
 
 People use their eyes in different ways, 
 which is quite right. Ask me how a man or 
 woman whom I have met was dressed, and I 
 cannot tell you — but I notice face and figure, 
 and should know that man or woman at first 
 sight a year hence. There are those who 
 look at dress, and omit the individual whom 
 it includes. Again, in travel, there are those 
 who like to take a guide-book in their hands, 
 and see the proper sights, and admire what the 
 infallible Murray declares to be admirable. I 
 prefer to come upon a place by chance, to lose 
 myself in it, to pervagate it, to find out its 
 beauties without guidance. Indeed, I could 
 wish it were possible to be taken bodily in 
 one's sleep, and dropped into the heart of some 
 distant city, Boston or Bagdad, Toledo or 
 Tripoli, and left to discover for one's self its 
 name and its marvels. 
 
 * * # * # 
 
 There is to be a new Grand Master of the 
 Freemasons, the Earl of Zetland resimino;. 
 The Prince of Wales, of course. Why not ?
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 43 
 
 I am not a Mason, and have not even the least 
 desire to discover their great secret ; but they 
 seem a useful body, with a very laudable taste 
 for good dinners, and ready to be charitable to 
 one another. I have seen their aprons and 
 other gorgeous decorations, and have been duly 
 stricken with awe : indeed, I was once at a 
 Masonic ball at Nottingham, where the Earl of 
 Zetland himself was present — they had been 
 inaugurating the late Duke of Newcastle — 
 and I never saw anything so splendid in my 
 life. Still, neither the desire to know the 
 answer to a conundrum, nor the desire to 
 wear fmei'v, has vet made a- Mason of me. 
 I can't understand how anybody has time 
 for such things, in these days of hurry and 
 worry. 
 
 A propos of secret societies, who were the 
 Gregorians and Gormogons ? In Bramston's 
 ' Man of Taste,' we find— 
 
 ' Next lodge I'll be Freemason, nothing less, 
 Unless I happen to be F.R.S.. 
 
 This couplet seems to have suggested a passage
 
 44 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 in the ' Dunciad,' where, after talking of those 
 who 
 
 ' Shine in the dignity of F.R.S.' 
 
 the poet proceeds : 
 
 ' Some, deep Freemasons, join the silent race, 
 Worthy to fill Pythagoras's place : . . . . 
 Nor pass the meanest unregarded ; one 
 Rose a Gregorian, one a Gormogon.' 
 
 The original note hereupon, explains : ' A sort 
 of lay-brothers, slips from the root of the 
 Freemasons.' But I observe in the last num- 
 ber of that inexhaustible periodical, Notes and 
 Queries, that the Gormogons are stated to have 
 come into existence some time in the reign of 
 Queen Anne, who died a.d. 1714, while the 
 Freemasons were founded in 1717. The 
 'Dunciad' was first published in 1729. The two 
 societies, it would seem, quarrelled bitterly, and 
 caricatured one another, and fought like the 
 Kilkenny cats. Carey writes : 
 
 ' The Masons and the Gormogons 
 Are laughing at each other, 
 While all mankind are laughing at them ; 
 Then why do they make such a pother ?' 
 
 The Masons seem to have been too much for
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 45 
 
 the Gormogons — at least, I never now meet 
 with anybody who boasts of being a Gormo- 
 gon. Uncle derivatur f by the way. And why 
 where the chiefs of the Gormogons called 
 (Ecumenical Volgi ? 
 
 Of course, in talking of the Freemasons 
 having come into existence in 1717, somewhere 
 in the precincts of Covent Garden, I do not 
 ignore their claims to have built the Pyramids, 
 and Stonelienge, and all the Cathedrals of 
 Europe. Only if they did, they are consider- 
 ably changed from what they were in those 
 very ancient times. Certes, they have built 
 the Freemasons' Tavern in the neighbourhood of 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields: a work somewhat inferior 
 to the Pyramids, or even to Stonelienge, but 
 where better dinners are obtainable than were 
 ever eaten by those elder architects. However, 
 if the Freemasons are the real descendants of 
 tlmse earnest men who gave their lives to 
 building minsters and churches in all the 
 cities and towns — aye, and small villages — of 
 Christendom, I wish they would resume their 
 ancient function. Such work is wanted.
 
 46 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Dec. 2. 
 
 There be various ways of playing chess, and 
 various ideas of the game. Chess with a lady 
 is, at any rate, an excellent way of securing a 
 
 tete-d-tete : 
 
 ' She puts her hair behind her ears, 
 (Each little ear so like a shell,) 
 Touches her ivory Queen, and fears 
 She is not playing well. 
 
 ' For me, I think of nothing less : 
 
 I think how those pure pearls become her — 
 And, which is sweetest, winter chess, 
 Or garden strolls in summer.' 
 
 I have heard the game described as selfish : 
 perhaps those who think so have seen a charm- 
 ing; girl at the chess-board, and envied her 
 opponent. The two great divisions of players 
 are those who treat chess as a science, and 
 those who treat it as a game. I do not mean 
 to say there is any hard and fast line between 
 them : there is a border-land where the 
 scientific and recreative ideas mingle. At the 
 same time, by far the larger number of players 
 will never rise to the higher grade : since, in 
 order to do so, an amount of study is requisite
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 47 
 
 which very few people will undertake. You 
 have only to open a work like Mr. Staunton's 
 ' Chess Praxis,' to see the analysis of the game 
 w T ill never be thoroughly studied, save l>y a 
 small minority. 
 
 It does not follow that an unscientific player 
 should never look into a book on the subject : 
 for chess has its recognised ' openings,' wherein 
 all the best moves are known. Now, the man 
 who can play the right game for the first eight 
 or ten moves is pretty sure to beat an even 
 player who has not that knowledge. Mr. 
 Longman's little volume is designed to instruct 
 players of this order : for, as he remarks in his 
 preface, nothing is more common than to find 
 amateurs to whom the words Evans, Gambit, 
 and Muzio are meaningless names. Amateur* 
 of this order, when they play among them- 
 selves, will go on for years without an idea of 
 the brilliant variations of the game. 
 
 Dec. 9. 
 There are terms in literature which ouoht to 
 be used with as much precision as if they were 
 mathematical definitions. The word sonnet is
 
 48 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 an example ; its meaning is as clear and un- 
 mistakable as that of the word square. It 
 signifies an arrangement of rhythm or rhyme 
 whose form is definite in all respects : yet there 
 are writers who abuse all its laws, sometimes 
 even exceeding the proper number of lines, 
 and still are audacious enough to call their 
 compositions by this name. It is as if a 
 geometer were to describe a scalene triangle, 
 and call it a square. Shakespeare's sonnets 
 (the quintessence of poetry) were written before 
 the law of the rhythm was known ; Milton, 
 who wrote sonnets both in Italian and English, 
 always produced the perfection of form. 
 Wordsworth, whose book of sonnets contain 
 some of his noblest poetry, was too often lax 
 in his rhythmical forms. The ' Ars Metrica ' is 
 not yet sufficiently studied in England. We 
 really know more of the scientific construction 
 of Greek and Latin verse than of our own. 
 
 Dec. 1G. 
 
 Talking of nerves, I heard a good story the 
 other day. Down where I live we have 
 recently been visited by burglars — the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 49 
 
 scoundrels ' skyugled' one excellent old 
 gentleman's choice plate, some of it antique 
 heirlooms, some presentation pieces in honour 
 of his staunch Toryism and admirable con- 
 duct as a master of hounds. Cruel, isn't it ? 
 to transfer these things to a London Jew's 
 melting-pot. Well, the police haven't found 
 them, and thev have been doino- a little busi- 
 ness since. A mysterious rumour readied 'the 
 Squire' — if I may thus vaguely mention him — 
 that on a certain niffht his house would be 
 
 O 
 
 attacked. The Squire is a resolute man, 
 and has gallantly commanded the Yeomanry 
 Cavalry. He drew from his sheath his old 
 sabre, and with a couple of man-servants, 
 adequately armed, took up a position in the 
 weakest point of the establishment — videUcit, 
 the butler's pantry. Suddenly, while the trio 
 watched, 
 
 ' The villainous centre-bit 
 O round on their wakeful ears in the hush of the moonless 
 night.' 
 
 To see this rascal tool stealthily making 
 its way through his sacred shutter was too 
 vol. 1. 4
 
 50 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 much for the butler. He fainted in his mas- 
 ter's arms ! The gallant old gentleman dropped 
 his sword, and fell back among a heap of trays, 
 which came to the ground with a terrible crash. 
 The centre-bit was withdrawn, and the burglars 
 ' skedaddled,' and the Squire, thanks to his 
 faint-hearted butler, had no chance of using 
 his cavalry sword. What might have happened 
 
 but for this touch of bathos, who can say ? 
 
 Dec. 18. 
 It always seems a pity to change the names 
 of places without good reason ; but the thing 
 is done daily, and there is no Londoner of any 
 standing; who has not to regret senseless alter- 
 ations in the names of streets and squares. 
 Recently an ' ancient rural road ' between 
 Stamford Hill and Hornsey has had its name 
 altered from Hanger Lane to St. Anne's Road, 
 because the inhabitants fancied that people 
 used to be hanged there ! What wiseacres ! 
 ' Hanger ' means a wood, hanging on the side 
 of a hill. Cobbett, that rare old master of 
 descriptive and abusive English, thus accounts 
 for the name in his 'Rural Rides': 'These
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 hangers are woods on the sides of very steep 
 hills. The trees and underwood hang in some 
 sort to the ground, instead of standing on it. 
 Henee these plaees are called hangers.' The 
 word often occurs in composition in the 
 southern and western counties ; a wood being- 
 called Birch-hanger, or Beech-hanger, accord- 
 ing to the prevalent tree. Clearly the fasti- 
 dious folk who dwell in Hanger Lane have 
 abolished a pleasant sylvan reminiscence 
 through their ignorance of English. What if 
 others follow suit ? Dwellers in Fleet Street 
 may complain that they are reminded of the 
 Fleet Prison, ignoring the swift silver stream 
 that in the old days ran through the valley 
 into Thames, a stream whose fieetness well de- 
 served its name. There was once an attempt 
 to turn Holywell Street into Booksellers' Row; 
 but in that dingy precinct there was oner ;i 
 holy well — and why should it be forgotten \ 
 
 1 If one must have a villa in summer to dwell, 
 O give me the sweet shady side of Pall-Mall !' 
 
 writes Captain Morris of the Beefsteak Club; 
 but as 'pell-mell' in the dictionaries means 
 
 4—2
 
 3- 
 
 TJioiiglits in my Garden. 
 
 something confused and tumultuous, perhaps 
 the Carlton and Reform will for once vote 
 together in favour of the streets being deco- 
 rously rechristened. Charing Cross, again, 
 must have something to do with the Cliarhw 
 of the charwoman — decidedly vulgar. To 
 connect it with la cliere relne Eleanor is very 
 pretty, but quite against philological prin- 
 ciples. Then there is Piccadilly : 
 
 ' Piccadilly, shops, palaces, bustle, and breeze, 
 The whizzing oil wheels and the murmur of trees," 
 
 as Mr. Locker sings. The etymologists of 
 St. Anne's Road would decide at once that it 
 gets its name from peccadillo ; and who can 
 tolerate such a thought in these days of 
 virtue ? No ; let Piccadilly be rechristened 
 — let the memories of Queensberry and Pal- 
 merston (neither of whom minded his P.'s and 
 Q.'s) be permitted to perish. Let a saint be 
 found as the future patron of this street of 
 small sins. By the way, those who are inte- 
 rested in the doubtful etymology of that word 
 Piccadilly, may like to know that among the 
 Chiltern Hills, not far from Chequers Court,
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 53 
 
 the seat of Lady Frankland Russell, there is a 
 conical hill, which from time immemorial has 
 been called Piccadilly. 
 
 Dec. 20. 
 
 Is anybody in the world so easily hoaxed 
 by empirics as the Englishman 1 We take 
 up a single number of a country journal. 
 ' Deafness is cured,' to begin with, and a Wes- 
 leyan minister bears witness thereto. Next, 
 coughs are cured. Then follows an ' only 
 genuine Widow ' Somebody's pills, prepared 
 by her grand-daughter. It doesn't say what 
 they cure, probably because their fame or their 
 virtue is oecumenical ; but it is rather hard 
 upon other relicts for this pill-monger to de- 
 clare that she is the ' only genuine widow ' in 
 England. Hooping cough comes next ; then 
 cod-liver oil, from Norway ; then the Poor 
 Man's Friend, which we should have thought 
 was money ; but, as it is ' sold in pots at 
 Is. l^d.,' this is evidently a misconception. 
 Dandelion and <juininc for the liver; an 
 asthmatic balsam that is 'truly efficacious and 
 pleasant' (as a schoolboy once remarked of tin.-
 
 54 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 birch) ; ointment and pills which cure a list of 
 diseases arranged alphabetically, commencing 
 with ' Bad Legs' and ending with a mysterious 
 malady referred to as ' Yaws ;' galvanic belts 
 that cure everything ; and among the rest, 
 ' writer's cramp,' whatever that may be ; a 
 ' soothing syrup,' commended to mothers by 
 the touchingly ungrammatical appeal, ' Are 
 you broken of your rest by a sick child V 
 gout and rheumatic pills ; an intimation from 
 ' a gentleman many years troubled with corns,' 
 that he will cure yours on receipt of a stamped 
 envelope — all those come together in the ad- 
 vertising columns of a country paper. Well, 
 we laugh at them. But there must be fools 
 in this civilised country who, instead of laugh- 
 ing at them, believe in them ; for people don't 
 pay money for advertisements without expect- 
 ing some return. Hence we suspect that the 
 only genuine widow, and the galvanic-chain 
 man, and the fellow whose pills cure yaws, and 
 the inventor who sells to the poor man ' potted 
 friend ' at thirteenpenee halfpenny, are all 
 making a pot of money through the preva-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 55 
 
 lence of stupidity, and by the promotion of 
 ill-health. It would be well if in our paro- 
 chial and national schools a few lessons could 
 be given on the conditions of health, the 
 chemistry of food and of medicine. 
 
 Dec. 23. 
 
 This is the week of church decorations, and 
 everybody's wives and daughters are pricking 
 their fingers with holly-leaves. I often think 
 it must be awfully cold business putting up 
 those triangles and the like. I want to know 
 why the mistletoe is not used in churches, as 
 it was in the old time. That same white- 
 berried plant means somewhat more than kiss- 
 ing. And the question is, what had the 
 Druids to do with the mistletoe ? And why 
 won't the mistletoe grow on the oak ? There 
 is plenty on apple, hawthorn, acacia, in my 
 vicinity ; but on the oak it wholly declines to 
 grow. There is a lane overshadowed by haw- 
 thorns, on which the sacred plant of the 
 Druids grows profusely. The young ladies of 
 the neighbourhood profess to be rather shy of 
 this lane.
 
 56 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 By the way, when I see such an array of 
 berries used by the pretty decorators, I am 
 disposed to wonder what the birds think of it. 
 Don't the thrushes, blackbirds, sparrows, and 
 robins miss those stolen berries ? They are 
 their especial resource in times when the frost 
 is so hard that the earth-worm declines to 
 come to the surface to be eaten. I hope the 
 young ladies who ' skyugle ' the hips and haws 
 for ecclesiastical purposes, will not forget to 
 throw out some crumbs for the redbreasts and 
 sparrows.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1870. 
 
 All through the day, O happy thrush ! 
 I hear thy music's torrent gush ; 
 Then comes the blackbird's mellow flute, 
 And merrily when both are mute 
 
 The robin sings : 
 But when the blue turns golden-pale, 
 Hist ! there's a strange impassioned tale 
 Told by the Daulian nightingale 
 
 With dusky wings. 
 
 Oinagie music, linger still ! 
 Echo, from the furze-clad hill, 
 Tosses back with semblance fine 
 The dreamy ecstasy divine, 
 
 And ether rings : 
 But lo ! through windows open wide 
 To catch the breath of eventide, 
 Comes lovelier sound than aught beside — 
 
 My lady sings.
 
 58 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 March 17, 1870. 
 
 The seasons have been out of order ever since 
 last April. Perhaps the coming month will 
 restore the proper order of things. As yet the 
 year is flowerless. Perdita prates prettily of 
 
 ' Daffodils 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty.' 
 
 This March sees no golden asphodel — even the 
 violets scarcely struggle into life through the 
 snow. The snow-storm of last Sunday morn- 
 ing was the real thing, no mere sprinkling of 
 Hakes for the breath of spring to blow away. 
 The boys of the village where I spent that day 
 were vigorously snowballing each other on their 
 way to the Sunday-school. I was reminded of 
 an event in my own boyhood. One day we 
 schoolboys were having a tremendous snowball 
 tight with some stout opponents ; we were on 
 the verge of discomfiture when I, being leader, 
 ordered my forces to put a stone in the centre 
 of every snowball. We conquered. I got my 
 idea from that once-popular boy's book. ' Sand- 
 ford and Merton,' wherein it is, of course, men-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 59 
 
 tioned with severe reprobation. The eccen- 
 tric author of that work, Day, who edu- 
 cated two young ladies (sisters), one after 
 the other, to marry him, and was success- 
 ively refused by both, would have been 
 shocked indeed if he could have known how 
 his prohibition became a suggestion. Such 
 
 things do occur. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Pigeon-shooting has always seemed to me 
 an uninteresting and, indeed, disgusting 
 amusement : I use the word ' amusement,' 
 assuming that the a in amuse is privative. 
 Certainly it must horrify the Muses to see the 
 birds of Aphrodite mangled with shot. How- 
 ever, this and kindred sports seem to fascinate 
 some people. The other day I picked up a 
 halfpenny daily paper published in Brighton, 
 and found an account of a 'sparrow shoot,' 
 which (says the reporter) 'not only secured 
 some of our best shots as subscribers, but 
 brought some well-known knights of the 
 trigger from a distance — amongst them Mr. 
 Tester, of Balcombe, who, singular to relate, is
 
 6o Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 still a keen sportsman, tliougli lie lias lost both 
 hands in the pursuit of his favourite pastime, 
 having had them blown off at the wrist on 
 separate occasions. He has a mechanical rest 
 upon the forepart of his left arm, upon which he 
 poises his gun, and pulls the trigger by using 
 the stum]) of his right arm.' Witherington, 
 immortalised in ' Chevy Chase ' as having had 
 both his legs cut off, and fighting on his 
 stumps, was a fine fellow in his time ; but I 
 cannot feel any enthusiasm about this modern 
 hero, who has sacrificed both his hands to 
 pigeon and sparrow shooting. Let us hope 
 they were fit for nothing better. By-the-way, 
 how the brilliant eloquence of provincial 
 journalism appears in that most appropriate 
 phrase — c knights of the trigger !' 
 
 There can be no question that a century 
 hence education will be easier, and a wider 
 course will therefore lie possible, by the intro- 
 duction of reforms of which at present only a 
 few people are talking. In notation, with all 
 its varieties of money, measure, and weight, 
 either ;) decimal or duodecimal system (the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 61 
 
 latter being preferable) will come into use. 
 More remote, yet tolerably certain, is the 
 introduction of phonetic .spelling ; etymologists 
 are already in its favour, and practical men 
 must follow. These two changes will shorten 
 by at least a year the time required for teach- 
 ing the three E's : and of course a gain of time 
 involves the possibility of higher instruction 
 before a child leaves school. 
 
 April 14. 
 
 The cuckoo and nightingale have been heard 
 for some time in the warmest parts of England. 
 I have not heard either, but younger folk with 
 better ears than mine assured me that the 
 former has been canorous in my immediate 
 
 mi 
 
 neighbourhood. There are few things so 
 striking, notwithstanding its familiarity, as 
 the way in which natural phenomena recur, 
 without any failure. As Emerson writes : 
 
 ' Ah ! well I mind the calendar, 
 Faithful through a thousand years. 
 Of the painted race of flowers, 
 Exact to days, exact to hours, 
 Counted on the spacious dial 
 Yon broidered zodiac girds.
 
 62 Thong Jits in my Garden. 
 
 I know the pretty almanac 
 Of the punctual coming back, 
 On their due days, of the birds.' 
 
 Yes, here we have them, back to their time, 
 though they may have wintered in iEgean 
 islands or on the margin of Nile. So with tin- 
 flowers. The punctual primrose brightens all 
 the hanks. The vernal world is full of song 
 and fragrance ; the exile from England may 
 well exclaim with the poet : 
 
 ' O qui mea me sistat in Angliil 
 Qua nunc Aprilis floret amabilis !' 
 
 Even while I write I hear the quaint queak, 
 queah, queak of the wryneck, Yunx torquilla — 
 known as the snake-bird from its violent 
 hissing when anyone approaches its nest ; 
 known, also, as the cuckoo's mate, because it 
 usually arrives a little before the cuckoo. It 
 is a carpenter, this little migratory creature, 
 and builds its nest in some hollow tree — 
 coming back year after year to the very same 
 tree, if undisturbed. Some lards are masons, 
 like the swallows ; some miners, like the jack- 
 daws and kingfishers ; some basket-makers.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 63 
 
 like jays, and thrushes, and bullfinches ; some 
 parasites, who won't trouble themselves t<> 
 make nests of their own if they can help it, as 
 the cuckoo, and man)' of the hawks and owls. 
 But their habits often vary : thus the robin- 
 redbreast usually chooses a cavity in a bank or 
 tree root ; but I know of a pair who at this 
 moment are contentedly sitting in an old 
 basket that hangs in an outhouse. 
 
 April 21. 
 
 Lovers of the Upper Thames may be in- 
 terested in knowing that the Ferry Inn at 
 Medmenham has been pulled down, and that 
 Mr. Scott Murray is substituting quite a 
 spacious hotel, which will very soon be fit for 
 occupation. Medmenham Abbey was in the 
 old days a fishing-house connected with the 
 great Abbey of Woburn — a place, we imagine, 
 where the abbot and his favoured subordinates 
 went to spend their Lent, at a time when to 
 catch a twenty-three pound salmon in the 
 Thames was not an event so rare as to elicit a 
 paean of delight from the pisciculturist of the 
 period. Probably the monks who fished the
 
 64 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Medmenham water before Henry VIII. Fluttered 
 the conventual dove-cotes thought very little 
 of such a fish as that Sahno solar of which 
 Mr. Frank Buckland is so proud. Over the 
 porch of Medmenham Abbey is still inscribed 
 the ' Fay ce que voudras ' of the wicked Club 
 which had Sir Francis Dashwood (a Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer, by the way) as president, 
 and Jack Wilkes and Churchill the poet as 
 members. One of their rules was to sleep in 
 cradles — a type, we suppose, of their inno- 
 cence ; and Wilkes's cradle, or a fragment of 
 it, is preserved to edify the inquisitive. What 
 is left of Medmenham Abbey has been some- 
 what spoilt and Cockneyfied of late. When 
 the works were in progress, the foreman, in 
 answer to our inquiry as to their object, said, 
 ' We're a renowating the place, sir ; making it 
 look more ancient-like.' However, there is no 
 possibility of spoiling the delicious reach of 
 the imperial river — whereon, even as we write, 
 the swans are floating, while a great heron, 
 who has just been fishing for his luncheon, 
 rises lazily into the air, revealing in the sun-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 65 
 
 shine his grey-blue body and wide wings of 
 purple-green. Medmenham, it may be re- 
 marked for the benefit of readers not up in 
 their Thames, lies between Henley and Marlow ; 
 and the river for about twenty miles each way 
 is beautiful beyond description. When the 
 new inn is finished it will be a charming place 
 to spend a day or a week. And the motto 
 for the felicitous time may be, 'Fay ce que 
 voudras.'* 
 
 * M. C. might justly have claimed the title of the Laureate 
 of the Thames. Since the days of Spenser nobody has 
 written about it more frequently or more charmingly. His 
 residence at Knowle Hill was in near proximity to his 
 favourite stream, and his swimming his dogs at "Wargrave 
 ferry, his wanderings amongst the ruins of Medmenham 
 Abbey, his driftings beneath the trees at Bisham, and even 
 his dinners at Shindies, each gave him subjects for verse. 
 Everyone knows, too, that charming stanza in which he 
 says : 
 
 ' Pleasant it is in a boat to glide 
 
 On the river whose ripples to ocean haste, 
 With indolent fingers fretting the tide, 
 
 "With an indolent arm round a darling waist.' 
 
 Many a season of sunlit glow or wintry gloom will the 
 stream of Thames see. Many a time will the woods on its 
 shore wear their summer green and autumn gold before 
 they hear the notes of a singer so devoted as Mortimer 
 Collins. — Edmund Yates. 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 April 30. 
 
 A writer who pleads for the lives of the 
 golden orioles which summer after summer 
 reach our shores, on the ground that their 
 plumage is beautiful, their song rich, their 
 habits useful, is apparently unacquainted with 
 the tendency of people in rural regions. As 
 Lord Kinnaird says of Mr. Lowe, he does not- 
 live in the country. Only let a winged creature 
 sing delightfully or possess unusual beauty, 
 and all the population of the vicinage will 
 soon be in hot pursuit of it, with sticks and 
 stones and rusty guns. None, therefore, but 
 the hardiest birds become regular residents in 
 this country ; and there are districts where 
 the song of thrush and blackbird is silenced — 
 where even a robin or a wren can barely live. 
 Our bucolic population go to bed early, else 
 certainly they would soon exterminate the 
 nightingales that are singing deliciously through 
 the lustrous April nights. And there seems 
 sympathy with these destructive proclivities in 
 quarters where you would scarce expect it : 
 thus the Saturday Revieiv seriously deprecated
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 67 
 
 Mr. Lowe's gun- tax, on the plea that it would 
 deprive the boys of towns and villages of 
 their favourite recreation. Was it through 
 an early course of ' hedge-popping ' at song- 
 birds that the Saturday reviewers were trained 
 to wound and terrify human pretenders to 
 minstrelsy 1 The golden oriole's advocate 
 sets up an equally futile plea, when he states 
 that the bird is insectivorous. He writes 
 thus : 
 
 ' During the time the young are in the nest the old birds 
 feed them incessantly with insects, and I have watched a 
 male oriole in an oak wood feeding his mate as she sat upon 
 her eggs with caterpillars which be brought to her at 
 intervals from the neighbouring oaks.' 
 
 You could never persuade an intelligent mem- 
 ber of a Sparrow Club that this is true. It 
 is a firm belief everywhere in the country that 
 the damage done by birds to buds and seeds 
 and fruit incalculably outweighs any advantage 
 gained by their destruction of insects. Nothing- 
 will change this belief short of a diminution of 
 birds sufficient to show an appreciable increase 
 of the insect tribes — which Eeaven forefend ! 
 Would it be worth while to introduce at penny 
 
 5—2
 
 68 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 readings Longfellow's legend of ' The Birds of 
 Killingworth ' ? 
 
 ' Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town, 
 Because like Herod it had ruthlessly 
 Slaughtered the Innocents.' 
 
 o' 
 
 May 5. 
 
 The literary arena is evidently overthronged. 
 The other day a friend of mine, new to literary 
 matters, sent a manuscript to a certain monthly 
 magazine, and received in rej^ly a note, which 
 I will give verbatim : ' The editor will not be 
 able to even glance at your MS. for several 
 years. It is now at my office awaiting your 
 wishes.' This is fact. The magazine was not 
 Fraser or Blackwood. When I received the 
 note, which I shall keep as a literary curiosity, 
 there arose a vision in my mind of the illus- 
 trious editor — a most magnificent literary per- 
 sonage — sitting in his sanctum amid a myriad 
 bundles of manuscript, while active messengers 
 bring him in more bundles every moment. 
 Poor fellow, how I pity him ! Each successive 
 bundle is an additional weight on his weak 
 mind ; it looks as if he would have nothing to
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 69 
 
 do but read manuscript ?to the end of his life ; 
 in a fit of angry resolution he vows that he won't 
 even glance at any of it for several years. How 
 will he spend the interval? I should recom- 
 mend him to buy a two-hundred-ton schooner 
 yacht, and go out to the iEoean Sea. When 
 lie comes back (several years hence) the 
 magazine and all its contributors will pro- 
 bably lie found together in the tomb of the 
 Capulets. 
 
 May 12. 
 
 The retarding east wind has been succeeded 
 by a higher wind from the west, which cruelly 
 tears the delicate young leaves from the limes 
 and maples, and even the ' fragrant snow' from 
 the lilacs. As I write, the leaves are driven 
 across the lawn like a fall of verdurous snow. 
 A wind of this kind in May does much 
 to diminish the glories of summer. All 
 these baby leaflets that are lost must needs 
 lessen the beauty of the shady pavilions of 
 June. 
 
 By-the-way, gardeners have odd fancies as 
 Jo the time for putting out geraniums and
 
 jo Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 pelargoniums and other bedding plants. One 
 horticultural wiseacre will never move till the 
 Derby Day, which he considers to have some 
 mysterious connection with the matter. 
 Another, whose notion seems rather more 
 rational, always waits for the mulberry tree — 
 believing that tree to have some sort of instinct 
 which prevents it from bursting until spring's 
 final frost is over. A wise tree, if this belief 
 be true. 
 
 May 19. 
 
 I have just observed what must be con- 
 sidered a degrading though natural result of 
 the processes of modern scientific thought. It 
 is curious that research into the nature of 
 things should tend to make men materialists : 
 every new beauty discovered in the arrange- 
 ment we call law ought to teach the investi- 
 gator to recognise and reverence the Power 
 which is behind the law. Moreover, the in- 
 quiry into those departments of nature wherein 
 force and even life have definite and calcul- 
 able results might be expected to show the 
 inquirer the dignity of his own position, as the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 possessor of free will. With Professor Huxley, 
 who is at this moment a typical man, it has no 
 such effect. It makes him wish himself an 
 inferior creature — or, preferably, a machine. 
 Here are some words of his from a recent 
 lecture : — ' I protest that if some great Power 
 would agree to make me always think what is 
 true and do what is right, on condition of 
 being turned into a sort of clock, and wound 
 up every morning before I got out of bed, I 
 should instantly close with the offer. The only 
 freedom I care about is the freedom to do 
 right : the freedom to do wrong; I am ready to 
 part with on the cheapest terms to anybody 
 who will take it of me.' This passage is worth 
 notice as showing the narrowuess of the man, 
 and his utter inability to perceive the function 
 which he has to perform in the world. It 
 proves too his absolute inability to understand 
 the elements of the science of mind. If Pro- 
 fessor Huxley could be turned into a machine 
 which would 'always think what is true' he 
 would cease to think at all: for there is no 
 thought where there is no choice. Also, there
 
 / " 
 
 2 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 is no power to ' do what is right,' where, there 
 exists no sense of wrong. Right and wrong 
 do not exist for a elock ; if it does not keep 
 time we blame its maker. Surely it is well 
 worth notice that so ' advanced' a thinker as 
 Professor Huxley pines to surrender his glorious 
 privilege of free thought. It shows that there 
 is something important missing from the scheme 
 of existence propounded by him and his 
 associates. Often we hear of the play of 
 Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet omitted ' by 
 particular desire :' but here we have some- 
 thing far more amazing — a popular modern 
 philosopher who would like to amend his 
 humanity by having his soul omitted. For my 
 own part, I should not have the slightest ob- 
 jection to the Professor's being turned into 
 a clock : he would at least lose the powers 
 of locomotion, and lie obliged to tick and 
 strike in one place. I fear he would tick very 
 loud, and that his striking power would be 
 deafening.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. J2> 
 
 June Hi. 
 
 ' O, ubi campi, 
 Spercheosque, et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis 
 Taygeta ! O qui me gelidis in vallibus Haemi 
 Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra !' 
 
 That second Georoic of our friend Virgil 
 was manifestly written in tremendously hot 
 weather : 
 
 ' who will set me in cool Hasmus' glades 
 And hide me with a canopy of boughs !' — 
 
 translates my friend Mr. Blackmore. It is 
 in bursts of spontaneity like this that Virgil 
 (the Tennyson of his time) vindicates his 
 superiority to his modern successors. Singu- 
 larly alike in monotony and plagiary, they are 
 at the same time not precisely equal. The 
 Augustan and Victorian ages are not without 
 their parallels, social, political, literary : but 
 Horace's superiority to Virgil is perhaps more 
 obvious than Thackeray's to Tennyson. 
 
 It was the intense heat which sent me to the. 
 ' Georgics.' Seriously, this looks like drought. 
 The gardeners complain that they have no 
 roses; the farmers complain of everything.
 
 74 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 The country roads are covered with fine dry 
 dust, and resemble the great Arabian desert. 
 The country people begin to lack water, which 
 is always one of the difficulties of English life 
 in a hot summer. What Government ought 
 to do, or ought not to do, is in these days 
 a perplexing question : but if somebody or 
 other would sink an Artesian well for the 
 public benefit, in every English village, it 
 would be an immense gain. Half the quarrels 
 of English villagers have reference to the 
 water supply. With the modern resources of 
 science, it would be easy enough to put an end 
 to such quarrels. 
 
 One of the advantages of this intensely hot 
 weather, to people living in the country, is 
 that the tramps can't stand it. Nobody can 
 trudge along a dusty road at noon with a 
 broiling sun doing its fiercest work. Even 
 tramps have brains : and when those brains 
 begin to seethe under the summer's sun, the 
 result may be serious. So the roads grow 
 quiet, and there is comparative scarcity of the 
 troublesome folk who live by begging and
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 75 
 
 stealing, and whose insidious persistence inter- 
 feres to a great extent with the charity which 
 everyone ought to bestow on his poorer neigh- 
 bours. I am also told that this weather is very 
 beneficial to cherries and wheat. 
 
 While on country subjects let me remark 
 that a few nights ago, being in a rural district, 
 I found myself dreaming that I was in a room 
 where a canary sang frantically. At length I 
 awoke — and the sound continued. J went to 
 the open window of my room, and found that 
 the nightingales were singing clamorously. 
 It was bright moonlight — and there was some- 
 thing marvellously magical in the issue of 
 strenuous melody from the shadowy copses. 
 Another point — which I commend to the con- 
 sideration of Mr. Noel Humphreys. Last year 
 we had a wonderful invasion of ladybirds ; 
 they came across the sea (I suppose in search 
 of aphides) just as the beccaficoes come to the 
 Sussex shore when figs are ripe. Well, this 
 year I notice a multifarious difference of colour 
 and form in the vernal ladybirds; they are 
 quite unusual creatures ; evidently there has
 
 76 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 been an unprecedented mixture of breeds. 
 Surely this is an opportunity for the entomo- 
 logists. 
 
 [Even as I write the thunderstorm begins, 
 and I am driven indoors by the rapid downfall 
 of rain, and am compelled to recommence 
 under quieter circumstances. Let me hope 
 that Jupiter Pluvius has not entirely oblite- 
 rated what I wrote.] 
 
 June 23. 
 
 Having recently made purchase of a swarm 
 of bees, I was also informed of the following 
 proverbial rhyme : 
 
 ' A swarm in May 
 Is worth a load of hay ; 
 A swarm in June 
 Is worth a silver spoon ; 
 A swarm in July 
 Isn't worth a fly.' 
 
 All things are relative, however : bees swarm 
 late this year, but the east winds have also re- 
 tarded the blossoms from which they make 
 most honey. The Portugal laurel — cerasus 
 Lusitanica — whose aromatic blossoms are due 
 in May, has only just come into full fragrance,
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 77 
 
 so I venture to hope that my June swarm, 
 though it will hardly be worth a load of hay, 
 will have greater value than a .silver spoon. 
 * * * * * 
 
 There are two classes of people in this 
 country whose means of livelihood I cannot 
 understand. The first are the village louts. 
 Where I write I can see a set of lazy young- 
 fellows lounging- in the sunshine ; they 
 have no intelligible means of subsistence ; 
 but no one of them will accept a shilling to 
 bring; in a few buckets of water for the lawn. 
 Yet they never seem to lack beer and tobacco. 
 The other class are the dashing; stockbrokers 
 of the time — the men who transmute a capital 
 of fifty pounds into apparently as many thou- 
 sands a year; the men whose suburban resi- 
 dences are ornate with terrace and garden, 
 with billiard-room and conservatory, who hang 
 their walls witli the choicest pictures, and store 
 their cellars with the choicest wines. They 
 make their thousands as easily as the village 
 loungers make their shillings. In both cases 1 
 
 CD O 
 
 should like to know who loses the money.
 
 78 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 June 30. 
 
 Henley Regatta is hi progress while I write; 
 and it seems as if that pleasant aquatic anni- 
 versary would have exceptionally fine weather. 
 For it is a tradition that the regatta seldom 
 passes without rain ; and I, for my own part, 
 have several times known the two days 
 thoroughly drenching. The long drought has 
 lessened the beauty of the scene ; the hills 
 above the town have lost their emerald green- 
 ness, and look very much like brown paper ; 
 and I hear that the people in those Oxford- 
 shire hill- villages have to come down to the 
 Thames for water. There is, I am told, an 
 intermittent spring among those hills, which 
 bursts out at intervals of some years, and is 
 then so abundant that the water runs down in 
 a torrent, and finds its way to the river by the 
 side of the beautiful piece of tree-shaded road 
 known as the Fair Mile. What a pity that 
 this does not happen to be the year for the re- 
 appearance of this mysterious fountain ! In 
 such weather as the present we begin to be- 
 lieve with Pindar that water is the best of
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 79 
 
 things. In such weather ideas stagnate, and 
 the brain grows inert, and plagiary and tau- 
 tology seem venial faults. I shall presently 
 tramp over to the Thames with my dogs, and 
 give them a swim, and see a race or two from 
 a punt moored under the woods of the island. 
 There was an a nosological picnic at Sil- 
 chester the other day. That sort of recreation 
 is rather enjoyable when the weather is fine 
 and the lecturers are not too prosy : and on this 
 occasion the wandering; archaeologists saw a 
 superb collection of Roman relics exhumed at 
 Silchester, and now in the Duke of Welling- 
 ton's possession. But even the legionary 
 eagle and the coins of many emperors do 
 not strike the imagination so strongly as the 
 long- line of massive Roman walls which once 
 surrounded an important city, as nearly as 
 possible the size of the city of London. The 
 careless way in which our national antiquities 
 are neglected is much to be regretted. It was 
 mentioned at Silchester that Stonehenge, pro- 
 bably the oldest monument on the earth's sur- 
 face, and assuredly the most mysterious, is
 
 8o Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 suffering greatly from the fires made under the 
 massive megaliths, and from the hammers of 
 stupid people, who chip off fragments as matters 
 of curiosity. Lord Romilly, I believe, proposes 
 to bring in a measure for enforcing the preser- 
 vation of national antiquities ; and certainly 
 if the owners of the soil will take no trouble 
 in the matter, Parliament ought to interpose. 
 x -r- -v- * *- 
 
 Martial (iii. 47) laughs at his acquaintance 
 Bassus for taking to his country seat from 
 Rome a supply of exactly the things which are 
 supposed to abound in the country. As his 
 chariot drove through the Capene Gate, it was 
 loaded with spoils from the markets of Borne. 
 
 1 Illic videres frutice nobili caules, 
 Et utrumque porrum, sessilesque lactucas, 
 Pigroque ventri non inutiles betas. 
 Illic coronam pinguibus gravem turdis, 
 Leporemque laesam Gallici canis dente, 
 Nondumque victa lacteum faba porcum.' 
 
 Really the same thing happens in the present 
 day. I often find in Covent Garden vegetables 
 and fruit which I can neither grow nor beg in 
 the country ; and in the heart of the Strand I
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 81 
 
 pick up the cream and poultry of Devon in a.s 
 good condition as if it were the Strand of Exe 
 or Tamar, instead of Thames. So that I cannot 
 laugh at Bassus whatever Martial may say. 
 By-the-way, I noticed that there was an argu- 
 ment in favour of the fruit of Covent Garden 
 in one of the horticultural journals a few days 
 ago. It is maintained that fresh fruit (of cer- 
 tain kinds) should not he eaten ; that straw- 
 berries and peaches, for example, have finer 
 flavour twenty-four hours afterwards than 
 when they are first gathered ; that second-rate 
 fruit which has been kept that time in a dark 
 fruit-room, is equal to the very best if eaten 
 fresh. Lovers of fruit, who are obliged to live 
 far away from strawberry-beds and peach- 
 walls, may be glad to hear this news. 
 
 July 21. 
 
 London has been very full this year. A 
 friend of mine, a parson, and a lover of the 
 Thames, who rowed in the Cambridge eight 
 a decade ago, found it out to his annoy- 
 ance a short time since. He had arranged a 
 pleasant trip on the river from Maidenhead 
 
 vol. i. 6
 
 82 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 to Hampton Court — and the party was formed, 
 two gentlemen and three ladies. Calm was 
 the weather, delicious the scenery : even the 
 numerous locks that had to he passed were not 
 unwelcome, since they gave the two oarsmen 
 rest. By -and -by they reached Hampton 
 Court, in excellent time for dinner : and for 
 that meal they were quite ready, having 
 passed the day upon light refections of sand- 
 wiches, and hock and seltzer. Alas ! it was 
 the day of Hampton Races — 'appy 'Ampton as 
 the Cockneys call it, dropping their lis for 
 coolness and convenience. Not a dinner or a 
 bed to be had in the purlieus of Hampton. 
 Well, they resolved to drive to Richmond, 
 where of course accommodation was certain. 
 After a pleasant ride in the cool evening 
 through Bushey Park, they reached Eichmond 
 to find it crowded with equipages, all its hotels 
 being filled to the brim. Lady Waldegrave 
 had a strawberry breakfast, and the Prince of 
 Wales was there. By this time the ladies 
 sorely needed their dinner ; but Eichmond 
 offered no hospitality, so they took refuge in
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 83 
 
 town, just catching the last train. When they 
 reached London, it being nearly midnight, 
 they went to the Charing Cross Hotel. Full 
 to the very attics ! My friend the parson 
 chartered a headlong hansom, and flew from 
 hotel to hotel in the West, but without suc- 
 cess. He was dressed in boating flannel, with 
 a very battered straw hat ; and he thinks the 
 waiters scanned him critically at the Clarendon 
 and Long's : still, he looks every inch a gentle- 
 man, whatever he wears, and I don't think his 
 costume prevented his getting accommoda- 
 tion. At any rate he returned at a little 
 before one to the Charing Cross Hotel, with 
 the sad news that a bed was nowhere to be 
 found. Of course when men are alone, such a 
 concurrence of annoyances matters little : one 
 can sleep in a railway waiting-room, or wait 
 for sunrise on one of the bridges, consoling- 
 one's self with a few cigars and a recollection of 
 Wordsworth's famous sonnet. The final result 
 was that an oblioino- waiter found one bed in a. 
 private house near the hotel, and that the 
 ladies were compelled to be content with tin's, 
 
 G— 2
 
 84 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 and some sawdusty sandwiches for supper. A 
 hapless ending to a pleasant day. The hotel 
 people declared that London had never been so 
 full since 1862. I wonder how it would have 
 done to take the train to Cannon Street, and 
 seek hospitality at the Railway Hotel there, or 
 at some other of the hostelries of the East. 
 
 Aug. 4. 
 
 Autumnal tourists who are panic-stricken by 
 the outbreak of war may be recommended to 
 see something of their own country. It is 
 astonishing how much beautiful scenery there 
 is within reach of even the pedestrian. Cross 
 the Thames by any bridge you please, and five 
 or six hours' walking will take you into wild 
 recesses of the Surrey Hills whose beauty is 
 beyond the reach of words. You have 
 ascended Mont Blanc, perchance — everybody 
 does in these days — but have you ever reached 
 the top of Leith Hill ? Though not quite a 
 thousand feet high, the view from the summit 
 is unique in its way ; you can see eleven 
 counties ; southward the sea is often visible.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 85 
 
 and north-eastward the towers of London. 
 England is full of beautiful spots with which 
 Englishmen are unfamiliar. Americans come 
 in swarms to the birthplace of Shakespeare' : 
 how few Englishmen know anything of Strat- 
 ford-on-Avon and Henley-in-Arden ! One 
 reason why travellers do not investigate Eng- 
 land lies in the stupidity of our country inn- 
 keepers. They will not move with the time. 
 They cannot be taught that French and 
 German wines ought to be placed on the 
 table at two shillings a bottle. The taste for 
 light wines is daily increasing — and we believe 
 it to be a wholesome taste. But the country 
 inn cannot supply anything except brandied 
 sherry at five shillings the bottle. Now, as 
 tourists must dine, it is pretty clear that they 
 will not traverse districts where a civilised 
 dinner with reasonable wine is impossible. 
 The Great British innkeeper ought to be 
 educated. 
 
 Weather adages are very valueless. There 
 is the old saw of the good Bishop Swithin of 
 Winchester :
 
 86 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 1 St. Swithin's day, if thou dost rain, 
 For forty days it will remain ; 
 St. Swithin's day, if thou be fair, 
 For forty days 'twill rain na mair.' 
 
 St. Swithin was the clearest of summer days 
 this year : but soon after came a break in the 
 long calm, and the old proverb was falsified. 
 But it was the day of the outbreak of war ; 
 and I fear it will be followed by more than 
 forty days of the rain of blood. Another old 
 meteorologic adage runs thus : 
 
 ' Quarta quinta qualis 
 Tota luna talis.' 
 
 But in my neighbourhood the fourth and fifth 
 days of this last moon were days of thunder- 
 storm — and ever since we have had fine 
 weather. 
 
 Nov. 24. 
 
 Being at Great Marlow the other day, I 
 strolled a little way out of the town to see the 
 house where Shelley lived. It is on the road- 
 side, just opposite a comfortable -looking man- 
 sion called Remnantz — and is broken up into 
 three cottages, whereof one (of course) is a
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. Sj 
 
 public-house. The number of public-houses 
 in our country towns and villages is really 
 something appalling — especially as the ale sold 
 in them is almost always undrinkable. Our 
 ancestors took thought for this, and appointed 
 ale-tasters : I believe they are sworn in 
 annually for the Precincts of the Savoy to 
 this day, and I hope they do their duty with- 
 out fear or favour. However, to return to 
 Shelley's residence : Sir William Clayton has 
 had an inscription put up, with an appropriate 
 passage from the ' Adonais ' — but it seems a 
 pity the place is not kept in somewhat better 
 condition. However, if the pantheists and 
 democrats who swear by Shelley leave his 
 house to be degraded, I, who admire him only 
 for his high poetic faculty, may be content. 
 
 Dec. 1. 
 A good story is told of a wanderer in France 
 at this moment, whose vagrancy is due to the 
 operation of the Bankruptcy Act. I Ming- 
 arrested by the French, and finding that they 
 had no belief in his passport, lie produced a 
 writ which had been served on him by his
 
 88 ThotigJits in my Garden. 
 
 tailor, and showed them that Victoria — the 
 Majesty of England — expected his appearance 
 in London by a certain day. The effect was 
 electric ; the facetious narrator of the story 
 remarks that a writ in hand is worth two pass- 
 ports in the bush. 
 
 *'f 2 r ~ £'- Ai. *!. 
 
 The lectures to women on scientific subjects 
 at South Kensington seem to be very popular. 
 I hardly know what to make of them. Pro- 
 fessor Huxley, one of the most irrepressible 
 of professors, is, according to a report before 
 me, lecturing on Physiography. What does he 
 tell the ladies % That the soil of the Thames 
 basin is washed down every year by the rain, 
 and that this is called 'pluvial denudation.' 
 That the hills of Hampstead and Sydenham 
 are heaps of London clay. That the basin of 
 the Thames will be washed to the sea-level in 
 a million years, and that all Britain will share 
 the same fate in five million years. That the 
 ' fishful' Wandle (the epithet is Izaak Walton's) 
 wherein Horatio Nelson caught trout, is 170 
 feet lower than it was a million and a half
 
 Thoughts 211 my Garden. 89 
 
 years ago. Now, with all due respect to a 
 learned professor, in these days when pro- 
 fessors profess omniscience and claim omnipo- 
 tence, was it worth any lady's while to go to 
 South Kensington on a neuralgic November 
 day to hear this rubbish I don't accept 
 those easy millions of years ; they may be 
 rough approximations, but Mr. Huxley leaves 
 out of sight the innumerable counteractive 
 and constructive agencies which have also been 
 at work. He dogmatises, and demands im- 
 plicit belief, although he is groping in Cim- 
 merian darkness, such as that through which 
 Ulysses passed in search of Tiresias. But, 
 even if any certainty could be obtained on 
 (piestions of historic physiography, of what 
 worth arc they as an instrument of feminine 
 culture ? It appears to me that the young- 
 ladies would be for better off if educated on 
 Charles Lamb's system — turned into a library 
 of English literature of the highest order, to 
 read at their 'own sweet will.' Professor 
 Huxley's audience, to judge by the report of 
 his prelection, have gained only one bit of
 
 90 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 solid knowledge : when they see the rain 
 washing the mud from the streets, they will 
 be able to describe it as ' pluvial denudation/ 
 And why not? So, dressing for dinner shall 
 be ccenal decoration, and crochet-work shall be 
 reticulate decussation. When everything ends 
 in ation, surely we shall get civilisation. 
 
 Dec. 8. 
 France has Mien for want of an aristocracy. 
 When the Eevolution destroyed that part of 
 the nation which the judicious Mr. Hughes 
 calls its 'dress-coat' — but which is really its 
 sword — the middle and lower classes were left 
 at the mercy of adventurers. Not otherwise 
 could the wild and wicked career of the first 
 Napoleon, ' the meanest man of men,' have 
 been possible : not otherwise could the third 
 Napoleon have fettered France so long, and by 
 such despicable methods. The disappearance 
 of an hereditary aristocracy deprives a nation 
 of its natural leaders — of the men who are 
 foremost alike in council and in camp. The 
 attempt to supply its place by military cour- 
 tiers — mock marshals — dependent for existence
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 9 r 
 
 on Imperial favour, by paid senators voting 
 according to order, by a bribed bureaucracy — 
 is necessarily futile. In France we have the 
 sad example of a people whose revolution lias 
 gone too fast and too far : and now that its 
 Kepublic has revived, amid the gesticulations 
 of Gambetta and the dithyrambs of Victor 
 Hugo, the weakness of democracy is exhibit- 
 ing itself before the eyes of the world. Men 
 of heroic mould are temperate in prosperity, 
 calm in adversity, and always true : where has 
 France found any such leader ? Hysterical 
 boasting, lamentation equally hysterical, un- 
 limited mendacity, have characterised the 
 chiefs of the 'great nation.' What can be 
 expected from a people so unhappily led ? 
 The great mass of the nation are lovers of 
 peace — 'at any price;' and the price they 
 have recently paid for it has been the absence 
 of freedom. As a fact, the French townsfolk 
 and peasantry have more of the shopkeeping 
 element than the English: they arc industrious 
 and frugal, like to save money, care little for 
 freedom and independence, submit quietly to be
 
 92 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 priest-ridden and prefect-ridden. Frenchmen 
 will submit to treatment from their official 
 superiors which no Englishman would endure 
 an instant. Hence they are a manageable 
 people — else how indeed could Napoleonism 
 have lived so long? Its strength lay in the 
 universal belief of the ill-informed middle and 
 lower classes that the Empire was peace. 
 
 To be Emperor of Germany, by the way, is 
 a great temptation : but I question whether 
 the Teutons will be very wise in restoring that 
 title. It is exotic, and has been used in mean 
 fashions. The Duke of Austria calls himself 
 Emperor : the Czar of Muscovy does likewise ; 
 we have had an Emperor of Elba and an 
 Emperor of Mexico — ay, and a black Emperor 
 ■of a West Indian island. Why use a Latin 
 word for headship of the Teuton race ? I like 
 the word King. Mr. Swinburne makes Mary 
 of Scotland say : 
 
 ' To be King James — you hear men say King James, 
 The word seems like a piece of gold thrown down, 
 Rings with a round and royal note in it — 
 
 A name to write good record of.'
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 A propos of Mr. Swinburne and my disqui- 
 sition on aristocracy, that gentleman holds the 
 opinion that no good poetry is producible, save 
 by men of birth. I don't know how that may 
 be, but as a curiosity of genealogy, the fact 
 (for which I am indebted to Notes and Queries) 
 is worth notice that both Byron and Shelley 
 were lineally descended from William Sidney, 
 the great-great-grandfather of that noble poet 
 and cavalier, Sir Philip Sidney. Here is a 
 clear case of a fine poetic vein running through 
 many generations. Sir Philip, by the way, 
 belonged to a time when war was waged less 
 barbarously than it is now. In one of his son- 
 nets he writes of ' that sweet enemy, France.' 
 
 Dec. 15. 
 
 The poetic faculty is evidently connected 
 with a curiously sensitive, intuitive, instinc- 
 tive idiosyncrasy. Coleridge, it is well known, 
 predicted the course of events witli 'a ter- 
 rible sagacity.' I wish our ' great poets' of 
 to-day w r ould kindly turn their attention to 
 affairs around them, instead of wasting end- 
 less verse upon that ancient Welsh nuisance.
 
 94 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 King Arthur. The fault of modern English 
 poetry is that it is too isolated, and trivial ; 
 it leaves unconsidered the great problems of 
 the day ; it throws a glamour over the past, 
 and neglects the present. Homer, Aristo- 
 phanes, Dante, Shakespeare, dealt with the, 
 life that surrounded them : our contemporary 
 geniuses prefer to poetise forgotten myths. 
 
 The people who criticise Mr. Freeman's 
 English, and attack him for using the verb 
 to jeopard, had better look into Eichardson's 
 Dictionary. There is nothing more ridiculous 
 than the minute grammatical criticism which 
 delights the Washington Moons of literature. 
 Language, in its earliest forms, was the inven- 
 tion of the ablest men : they made it what it 
 is ; they have not lost their right to alter it. 
 Great speakers and writers created lano-uao-e : 
 grammarians came afterwards, and reduced 
 their practice to what looked like rules. But 
 these are days when the drill-sergeant ventures 
 to call the general to order. It is sheer non- 
 sense. Language owes all its power to the 
 men who have wielded it with power: half
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 95 
 
 of us use Shakespearian phrases every day 
 without noting or knowing that Shakespeare 
 coined them. And yet how proud we are of 
 our own small coinages ! I noticed in a book 
 by Professor Silvester, not long published, 
 that he claimed as his own coinage the verb 
 unshape. I found it in the first dictionary I 
 consulted. 
 
 There is a very charming poem in the cur- 
 rent number of the Cornhill Magazine, entitled 
 'After Ten Years.' Its signature — A. L. B. — 
 indicates Miss Alice Lucie Bishop, a young- 
 lady of eighteen, whose first appearance it is 
 in magazine literature. One can't safely pre- 
 dict anything about young ladies : they begin 
 brilliantly, as artists and poets, and amaze you 
 by their marvellous achievements at eighteen : 
 and at twenty they have passed into the realm 
 of millinery, and would rather talk of bonnets 
 than of sonnets. They have within them the 
 germs of higher attainments, which never 
 reach perfection. The truth is that girls were 
 designed by Providence to be wives and 
 mothers, and that these imperfect capacities
 
 96 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 of theirs were meant to be useful to their 
 husbands and sons. The girl of eighteen who 
 writes lovely poetry will be making nursery 
 rhymes for her son at twenty-eight. The 
 young female mathematician who knows all 
 the dodges of the integral calculus will ten 
 years hence be teaching her boy the multipli- 
 cation table. Nothing in this world is wholly 
 wasted. 
 
 Dec. 29. 
 
 Whether or no the eclipse had anything to 
 do with the cold, it certainly brought in keen 
 weather. The birds feel it, and grow wondrous 
 tame ; specially our audacious and vivacious 
 little friend the robin redbreast : 
 
 1 The summer bird 
 That ever in the haunch of winter sings.' 
 
 There is a little fellow — a sylvla rubecula bolder 
 than its kin — that lives in my passages and 
 staircases, and daintily picks up crumbs of 
 bread and meat that are set on a plate for 
 it, and thoroughly enjoys a bath in a shallow 
 dish. I have found Mr. Lowe's ten-shilling 
 gun-tax useful in keeping at a distance the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 97 
 
 lazy loungers who kill song-birds this cold 
 weather. A threat of the police has suffice* I 
 to render them shy of my shrubberies, where 
 congregate in peace blackbirds and thrushes, 
 whose songs will reward me well when sum- 
 mer shall return. By- the- way, the predatory 
 people in my vicinage never talk of ' the 
 police ;' they drop the definite article, and seem 
 to personify their natural enemy, whom they 
 style Boleese . . . with tremendous emphasis 
 on the Bo. 
 
 vol. 1.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1871 
 
 Where is Paris, the beautiful city ? 
 
 Has it dissolved like a mirage wondrous — 
 Its ladies bright and gallants witty, 
 
 Passed like an earthquake shock from under us ? 
 
 Swept away by the onset thunderous 
 Of Teutons mad with the battle joy ? 
 
 Fate and time from beauty sunder us : 
 Where is the famous city Troy ? 
 
 Where is Napoleon ? Where each captain 
 Who rode in his steel-clad train but lately, 
 
 Every one rare visions rapt in 
 
 Of a France that loomed o'er Europe greatly, 
 Of a Gallic Empire, strong and stately — 
 
 A baby-giant with war for a toy ? 
 
 Where do those phantoms march sedately ? 
 
 But where is Hector who fought for Troy ? 
 
 Where are the ladies who roamed at large in 
 
 That sweet city, 'mid glee incessant, 
 Drinking wine of moist Marne margin 
 
 Under the soft moon's silver crescent,
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 99 
 
 With lively laughter effervescent, 
 And gay love-games that are loth to cloy ? 
 
 Where is that ecstasy evanescent ? 
 But where is Helen who loved in Troy ? 
 
 Jan. 2G. 
 
 The capitulation of Paris makes me think of 
 the fall of Troy. Though thirty centuries 
 have intervened, though the introduction of 
 ' those vile guns ' has changed the material 
 aspect of war, yet the two sieges have many 
 points of resemblance. Both resulted from a 
 war of races : the Greek and Asiatic were just 
 as irreconcilable as the Teuton and the Latin 
 Troy and Paris seem to have been cities not 
 dissimilar. Gaiety and voluptuousness reigned 
 in each, and Aphrodite Misthote was the 
 favourite divinity. It is easy to see that Ilion 
 was a city emasculated by luxury ; and the 
 perfidy of Alexander, even though it may be 
 mythical, clearly indicates that the Trojan 
 conscience had become weak and unscrupulous. 
 Myth grows always upon a basis of reality. 
 Troy was a pleasure-city ; Helen was typical 
 of the women who haunted it. Again, the 
 Greeks beat the Trojans by the union of 
 
 • >
 
 ico Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 intellectual and physical superiority. Even 
 thus have the Prussians beaten the French. 
 Bismarck and Moltke are abler men than their 
 opponents, but they could not have achieved 
 continuous successes if they had not been 
 supported by men of thews and sinews. 
 Everywhere the Prussians outweighed the 
 French, having wider chests, more stalwart 
 shoulders, and stronger legs. This is at the 
 bottom of all conquests. Guns are good, but 
 ultimately it is the men who handle them that 
 obtain the victory. Nestor and Ulysses, I 
 suspect, were cleverer than any of Priam's 
 councillors : but Achilles and his myrmidons, 
 dwellers on the heavy clay of Phthia, were 
 worth double the numbers of Marshal Hector's 
 picked men. That is the way I read Homer, 
 and compare him with my daily newspaper. 
 
 I think it is scarcely questionable that the 
 Trojans were of Egyptian race. Herodotus 
 maintained that the Homeric deities were of 
 Egyptian origin, and the chronology of both 
 the ' Iliad' and the ' Odyssey' is the chronology 
 of Egypt. The most ancient Attic year con-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 101 
 
 sisted, like the Egyptian, of twelve months of 
 thirty clays each. The intercalation was made 
 by a solar cycle occurring once in nine years, 
 as may be seen by what Odysseus says of 
 Minos, 'Odyssey,' xix. 178. But the early 
 Greeks dated from the fall of Troy, even as 
 the German Empire may date from that of 
 Paris : it was taken on the 24th of the month 
 Thargelion. They adopted the chronology of 
 the enemy, which was also that of Egypt. 
 From this, and from the genealogy given of 
 Memnon by Homer, there seems adequate 
 reason to believe that Troy was an Egyptian 
 colony. 
 
 < The will of God '— Atoc BouA^, (' Iliad,' T. 5) 
 — was the theme of Homer's epic, and will be 
 the theme of all great epics to the end of time. 
 It is wrought out in the terrible tragedy whose 
 last act is now imminent. I venture to hope 
 great things from this stupendous collision < >f 
 Europe's two foremost races. The Trojan war 
 was the fans et origo of the exquisite Attic 
 civilisation. Poor Agamemnon — abslt omen — 
 did not gain much by his triumph: from the
 
 1 02 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 days of Iphigenia, the victim to Clytemnestra 
 the murderess, he was unlucky : but Europe 
 gained greatly. 
 
 The other day a courteous editor sent me 
 eighteen volumes of poetry to review. Fancy 
 the contemporaneous existence of eighteen real 
 poets ! The Victorian beats the Elizabethan 
 age — as to number of poets, at any rate. Now 
 I take it that to write good English verse is a 
 gentlemanly accomplishment ; and that a man 
 who does that, without aspiring to be a poet, 
 deserves kudos. I like the good strong verse 
 that I used to read in Blackwood and Fraser 
 thirty or forty years ago. The modern maga- 
 zinist is a pitiable poetaster ; because he has 
 found out how to construct a ten-syllable line 
 by counting his fingers, he imagines himself 
 equal to Byron — or at least to Tennyson 
 Seventeen out of my eighteen were singsong 
 fellows of this order : the eighteenth, Joaquin 
 Miller, author of 'Pacific Poems' (Whittingham 
 and Wilkins) is of quite another sort. He 
 hails from that rough and racy region whereof 
 San Francisco is the capital, and along whose
 
 Thoughts in viy Garden. 10 
 
 .shores the mighty waves of the Pacifie roll in 
 resonance. He gives us a thin volume of a. 
 hundred pages, containing two productions 
 only : and the second, which fills five-sixths 
 <»f the book, is unreadable rubbish: but the 
 first, which tells in swift verse a strange 
 passionate Californian story, is a true poem. 
 Without being imitative, it reminds me of 
 Browning. But I cannot understand how the 
 same man can have written both poems. 
 
 Feb. 9. 
 
 Mr. Brassey, whose will I see proved with a 
 personalty of about six and a half millions, 
 was a proof of the great things that an engineer 
 or contractor can do in days like these. Six 
 and a half millions, £6,500,000 — at only five 
 per cent., nearly a thousand pounds a day to 
 spend ! What is a man to do with it ? What 
 magnificent use might be made of it by a man 
 of wisely generous capacity ! But then such 
 men seldom accumulate sums so enormous. 
 Brassey, I believe, was the man who wanted 
 the Government, during the Crimean war, to 
 contract for taking Scbastopol, and expressed
 
 104 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 a willingness to make a tender. The idea is 
 not bad. Perhaps, if war were to become a 
 matter of commerce, contracted for by engineer- 
 ing firms, the false glory which transforms a 
 butcher of men into a hero would disappear. 
 Instead of a splendid array of redcoated, white- 
 plumed soldiers, Messrs. Poliorcetes and Co. 
 would send out stalwart black- visaged 'navvies,' 
 mighty eaters of beef and drinkers of beer. 
 You can't write epics and lyrics about fellows 
 of that sort, who destroy cities as a matter of 
 business. I venture to think that if the great 
 engineering firms could take war into their 
 
 © © 
 
 hands, and make it a department of their 
 trade, it would be a universal blessing. You 
 have only to make people understand that a 
 soldier is a hired murderer to get rid of him 
 altogether. 
 
 It was Dundas, I think, afterwards Lord 
 Melville, who invented the hideously-hybrid 
 word starvation — now so common that the 
 best-educated young ladies fresh from board- 
 ing-schools would be amazed to hear it was 
 not English. But English it is not, and never
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 105 
 
 will bo. Teutonic words cannot take Latin 
 endings : if they could, ending might become 
 endation. Now, flirtation, a dubious word, 
 invented by Lady Frances Shirley {teste Lord 
 Chesterfield) has the benefit of its uncertain 
 origin. I fear it is wrong ; but I don't know T 
 what the young ladies would do without it. 
 
 Feb. 14. 
 A paper announced to be read before one of 
 the learned societies on Phyllotaxis (the mathe- 
 matical arrangement of the leaves of plants) 
 by the Rev. G. Henslow T , reminds us of the 
 ultimate osculation of all sciences. We suspect 
 the mathematical principles of botany are 
 nearer the surface than is generally supposed. 
 Every curve has its equation : — x 1 + }f—\ means 
 the circle; or — if—\ means the equilateral 
 hyperbola; y 2 (2a — x) = x'\ an unintelligible 
 expression to the untaught, makes the mathe- 
 matician think of Kiaooq, the ivy — since the 
 cissoid curve resembles ivy-growth. Have we 
 not here the rudiments of mathematical botany? 
 May we not have hereafter the equation to a 
 rose or a cyclamen, as well as to an ellipse or
 
 io6 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 cycloid ? We have the equation to the catenary 
 curve — that is, the curve of a flexible string 
 suspended by its two ends. May we not in 
 time get the equations that show the growth 
 of certain trees — even the flight of certain 
 birds % All these things have a mathematical 
 law : the difficulty is to discover it. Every 
 tree has its curve of growth ; nobody can 
 mistake the bare boughs of birch for those of 
 oak, or of ash for elm. Nobody with observant 
 eye could mistake the movement of a starling 
 for that of a blackbird. So there is plenty of 
 room for Phyllotaxis, and for much more of 
 the same kind ; and we wish Mr. Henslow 
 good fortune in his investigation. By the 
 way, when the late Professor Henslow went 
 from Cambridge to a country rectory, he hit 
 on the brilliant notion of teaching botany in 
 the village school ; and members of School 
 Boards may like to know that he was rather 
 successful in this way. Children were allowed 
 to enter the third botanical class, when they 
 had learnt a series of words whereof angio- 
 ^permous and tlialamifloral are specimens.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 107 
 
 This may seem absurd, but exactitude and 
 
 quickness are quite attainable by botanical 
 lessons ; and work that takes children into 
 woods and fields has an important secondary 
 value. The worst of it was that Professor 
 Henslow could never keep a curate. The 
 village children got so terribly learned that it 
 was impossible to traverse a lane in the parish 
 without being encountered by a mite in petti- 
 coats, who curtseyed to the ground and said, 
 ' Please, sir, is this Scolopendrium or Poly- 
 j odium V Though the flowers of the vicinage 
 might be thalamifloral, the parish itself would 
 hardly be a bed of roses to a curate who, 
 however skilled in theology, had neglected his 
 
 1 )otany. 
 
 Feb. 23. 
 
 February this year is forward ; the country 
 is alive with colour and beauty ; the birds are 
 busily building ; thrush sings and brimstone 
 butterfly flutters and pirfex irritans bites ; and 
 I am writing on a sunny lawn, fringed with 
 catkins of the filbert, whose tiny rose-flowers 
 are so numerous that we may expect plenty of
 
 io8 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 nuts with our autumnal port. ' Now comes in 
 the sweet o' the year.' Autolycus (the degraded 
 type, who can't sing, though he still holds the 
 notion that 
 
 ' A quart of ale is a dish for a King ') 
 
 is active on the Queen's highway. When will 
 tramps lie put down in the other counties of 
 England as they are in Dorsetshire ? They are 
 almost a worse nuisance in spring than the 
 pulex irritans. 
 
 And, a propos of the Queen's highway, 
 couldn't the men who drive cows thereon he 
 instructed (at least when those cows have 
 calves with them) to drink as little as possible 
 of the vile stuff sold at wayside beershops 
 under the name of ' fourpenny ale ' ? I have 
 seen so many ladies frightened by cows care- 
 lessly driven, at a time when the maternal 
 instinct makes them aggressive, that I should 
 like to think something; might be done. I am 
 not unwise enough to hope that the brewers 
 will ever condescend to sell wholesome ale : 
 they are too well satisfied with the vast profit 
 of the present system. And home-brewed ale
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 109 
 
 is for the poor impossible until the malt-tax is 
 repealed, and free -trade rendered complete. 
 Will that relic of protection ever be removed 
 by the party whom free-trade has vastly 
 advantaged ? 
 
 I have had a couple of amusing experiences 
 of red-tapism lately. Close to my villula is a 
 piece of land of about twenty-seven acres — 
 forming the endowment of Poole's Charity for 
 clothing the poor of Maidenhead. It has just 
 changed tenants quietly : had the change been 
 generally known, plenty of people would have 
 been glad to give a much higher rent than the 
 new tenant. He is a brickmaker, and is going 
 to dig out all the clay and lime, and be a 
 nuisance to the vicinage. Moreover, how 
 many pairs of trousers per annum will a 
 used-up brickfield find for the poor of Maiden- 
 head. The deceased Poole (ancestor, perhaps, 
 of Louis Napoleon's ally) doubtless intended a 
 perennial supply of clothing. I wrote to the 
 Charity Commission which flourishes in York 
 Street, St. James's. 1 have received a scries of 
 the politest letters on the creamiest foolscap.
 
 1 1 o Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 The upshot is, that nothing can be done, since 
 in 1800 the land was let for 500 years without 
 impeachment of waste I This needs no com- 
 ment. What will be the value of land within 
 a dozen miles of Windsor Castle a.d. 2300 ? 
 
 My second case is with the Post Office. If 
 the Postmaster-General undertakes the duties 
 of a ' common carrier,' why should he not 
 accept the responsibility ? He charged me 
 thirteenpence the other day for bringing me an 
 early copy of Mr. Sheridan Le Fanu's ' Check- 
 mate ' (a capital novel, by the way), and it 
 arrived in a state of what Mrs. Slipsop would 
 call ' dilapidation.' It was crushed to pieces. 
 The Railway Company would have brought it 
 to me for half the money, and would have 
 replaced it if spoilt by accident. I wrote to. 
 head-quarters, hoping that the new Postmaster 
 was appointed for some better reason than his 
 willingness to offer an asylum to the Pope. 
 Much foolscap reached me in return. The 
 local postmaster travelled eight miles each way 
 merely to ask if I still preserved the cover in 
 which the books had been sent. As it was
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. i i i 
 
 torn to tatters, it scarce seemed worth preserva- 
 tion. Well, my final epistles from St. Martin's 
 le-Grand assured me that they were very sorry, 
 that nobody had committed any neglect, and 
 that they could not think of compensating my 
 loss. Of course I shall request my friends to 
 send their books by rail in future. Only, if 
 that local postmaster had not been sent oyer in 
 a fly to ask a useless question, the Post Office 
 could have afforded to pay me at least half the 
 price of the book. 
 
 I find the following in a catalogue from that 
 well-known librarius Kerslake, of Bristol : 
 
 ' 4097. Unpublished Manuscript : — VIRGIL'S iEneid. 
 Books 1 to 7. Translated into English Verse by the late 
 Rev. T. GRINFIELD, Rector of Shirland, Derbyshire, long 
 resident at Bristol. 1808-12. 7 vols. + Materials for a 
 Life of Virgil. Collected and arranged by T. G. = 4to. 8 
 vols. 1/. Is. 
 
 ' The original autograph, 'with his revisions and improve- 
 ments in later years. The Rev. Mr. Grinfield is known by 
 several works in Sacred Poetry, etc' 
 
 Mr, Grinfield was a splendid Virgilian . . . 
 and his labours in his favourite field are now 
 saleable for a guinea ! I recoiled thai one day
 
 1 1 2 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 he and I were talking of photography (an art 
 
 in which I dabbled and like), and he aptly 
 remarked that Virgil had furnished the best 
 possible legend for a photographic studio. . . . 
 
 ' . . . . Solem quis dicere falsum 
 Audeat ?' 
 
 That alone is worth the guinea Kerslake wants 
 for his eight volumes of scholarly MS. 
 
 March 16. 
 
 What weather ! It is in one respect curiously 
 coincident with last year's. On the 12th of 
 March, 1870, we were picking violets: the 13th 
 found the garden hidden under two inches of 
 snow. Well on the 13th this year I had the 
 pleasure of being caught in two severe hail- 
 storms — so severe that in a few minutes the 
 hail lay inch-deep in the road, and you could 
 see it after it had passed, looking like a white 
 curtain against the black cloud in the distance. 
 And on the 14th, at six in the morning, snow 
 was falling in thick and rapid flakes, which 
 soon whitened all the ground. But the tempe- 
 rature is higher than it was last year, and the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. i j 3 
 
 snow has melted rapidly. It is curious, how- 
 ever, that this ' blackthorn winter' should come 
 so keenly amid an unusually early spring. The 
 appearance of the birds is a proof that we have 
 hitherto been exceptionally early. I read in 
 the Westmoreland Gazette : ' Since the 7th 
 hist, there has been a swallow flvino; about 
 Mill Area, Kirkby Lonsdale. It is about a 
 month earlier than they usually appear. A 
 correspondent states that, being somewhat 
 incredulous as to the alleged appearance of the 
 swallow, he went to the spot, and sure enough 
 the report was correct. It was the sand-marten 
 {Hirundo rlparia), flitting about and as merry 
 as though it had been a hot summer's da v. 
 A pair were seen on Monday, the 6th, for the 
 first time.' Gilbert White, of Selborne, the 
 most loving student of nature that the world 
 has known, puts the earliest appearance of the 
 sand-marten at March 21 — at which date one 
 was seen in 1790. AVhite's opinion is that 
 these hirundines do not always migrate, but lie 
 torpid in the crevices of the cliffs which are 
 their favourite haunt. 
 
 vol. 1. 8
 
 H4 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Again, White's earliest date for the euckoo 
 is April the 11th. What says the Salisbury 
 Journal, under the head of Marlborough ? — 
 ' The cuckoo was heard in this neighbourhood 
 on the last day of February, and its peculiar 
 notes have been repeatedly heard since. An 
 old inhabitant, who has worked in the forest 
 for forty years, says he has never heard the 
 cuckoo so early, and that its presence amongst 
 us at the beginning of March is a sign of a dry 
 summer.' Whatever the value of that ' old 
 inhabitant's' prognostic, I quite believe that he 
 never before heard the cuckoo so early. Is it 
 absolutely certain that there is not a cuckoo- 
 clock at one of the neighbouring cottages ? 
 
 I hope the School Board will teach builders 
 something. For some time I have been in the 
 diruit-ccdificat condition, and the other day I 
 had a ventilator put into a room which had 
 been altered. My landlord, a builder, asked 
 the workman what it meant, and was amazed 
 when he heard. ' Why,' he exclaimed, ' they 
 put list on the windows to keep out the 
 draught, and then put a ventilator to let it
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 115 
 
 in ! Why don't the draught from the windows 
 do?' 
 
 May 4. 
 
 If naught unusual occurs this will be a 
 gloriously fecund year. This morning I received 
 an enthusiastic note from a famous poet and 
 gardener. ' We shall have a season,' he writes, 
 ' if no frost comes. More rain impends, and 
 the more the merrier. My trees are waving 
 wild arms at me.' Personally I don't want 
 much more rain at present, as I am rather 
 tired of getting wet through, and it is impos- 
 sible to stay indoors in May. The behaviour 
 of the cuckoo and the nightingale show the 
 singular forwardness of the season. The night- 
 ingale carols at noon everywhere, and never 
 tires. Of the cuckoo Wordsworth wrote : 
 
 ' Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring ! 
 Even yet thou art to me 
 No bird ; but an invisible thing — 
 A voice, a mystery.' 
 
 That was in 1807 ; in 1871 the cuckoo is no 
 mystery at all, but shouts his 'minor third' in 
 your car so suddenly as to startle you ; and 
 
 8—2
 
 1 1 6 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 everywhere the world is growing green ; the 
 hawthorn hedge will soon be in flower ; the 
 lilac's ' fragrant snow' is plenteous ; the lime is 
 full of leaf. It is a marvellous spring ! 
 
 Talking; of vernal matters, trees and bees 
 and the like, I desire to commend ' The Handy 
 Book of Bees' by A. Pettigrew (Blackwood), a 
 capital little manual by a master of the craft, 
 who writes straightforward, and does not try 
 to be eloquent or sentimental. I have found 
 but one mistake in the book — or I may say 
 two mistakes intertwisted. Mr. Pettigrew 
 writes : ' maple, sycamore (or plane) and lime 
 trees are of great value to the bee farmer. 
 Maples are not so abundant in this country as 
 sycamores and limes.' There is odd confusion 
 here. The Oriental plane (vXaTavog from rrXarvg, 
 because of its wide flat leaf) is never miscalled 
 the sycamore, and is much rarer than the larger 
 maple (acer pseudo-platanus) which is vulgarly 
 so called. There is no sycamore in England. 
 The plane is a city-loving tree : you will see 
 more in London squares and suburbs than in 
 many miles of country. But you cannot walk
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. i i 7 
 
 a mile without seeing many maples, and thej 
 are trees in which the bees greatly delight. 
 
 May 1 1 . 
 
 Owls. The Owl, to which I in its prime was 
 a contributor, was, as everybody is aware, 
 christened by inverting the initial letters of 
 the name of that brilliant, but rather maniacal 
 gentleman, L. W. Oliphant. The notion was 
 suddenly started at a Crystal Palace dinner, 
 where Evelyn Ashley and Algernon Borth- 
 wirk and a few other brilliant wits were pre- 
 sent : and, as it won the patronage of Lady 
 Palmerston, the thing w T ent wondrously. How 
 a few years changes the aspect of affairs. As 
 I think of the old Owl days, I can hardly be- 
 lieve that Palmerston is gone, and that Cam- 
 bridge House is a club. 
 
 And I am reminded of the Owl by the fact 
 that my neighbour's footman has brought me 
 a pair of young owls of his own training. 
 They look pretematurally wise. Of course I 
 have bought them, and of course I mean to 
 educate them. Consulting Gilbert White, I 
 find that owls are fond of young pigeons.
 
 r 1 8 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Now, as I prefer to eat my picjeonneaux (as the 
 French call them) myself, this is serious. I 
 must keep my new pets away from the pigeon- 
 house. I am told by the same authority that 
 owls hoot in three different keys, G flat or F 
 sharp, B flat, and A flat. Also, that they can 
 live a whole year without water. I hope they 
 won't wake up suddenly to-night, and hoot in 
 any of the keys mentioned above. Such 
 music would be rather too startling.* 
 
 There is to be an encampment on the Berk- 
 shire downs this autumn, and the owners and 
 occupiers of land have been holding a meeting 
 about it at one of the Ilsleys, whether the 
 East or West I forget. According to Colonel 
 Loyd-Lindsay, who was present, there will be 
 no harm done by the soldiers, and the farmers 
 may learn military methods of tapping the 
 
 * The owls certainly did wake up in the night and hoot in 
 various keys ; and worse than that, they attracted other owls 
 to the spot, who also hooted. One night we had to turn out 
 and carry on quite a war with three vagrant owls who had 
 come to visit ours. We found these birds liked plenty of 
 fresh water, both for drinking and bathing. They lived in 
 a large aviary built round an apple-tree, and became great 
 pets with their master. — Frances Collins.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 1 1 9 
 
 chalk wolds for water. As farmers are always 
 in want of water, thanks to over-drainage and 
 destruction of trees, this would be advan- 
 tageous. But the agriculturists of the Koyal 
 county are rather afraid of camp-followers, 
 male and female, and I confess this fear does 
 not seem to me at all chimerical. I have 
 during the past summer noticed what occurred 
 when a detachment of Engineers came down 
 to the Thames to practise pontooning. There 
 was much drunkenness at the public-houses of 
 the vicinage, and there were many women of 
 the worst character about. If this were the 
 case when two or three hundred men of a first- 
 class corps were out on a military picnic, how 
 will it be if thirty thousand are encamped in 
 the Vale of the White Horse ? 
 
 Sir Walter Scott's centenary is to be cele- 
 brated in August. Being; a student of Scott, 
 whose works I have edited, I proposed to the 
 conductor of a literary journal an article on 
 the topic. He assured me that he had already 
 received one hundred and seventy-one articles 
 upon it — all from Scotchmen. WTlO shall say
 
 120 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 that the modem Homer is not appreciated in 
 his own country 1 By-the-way, I wonder 
 whether any of those one hundred and 
 seventy-one gentlemen will be amazed if his 
 article is not printed. 
 
 I see by an advertisement that the Quarterly 
 talks of a book by Messrs. Chabot and Twisle- 
 ton as settling, once for all, the long-disputed 
 controversy respecting the authorship of the 
 Junian letters. I do not believe this matter 
 is to be settled by mere comparison of hand- 
 writing. Style is a surer test : that empty 
 coxcomb, Sir Philip Francis, could never have 
 attained the splenetic severity of Junius. 
 
 May 18. 
 
 Three planets, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars, 
 have recently been visible in proximity in the 
 evening .... just after dinner, if that's 
 an astronomic phrase. Hence some verse — 
 which we append. 
 
 ' Three planets swim 
 At even-glow in this delicious season, 
 When the soul dips into the bath of iEson, 
 Down through the wondrous west,
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. \ 2 1 
 
 The regal rim 
 Of Jupiter cuts clear into the tender 
 Blue — while at hand shines Yenus like a slender 
 Bride for her nuptial drest. 
 
 ' Myriads of miles 
 Part them, and yet in this soft vernal weather 
 They pass into the sapphire sky together, 
 Looking like wedded spheres. 
 The dream beguiles 
 One's fancy, that their twilight hymeneal 
 Has something in it palpable and real 
 And is what it appears. 
 
 ' But lo, where Mars 
 Toward the blue margent of the concave swims on, 
 A sudden angry spot of tremulous crimson, 
 With dire disaster rife, 
 Strange triple stars ! 
 Will calm strong Jupiter and joyous Yenus 
 From sanguine evil of the war-torch screen us ? 
 With power and love stay strife V 
 
 May 25. 
 
 The Derby Day is evident])' falling off. It 
 is becoming more vulgar, and of less interesl 
 to the higher classes. I confess myself rather 
 rejoiced thereat. When a holiday sinks into 
 saturnalia, it should be effaced. Nor is this 
 all; betting on horse-races has of late years 
 grown to a great height, and done immeasur- 
 able harm: I should like to see it 'stamped
 
 122 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 out ' altogether. When people grow weary of 
 the Derby, they may also grow disgusted with 
 Tattersall's. I do not say this at all against 
 the interests of that noble animal, the horse. 
 English gentlemen are not at all likely to neg- 
 lect him, and to omit any chance of improving 
 his condition. But the Derby has become an 
 orgy, and betting has become a maniacal 
 disease ; and so I hope for the time when 
 Premiers will not be seen at Epsom, when the 
 House of Commons will not waste a day on 
 the Turf in the most trying time of the 
 session. I should not have written thus years 
 ago, for the sport was less unhealthy ; but 
 there can now be no doubt that matters are 
 going too far, and that horse-racing (with its 
 objectionable accompaniments) grows daily 
 more unpopular. 
 
 I have already referred to the new book by 
 Chabot and Twisleton, designed to prove 
 by evidence of handwriting that Sir Philip 
 Francis was Junius. I remarked, that no evi- 
 dence of handwriting could possibly stand 
 against the evidence of style. In the Times of
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 123 
 
 Monday last there was a most able review of 
 the book, by some writer who evidently has 
 consummate mastery of the testimony about 
 Junius, and I am not surprised to find that he 
 remains entirely unconvinced by the new evi- 
 dence presented. Thus he writes : 
 
 'At the risk of provoking a rebuke from Mr. Twisleton, 
 we must say that his pet expert, whose integrity is un- 
 impeachable, not unfrequently reminds us of the recogni- 
 tion in Box and Cox, " Have you a strawberry-mark on your 
 left shoulder?" " No." " Then you are my long-lost 
 brother." ' 
 
 I believe the simple truth to be that in 
 such a case comparison of handwriting proves 
 scarcely anything. There are few things in 
 which there is more unconscious imitation. 
 The boys at a school, or the members of a 
 family, will write alike ; and I have in my 
 time had two or three accurate imitators of my 
 own chirography — which is not a particularly 
 imitable one. But imitation of style is quite 
 another thing. It is not mechanical, but intel- 
 lectual. Yon may write a worse style than your 
 own, but I defy you to write a better. Now this
 
 1 24 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 is what the Franciscan theorists about Junius 
 
 have to prove for their client And I 
 
 maintain that it cannot be done. Could 
 Macaulay write like Swift, or Tennyson like 
 Shakespeare ? It has been well pointed out by 
 my friend the late Mr. Jelinger Synions that 
 the best sentence Francis in propria persona 
 ever wrote is ungrammatical. Thus it runs : 
 
 ' The loss of a single life in a popular tumult excites indi- 
 vidual tenderness and pity. No tears are shed for nations. 
 When the provinces are scourged to the bone by a mercenary 
 and merciless military power, and every drop of its blood 
 and substance extorted from it by the edicts of a royal 
 Council, the case seems very tolerable to those who are not 
 involved in it.' 
 
 Now this, apart from its absurd error of 
 syntax, quite without parallel in Junius, is a 
 most curious mixture of the forcible and the 
 feeble. ' No tears are shed for nations,' 
 though an exaggeration, ' is good,' as Polo- 
 nius would say. But all the rest is weak, and 
 grows weaker toward the end — growing m _ 
 deed absolutely imbecile in the sequent sen- 
 tences, which I have no space to quote. Now 
 Junius always brought his power upon you
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 125 
 
 like a surprise, at the end of his paragraphs. 
 Thus: 
 
 1 Good faith and folly have so long been received as 
 synonymous terms, that the reverse of the proposition has 
 grown into credit, and every villain fancies himself a man of 
 abilities." 
 
 Again : 
 
 ' That he is the King of a free people is indeed his greatest 
 glory. That he may long continue the King of a free people 
 is the second wish that animates my heart. The first is, that 
 the people may be free/ 
 
 I do not admire Junius, but I maintain that 
 he was here writing at a level unreachable by 
 Philip Francis. As to evidence of hand- 
 writing, I think it wholly valueless. But evi- 
 dence of style, which I take to be of great 
 value, is imappreciable by the great majority 
 of men. To the uncultured, Francis and 
 Junius are as much alike as to the uneducated 
 palate Gladstone Claret and Chateau Lafitte. 
 I think the evidence in favour of William 
 Burke's identity with Junius is as conclusive 
 as circumstantial evidence on a literary problem 
 well can be.
 
 126 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 'The Nation of London,' to quote De 
 Quincey's phrase, is now three and a quarter 
 millions in number, having grown almost half 
 a million in ten years. I am no lover of great 
 cities myself, any more than Prince Bismarck. 
 One great city has recently proved itself in the 
 sight of the world both cowardly and cruel — 
 and a very lamentable exhibition it has been 
 — and I wish I could hope it is over. I don't 
 think Londoners would in any imaginable con- 
 dition act like Parisians, but I cannot rejoice 
 in their rapid agglomeration and agglutination. 
 
 ' God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain.' 
 
 The retirement of Sir Eoderick Murchison 
 from his sixteen years' presidency of the Eoyal 
 Geographical Society is an event well worth 
 note. What is geography ? Surely the second 
 science to theology : since one deals with God, 
 and the other with that world which God has 
 given us to live in, to develop, to explore. Of 
 late years we have learned more of the world 
 than could have been imagined possible ; the 
 spirits of Herodotus and of Columbus have
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 127 
 
 moved in our midst ; men have died right 
 nobly for the sake of solving Arctic and Afric 
 mysteries. Sir Roderick has been the supreme 
 guide and counsellor of these men — the Nestor 
 of the w;ir. He is not an old man for one of 
 his genius, being still under eighty ; and if his 
 present illness should be conquered, his lucid 
 intellect may yet give great aid to the pur- 
 suers of the glorious science which he loves. 
 
 June 1. 
 
 The slang of the modern young lady — the 
 ' awfully jolly' style of utterance — is certainly 
 not new. Indeed I have a vague idea that 
 Aristophanes ridiculed precisely the same kind 
 of thing. But, being the other day at an inn 
 on the margin of the Thames, on the Bucking- 
 hamshire side, I found a collection of (plaint 
 old novels, and, having an afternoon to waste, 
 1 took Miss Burney's 'Crecilia' down to the 
 water-side, and tried to read it. 1 was a good 
 deal interrupted by herons, and swans, and 
 swallows, and dogs in the water, and pretty 
 girls in canoes: but I read enough to sec that 
 our grandmothers in their girlhood were just
 
 128 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 as silly as our daughters are now . . . that, 
 although awfully jolly had not been invented, 
 a girl of that period would say that an enter- 
 tainment was vastly pleasant, or that a young 
 gentleman was monstrous handsome, or that a 
 wit was mighty amusing. Well, as I have said 
 before, slang is the language of people who 
 either cannot or will not think. Such people 
 are always a majority — and so slang overruns 
 pure language just as a parasite often destroys 
 a tree. 
 
 June 15. 
 
 How scenes change ! I happened to have 
 referred to an old volume of Blackwood (1839), 
 and I come upon a page describing the delight 
 of walking in Oxford Street and seeing the 
 Oxford 'Age' with Jollit on the box starting at 
 eleven in the morning, just time enough to 
 take men to their colleges for hall-dinner. 
 Well, thanks to a few disinterested lovers of 
 the road, anyone who has leisure in these 
 hurrying times may go behind four horses to 
 Brighton or Seven Oaks or Windsor, and fancy 
 there are no railways in the world. But who
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 129 
 
 has leisure ? We live too fast, crushing into 
 each day of existence too much business, too 
 much excitement — pleasure I will not say, for 
 pleasure is a thing unknown except to the few. 
 As a result, literature and the drama are cor- 
 rupted : novels teem with murders and biga- 
 mies, and theatres are devoted to the horrible 
 or the salacious. Leisurely enjoyment of life 
 is become almost impossible. 
 
 I pass from Oxford Street to Tavistock 
 Street, Covent Garden. Walker, the aristo- 
 logist, son of Walker the orthoepist, writes 
 thus in his 'Original' (1835). — 'Tavistock 
 Street, Covent Garden, was once the street 
 of fashionable shops — what Bond Street was 
 till lately, and what Bond Street and Regent 
 Street together are now. I remember hearing 
 an old lady say that in her young days the 
 crowd of handsome equipages in Tavistock 
 Street was considered one of the sights of 
 London. I have had the curiosity to stride 
 it. It is about one hundred and sixty yards 
 long, and before the footways were widened 
 would have admitted three carriages abreast.' 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 This must have been about the year 1771 
 . . . just a century ago. How will poor 
 little Tavistock Street's magnificent succes- 
 sor — the street of the Reo-ent— -look in the 
 
 O 
 
 year 1971 ? Let us hope that in the interval 
 the communists will not have had their inn- 
 ings, petrolising clubs and palaces, upsetting 
 columns, racking the ' emporiums' (I think 
 that is the word) of Howell and James and 
 London and Ryder. I saw Colonel Dickson 
 ride proudly past the Carlton at the head of 
 his ragged regiment : I saw the Hyde Park 
 palings destroyed by strange roughs from East 
 London conjured westward by the illustrious 
 M.A., who is now an arbitrator of small debts. 
 At those follies I laughed ; 1 >ut since what 
 Paris has suffered, I shall laugh at no future 
 folly of the sort. And I hope there may be 
 none to lauoh at. 
 
 July 13. 
 
 Being a lover of gardens, and indeed usually 
 writing in a garden — a habit which during 
 this rainy summer has often brought me into 
 difficult}' — I have been amused by an article
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 131 
 
 in the current number of London Society, 
 entitled, 'A Revolution in Gardening/ The 
 author, who founds his paper on the theories 
 of a certain Air. Robinson, concerning whom 
 I unhappily am ignorant, is an advocate of 
 wild gardening, and a most determined oppo- 
 nent of the system of 'bedding out.' He 
 prefers dandelions to marigolds — wherein I 
 cannot agree with him: but I grow the roots 
 of leontodon, or dent de lion, for salad, know- 
 ing them to be both pleasant to eat and 
 salutary. My own opinion is that the horti- 
 culture whereof Paxton was the prophet, and 
 whose principle is to multiply new plants to 
 the utmost by importation and combination, 
 is the true art. At the same time I would 
 by no means neglect indigenous plants. I go 
 out into the byways and commons in search 
 of ferns and orchises, crane'sbill and loosestrife, 
 foxglove [i.e., folks' glove or fairies' glove], the 
 yellow flags and white water-lilies of Than, 
 and a hundred other wild flowers. But tins 
 should not decrease the culture of exotic and 
 erratic plants. I like to cover my walls with the 
 
 9—2
 
 132 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 swift-growing milk-fragrant coboea of Mexico, 
 with the bright reel tacsonia, with the fragrant 
 wistaria of China, with the orange eccremocarpus 
 of Peru. I don't see why these should not be 
 grown, as well as the bryony and nightshade 
 and clematis of the hedges. By the way, the 
 writer I am criticising puts a superfluous letter 
 in the name of the village where Sophocles 
 was born, but by way of reprisal spells the 
 barbarous name of the chrvseis with four 
 letters too few — escholzia instead of esch- 
 scholtzia. Why not always call the golden 
 flower Chryseis, after that daughter of Apollo's 
 priest, KaWnrapiw, whose abduction gave the 
 Greeks before Troy so much trouble ? 
 
 Aug. 24. 
 
 The other day I had the pleasure of dis- 
 cussing with an American gentleman the 
 quality of Longfellow's poem ' Excelsior.' I 
 maintained that, beyond the inherent absur- 
 dity of any young person's trying to climb 
 the Matterhorn late at night, without guides, 
 and with a banner in his hand instead of an 
 alpenstock, the Latin refrain of the poem
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 133 
 
 could only mean that the youth in question 
 grew taller as he went farther up. Long- 
 fellow ought to have written ' Excelsius,' if he 
 meant higher up — as there seems reason to 
 suppose. My American was quite aggrieved, 
 and remarked that the word had been ac- 
 cepted in the United States — that ships were 
 christened 'Excelsior' — that ladies' schools 
 were called ' Excelsior Seminary,' and the 
 like — that there was at least one ' Excelsior 
 Terrace' in every town in the great Republic. 
 'That,' he said, 'is sound fame' — and I have 
 no doubt Mr. Hepworth Dixon would agree 
 with him. ' But,' I retorted, ' it is unsound 
 grammar.' ' What do we Americans want 
 of Latin grammar V he asked, indignantly. 
 'Nothing at all,' was my reply; 'nobody 
 asked you to use Latin, but if you will do 
 it, you might use it accurately.' 
 
 The notion that Republicans, like kings, 
 claim to be supra grammaticam, amused me 
 much. However, I quite agreed with my 
 opponenl that the Americans want no Latin. 
 Latin is the language of gentlemen and
 
 i t 34 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 scholars — of the study and the library. The 
 ideal modern gentleman of the American type 
 wants no Latin ; life is not long enough for 
 such an acquirement. He lives at a killing 
 pace, and can't waste time upon Horace and 
 Virgil. He may be — I don't mean to ques- 
 tion it — more useful and even more orna- 
 mental than the Eno-lish gentleman to whom 
 we are accustomed — who likes the flavour of 
 Horace and the flavour of port — who loves 
 to read his favourite authors in the editions 
 of Elzevir or Baskerville — whose library is 
 fragrant with Russian leather. At any rate, 
 he is quite a different entity, and is not likely 
 to quote Horace. 
 
 Latin, however, notwithstanding utilitarian 
 efforts to banish it from our schools, will 
 always hold its own. It is the language in 
 which scholars correspond, and wits write 
 epigrams. Inferior to Greek in many things — 
 especially in poetic flexibility and music of 
 rhythm — it has its own superiority, being- 
 more terse, more definite in its phraseology, 
 and capable of carrying later ideas. For,
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 135 
 
 though the two languages arc probably of 
 about equal antiquity, Greek grew faster than 
 its sister tongue. It reached perfection in the 
 hands of Aristophanes ; while Latin was not 
 consummated till nearly four centuries later, 
 when Cicero and Horace and Virgil wrote. 
 Four centuries produce ideas, when the world 
 is living as fast as it did between the age 
 of Pericles and the age of Caesar. And, in- 
 deed, Latin had not acquired its full richness 
 of expression till it was used by Martial, 
 nearly a century later. 
 
 If one may venture to advert to that inex- . 
 haustible topic, the weather, I may say that it 
 is rather puzzling. A letter from Aberdeenshire 
 this morning; tells me that fires have become 
 necessary up in the grouse-shootings. As I 
 write, a wild wind is tearing the leaves from 
 my trees, and completely strewing the lawn. 
 You might think it was late in autumn. How- 
 ever, perhaps we shall get an Indian summer : 
 if so, I most assuredly shall rejoice. With 
 line weather, I always think September and 
 ( )ctober the most enjoyable months of the year.
 
 136 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Sept. 21. 
 
 What a pleasant ' parlour- window book ' — 
 to use a happy phrase of Leigh Hunt's — is the 
 ' Essays ' of Francis Bacon. Unluckily, in these 
 refined times, there are no parlours : hence, of 
 course, there can be no parlour-windows. I 
 am pleasantly reminiscent of old-fashioned 
 country parlours, with latticed bay windows 
 looking out on quaint gardens, overflowing 
 with roses, and alive with multitudinous bees, 
 and with low seats wherein it was natural to 
 expect to find a book. No cheap periodical 
 literature (if literature it can be called) had 
 usurped the place of our old essayists : young- 
 ladies in search of light reading had no Family 
 Herald or Bow Bells to solace them, and seemed 
 quite content with Addison, and Steele, and 
 Goldsmith, and a few other essayists. Some 
 of them were even known to read Shakespeare, 
 Milton, Dryden, Pope — not to mention the 
 courtly Waller, and ' dear Matt Prior's easy 
 jingle.' Nous avons change tout cela, as the 
 Medecin malgre lid remarked when his patient 
 remonstrated on his heart's having changed
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 137 
 
 sides since he was a boy: and it would be 
 rather hard to find a modern young lady 
 whose literature went much beyond the novels 
 of the year. 
 
 To revert to Bacon's ' Essays,' one of the 
 choicest of parlour-window hooks. Recently 
 I have looked through it again, and, of course 
 (as is the case with all good Looks), have found 
 much more in it than when I read it last. A 
 good book is like a w T ise man or a charming 
 woman ; it is a perennial fountain of novelty ; 
 vou cannot exhaust it or grow tired of it. 
 
 Everybody remembers the late Lord Derby's 
 famous aphorism: 'Muck is money.' I don't 
 suppose the noble earl plagiarised, consciously 
 or unconsciously ; but I find in Bacon's essay 
 ' Of Travel ' this saying — ' Money is like muck, 
 not good except it be spread.' 
 
 From Bacon I turn to Joseph Trapp, D.D., 
 sometime Professor of Poetry in the University 
 of Oxford, whose translation of Virgil into 
 English blank verse I had never seen till I 
 picked up the first volume by accident the 
 other day. It is the second edition (l7-'>5)
 
 138 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 'printed for J. Brotherton, J. Hazard, W. 
 Medows, T. Cox, W. HinchclirTe, W. Bickerton, 
 J. Astley, G. Austen, L. Gilliver, and E. Wil- 
 lock.' That penultimate publisher must surely 
 be of the same family as our old friend Captain 
 Lemuel Gulliver ; only a letter of the name 
 has been changed. The poetic Professor Trapp 
 prefixes to his translation a preface of about 
 ninety pages, wherein he irrefragably proves 
 three things : 
 
 1. That Virgil was a greater poet than 
 Homer. 
 
 2. That Trapp's translation of Virgil is in 
 all points superior to Dryden's. 
 
 3. That Trapp's blank verse is more majes- 
 tical and melodious than Milton's. 
 
 Sept. 28. 
 
 The swallows are not gone yet ; but I have 
 recently seen them holding their preliminary 
 assemblies on the roofs, as described by Theo- 
 phile Gautier, years ago : 
 
 ' La pluie au bassin fait des bulles ; 
 Les hirondelles sur le toit 
 Tiennent des conciliabules ; 
 Voici l'hiver ! voici le froid !'
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 139 
 
 The French poet went on to make the 
 various swallows describe the places whither 
 they were going . . . as thus : 
 
 ' A la seconde cataracte, 
 
 Dit la derniere, j'ai mon nid ; 
 J'en ai note la place exacte 
 
 Dans le cou d'un roi de granit.' 
 
 Few things in nature are so marvellous as 
 this migration of the birds. How do such 
 tiny creatures as swallow and marten and 
 swift find their way unerringly from Thames 
 and Avon and Trent to Nile and Ganges and 
 Euphrates and Tigris ? It is a great mystery. 
 Perhaps when Mr. Darwin has finished proving 
 that man is a gorilla, he will demonstrate the 
 swallow to he an automaton. 
 
 Since Charles Dickens in 'The Old Curiosity 
 Shop' depicted the highly respectable Mrs. 
 Jarley, proprietor of waxworks, the vocation 
 has grown more momentous. saw on a 
 
 Berkshire road the other day. a train of eleven 
 vans of waxwork returning from a country 
 fair. The inscriptions on the outside of them 
 were suggestive. Madame Rachel and the
 
 140 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Welsh 'fasting; girl' were in the aristocratic 
 company of Prince Bismarck, the Marquis of 
 Lome, and the Princess Louise. One van 
 contained a group of the Royal Family ; 
 another of Joseph being sold by his brethren ; 
 another of Lady Jane Grey's execution. They 
 were advertised as moving waxwork, by the 
 way, so I suppose the Royal Family in efngy 
 behaved very much as they do at Osborne or 
 Balmoral. You can imagine the sort of thing 
 — conversation and chess (the Queen likes 
 chess), when enter Earl Granville with a 
 despatch-box : 
 
 The Earl : ' War is declared, my Liege. The Prussians 
 are at Dorking.' 
 
 The Queen : ' Dear me. And I had ordered a couple 
 of Dorking fowls for lunch.' 
 
 I have often mentioned the strange mis- 
 management which seems an incurable disease 
 of some of our public charities. An orphan 
 asylum will get a prince to open its new 
 edifices, and spend more on the entertain- 
 ment than the contributions bring in. The 
 other day I casually heard of the case of the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 141 
 
 steward at a large orphan asylum — whose 
 duties are to manage the farm and gardens 
 which supply the establishment, and who 
 comes home drunk every night, usually sleep- 
 ing in a barn or outhouse, where the labourers 
 find him in a stupid state when they come to 
 their work in the morning. His inefficiency 
 has caused the loss of some valuable cattle. I 
 asked mv informant, who knows the man 
 personally, how he contrived to keep his 
 situation, and received for reply, ' Oh, the 
 superintendent is a tippler too ; but he is 
 going away now, and then I expect this man 
 will lose his place.' Well, I hope he may : 
 but meanwhile the institution has suffered, the 
 money of generous subscribers has gone to 
 find beer for steward and brandy for super- 
 intendent, the children have their milk watered 
 because the steward's negligence has caused 
 the death of cattle. Such a man could not 
 hold his place on a private estate three weeks ; 
 he has been three years at this orphan asylum. 
 Cannot something be done to bring private 
 charities under Government inspection? An
 
 ij\.2 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 immense amount of money is wasted by the 
 
 inefficiency and incapacity of persons employed 
 
 at these institutions. 
 
 Nov. 16. 
 
 ' Where there is no God there will be 
 ghosts.' This famous apophthegm of Novalis 
 frequently occurs to me in these days, when 
 people cannot believe that the world had a 
 Maker, who is now its Upholder, yet can 
 believe that, if five or six fools sit round a 
 table, that table will turn, and answer ques- 
 tions by emitting groans. It is very odd, this 
 imbecile superstition. 
 
 A passage in Robert Browning's poems has 
 always appeared to me to indicate that the 
 writer has a delicate notion of music. It is 
 the eighteenth stanza of ' A Lover's Quarrel :' 
 
 ' Here's the spring back or close, 
 When the alrnond-blossom blows ; 
 We shall have the word 
 In that minor third 
 There is none but the cuckoo knows.' 
 
 However, picking up a copy of dear Gilbert 
 White's 'Selborne,' I rind, among the notes, this
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 143 
 
 statement : ' The cuckoo begins early in the 
 season with the interval of a minor third, the 
 bird then proceeds to a major third, next to a 
 fourth, and then a fifth, after which their voice 
 breaks without attaining a minor sixth.' Hence, 
 clearly, this bit of observation was not, in the 
 first instant, Browning's, which I regret to see. 
 I like to see a poet find out the world's secrets 
 for himself. 
 
 Nov. 23. 
 
 There are two things I dislike about English 
 lawyers — their fees and their jokes. In Eome, 
 whence we have borrowed our legal system 
 (and degraded it in borrowing), the pleader 
 must have been a gentleman . . . member of 
 a gens. He took no fees. His clients were 
 his inferiors, whose cause he took up because 
 they were utterly unable to help themselves. 
 Did Regulus take sesterces from soiled palms, 
 think you? Think of Horace's 'egregius 
 exsul ' : 
 
 ' Atqui sciebat, qua; sibi barbarus 
 Tortor pararet : nnn aliter tamen 
 Dimovit obstantes propinquos 
 Et populum reditns morantcm;
 
 144 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 ' Quam si clientum longa negotia, 
 Dijudicata lite, relinqueret, 
 
 Tendens Venafranos in agros 
 Aut Lacedsemonium Tarentum.' 
 
 Kely on it, the man who elbowed aside his 
 client as gaily in prospect of return to his 
 Punic torturers as if h^ were off to a holiday 
 at his villula, was no mere gatherer of fees. 
 Among the Eomans the bar was a profession, 
 with us it is a trade. 
 
 Again, our legal jokes ! They are an abomi- 
 nation. It has many a time been urged — and, 
 indeed, I have seen it urged lately, when dull 
 jokes were made in a murder trial — that the 
 course of inquiry is so wearying that a little 
 laughter is necessary to lighten the strain on 
 the brain. What nonsense ! If a legal inquiry 
 is properly conducted its interest will quite 
 suffice to occupy the minds of judge, and jury, 
 and bar ; it is a problem whereon they may 
 just as well concentrate their intellects, and 
 not stop to bandy impertinences which arc 
 taken as^ witticisms. Fancy a student of 
 mathematics refreshing himself with Joe Miller
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 145 
 
 in the intervals of Euclid. 1 admit that satire 
 would sometimes be effective at the bar — or 
 even upon the bench. But the lawyer who 
 can wield that weapon is not among us 
 now. 
 
 Dec. 14. 
 
 I confess to some slight envy for birds this 
 wintry weather. My pigeons take their bath 
 in the coldest-blooded' way the moment the 
 gardener breaks the ice of mornings. Mr. 
 
 Keats writes : 
 
 ' St. Agnes' Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was ! 
 The owl, for <fll his feathers, was a-cold.' 
 
 Well, I don't believe it will be much colder on 
 St. Agnes' Eve (I regret to say I don't know 
 who the lady was, but I see January 21st is 
 her festival) than it has been already, — and a 
 couple of owls that live in an apple-tree oppo- 
 site my window blink at me as jollily as pos- 
 sible, and evidently care nothing at all for 
 frost and snow. 
 
 An American poet, Emerson, is true to 
 vol. 1. 10
 
 146 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 nature when he describes the titmouse .... 
 most amusing and daring of little birds. 
 
 ' You shall not be overbold 
 When you deal with arctic cold,' .... 
 
 he writes : and then tells us how, in the 
 sharpest weather, he met in his wanderings 
 a torn- tit that shamed his shivers — that 
 
 ' Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, 
 Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, 
 Prints his small impress on the snow, 
 Shows feats of his gymnastic play, 
 Head downward, clinging to the spray. 
 
 ' Here was this atom in full breath 
 Hurling defiance at vast death ; 
 This scrap of valour just for play 
 Fronts the north wind in waistcoat grey.' 
 
 Just such an atom on wines — such a versicolour 
 scrap of valour — comes and hangs feet upward 
 on a scrap of gristle of sirloin which I sus- 
 pended by a bit of twine from a young ash- 
 tree. I see him a dozen times a day. Each 
 time I think that to be a tom-tit would be 
 pleasant. 
 
 And, indeed, the life of a bird is not unen-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 H7 
 
 viable ; and to be a dog and to fulfil the whole 
 duty of a dog, to love man and to keep his 
 commandments, as Christopher North said, 
 might not be objectionable; but I would rather 
 not be a cat. 
 
 10— 2
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 1872. 
 
 Life has its endless contrasts. Very few 
 
 Tbe years that teach us its complete conditions 
 
 If you would stand in Manhood's front, be true ; 
 If not, then make contemptible submissions. 
 
 There is a lofty destiny for man ; 
 
 Only the perverse idiot fain would spoil it. 
 God gave great gifts since first His world began : 
 
 His will is fate : then wherefore try to foil it ? 
 
 Jan. 11. 
 
 What fools there are in the world ! I have 
 just seen the fourth edition of a book called 
 ' The Alpha,' by a person named Dennys, 
 whose portrait is prefixed to it. It is a 
 jumble of effete and exploded heresies, written 
 in the tallest and dullest Ameriean-Eno-lish.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 149 
 
 The most amusing yet contemptible part of it 
 is an appendix, which Mr. Dennys is averred 
 to have written since his death, and which pro- 
 fessedly contains an account of his entry into 
 the other world, where, when he first awoke, 
 he found himself in a circular room with ala- 
 baster walls, 'reclining' (these gentry never lie) 
 * on a couch formed to resemble a white lily.' 
 I don't care to fill space with the imbecile 
 blasphemy of the pseudo-Dennys, but his 
 account of a public meeting of spirits, who 
 passed resolutions, is very fine fooling indeed. 
 Here is the first resolution : ' That, as the 
 leaven from the Angel world had permeated 
 the vast mass of Western civilisation (meaning 
 Yankee land), the attention of this association, 
 combined with the means at its disposal, 
 should be devoted to the opposite section of 
 the earth, taking as its first point the English 
 nation,' etc., etc. Pleasant for us ! 
 
 Jan. 18. 
 
 It seems a pity that by the carelessness of 
 writers and the ignorance of critics, the royal 
 opulence of our English language should be
 
 150 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 decreased. In last week's Saturday Review w > 
 critic appends a contemptuous ''sic' to a sen- 
 tence containing the words clariture and poli- 
 ture. Happening to have the book under 
 notice, I referred to the passage, and found 
 that clariture was the reviewer's misprint for 
 clarity. This is a word as old, at least, as 
 Wiclif, and is at the present day used by Mr. 
 Robert Browning, in ' The Ring and the Book,' 
 and by Professor Robinson Ellis, in his capital 
 translation of Catullus. As to politurej 
 Richardson's authority for it is Beaumont, and 
 I have myself seen it in the writings of John 
 Evelyn, who was no bungler in English.* 
 
 "While I am on words, I may note that the 
 other day a printed circular reached me from 
 Mr. John Murray, of Albemarle Street, wherein 
 the word favour was spelt in the American 
 fashion — favor. This neographic tendency is 
 based on ignorance ; favour comes to us through 
 
 * These words had been used by the author himself, in one 
 of his novels. The critics were often at Avar with him for 
 resuscitating old words and coining new ones. Amongst the 
 latter his verb ' to laze ' has been very generally accepted. 
 — F. C.
 
 Tkoughts in my Garden. 1 5 1 
 
 the French, and the u shows its history. I 
 should have expected more Toryism in spelling 
 from the publisher of the Quarterly Review. 
 
 Feb. 1. 
 
 I have not read Sir Henry Holland's ' Recol- 
 lections of Past Life ;' but it is easy to see 
 from the Times review that it is a book of 
 pleasant anecdote, produced by a man who has 
 reached his anecdotage — to use a pun which 
 Disraeli, the younger, has conveyed from 
 Wilkes, the demagogue. On the Times reflex 
 of Sir Henry's book, I have two or three re- 
 marks to make. Sir Henry describes Palmer- 
 ston as working hard under a sharp fit of gout. 
 Now, this shows one of two things: either that, 
 like Tom Sayers, Palmerston had a nature de- 
 void of sensitiveness, or that the work he was 
 doing could be done mechanically. 
 
 Again, Sir Henry is made to say, that in 
 these days ' critical scholars art 1 , scarce ; serious 
 reading, even of such works as " Paradise Lost " 
 is most rare, and Milton and Dryden are 
 rather names than realities to the mass of 
 English readers.' English readers never have 

 
 152 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 been a mass, and never will. But, if Sir 
 Henry Holland will look into that admirable 
 little periodical, Notes and Queries, he will see 
 at once that there is literary life astir, even 
 among a nation who live in counting-houses 
 and behind counters, on the literature of the 
 ledger. Let him ask Mr. Furnivall whether 
 far more recondite poetry than Milton and 
 Dryden is not easily read. I protest against 
 the laudator temporis acti, when he shuts his 
 eyes to the great works of the age. I will 
 find among my friends many men (and one or 
 two women) who know not only Milton and 
 Dryden, and Chaucer and Shakespeare, but the 
 ' Saxon Chronicle ' and Walter Essex. And I 
 can tell Sir Henry Holland something anent 
 the music of the ' Paradise Lost,' which pro- 
 bably he never has heard. 
 
 Sir Henry is also said ' to see in great libra- 
 ries an enormous and useless evil.' I hope this 
 Enolish belongs to the Times and not to the 
 physician, for the significance of useless evil 
 might puzzle a metaphysician. Sir Henry 
 burns his books when he gets too many. To
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 153 
 
 burn a book is abominable. I think the in- 
 vention of printing was a misfortune, but, 
 1 laving got it, we should take the consequence, 
 and be tender to the weakest thoughts of the 
 weakest men. We have encouraged these 
 dunghill cocks to crow ; it is cruel to wring 
 their necks incontinent. 
 
 Sir Henry devotes (Times English) a certain 
 portion (what in the world does that mean ?) 
 of three days in eaeh week to classical read- 
 ing. As it is never too late to learn, a course 
 of Aristophanes might do him good, with 
 special reference to ^Tcu>f>o\oyia and /.urapSh) 
 Sea-^la. Here perhaps he might discover 
 that there was a curious reproduction of 
 
 Pericles in Palmerston. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 The chiff-chafT or willow wren lias visited 
 my small angle of the world quite a fortnight 
 ago. Now the observant Gilbert White tells 
 us that the willow wren begins to sing- 
 about the 20th of March. So evidently the 
 vernal movements are unusually in advance. 
 Moreover, a day or two since 1 found on my
 
 1 54 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 gravel walk a young bat that had just fallen 
 from the nest ; it was a pretty creature, but 
 made a mere mouthful for a tame owl to which 
 I offered it. Considering that we have had no 
 summers lately, I fain hope that these are 
 prognostics of warm weather in the noon of 
 1872. 
 
 There is an old Persian story of an im- 
 mortal wanderer who came to a place by the 
 sea where fishing was in progress, and asked 
 how long the sea had been there. The fisher- 
 men told him, 'Always? Five hundred years 
 later he happened to be passing the same way, 
 and lo, there was a great forest, and sonn- 
 woodmen cutting trees. He asked them how 
 long the forest had been there; they also 
 answered, 'Always.' Another five hundred 
 years, and he found on the spot a mighty city 
 — a Nineveh or Babylon — whose inhabitants 
 answered his customary inquiry with the in- 
 evitable ' Always.' When, five centuries later, 
 he returned to find the sea where the city had 
 stood, and fishers on the shore, it may be 
 assumed he asked no questions.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 155 
 
 But, in one's own short life, curious changes 
 often occur. I have gone back to what I re- 
 membered a pleasant, old-fashioned gentle- 
 man's house in my boyhood, and found it a 
 butcher's shop. The other day, at a railway- 
 station, I saw a well-ordered garden where 
 years ago I remember a collection of broken- 
 down carriages and other rubbish. I auda- 
 ciously went down into it, seeing a gentleman 
 there examining some most scientific beehives, 
 and I found that the gardener and beekeeper 
 was the station-master at the railway, who had 
 reduced the place from chaos to Cosmos, and 
 wdio was a perfect enthusiast about his bees. 
 
 Feb. 15. 
 
 Ash Wednesday and St. Valentine's Day 
 coincided this week. The same thing will 
 occur five years hence, but not again till 
 a.d. 1923. If leap-year did not throw it out 
 it would happen every eleven years. I Jut 
 leap-year throws everything out, even the 
 ladies, who in such years have a legal right to 
 make proposals of marriage. I forget what
 
 156 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 penalty the common law of England inflicts 
 on those who dare to refuse such pro- 
 
 Among the literary attendants on the Royal 
 household there is, I think, a Historiographer. 
 The man who wrote England's history from 
 the pleasant vantage-point of Windsor Castle 
 would, I imagine, make it a pleasant picture. 
 Again, there is a Poet Laureate. What says 
 the parodist % 
 
 1 Oh, that would be the life for rue, 
 With plenty to get, and nothing to do, 
 But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue, 
 And whistle all day to the Queen's cockatoo, 
 
 Trance-somely, trance-somely ! 
 Then the chambermaids that clean the rooms, 
 Would come to the windows and lean on their brooms, 
 With their saucy caps and their crisped hair, 
 And they'd toss their heads in the fragrant air, 
 And say to each other, " Just look down there, 
 At the nice young man, so tidy and small, 
 Who is paid for writing on nothing at all, 
 
 Handsomely ! Handsomely !" ' 
 
 All me ! Mr. Tennyson is no longer a ' nice 
 young man ' . . . . and I wonder what has 
 become of the Queen's chambermaids, so plea-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 157 
 
 santly depicted'? Where are their brooms, 
 and where are they \ 
 
 But, there being a Koyal Poet who docs 
 nothing, and a Royal Historiographer who 
 apparently does less than nothing, why might 
 there not be a Royal Grammarian, who might 
 be paid for doing something'? It would be 
 just as well that the speech of an Eng- 
 lish Queen to the English folk should be 
 English. 
 
 I am not going to criticise what is called the 
 Queen's Speech. But I think it would be as 
 well for the Court to set a good example to 
 the nation ; wherefore a Queen's Grammarian 
 might be useful. I hope there will not be an 
 immediate express from Windsor to offer me 
 the appointment. I like English, conceiving 
 it a nobler language than even Greek : but 1 
 should not care to write it officially. 
 
 Among the latest literary developments is 
 the tailor's advertisement book — fashion mixed 
 with fiction. I think the idea charming, 
 though nobody has asked me to help in it. 
 This is the kind of thing :
 
 1 5S Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Our Teouseks 
 
 The perfection of beauty 
 
 Fitting any leg 
 
 FIFTEEN SHILLINGS ; 
 
 also 
 
 The Fatal Widower 
 
 by 
 
 Algernon Deloraine, Esq. 
 
 Among the amusements of small villages 
 the Penny Reading* takes an important part. 
 
 * Mortimer Collins was accustomed to take part in the 
 Knowl Hill Penny Readings for many years. He composed 
 some pieces especially for them, introducing in one many of 
 the village characters, which not only gave great pleasure, 
 but had good results. Of the landlord of the village inn, 
 who was celebrated for his coarse language, it was said : 
 
 ' His beer and language both are mild ;' 
 
 which caused him to be so much 'chaffed' that he improved. 
 The village shopwoman was delicately reminded of her love 
 of gossip ; and the landowners were recommended to make 
 the cottages on their estates habitable, to 
 
 'Make the rooms safe against the wind and rain, 
 Whitewash the parlour, and clear out the drain ;' 
 
 advice that was much needed. The poor were recommended 
 to be independent in spirit and temperate and thrifty ; the 
 rich to be kind and wise in their dealings with the poor. 
 
 These efforts of the author to turn his talents to good 
 account in his own village were thoroughly appreciated by 
 both people and parson. The latter was the son of the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 159 
 
 Having some experience thereof, I wish it 
 could be Letter done The parson might 
 take as much trouble about them as he 
 does about his sermons. People who come 
 to laugh may be taught to think. There 
 is this to be said : readers at even Penny 
 Readings should know how to read, which 
 is of all accomplishments the rarest. There 
 is also this : they ought to know how to 
 choose what they read, whereas they gene- 
 rally take something from a ridiculous series 
 of cheap books, edited by a person named 
 Carpenter. Xow, what I venture to suggest 
 is this: the parson of the parish makes 
 his Sunday sermons, why should he not also 
 make his week-day readings \ Then lie might 
 say what, perhaps, he could not say from the 
 
 celebrated engineer, Sir William Fairbairn, and was much 
 beloved in his parish. But when he left he was succeeded by 
 a young man who was thirsting for reform in every way, who 
 did not understand his eccentric parishioner in the least, and 
 commenced his reform by attacking him. So there was an 
 end to the good feeling that had existed for so many years 
 between the parson and the poet and the people. This 
 explains the bitter feeling shown by Mortimer Collins in 
 his later works against the clergy. — F. C.
 
 i6o Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 pulpit, though Bishop Latimer would. I 
 think the Penny Reading might be capitally 
 utilised if clerical readers would give some- 
 thing of their own in lieu of Tennyson's ' May 
 Queen ' and the inevitable selections from 
 ' Pickwick.' 
 
 March 21. 
 
 Snow ! The blackthorn winter ! This, after 
 the earliest spring I remember for years. 
 Nature delights in these contrasts. As I write 
 my lawn is paven with snow ; the white 
 tumbler pigeons upon it, favourite birds of 
 Aphrodite, look dirt}' against the Almighty 
 Artist's whitest colour ; the naked lime branches, 
 ' intersected and decussating' (as Samuel John- 
 son would say), look like a colossal array of 
 Honiton lace ; the white lilacs at the apex of 
 my scalene triangle, which in a few days would 
 have offered their own fragrant snow, are laden 
 with cool blossoms of frozen vapour. 
 
 Endlessly, as Humboldt has shown, there 
 goes on a battle, often won, yet never lost, 
 between the north-east and south-west winds, 
 between Boreas and Auster. Boreas is always
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 161 
 
 eloping with Orithyia, and Auster always fly- 
 ing swift to save her from the Gretna, of polar 
 ice. The conflict can never end : and when, 
 as in this year, Auster has had long advantage, 
 Boreas suddenly comes with his artillery of 
 snowflakes and tries to ruin the cities of flowers. 
 The key to meteorology lies in this immemorial 
 strife, just as the key to ontology (for I hate 
 the slang word, metaphysics) lies in Punch's 
 immortal queries : 
 
 ' What is Mind ? 
 
 No Matter. 
 What is Matter ? 
 
 Never Mind.' 
 
 •tt * # % 
 
 Does the Claimant feel at all like Cristo- 
 
 phero Sly the Tinker, when he awoke after 
 
 hearing the players rehearse 'The Taming of the 
 
 Shrew T "? Did he feel like that drunken worthy 
 
 when some conspiracy (as yet inexplicable) 
 
 transmitted him from a Colonial butcher to 
 
 Sir Eooer, and gave him a lustrum of life on 
 © ' © 
 
 the fat of the land? How do such people feel? 
 I can imagine him, just like Sly, exclaiming to 
 the landlady of his Jermyn Street Hotel. . . . 
 vol. i. 1 I
 
 162 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 ' You are a baggage : the Slys are no rogues — 
 look in the Chronicle — we came in with Richard 
 Conqueror. Therefore, pancas pallabis; let the 
 world slide : Sessa !' I think as the Claimant 
 has lost all appearance of right to the Tichborne 
 motto (Pugna pro patria) nothing better could 
 suit him for a post-Newgate and nugatory coat 
 of arms than ' Let the world slide : Sessa !' 
 
 I wonder where all the German bands come 
 from. They are pervading the country. You 
 meet them equally at the Land's End and 
 Berwick-upon-Tweed. Each plays more lament- 
 able and lachrymose tunes than its predecessor : 
 there is one now making my dogs all howl by 
 playing 'the tune the old cow died of.' A friend 
 suggests they must be the bands of the Army, 
 not required just at present. If the Prussians 
 conquered France to such music, it is a greater 
 exploit than the retreat of the Ten Thousand. 
 
 March 28. 
 
 ' Why should Easter be a movable feast V 
 asks the Times in a review of a book by a 
 gentleman named Newland Smith : and then 
 it proceeds to advocate its fixture to a given
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 16? 
 
 3 
 
 day, on the ground that 'to all men of business 
 such uncertainties are a substantial inconveni- 
 ence.' I am not scorns: to write on theology 
 here, or on the complications of chronology, 
 which indeed are not easily intelligible : but I 
 cannot help being amused by the way in which 
 ' the leading journal of Europe ' attempts to 
 set aside old traditions concerning the greatest 
 event in the Christian history in order to secure 
 convenience for men of business. What are 
 ' men of business '? Business is connected by 
 the etymologists with the French besom (O.F 
 besoine), and is the occupation of the man who 
 wants something. Thus a mere mendicant is, 
 by definition, a man of business. Indeed the 
 word beggar itself is from bag — meaning a man 
 who carries a bag ; and modern commercial 
 slang reproduces the phrase, saying of a clever 
 man of business that he has bagged a good 
 thing. The contemporary ' man of business 
 goes to the city daily, where lie does mysterious 
 business by which somebody presumably loses, 
 since invariably he gains : and he lias, accord- 
 ing to his fancy, his yacht, his stud, his hounds, 
 
 11—2
 
 164 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 his mansion with pineries, his grouse moor, a 
 myriad other luxuries. Now, to whatsoever 
 extent it may be our duty to revere this 
 prosperous gentleman, it will hardly be held 
 that his ' substantial inconvenience' justifies a 
 change in the ancient custom of the Church. 
 Little does he care how he subjects to incon- 
 venience other folks. He will have all the 
 luxuries of life : and now a Mr. Smith (backed 
 by the Times) thinks Easter should be altered 
 to suit him. What a pity he cannot have 
 exactly the weather he likes for his superb 
 gardens, for his magnificent strawberry break- 
 fasts ! What a pity he cannot purchase, by a 
 cheque on his bankers, health of body and 
 health of mind ! What a pity that, though 
 professedly a man of business, and by eager 
 desire a man of pleasure, he sees no way in the 
 world to become a happy man ! Easter day 
 will Ml on the 23rd of April in the year 2000. 
 
 ~i" tc ~i~ *iC •>? 
 
 What is the curious mental malady which 
 makes men care to collect such things as post- 
 age stamps % I see by a newspaper paragraph
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. ]6 
 
 that some well-known auctioneers have been 
 
 .selling stamps at such prices as £6, £8 12s., 
 
 and so on . . . 273 specimens producing little 
 
 less than a pound apiece, I think I would give 
 
 sixpence for the photograph of the gentleman 
 
 who gave six pounds ten shillings for a thirteen 
 
 cent. Sandwich Islands stamp. Is nobody 
 
 buying up Tichbome bonds for future sale by 
 
 auction in Wellington Street % 
 
 % # -/- % * 
 
 The Yorkshire people are too acute for their 
 Mayors and Councillors. Batley borough has 
 wisely and courageously carried its Corporation 
 into Chancery, on the question whether the 
 Mayor should have a gold chain worth two 
 hundred pounds. What is a Mayor without a 
 chain . . . or a dog either ? Unluckily, Vice 
 Chancellor Wickens showed himself a cynic, 
 remarking that if a Mayor wore a chain for 
 which he had not paid, it did not even prove 
 his personal solvency. So the Batley Council- 
 lors will have to decorate their beloved Mayor 
 out of their own pockets. 
 
 It is really worth while to call attention to
 
 1 66 TJiotigJits in my Garden. 
 
 Municipal vagaries when they reach one's ears 
 Dwellers in country towns are at the mercy of 
 pushing tradesmen who like notoriety, and 
 whose ignorance of affairs leaves them in the 
 hands of their officials — Town Clerk, Surveyor, 
 and so forth. The late Mayor of Heading, a 
 respectable chemist, is now a knight, because 
 the Prince of Wales laid the foundation of the 
 Reading Grammar School. No one begrudges 
 him the handle to his name, probably : but it 
 seems odd that immediately afterwards he 
 should go in State on Sunday, mace and all, 
 to a Dissenting chapel ! Odder still that, 
 being presented to her Majesty on his knight- 
 hood by the Secretary of State at the last 
 levee, he should return to Eeading to preside 
 at a meeting of the Liberation Society ! Radical 
 as Reading is, this was too much ; only a -week 
 or two before the Liberals of the boron gh had 
 mobbed Oclger ; on this occasion they similarly 
 treated the ex-Mayor, Sir Peter, whom the 
 police barely got home in safety. 
 
 May 2. 
 
 It vesuviates. This sudden heat in the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 167 
 
 atmosphere lias something to do with the 
 eruption of the mountain which killed Pliny 
 the Elder. The inner fire of this planet cannot 
 come to the surface without affecting the whole 
 atmosphere. I suspect the fire and lava of 
 Vesuvius is felt in every quarter of the globe. 
 People who question this are apt to forget that 
 this travelling sphere is whirled (whence, world) 
 at a considerable pace around its axis and 
 through space. Every point, putting it roughly, 
 moves a thousand miles an hour in rotatory 
 motion. Fancy being a fly on a wheel . . . 
 which every human being is . . . and rotating 
 a mile every three seconds or so. But fancy 
 farther that the flying sphere, having more 
 than five hundred millions of miles per annum 
 to traverse, does it at nearly seventeen miles a 
 second . . . about a thousand times as fast as 
 the swiftest express train ever started. And 
 all the while we, passengers in this wondrous 
 vehicle, know nothing of the movement save 
 by observation of the points we pass. And 
 then there is a third motion, more wondrous 
 than the other three, which sweeps the whole
 
 1 68 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 solar system (as the learned conjecture) around 
 some central sun. It is a g;ood thing to realise 
 one's insignificance and ignorance. It is also 
 a o-ood thing; to realise the fact that mind is 
 greater than matter, and one true man than 
 any number of machines. A planet is of 
 course a machine. 
 
 Another bit of news from Westmorland is 
 that Wordsworth's house, Eydal Mount, is to 
 be decorated and desecrated. ' A Country 
 Parson ' writes to complain of the Vandalism 
 about to be committed, and sug-gests that 
 something should be done to stop it. I 
 certainly think likewise. I have stood with 
 the great poet on the terrace of Rydal Mount, 
 gazing on a marvellous landscape of land and 
 fell, overshadowed by the superb laurels which 
 he had himself planted from cuttings of those 
 which Petrarch set above Virgil's grave. It 
 was in 1848 ; Crabb Robinson had come down 
 to cheer him after Mrs. Quillinan's death. He 
 was naturally in most melancholy mood, and his
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 169 
 
 saddest thought was that after his death RydaJ 
 Mount might perchance pass into the clutches of 
 sue] 1 Vandals as the 'Country Parson' describes. 
 I hope the evil destiny will be averted. 
 
 By the way, how ought Westmorland to be 
 spelt ? People who have never been there 
 spell it Westmoreland, which is of course absurd. 
 People who live there usually write Westmor- 
 land . . . the western land of moors. But 
 Dr. Guest of Cams, in his ' History of English 
 Rhythms,' writes always Weslmerland . . . the 
 western land of meres. I am much disposed 
 to think that Guest is right. 
 
 ■M. ?'- j'- ". »l 
 
 «* *- %s *<» "k 
 
 I am sorry to see my old acquaintance 
 Horace Mayhew is dead. He belonged to a 
 class of men who never quite understand there 
 is something to be done in the world. They 
 arc the Mercutios of society . . . though him 
 I always called Horatio. They write and talk 
 epigrams; they produce comic books; tiny are 
 ; 1 musing at dinner. Life means more than that. 
 
 May 'J. 
 
 There is clearly a revival in tic realm of
 
 170 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 poetry, as shown by the great number of 
 young beginners who are trying hard to climb 
 bicipitem Parnassum — not to mention the 
 masterly work of some four or five who may 
 fairly claim the high rank of poets. The pulse 
 of poetry has for centuries beat full and strong 
 
 in the English race Certainly since the 
 
 days of King Alfred the Truthteller, himself a 
 poet of no mean kind. The young writers 
 whose books come out and are forgotten, and 
 who themselves in time forget they ever 
 believed they were poets, are like the imperfect 
 buds that form on fruit trees. If they have 
 no fruition, at least they attest the power of 
 the tree, whose inborn energy would fain do 
 more than it can. 
 
 The best advice that can be given to a 
 young gentleman who aspires to the art of 
 poetry is to write freely and assiduously, but 
 to burn all he writes, to read old English 
 poetry instead of new, and to study diligently 
 Guest's ' History of English Ehythms,' which is 
 to the pro metrica an absolute Euclid. The 
 poet who writes without knowing anything of
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 171 
 
 the mere elements of his art, resembles the 
 mathematician (self-styled) who, ignorant of 
 the sixth book of Euclid, announces to the 
 world that he has discovered the quadrature of 
 the circle, — or the young statesman (also self- 
 styled) who thinks he could reform the world 
 if he could catch the Speaker's eye. Not long 
 since a young friend of mine, who has published 
 a thick volume of poetry of about 300 pages, 
 much of it very good, maintained that so long 
 as a sonnet has fourteen lines, it may rhyme 
 as irregularly as you please. Now the sonnet 
 (vide Guest) is ' made up of the ballet-stave of 
 eight with close rhyme, and of two triplets. 
 The ballet-stave has never more than two 
 rhymes, and the triplets generally the same 
 number, but sometimes they have three.' If 
 you were to quote this definition to some of our 
 young sonnetteers, they would want to know 
 the meaning of a ballet-stave and of close rhyme. 
 So I remember in my school-days, a worthy 
 ironmonger who had acquired a magic lantern 
 with astronomic slides, ambitiously offered to 
 lecture on astronomy at the Mechanics' In-
 
 1 7 2 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 stitute. He read up the subject with great 
 pain — and one day, when I went into his shop 
 to buy a knife, he implored me to explain to 
 him what a right angle was. I think I made 
 him understand : but he unfortunately broke 
 down when he came to our satellite, and 
 learnedly explained ' the phrases of the moon.' 
 I fear we laughed. Yet it would be thought 
 cruel to laugh at a young poet who did not 
 know the meaning of a virelay or a sestino. 
 
 June 13. 
 
 Lady Burdett-Coutts does good service in 
 advocating the preservation and protection of 
 birds : but will it ever be done ? Three 
 classes of enemies have our beloved birds. 
 1. There is the small boy who likes birds- 
 nesting : and him one can really almost for- 
 give, for his true delight is the peril of climb- 
 ing a tall tree. 2. There is the bucolic lout 
 who founds sparrow clubs and shoots down 
 hawks and owls — unaware that he thereby 
 protects the multiplication of caterpillars and 
 ■slugs and vermin. 3. There is the profes- 
 sional birdcatcher, who picks up linnets and
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 173. 
 
 bullfinches and niffhtinffales for sale in St. 
 Martin's Lane, or who kills the jay and the 
 seamew to supply feathers for ladies' hats.* 
 
 Mr. F. 0. Morris of Nunburnholme (worthy 
 successor of Gilbert White) writes thus on the 
 matter : 
 
 ' In the May number of an American publication, pub- 
 lished at Boston, gratuitously forwarded to me monthly, 
 called Our Dumb Animals, I see it stated twice over, that in 
 that State— Massachusetts, I believe — there is a fine of $25 
 for taking a bird's nest. 
 
 ' If something is not done in this direction, several of our 
 birds will before long be totally exterminated.' 
 
 And he goes on to say that lie wishes the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer would impose a 
 tax on all bird-cages less than a foot square. 
 A good idea ; but I think I have a better. 
 Tax all tame birds. A shilling a year would 
 bring in a good addition to the revenue 
 
 The principle of the dog tax should be ex- 
 tended to all animals domesticated as pets. 
 
 ♦Mortimer Collins lived in a continual state of warfare 
 with the ' bucolic lout ' concerning the birds. He was for- 
 tunately too far from London, or from a railway station, to 
 be troubled with the professional bird-catcher, who is a 
 much worse creature than the bucolic lout. — F. C.
 
 i 74 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Cats should certainly be taxed, as they are 
 annoying and mischievous. I possess two 
 owls, two tortoises, and a parrot, and am quite 
 willing to pay for all of them if my lieighl >ours 
 are likewise treated. 
 
 June 27. 
 
 The very remarkable Parliamentary Report on 
 Habitual Drunkards in Thursday's Times deserves 
 all that journal says concerning it in its leading 
 columns. There is a curious tendency to despo- 
 tism on the part of good people with narrow 
 minds. They see the evil of drunkenness, and 
 they rush to the inference that if there were no 
 drunkenness there would be no evil. Accord- 
 ing to them, original sin came in with Noah. 
 The committee are influenced by a desire to put 
 an end to ' initial and casual drunkenness,' and 
 they think that if a man were imprisoned for 
 thirty days the first time he became ebrious, 
 it probably would cure him. If three times 
 convicted within a year, it is proposed to send 
 him to a reformatory for a period varying from 
 three months to twelve ! I have seldom seen 
 a finer example of the way in which well-mean-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 /o 
 
 ing people try to do harm. Common sense 
 will of course laugh down recommendations 
 which, if carried out, would either result 
 in a despotism of water-drinkers, or would he 
 absolutely defied . . . the latter most pro- 
 bably. For, though water-drinkers, whether 
 Kechabites, or Good Templars, or Band of 
 Hope, are singularly noisy, the believers in 
 wine and ale have some latent power. I am 
 of opinion that drunkenness can be lessened 
 in quite a different way. It has long been 
 unfashionable ; it is now regarded, except 
 among the very dregs of society, as imbecile. 
 Nothing will be gained by treating men like 
 children, depriving of liberty and indepen- 
 dence, making moral by menace. Almost the 
 only sensible remark in the report is : 
 
 ' That watchf ul supervision over the purity of the article 
 sold is required.' 
 
 Obtain this watchful supervision. Lessen 
 the number of public-houses (in my parish 
 of 850 inhabitants there are 11)! In the 
 interests of Free Trade, and to pacify the
 
 176 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 offended shade of Cobden, repeal the Malt 
 
 Tax. You will soon have less intoxication, 
 ■st- -;:- % -v- -* 
 
 Among the many things which erudite pro- 
 fessors teach to young ladies now, why does- 
 not somebody try to teach them English ? 
 Nothing is easier than to talk without think- 
 ing. I do not object to anybody's talking 
 nonsense who can do it wittily : but that 
 requires more thought than to gain repute- 
 for political wisdom by cramming and repro- 
 ducing the articles in the morning papers. 
 There is a tendency among folk of fashion to 
 chatter in the style of Swift's ' Polite Conver- 
 sations,' and to make one word do the work 
 of a dozen ideas .... if they have so- 
 many. There is a phrase which has done 
 duty so often that it must have saved millions 
 of thoughts : that phrase is awfully jolly. It 
 can be applied to anything ... a dinner^ 
 a ball, a picnic, a dress, a lover, a sermon, 
 a novel, a concert . . . aught in fact that 
 enters the giddy head of the child who 
 sltabille, babille, et se deshabille from January
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 177 
 
 to December. Let me put this silly little 
 phrase under the etymological microscope. 
 
 Awe is fear, dread, reverence ... in 
 Danish, chastisement ... in Greek, anger. 
 The word awful applies fitly to such an event 
 as tin 1 burning of Paris ... to earthquake, 
 pestilence, war. It may even descend to 
 qualify the judge's wig or the pedagogue's 
 rod. It is not well fitted to use with jolly. 
 
 That word comes from jol, yule, Christmas, 
 when mirth and fun always prevailed among 
 us folks of the North. Hence it may be fairly 
 applied to a time of glee and merriment, such 
 as those to which young ladies often do apply 
 it; but it can scarcely be connected with a 
 dress or an oratorio, with the sermon of a pet 
 preacher, or Mr. Tennyson's last poem. When 
 you qualify it by awful/y, of course the blunder 
 becomes greater. A phrase often used — an 
 awfully jolly felloiu — must mean a companion 
 so boisterous in his mirth that he frightens 
 you. 
 
 Then there is nice; a word without which 
 young Indies could hardly talk at all. Its 
 
 vol. 1. 12
 
 178 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 original meaning is ignorant . . . from the 
 Latin nescius. Hence a nice man is a man 
 who knows nothing but the brilliant follies of 
 society. He may know a few peers, if they 
 never go to the House, and a few peeresses, 
 if they are rather fast. He may know how 
 to whistle an opera air, if he gives away 
 boxes. He may know the names of race- 
 horses, if he always loses gloves by dozens. 
 He may know which are the best champagnes, 
 if. he sends plenty to picnics. 
 
 The nice girl, Nescia, is fit to be his bride. 
 She knows the last new dance, the last new 
 fashion, the last new scandal. She knows who 
 dyes her hair, and who pawns her diamonds. 
 She knows the histories of equivocal celebri- 
 ties. She knows everything that is not worth 
 knowing, and she knows nothing else. Such 
 are the gentleman and lady who are often 
 described as ' awfully nice.' Of such niceness 
 let us all stand in awe. 
 
 n 41 t\ t\ t\ 
 
 Specimen of a young lady's letter — 'Last 
 night we were at a dance at Mrs. L . . . 's ;
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 179 
 
 they had about a hundred people, and only 
 six couples could dance at a time, the place 
 was so crowded. Mr. A. . . . was there ; 
 he is an oddity, and always thrusting his arms 
 out of his coat-sleeves, and thinks a little of 
 himself. I had a good laugh at his conse- 
 quential ways, and spring-dancing, like those 
 jumping dolls that are fastened on to a piece 
 of elastic.' Gentlemen who have a high 
 opinion of yourselves, and who dance with 
 the elegance of the French school, remember 
 that some of those demure damsels who are 
 looking on — each of you being one of the 
 twelve amid a hundred, are quite capable of 
 noticing your weak points. Of course the 
 ladies who give such dances are incorrigible. 
 These are the places where Lord Verisopht 
 meets Lady Veriphast. People of other classes 
 
 who go there are sadly wasting their time. 
 * * * * * 
 
 Talking of birds, I quite forgot last week, 
 in mentioning the various feathered bipeds for 
 which I should like Mr. Lowe to tax me, to 
 name a jackdaw, of most archidiaconal appear- 
 
 12—2
 
 i8o Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 ance. He fulfils Vincent Bourne's descrip- 
 tion : 
 
 ' Nigras inter aves avis est, quae plurima turres, 
 Antiquas aedes, celsaque fana colit .... 
 Clamores, quos infra audit, si forsitan audit, 
 Pro rebus nihili negligit . . . . et cogitat.' 
 
 He has lately made war upon my parrot, 
 when that more brilliant bird is taken in his 
 cage upon the lawn, and the other day suc- 
 ceeded in getting a feather out of Psittacus's 
 tail. La Fontaine or Gay might make an alle- 
 goric fable therefrom. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 My village postman has just had sent him 
 for compulsory wear a heavy black hat, with 
 G.P.O. in brazen letters on the front. He is 
 threatened with a heavy coat to follow. As 
 the poor fellow walks about twenty miles a day 
 for fourteen shillings a week, and has hitherto 
 done it in a blouse and straw hat when the 
 weather was hot, he is not intensely grateful 
 to G.P.O. 
 
 Talking of the said G.P.O., they are just 
 now laying telegraph wires along the Great
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 1S1 
 
 Western Road. Useful doubtless they will 
 be, but not at all ornamental. However, the 
 work is indolently done. At nine in the 
 morning I found the three pioneers of the 
 campaign halting their carts under the trees 
 by the village schools, and eating lotos. They 
 suggested beer as I passed : vainly, since I 
 would rather administer any such refreshment 
 to my overworked and underpaid postman. 
 At twelve I passed again : they were playing 
 impromptu skittles with the pegs given them 
 to hammer into the ground. At half-past 
 twelve they had reached the village inn, a 
 quarter of a mile back, and were refreshing 
 themselves after their onerous labour. Where 
 they are now may perchance be known to Mr. 
 Frank Ives Seudamore. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Milton sayeth : 
 
 A book was writ of late, called Telrachordon, 
 And woven close, both matter, form, and style ; 
 The subject new ; it walked the town awhile, 
 Numbering good intellects ; now seldom pored on. 
 Cries the stall-reader, "Bless us ! what a word on 
 A title page is this !" '
 
 1 82 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Has anybody (not a scholar) read Milton's 
 Tetrachordonf Will anybody ever read an 
 ornithologic work by a friend of mine, based 
 on Aristophanes V' Milton ends : 
 
 ' Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheke, 
 Hated not learning worse than toad or asp, 
 When thou taught'st Cambridge and King Edward Greek. 
 
 Certes, everybody shies at Greek just now, 
 save perhaps the learned ladies who write 
 
 * ' Will anybody ever read an ornithologic work by a friend, 
 of mine, based on Aristophanes? 1 This work was M. C.'s 
 own ' British Birds, a Communication from the Ghost of 
 Aristophanes.' He never wrote anything better worth 
 reading, more pungent and incisive in its humour, more 
 effective in the swing and rhythm of its original metres. 
 The composition is the most amusing satire on the crude 
 materialism and the dogmatic positivism of the day. But its 
 interest, like its worth, is more than ephemeral, and the choice 
 songs in which it abounds contain passages that will live, 
 and that one perpetually sees quoted without any acknow- 
 ledgment of their origin. Only Mortimer Collins could 
 have succeeded in producing a work at once so thoroughly 
 popular and so essentially classical. It would have delighted 
 the great translator of Aristophanes, whom he so much 
 admired, Hookham Frere. Two or three distinguished Ox- 
 ford scholars, to whom I have shown the book, have pro- 
 nounced it superior to any Jew d 'esprit of the sort which they 
 have ever seen. It has certainly greater originality, and it 
 is more generally intelligible and enjoyable. It has only to 
 be more widely known to extend and to perpetuate the fame 
 of its brilliant and accomplished author. — T. IT. S. Escott.
 
 Thoughts iji my Garden. 18 
 
 o 
 
 in profound periodicals on prohibited sub- 
 jects. 
 
 Sept. 21. 
 
 Passing through a small village; one day this 
 week, I noticed that a third-rate travelling 
 circus had been set up in the fusty back-yard 
 of the Bell public-house. Clowns and de- 
 sultors in ragged jackets were hanging about. 
 I could not help thinking what very dull and 
 vulgar entertainment is provided for the 
 country folk. Of course in London it is not 
 much better ; the ordinary run of modern 
 plays is simply beneath contempt — is intoler- 
 able to a man of culture. Froissart described 
 the English of his day as amusing themselves 
 sadly. It may now be said that they amuse 
 themselves stupidly. Vulgar puns, indecent 
 dances, legs in flesh-coloured tights, have 
 driven the poetic drama from the stage. Will 
 there be a reaction ?* 
 
 * Things have much improved in the last decade, for 
 though the style of entertainment mentioned by M. C. still 
 flourishes in certain quarters, its patrons are gentlemen of 
 the 'Crutch and Toothpick' school, it is now shunned by
 
 184 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 To return to the shabby little circus. Its 
 placards were magnificent, announcing amuse- 
 ments of the most startling kind. But the 
 best thino- was the statement that this itine- 
 rant booth was under the patronage of a long- 
 list of illustrious personages, beginning with 
 the Queen, and ending with — the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury. I wish I knew when his Grace 
 patronised that circus. I wish I had been 
 there to see the Primate of all England be- 
 nignantly smiling on the horse-play of the 
 clown. 
 
 J'- $'~ J'- it. J5. 
 
 t\ *>* "i* *. "JS 
 
 In Notes and Queries a gentleman named 
 Chance writes to say that he pronounced clear, 
 clean, as if written Hear, than ; and that he 
 believes the great majority of Englishmen do 
 likewise. He is like a man colour-blind, to 
 whom scarlet looks a dull grey. A correspon- 
 dent who does not agree with him shows 
 
 the majority of playgoers, and severely castigated by the 
 preys. The admirable comic operas of Messrs. Sullivan and 
 Gilbert, full of wholesome fun and charming music, have 
 largely supplanted the old burlesque with its buffoonery, 
 ribaldry, and music hall ditties. — E. Y.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 185 
 
 M 
 
 almost as dull a perception of sound when 
 lie says that ' iu some Greek words, such as 
 KTaofiai, he believes the initial sounding of 
 the k is impossible without the intervention of 
 a vowel ' ! This gentleman must be /3af>/3apoc, 
 in the old Greek sense — a person whose speech 
 is nothing but ha ha ha. kt is easv enouoh 
 to pronounce, without help from the urvocal 
 vowel, by anyone who has learnt to articulate. 
 "\\ e take words from the Greek and murder 
 them. Schoolboys are allowed to call Ptolemy 
 ' Toleniy.' Does anybody suppose that the 
 royal word \pa\fia was pronounced salt ma 
 by the Greeks 1 It is a shame to degrade 
 such a word by softening its sounds. I 
 always shudder when I hear a parish clerk 
 give out the hundredth saltm. 
 
 Oct. 10. 
 
 The Echo is a journal which seldom readies 
 my hermitage — an attic hermitage, whence I 
 sometimes catch glimpses of the Surrey hills 
 through the fogs of Thames and tobacco — but 
 1 happened to see an extract from that erudite 
 journal the other day, wherein a lady with a
 
 1 86 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 curious name, and largely related to the Army 
 List, describes a radical reform which the 
 dearness of everything has caused her to make 
 in her domestic economy. She writes from 
 Kensington : 
 
 ' Gershonia, widow of a Lieutenant-Colonel of H.A., 
 daughter of a Lieutenant-General of Cavalry, mother of a 
 Lieutenant of Hussars, mother-in-law of two Staff Officers, 
 and aunt of one Lieutenant-Colonel, one Colonel, and one 
 Major, says she now has no servant, and was never more 
 comfortable. She boils the water for dressing and breakfast 
 by a gas stove. A married woman, however, comes in at 
 noon for the rest of the da; . 
 
 ' The first thing she does is to go out and fetch my dinner 
 — hot boiled beei", potatoes, and carrots, for 4d., then I have 
 some apples, say 2d. worth, the only reasonably cheap fruit 
 to be had. I never drink anything but water. So that I am 
 quite making a fortune by having no expenses with servants. 
 Besides, I never relished my dinner so much as now. My 
 expenses for the week have not exceeded one guinea, includ- 
 ing laundress, and the shilling I pay daily to the woman. 
 I mean never to keep a servant again. 
 
 ' She proposes to start a Ladies' United Service Club, and 
 under no pretence to admit a gentleman or a servant.' 
 
 One can guess the sort of ladies among 
 whom such a club would be popular. I don't 
 think they need fear a siege from the ' oppo- 
 site sex.' To dine regularly at one on boiled 
 beef and vegetables from a cook's shop, with 
 a dessert of apples and London water of the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 187 
 
 first vintage, must be salutary for both mind 
 
 and bod}'. Water from a mountain spring or 
 
 a deep, pure well is delicious ; but water that 
 
 has passed through miles of metal pipe is a 
 
 beverage to be avoided, and I humbly think a 
 
 glass of honest beer would be wholesomer. 
 
 As to the coarse, cook-shop beef, the idea is 
 
 quite enough ! I'd rather dine with the 
 
 country labourer on a hunch of bread, a slice 
 
 of fat bacon, and an onion. We would eat 
 
 them under a hedge instead of in Kensington; 
 
 and if we were too poor for a. mug of Burton 
 
 or Stratford, or of Devon cider, why we'd be 
 
 content with water from the nearest spring. 
 * * -* « * 
 
 Odd things are met with in the papers used 
 
 by shopkeepers for wrappage. Sometimes a 
 
 fragment of some priceless old book that has 
 
 fallen into the hands of fools who did not 
 
 know its value. ( )ftener — most often indeed 
 
 of all — blue-books lavishly published by order 
 
 of the House of Commons, and unread by 
 
 more than "0001 per cent, of the members and 
 
 editors to whom they are sent. Parliamentary
 
 1 88 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 blue-books wrap up more butter and bacon 
 than any other material of the papyrus tribe. 
 The last queer envelope of merchandise I have 
 noticed was a fragment of ' Examination 
 Questions on the History of Greece.' It is 
 stated to be a ' second edition, improved and 
 enlarged. ,' It is one of the ingredients of what 
 one might call potted history. Life is squeezed 
 out of the bright story of Greece, and it be- 
 comes a dreary list of names. As thus : 
 
 ' Chap. XVIII. — Administration of Pericles. — 1. What 
 were the political views of Pericles ] 2. "What is remarked 
 relative to the conduct of Pericles in public ? 3. State the 
 observation of Plutarch. 4. The devotion of Pericles to his 
 public duties, b. What is remarked relative to his eloquence ? 
 a. Relative to his disinterestedness? 7. As a commander. 
 8. What quarrel took place between Doris and Phocis ? 9. 
 Explain Promanty. 10. Why was it accorded to Sparta, 
 and afterwards bo Athens ? 11. What revolution occurred 
 in Bo?otia ? 12. Describe the expedition of Tolmides, and 
 its result. 13. What was the consequence? 14. What 
 recalled Pericles from the reduction of Eubcea ? 15. What 
 item did Pericles introduce into his financial statement ? 
 16. How expended ? 17. Why were both parties disposed 
 for peace ?' 
 
 Oh dear me ! Does not everybody remember 
 having to answer strings of such lifeless ques- 
 tions, and wishing poor dear Pericles at
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 189 
 
 Jericho ? Thus came Byron to hate Horace ; 
 thus Professor Sylvester to hate Euclid. Now 
 I have known a great teacher rise before his 
 pupils, and make them in half an hour under- 
 stand much of that hiidi-souled Pericles — 
 his dauntlessness, purity, magnanimity ; his 
 passion for glory, and poetry, and art ; his 
 deepest passion of all — for Athens. Will you 
 ever get any notion of 
 
 ' The glory which was Greece, 
 And the grandeur which was Rome,' 
 
 from a gentleman whose notion is ' Explain 
 promaniy '? Does he mean irpofxavrtia 1 Had 
 he no Greek types at his command ? 
 
 Oct. 17. 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold has so far made his 
 own, and, as it were, patented the phrase 
 ' sweetness and light,' in which qualities Ik; 
 holds Englishmen singularly deficient, that I 
 was surprised to he reminded by a writer in 
 Notes and Queries that these words are coupled 
 by Dean Swift in his ' Battle of the Hooks.' 
 These are the words : ' For the rest, whatever
 
 190 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 we have got has been by infinite labour and 
 search, and ranging through every corner of 
 nature ; the difference is, that instead of dirt 
 and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our 
 hives with honev and wax : thus furnishing 
 mankind with the two noblest of things, which 
 are sweetness and light.' Nobody can be 
 blind to the intense light of Swift's intellect ; 
 and there was more sweetness in him than all 
 but his inmost friends knew — friends like 
 Bolingbroke and Pope. The sweetness of a 
 great man often grows acid amid the develop- 
 ments of human folly. Few men have been 
 more misunderstood. Even Thackeray could 
 not see the pathos that lay 'too deep for tears' 
 under that sad inscription, ' only a woman's 
 hair.' 
 
 Nov. 14. 
 
 The Philadelphia correspondent of the 
 Times calls the horse disease an epizootic. 
 Why ? Because a writer in the English 
 Journal of Education many years ago pointed 
 out that ' epidemic-' cannot properly be applied 
 to the inferior animals. The remark was not
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 191 
 
 so momentous that I should care to claim it as 
 my own ; mine it was none the less. Clearly 
 Radicalism, which becomes every now and 
 then epidemic, can by no chance become 
 epizootic. A horse or a dog could no more 
 be taught Radicalism than alcoholism. 
 
 Since ' epizootic ' means something that 
 affects all living creatures, from men to 
 polypi, it is manifestly inapplicable to a 
 malady affecting only horses. Why ' horse 
 disease ' is not a, good enough phrase, I cannot 
 conceive ; but if the Times must be Greek, 
 allow me to suggest ' ephippic' It would do 
 the average journalist much good to read Mr. 
 Barnes's 'Early England.' Why use 'alti- 
 tude,' ' latitude,' ' longitude,' when • height ' 
 and ' breadth ' and ' length ' are ready to 
 hand? Why 'astronomy' instead of 'star- 
 lore,' or 'statics' instead of ' weightlore,' or 
 ' decimate ' for ' tithe,' or ' estuary ' for ' frith,' 
 or 'glossary' for 'wordbook,' or 'convivial 
 party for 'mirth mote'? When the clever 
 gentlemen who fulfil Horace's oft-cited line : 
 
 ' Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba,
 
 192 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 appear in our journals they puzzle one with. 
 their magniloquence. The Times hath a well- 
 known correspondent who styles himself ' His- 
 toricus ;' this must mean either that he is an 
 historic character or a master of history ; 
 which ? Again, there is ' Indophilus,' who, I 
 suppose, means us to understand that he is a 
 lover of India. Had he been quick at Greek, 
 he would have written ' Philindus.' ' Indo- 
 philus means a man whom Indians love. 
 Greek was looic as well as music. The two 
 ought to be entirely inseparable. 
 
 Dec. 5. 
 
 Sir Henry Holland's pleasant letter in refe- 
 rence to the late Mrs. Somerville, who in her 
 ninety-third year could read a treatise on 
 Quaternions (the highest department of 
 modern algebra), who translated Laplace's 
 great work, yet who was not above the enjoy- 
 ment of music and art, and could mend old 
 lace to perfection, might be a lesson to those 
 noisy women-folk who set up for an equality 
 with man, yet get plucked in their examina- 
 tion when they attempt such rivalry. At
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 193 
 
 Edinburgh, where Mrs. Somerville won a 
 mathematical prize in her girlhood, the enthu- 
 siastic Miss Jex Blake has just lost her exami- 
 nation. The contrast is perfect. The ladies 
 who are wildly agitating for social indepen- 
 dence are not of the same class* as those who 
 do useful work in their time. One cannot 
 imagine Miss Edgeworth or Miss Austen, Mrs. 
 Hemans or Miss Landon, Mrs. Browning or 
 Mrs. Somerville, joining in this shriek for 
 freedom from male control. Women of stable 
 minds and high desires have no sympathy 
 with the chaotic charivari of the hysteric 
 sisterhood. 
 
 "Women there are who say the world is slow 
 
 To recognise their scientific power ; 
 
 "Wherefore they fill with heat the flying hour 
 And let the beauty of their sweet life go 
 Like water through a child's frail fingers. So 
 
 Might the tree murmur not to be a tower, 
 
 Might envy of the strong storm vex the shower 
 That wakes sweet blossoms and makes brooklets flow. 
 The lady whom I love has no such thought : 
 
 No stolid strength of mind shall make her weak, 
 
 Xo folly sink her in the sad abyss 
 "Where these same scientific souls are caught. 
 
 She knows a kiss befits a lovely cheek, 
 
 Ay, and that rosy lips were made to kiss. 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 1873. 
 
 1 and my sweetheart spelt together ; 
 
 Our ages were together ten : 
 How sad to waste the sweet spring weather 
 
 In the old Dame's fusty den ! 
 White lilac, fragrant, graceful, cool, 
 Tapped at the window of the school ; 
 Alas, too well our doom we knew — 
 There was a tremulous birch-tree too. 
 
 1 and my sweetheart dwell together : 
 
 Many tens are our ages now : 
 Vanished is youth's gay violet weather, 
 Stays the old Dame's frowning brow. 
 Dame Nature keeps the eternal school, 
 And grows keen twigs to flog the fool ; 
 But looks away, with pardoning eye, 
 When we play truant, my love and I.
 
 Though is in my Garden. 195 
 
 Jan. 2* 
 
 The toiling agony of modern life produces 
 many evil effects, which might to some extent 
 be modified. One of these is that many ladies 
 of gentle birth are compelled to make their 
 own living without any special preparation 
 for that fated task. Merchants break ; men 
 in professions die suddenly at the commence- 
 ment of their career ; inheritors of indepen- 
 dent property are led to ruin by plausible 
 speculations, designed to benefit only their 
 promotors and liquidators. What are the 
 daughters of such pauper sires to do % Boys, 
 even though imperfectly educated, may usually 
 open with their swords that oyster the world ; 
 but where is room for the girl of nurture 
 delicate, yet culture incomplete ? She may 
 attempt to be a governess, but will find the 
 competition hard with the trained governesses 
 now readily found. 
 
 What else is there'? Failing ;h a teacher, 
 she perhaps advertises for employmenl 'in 
 
 *This was written before 'lady-helps' were instituted. 
 — F. C. 
 
 13—2
 
 196 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 any position not menial.' The reader's imagi- 
 nation will easily follow lier through various 
 phases of existence which may be thus 
 described. 
 
 Modern life has altered the surface of 
 society as it has the surface of England ; but 
 the foundations are unchanged. Along the 
 Great Western road, from London into Berk- 
 shire, I see a line of disused pumps, which 
 once supplied water to keep the highway in 
 order for the royal mails ; I also see a line 
 of new telegraph posts, carrying wires which 
 do the work of communication instantane- 
 ously. Those pumps, with handles broken 
 off or chained, are phantoms of the past ; 
 those posts are facts of the present, which 
 must disturb the quaint old pumps, that re- 
 member thirty or forty coaches a day, dashing 
 merrily by in the summer, dragging wearily 
 through the snow of winter. The past, how- 
 ever, is not altogether past : a four-horse 
 coach comes this way now and then ; there 
 are gentlemen who, feeling they are not bound 
 to shatter their nerves by steam-travel at forty
 
 Thottghts in my Garden. 197 
 
 miles an hour, and loving to pass through a 
 pleasant country behind a slashing team, have 
 on certain roads brought back the delightful 
 old system. It may or it may not pay, but 
 it gives to amateur drivers courage and skill, 
 to travellers pleasure and health. The four 
 horse coach may outlive railways ; for rail- 
 ways will probably go down before some 
 swifter and safer form of travel ; but there 
 will be summer teams out of London till the 
 days of the New Zealander. 
 
 Now, as this material beauty of the past 
 has been rescued from oblivion and brought 
 again before our eyes, may not also certain 
 social forms which have perished before modern 
 arrangement ? The proposal has been made 
 that mothers who desire their children to be 
 wisely managed should substitute a lady-nurse 
 for the customary old harridan at the head of. 
 the nursery — a creature all slaps and scolds 
 and snuff, who actually teaches her under- 
 nursemaid neglect and cruelty and deceit. 
 Many well-born girls, poor by misfortune, 
 quite unfit to act as governesses, could very
 
 198 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 well control a nursery. The objection to be 
 anticipated is that the position would be 
 menial. Terrible word ! In theory a gover- 
 ness is a lady : in practice she is too often a 
 slave. A lady-nurse would be doing for young 
 children only what she would do if they were 
 her own, and she were unable to keep servants 
 enough. 
 
 Before this particular point was at all dis- 
 cussed, I had regarded the question more 
 widely, and had concluded that ladies of rank 
 and wealth would do infinite good to others, 
 and a little to themselves, by reviving that 
 institution of the past, the waiting gentle- 
 woman. Now comes the menial objection even 
 more forcibly. What does this dreadful word 
 signify ? Consult Hensleigh Wedgwood : ' Be- 
 longing to the meiny, or household.' Why, 
 your secretary, your governess, your chaplain, 
 your librarian, yes, even your wife and chil- 
 dren, belong to your household. The word 
 comes through old French from the Latin — 
 minus natus was turned into mainsne, maisne, 
 younger child. Thus, according to our most
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 199 
 
 erudite and accurate etymologist, the primary 
 sense of menial is, a child of the household. 
 Etymology is full of historic and philosophic 
 matter. Might there not now be menials and 
 menials, even as there are knights of the 
 garter and knights of the shop ? 
 
 The experiment should be tried in a large 
 meiny, or household. One waiting gentle- 
 woman would be isolated and uncomfortable. 
 Suppose a mansion in which from four to six 
 could be employed. The scheme is, exchange 
 of service, to be broken through where special 
 fitness or unfitness appears. In the first trial 
 it would be well to let each novice test her 
 capacity for each menial employment : in time 
 it would often be found that one would excel 
 as secretary to the mistress, another as reader 
 and companion, others as controller of the 
 nursery, director of housekeeping, manager of 
 the still-room, manager of the linen. 
 
 They should live apart from the rest of the 
 household, and be liberally treated. At times 
 
 the mistress might choose to have oi r more 
 
 at her own table, or in the withdrawiug-room
 
 200 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 after dinner, to join in music or conversation. 
 At such times any other who has to be in 
 attendance would, being a gentlewoman, treat 
 her associate with the respect she rendered to 
 an) r other guest. To serve and to be served 
 are introactive functions : the nation serves it* 
 kino- the true king: serves his nation. For the 
 
 O' o 
 
 dauohters of the household to serve their father 
 and his guests was a custom of old heroic 
 people, is a custom now in countries where 
 simplicity continues. What princesses have 
 done need not ashame an English gentle- 
 woman. 
 
 Indeed, the position I have tried to describe 
 would give an intelligent girl the best possible 
 training. It would develop her faculties, refine 
 her manners, widen her knowledge of life. It 
 would teach her to live peaceably with her 
 equals, to be courteous to those below as well 
 as those above her. It would fit her to become 
 a good wife and a wise mother. 
 
 Not that the scheme implies that every wait- 
 ing gentlewoman is to find a husband. Many 
 of them must develop into maiden ladies, for
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 201 
 
 whom appropriate service is not wanting. 
 Still, marriage would often be their fortune, 
 especially under the sway of a wise and gene- 
 rous mistress, who would afford them moderate 
 social intercourse and sagacious guidance, and 
 doubtless a reasonable dower. It is hard to 
 conceive a training; that would make better 
 wives for gentlemen of medium income. Living 
 in an atmosphere of courtesy and refinement, 
 the}' would be placed above those silly flirta- 
 tions which spoil the character and sometimes 
 ruin the lives of girls who have no such advan- 
 tage. Many a poet, soldier, philosopher, artist, 
 statesman, would be thankful for the chance 
 that made him marry a waiting gentlewoman. 
 The question remains, how would such an 
 arrangement suit the master and mistress ? 
 Well, there can be little doubt that the lord 
 of a great household would be better served it' 
 the lighter services were rendered by gentle- 
 women, instead of footmen or parlour-maids. 
 The lady would profit even more, being sure, 
 when she had tested her attendants, of honour, 
 intelligence, courtesy, duty. When once she
 
 202 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 had organised her household, they would act 
 for her as the senses for the mind ; and, doing 
 their work with the easy grace and lightness 
 of touch and ready obedience which charac- 
 terises gentle blood, they would at no time 
 commit the awkwardness which common ser- 
 vants cannot avoid. She would be like Artemis 
 among her nymph attendants ; or like Nausikaa 
 the princess amid her servitresses, fitly com- 
 pared to the goddess : 
 
 The damsels of the palace of Alcinotis, who 
 went with their mistress to wash the royal 
 linen by the river-side in the fair lavatories 
 that it fed, were waiting gentlewomen, as seen 
 by Homer. 
 
 If it be pleasant to surround yourself with all 
 accessories of life in their fairest forms — to enjoy 
 pictures of the highest kind ; gardens delicious 
 to the eye; furniture fitly chosen; china, glass, 
 plate, of perfect form ; books choicely bound ; 
 horses well matched — is it not even pleasanter 
 that your personal retinue are fair to look
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 203 
 
 upon, graceful in movement, intelligent and 
 quiet, and able to anticipate your wants? 
 
 This is a question for ladies to consider; 
 both those who would give such employment, 
 and those who would receive it. 
 
 Jan. 16. 
 
 I live in a village : at the village shop I 
 sometimes get substantial proof of folly com- 
 mitted by that august body, the House of 
 Commons of England. Videlicet: yesterday I 
 purchased, at threepence a pound, in form 
 of waste paper, a blue book (28th of April, 
 1871), headed 'Elementary Education (Civil 
 Parishes).' It was ordered on the motion of 
 Mr. "William Edward Forster. I am glad to 
 have it at the price of ninepence, but I think 
 there must be a most useless waste of money 
 when a return of April, 1871, reaches a Berk- 
 shire village in January, 1873, as mere paper 
 to wrap round bacon and butter. And, ob- 
 serve, the return is a. valuable one. concerning 
 which the public would be glad to have infor- 
 mation. What I ask is this — why are these 
 books issued only to members of Parliament
 
 204 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 and grocers ? Do those two classes absorb all 
 English intellect ? 
 
 Captain Thomas Coram, who in 1739 ob- 
 tained a charter for the Foundling Hospital, 
 would, I imagine, be rather disgusted at the 
 present state of Great Coram Street. He, kind 
 of heart and loyal in thought, did his best for 
 deserted children; but he had no sympathy 
 with the miserable hetaira who has come to 
 pervade certain parts of London once reputable. 
 There are few men whose real goodness of 
 heart is more evident than Captain Coram's. 
 You can see that he desired to do good to poor 
 deserted children, left fatherless and mother- 
 less. His real human kindness has been 
 muddled by those who succeeded to the 
 management of the Foundling Hospital, which 
 he founded in North London, and which has, 
 of course, been of infinite service. For my 
 part, I agree with Captain Coram, if children 
 are brought into the world contra bonos mores, 
 I do not see why they should suffer for life.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 205 
 
 Jan. 2:). 
 
 The deaths of Lord Lyttoii and of James 
 Hannay will make a deep impression on a 
 great number of minds. I suppose few writers 
 have given greater pleasure or produced 
 greater failures than Lord Lytton. If asked 
 which was his greatest book I should say 
 ' Saint Stephen's,' a poem descriptive of our 
 Parliamentary giants, published first in Black- 
 wood's Magazine. Few things in English 
 letters are of higher quality than his sketches 
 of great men like Pitt, Fox, Burke, Canning. 
 The last, perhaps, is one of the least brilliant. 
 Bulwer Lytton's weakest point was senti- 
 mentalism, and there seems no reason to 
 sentimentalise about Canning. The descrip- 
 tions of earlier politicians are more powerful : 
 but the metre of the poem often halts, and it 
 semis as if the writer scarce knew the differ- 
 ence between an iambus and a trochee. This 
 want of rhythmic, science ran through all Lord 
 Lytton's ambitious attempts in the realm of 
 poetry - r while in prose, it must be confessed 
 that he was a trifle too fond of fine writing.
 
 206 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 James Hannay, who died of apoplexy, did 
 less than he ought, even as Lord Lytton inde- 
 fatigably strove to do more. It is curious that 
 there are certain men who impress all who 
 know them with a sense of power, yet who 
 never thoroughly grasp the public. Of this 
 class certainly was Hannay. I think he was 
 the best talker I ever knew. He was certainly 
 as good a writer of pure English prose as any 
 man among us. Comparisons are odious ; 
 yet it may be said that Hannay could not have 
 written such English as may be sometimes 
 found in the works of Dickens and Lord 
 Lytton. His was the style and school of 
 Swift, a little touched with poetry. He has 
 not received anything like fair recognition 
 from the journals of London. 
 
 Jan. 29. 
 
 A volume of Swift and a bottle of wine are 
 no bad solace when the wind is east and rheu- 
 matism is hoverino; around. Thus have I been 
 consoling myself this morning, and have read 
 with great delight ' Martinus Scriblerus ' over
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 207 
 
 again. What a loss to letters that Swift, Pope, 
 and Arbuthnot did not complete that charm- 
 ing satire ! I suppose Sterne must have had it 
 in his mind when he commenced 'Tristram 
 Shandy': Cornelius Scriblerus and his brother 
 Albertus are very like Mr. Shandy and my 
 Uncle Toby, while the mishaps which attended 
 Martimis's early career may well have sug- 
 gested Tristram's. 
 
 Feb. 6. 
 
 I wonder whether Mr. Charles Darwin has 
 read the famous history of Martinus Scriblerus, 
 to which I referred last week. When I read 
 of the way in which Mr. Darwin treats his 
 children, I am reminded of the experiments 
 tried by Cornelius Scriblerus on his famous 
 son. My knowledge of Mr. Darwin's method 
 is not drawn from his books : for I hereby 
 assure my reader that I would not trouble 
 myself about a theory which is evidently false. 
 I hold that I was made in the image of God ; 
 Mv. Darwin believes thai lie was made in the 
 image of the ape. To read exploded nonsense
 
 2oS Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 of this kind is no fancy of mine. But in occa- 
 sional magazine papers I catch fragments of 
 Darwinism ; and I confess I should not like to 
 be Mr. Darwin's child, or even his dog. Were 
 I his dog, I would run away to the nearest 
 Platonist and feel certain of a hone and no 
 experiments. If Mr. Charles Darwin would 
 read ' Martinus Scriblerus ' and ' The Loves of 
 the Triangles,' he would, perhaps, be cured of 
 his craze. Yet I don't know. There is a 
 sham-science epidemic about, and any man 
 who will prove something quite new may find 
 a publisher and a public. 
 
 %r 3r *Jp v(c •,» 
 
 Lord Lyttelton, in Notes and Queries, has 
 been criticising the grammatical construction 
 of a sentence of Edmund Burke's. To my 
 thinking, genius creates grammar. But, this 
 question apart, it is very clear that Burke w T as 
 technically accurate. ' It is not for his Holi- 
 ness we intend this consolatory declaration. 
 .... Is it to him we are to prove the sin- 
 cerity of our resolution ? .... Is it him
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 209 
 
 who has drained and cultivated the Pontine 
 .Marshes that we are to satisfy of our cordial 
 spirit of conciliation ? Is it to him we are to 
 prove our good faith V etc. The ' him ' I have 
 italicised perplexes Lord Lyttelton, who thinks 
 the pronoun should be in the nominative. 
 ( hie would have thought the construction, ' Is 
 it him we are to satisfy V would have been 
 clear enough to the keenest grammaticaster. 
 Burke's rapid rhetoric has all through this part 
 of his speech thrown the Pope into the fore- 
 ground of each sentence, but the construction 
 of each sentence is of unerring accuracy. Turn 
 the sentence any way you will, and it is clear 
 that ' he ' would he ungrammatical. I wonder 
 at this captious criticism from Lord Lyttelton, 
 who is undeniablv a scholar. 
 
 * 
 
 Some one tells me that a well-known clergv- 
 man lias put forth the theory that the devil is 
 in his dotage. The idea is thai the fallen 
 archangel, utterly estranged from God, utterly 
 in rebellion, must of necessity have grown 
 
 vol. 1. 14
 
 210 TJioughts in my Garden. 
 
 weaker and more stupid by that estrangement 
 
 during the many millenniums since the fall of 
 the angels. So the first fearful conception of 
 Satan has been brought down to the moekino- 
 fiend Mephistopheles, to the prying fiend 
 Asmodeus. 
 
 ' How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer ! Son of 
 the Morning !' 
 
 There is a curious ontological problem at the 
 basis of this suggestion. Any creature rebel- 
 ling against its creator could not fail to dete- 
 riorate in time. I should like the opinion of 
 learned divines on this subject. Does Satan 
 grow weaker ? If so, will the world improve, 
 in proportion thereto ? Again, if the spirit 
 of evil has degenerated, may not his doings 
 be quite as bad, though of a meaner cha- 
 racter ? 
 
 Where he once inspired an Alexander, he 
 now inspires a Bonaparte — where he once in- 
 spired the Egyptian Magi, he now inspires 
 people who turn tables. There is a long 
 descent from the Witch of Endor to Mr. 
 Home.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 2 1 1 
 
 March 6. 
 
 Mr. Matthew Browne, in St. Paul's Maga- 
 zine, prints a lady's letter which he picked up 
 some ten years ago, and bases on it a rather 
 suggestive article. Although he gives no names, 
 I am doubtful whether the publication of a 
 letter of this kind, picked up by accident, is 
 quite the right thing for a gentleman who 
 writes in a first-class magazine. The man who 
 picks up a letter ought, if possible, to transmit 
 it to the owner or writer ; if this be not 
 possible (as evidently it was in Mr. Matthew 
 Browne's ease) he ought to destroy it unread. 
 To keep it ten years, and then base an article 
 on it, is not exactly a gentlemanly proceeding. 
 Lapse of time cannot give any man the right 
 to make a private letter public. 
 
 Anions: the remarks which occur in Mr. 
 Browne's essay on a lady's letter I find the 
 following; : ' Mr. Walter Bagehot, a writer who 
 is far more in harmony with the more recent 
 forms of progress than the writer of these 
 lines can pretend to be, lias lately quoted, and 
 without answering it in the affirmative, the 
 
 14— 2
 
 2 r 2 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 dreary question whether all that human inven- 
 tion has accomplished has yet lightened by 
 one half-hour the labour of a single human 
 being.' The answer to this is — "NVhv should 
 it ? Laborare est orare. Man was designed 
 to work — not to shirk work. A thoroughly 
 healthy man likes the work best suited to him, 
 whether it be writing a Look or driving a 
 plough. It is a mere morbid tendency which 
 makes people desire to pass their time in 
 chronic idleness. Probably ' human inven- 
 tion ' tends rather to increase than to diminish 
 the amount of human labour ; and in so doino- 
 it brings good to the race. Do Messrs. 
 Bagehot and Browne think the ideal of 
 humanity to be the naked savage of the 
 torrid zone, who has nothing in the world to 
 do but to open his mouth that the fruit may 
 fall into it ? 
 
 March 20. 
 
 I notice that an illuminated poem in a 
 carved oak casket has been presented to the 
 Prince and Princess of Wales as a memorial of 
 their thanksgiving visit to St. Paul's. The
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 213 
 
 papers give the name of the lady who illumi- 
 nated and the gentleman who carved the oak 
 — but not a word about the poet! Sir William 
 Knollys, on the part of the Prince and 
 Princess, says that it is the prettiest book 
 they ever saw, and enclosed in the very nicest 
 box — but not a word about the poem ! I 
 should think that loyal poet would shortly be- 
 come a democrat. 
 
 The Post Office has just announced that it 
 will issue envelopes of ' square shape,' their 
 dimensions being 4f inches by Z\\ inches ! 
 Kings are said to be supra grammaticam : evi- 
 dently the Postmaster-General claims to be 
 supra (jeometriam. Henceforth ' Euclid ' must 
 be amended, and a square be defined as that 
 which hath one side longer than another. I 
 suppose Mr. Gladstone will be squaring the 
 circle when he retires from the leadership of 
 the House. 
 
 March 22. 
 
 The Fence Act for ' certain wild birds ' came 
 into operation on the 15th of this month, and 
 will, we hope, prevent the bucolic lout from
 
 2 14 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 shooting and trapping the winged denizens of 
 air. But, looking through the schedule of 
 birds protected, it is impossible not to be 
 struck by the absurdity of the omissions. Our 
 three chief song-birds — blackbird, thrush, and 
 skylark — are left out in the cold, while the 
 hedge-sparrows are protected. Now every 
 gardener knows that blackbirds and thrushes 
 are his best friends ; they will never touch 
 fruit or fruit-bud while they can find worm 
 or slug or snail. The Queen's gardener at 
 "Windsor was converted a year or two ago : he 
 watched a blackbird busy on a strawberry-bed, 
 and found that he was eating — snails. Merle 
 or mavis will get a snail out of his shell as 
 dexterously as an old oyster-eater obtains his 
 favourite bivalve. Then the kingfisher is pro- 
 tected, but not the jay — a bird of almost equal 
 beauty; the owl is protected, but not the 
 hawk — a bird of greater utility. Keepers will 
 shoot hawks, just as farmers will kill sparrows), 
 regardless of the fact that they keep down 
 the vermin most noxious to game — pestilent 
 destroyer of eggs and of young birds. This
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 2 1 5 
 
 .schedule oiio-fit to be amended next session. 
 
 Of course we expect nothing of this. 
 
 *' «* »» \r K 
 
 -<r -,r -/J -,r -,.- 
 
 The Brighton people are planting trees, and 
 rejoicing thereat. We can quite understand 
 their delight at the idea of having leafy boule- 
 vards in London's pleasant marine suburb; but 
 we are not altogether certain that their policy 
 is wise. Everybody who has a place in the 
 country knows how sombre and melancholy 
 it seems in November, when the trees are 
 leafless, and the gardeners have nothing to do 
 but sweep away the fallen foliage. Now 
 November is just the height of the Brighton 
 season, and at Brighton dinner-tables we have 
 heard it ably argued that the absence of trees 
 makes the town popular in autumn. You 
 forget the bare branches, the decaying leaves ; 
 you see a brilliant town of mansions, shops, 
 hotels ; you see a Pavilion, an Aquarium, a 
 couple of piers dedicated to flirtation ; you see 
 a joyous crowd influx and reflux upon that 
 superb four miles of road which faces the sea 
 from Kemp Town to Hove ; and then the
 
 216 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 whole is girdled "by the sea itself, always 
 changing, yet unchangeable, always full of 
 stimulus, always bringing up that ntysterious 
 element, ozone. Now the question for 
 Brighton to consider is whether deciduous 
 trees will not injure this unique combination. 
 Had not the Mayor and Corporation better 
 come to London in November, and take a 
 good look at the London squares ?* 
 
 April 28. 
 
 All old tradition alleges that when the ash 
 is in leaf before the oak the summer will be 
 wintry ; this year the ash is so much in ad- 
 vance that tailors would be wise to lay in very 
 moderate stocks of light clothing. The cock 
 nightingales came over pretty early, strange to 
 say ; but who has heard the cuckoo or seen the 
 swallow ? Last year some French meteorolo- 
 gist predicted that summer would consist of 
 three weeks in August ; he was right. This 
 
 * M. C. had a great affection for Brighton, and has 
 dedicated some of his prettiest verses to its praise. A poem 
 called ' "Winter in Brighton,' of which the last stanza is par- 
 ticularly piquant, is quoted further on. — E. Y.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 2 1 7 
 
 year the same prophet of evil promised us one 
 fine month only — July. Imagine the misfor- 
 tune if that month should be entirely filled 
 up with the general election, and one's sole 
 
 chance of a holiday lost. 
 
 May 1. 
 
 The gentleman who, having been at a 
 meeting of the Anthropological Society, said 
 they were trying to prove they all came from 
 monkeys, and that he thought they were 
 getting hack very fast to where they came 
 from, has my sincere sympathy. The worship 
 paid to men who produce anything that seems 
 new, whatever the intensity of its silliness, 
 lteoins to get disgusting. Here is a cutting 
 from a critical journal, reviewing a book on 
 ants and spiders: 'Mr. Darwin has not only 
 the knack of utilising the waste materials, the 
 shavings and sawdust of other men's work- 
 shops, but he seems to us to have raised to an 
 altogether new position of dignity the old 
 "gardener'' type of naturalist, such as was 
 White of Selborne.' Anyone who has studied 
 Gilbert White, the most poetic of English
 
 2 1 8 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 naturalists, must feel slightly amazed at being 
 told that Mr. Darwin has raised him to a ' new 
 position of dignity.' Gilbert White was no 
 maker of mad theories. He used his eyes and 
 his 1 train. He saw more birds in one parish 
 than many other men would see if they 
 travelled through the world. He recorded 
 what he saw in English delightful for its 
 simplicity and clearness. He is indeed 
 unique. The misfortune of the current period 
 is that we must over-estimate our loquacious 
 Liliputians. 
 
 Even Mr. Auberon Herbert may be of some 
 use in his day and generation ; and while I 
 cannot sympathise in his desire that there 
 should be a piano in every cottage in the 
 kingdom, I quite agree with him in wishing 
 more effectively to protect wild birds. He has 
 got his Committee, and I hope it will do satis- 
 factory work. The Act already passed is so 
 intensely absurd that it can be regarded only 
 as a piece of well-meant ignorance. There are 
 few people so ignorant as gardeners and farmers 
 of the value of birds. We send sparrows to
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 219 
 
 Australia, where they are only too glad to gel 
 them; but we shoot them down here, offering 
 so much a dozen for their heads. If farm 
 produce were not already dear enough in all 
 conscience, we might wish the sparrow clubs 
 to be successful, and a plague of caterpillars to 
 visit the land. The ordinary English farmer 
 is a very good fellow; his ale and beef are 
 excellent ; he gives you the hearty welcome of 
 the ancient time. But you cannot teach him 
 that birds do him very little harm and im- 
 measurable good. On this point he is unper- 
 suadable. You cannot induce him to tolerate 
 sparrows. So I hope the Legislature will 
 authoritatively interfere, even though at the 
 instance of that eccentric young gentleman, 
 Mr. Auberon Herbert. It is high time that 
 the beautiful birds, for which England is 
 famous, should be more carefully preserved. 
 We cannot kill any of God's creatures unneces- 
 sarily without discovering that we have made 
 a mistake. 
 
 1 am writing on May Day, once the festival 
 of London chimney-sweepers. It is a lovely
 
 220 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 day, and I write out of doors — facts that 
 deserve to be chronicled in these wintry times. 
 There is a May fair at the country town — as 
 once there was in London, teste Mayfair — and 
 long strings of show-folk, horse-buyers, and 
 the like, make the road populous. What 
 would the road have been, I ask myself, if 
 steam and the iron tram had not changed the 
 form of travel ? Forty years ago forty coaches 
 passed this gate — now the road-traffic is simply 
 insignificant. Will any further development 
 of travel occur? Shall we have balloons, for 
 example ? They have been threatened for a 
 long time ; and some of my friends who 
 have tried them say they are very pleasant. 
 Once solve the problem of guiding a steam 
 balloon, and what will be the fate of railway 
 shares ? 
 
 May 8. 
 
 A lady, the other day, remarked to me that 
 she had heard the nightingale before the 
 cuckoo, and was fortunate therein. Inquir- 
 ing what she meant by this, she reminded
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 221 
 
 me of a sonnet by John Milton, prince of 
 sonneteers : 
 
 ' O nightingale, that on yon blooming spray 
 
 Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still ; 
 
 Thou with fresh hope the lover's breast cloth fill, 
 While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May. 
 Thy liquid notes, that close the eye of day, 
 
 First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, 
 
 Portend success in love. O, if Jove's will 
 Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay, 
 Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate 
 
 Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh ; 
 As thou from year to year hast sung too late 
 
 For my relief, yet hadst no reason why. 
 Whether the Muse, or Love, call thee his mate, 
 
 Both them I serve, and of their train am I.' 
 
 All dwellers in the country may Lope for 
 success in love this year, for the nightingales 
 have been here for a week or two, while the 
 ' invisible voice ' of the cuckoo has yet been 
 sparsely heard. To-day (8th May) I have 
 seen the house-marten for the first time — a 
 bird whose arrival Gilbert White, of Selborne, 
 puts at from March 28 to May 1. 
 
 % * * •* * 
 
 The learned professions are overstocked.
 
 222 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 — ■ ■ 
 
 There are too many poor curates, briefless 
 barristers, and doctors who get no practice. 
 Is it not worth while to consider whether, as 
 civilisation and opulence increase and develop, 
 other vocations might not he elevated to the 
 same level ? Man)" suggestions are conceivable 
 on this topic ; at present we make one only. 
 Every county in England contains castles and 
 halls where the gardens are brought to per- 
 fection with utter recklessness of expense. Go 
 into the gardens of Alnwick, Chatsworth, Alton 
 Towers, Arundel Castle, and your eye is feasted 
 with marvellous beauty, for there great nobles 
 dwell; but there are also country gentlemen 
 and millionaires who delight in perfect 
 gardens, and care little what they pay for 
 them. Now, why should not a great pro- 
 prietor's head-gardener be a gentleman, as 
 much as his secretary or his steward ? As 
 things are at present, a head-gardener receives 
 wages beyond his actual needs. A gentleman 
 as head-gardener would require a higher salary, 
 but he would pay for it in many ways. He 
 would keep the subordinates in good order,
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 "o 
 
 would apply scientific botany to gardening, 
 would be able to instruct the household in the 
 only art that Eve hail to learn in her days of 
 innocence — an art calculated to give ladies 
 more permanent pleasure than any other, 
 music even not excepted. There are times 
 when the loveliest melody is wearying to the 
 ear, but who ever tires of roses and May 
 lilies ? 
 
 No man need be ashamed of the gardener's 
 art. Verulam loved it, as his famous essay 
 proves. The growth of leaves and flowers is 
 full of scientific suggestion, as everyone knows 
 who has seen Mr. Henslow's paper on ' Phyllo- 
 taxis.' Some day mathematicians will find the 
 equation to the oak and the ash, as they now 
 find it to cissoid and cycloid curves. The 
 great nursery owners are gentlemen of culture, 
 or they could never have developed the science 
 of horticulture as they have done. The names 
 of Rivers and Veitch need only be mentioned 
 to prove our point. One of our foremost 
 living novelists is by profession a gardener. 
 You have only to read his translations of the
 
 224 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 'Georgies' of Virgil to see what lie has gained 
 by intimate intercourse with nature. 
 
 In order that our idea might become prac- 
 tical, it would be requisite for country gentle- 
 men of large property to employ gardeners of 
 this new class. But supply produces demand; 
 if such gardeners could be found they would 
 soon eliminate the honest, plodding Scot or 
 jaunty Englishman, neither of whom has ever 
 read Evelyn's ' Sylva,' or has an elementary 
 notion of botany. Now, in order to obtain 
 such a supply, there ought to be a college for 
 gardeners, where the art should be taught in } 
 its widest sense. Lectures on botany, on gar-O 
 dening in connection with architecture, on the 
 mathematics and chemistry of vegetable life, 
 would of course be delivered, and the under- 
 graduate gardener would be taught the rela- 
 tions of ornithology and meteorology to his 
 own special art. When we see gardeners igno- 
 rantly killing bullfinches — when we remember 
 the well-known story of the head-gardener at 
 Windsor Castle, who positively refused to be- * 
 lieve that thrushes preferred snails to straw-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 225 
 
 homes — we are compelled to admit that 
 gardeners require a little more culture before 
 the culture of the ground is left at their 
 mercy. 
 
 We venture to think that artistic and 
 scientific gardening might become an admir- 
 able profession for gentlemen not ambitious 
 of making great fortunes. No occupation is 
 healthier ; none is fuller of variety and 
 interest. Every day in garden and green- 
 house brings a new surprise — a new de- 
 light ; and the man who becomes a thorough 
 gardener will often recall Cowley's famous line : 
 
 ' God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain.' 
 
 Doubtless, Cowley's thought was suggested by 
 Bacon, whose beautiful essay begins : ' God 
 Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed it 
 is the purest of human pleasure: it is the 
 greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, 
 without which buildings and palaces are but 
 gross handiwork.' And he puts the gardener 
 above the architect, saying that it is easier ' to 
 build stately than to garden finely.' 
 vol. 1. 15
 
 226 ThotigJits in my Garden. 
 
 May 22. 
 
 A dear friend of mine, poet and palindromist 
 and archaeologist, lias written me a letter full of 
 suggestion. Though not by any means an 
 Irishman, he begins with his postscript, having 
 left no room for it at the end of the letter. 
 Thus it runs : ' This is a specimen of my hand- 
 writing with a steel pen. Cuss all steel pens!' 
 I agree with him, though his verbiage is 
 strong and his heterography wrong. One of 
 the most difficult questions in the world is 
 why people will use steel pens, when that 
 noble animal the goose utters its metallic 
 notes on every common of England — I design 
 no slur on the Commons of England. Now 
 the goose of Michaelmas is no favourite food 
 of mine, as I hate stuffing ; but the creature's 
 thighs devilled are not bad, and the young 
 spring gosling is dear to the epicure. The 
 general public like goose — even in their litera- 
 ture : hence there must surely be heaps of 
 quills available. For my own part, I have not 
 used a steel pen for at least a quarter of a 
 century.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 227 
 
 June 5. 
 
 Longman's ' Notes on Books ' always amuse 
 me by their odd contrasts. Mr. William 
 Longman's ' Three Cathedrals Dedicated to 
 Saint Paul in London,' written within the 
 shadow of the great Metropolitan minster, 
 comes curiously alongside of the Bishop of 
 Natal's last ' Lectures on the Pentateuch.' 
 The publisher may send me his book if he 
 likes, for I delight in the great and glorious 
 history of the famous Apostle's connection 
 with England's chief city ; but Bishop 
 Colenso is quite welcome to keep his book 
 to himself. Is not this charmino- for an 
 English Bishop ? — ' We are now able to 
 regard the numerous discrepancies and con- 
 tradictions ' (of the Bible) ' as only the natural 
 consequence of the conditions under which it 
 has been composed, by fallible men like our- 
 selves, however inspired with Divine Life, 
 writing in different ages, and from very 
 different points of view.' ' To us, grown up 
 and nurtured amongst the secrets of nature 
 . . . . a miracle, if really witnessed, would be 
 
 15—2
 
 228 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 like a jarring discord in the midst of a mighty 
 music.' Now, Bishop Colenso, being a Church- 
 man, has scarcely an honest right to put 
 matters in this way. And being a mathe- 
 matician, he might possibly be aware that 
 Babbage has shown that a calculating machine 
 may be constructed so as to extract square 
 roots for (say) a century, and then to extract 
 one cube root only, and then to go on extract- 
 ing square roots so long as it existed. Would 
 that be a miracle, Bishop of Natal ? A 
 miracle, if really witnessed, would not be 
 accepted without the Bishop's testamur. It 
 does not occur to him that we live in a world 
 of miracles. Miracles are the rule, and ordi- 
 nary events the exception. He cannot con- 
 ceive the personal existence of God. Let 
 him write God with a small initial, like 
 'mr. John morley,' and have done with it. 
 The Infinite Power that gives us life and 
 light, that paints for us miracles of sunrise 
 and sunset, that makes the sun and moon 
 keep time, will not be annoyed by this in- 
 fantile, imbecile insult. The scarlet chestnut
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 229 
 
 and purple beech that I see opposite me as I 
 write are miracles. But Colenso is quite in- 
 capable of understanding the personal inter- 
 ference of God. He looks on the world as a 
 machine He cannot comprehend Goethe's 
 saying that it is the garment of God. 
 
 June 19. 
 
 This week I visited the Palace of a Prince 
 of the Press. Although the architecture was 
 
 O 
 
 not precisely what I should have chosen for 
 myself, I naturally rejoiced that journalism 
 could lead to such grandeur. You may see 
 the splendid, stately house miles away, even 
 as you may feel on the other side of the world 
 the influence of the famous newspaper that 
 1 milt it. Yet, after admiring the place as it 
 deserves, I came to the conclusion that we 
 English have lost the art of house-building. 
 Why should not a palace be as snug and cosy 
 as a cottage ? For this reason, that the modern 
 architect has not the comprehension and con- 
 structive power which belonged to his ante- 
 cessors. We have lost sisht of the fundamental 
 axiom that beauty depends on utility. There
 
 230 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 must be a tower at one of these big houses ; 
 but why a tower, unless it is for an observatory ? 
 If I were a millionaire with a great house to 
 build, there should be towers, certainly ; but 
 they should carry a reflecting telescope as large 
 as Lord Rosse's, and should have apartments 
 for a staff of sleepless astronomers. 
 
 At the house which I now vaorielv describe 
 there is a charming picture gallery lighted from 
 the ceiling. Most of the pictures are by Dutch 
 masters ; there is a wonderful Paul Potter, a 
 young bull and two cows, real as life ; there 
 are some noble examples of Ostade and Mieris; 
 the only paintings of another school which 
 struck me were two beautiful Canalettis. One 
 of these seemed to me as fine as anything I 
 have ever seen from the hand of the immortal 
 Venetian. What cunning there was in the 
 brush that placed on canvas canal and lagoon, 
 palace and bridge, with perfect accuracy of 
 touch ! However, the picture that struck me 
 most was in the dining-room : a grand Ostade, 
 ' Peter denying Christ.' The recreant apostle 
 and the girl accusing him are nobly painted ;
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 231 
 
 but a Roman soldier, who looks at Peter with 
 an air of complete contempt, is one of the 
 finest figures I remember on canvas. The 
 great painter has managed to put into that 
 Roman face the feelings which Rome had for 
 despised races. He breathes the very spirit of 
 ( !sesar. 
 
 Splendid deodaras and wellingtonias orna- 
 ment the grounds ; and the woods, new growth 
 of an old forest, have beech trees which, in 
 another century, will be as fine as those 
 in the Chiltern Hills about Great Hampden. 
 There, is a lovely lake — artificial, though one 
 would not think it — studded with islands, 
 and populous with wild duck. On this lake 
 we rowed, and a lady in my company ex- 
 claimed, 'This is too delicious.' We may 
 enjoy life 
 
 With indolent fingers fretting the tide, 
 And an indolent arm round a darling waist. 
 
 What more shall I say? Miles of grapes, 
 peaches and nectarines galore. Dairy and 
 laundry on a giant scale. I went away a
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 ~j~ 
 
 meditative man, thinking it well to be a Prince 
 of the Press. 
 
 July 17. 
 
 Thanks to Lady Burdett-Coutts for becoming 
 Defensor Avium. If her influence tends to 
 enlighten their bucolic enemies and to frighten 
 the unscrupulous bird-fancier, I shall say with 
 Aristophanes : 
 
 ''Q rpvayutKapiov icrqvbv opviQwv ykvog. 
 
 At the Highgate Horticultural Society's show 
 the Baroness gave prizes to gardeners who 
 protect wild birds. She said : ' It seems to 
 me only to require to be more known that the 
 birds are their real friends and not their 
 enemies. Some years ago the market gardeners 
 of Hounslow destroyed the tomtits, and the 
 result was that the incipient fruit-buds were 
 all destroyed, and they soon were glad to 
 welcome them back again. There are certain 
 unfortunate birds who appear to have no 
 friends in Parliament, and I hope that all you 
 who have votes will prove that they have very 
 many friends out of Parliament. The poor
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 233 
 
 sparrow is another persecuted bird. The 
 sparrow clubs are following in the wake of 
 that ignoble sport, pigeon-shooting.' I fear 
 it will be almost as impossible to teach the 
 country folk that birds are useful as to make 
 the youthful swell of Hurlingham understand 
 that pigeon-shooting is an ' ignoble -sport.' 
 Her ladyship's remarks may be supplemented 
 by an extract from the Garden, a capital 
 periodical of its kind : ' About three weeks 
 ago many gooseberry bushes in the kitchen- 
 garden here were much infested with the 
 caterpillar peculiar to the gooseberry. When 
 the men were not about, and on Sundays, 
 some cuckoos were observed every day on the 
 bushes feeding on the caterpillars, which they 
 thinned off considerably in a week or two. I 
 had them disturbed as little as possible, and 
 sometimes as many as four or five at a time 
 were seen enjoying their feast.' 
 
 July 24. 
 
 Verily law no longer holds its ancient con- 
 nection with letters, and even Cockburn is not 
 so literate as Cicero or Pliny. Fancy the Lord
 
 234 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Chief Justice of England ascribing to B3T011 
 the best known and most frequently misquoted 
 couplet in Pope's 'Essay on Man.' I presume 
 it is so often erroneously quoted because Byron 
 blundered when lie put it into a hasty note to 
 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:' but 
 how anybody who understands English could 
 mistake a couplet of Pope's for the work of 
 Byron is to me unintelligible. Pope's epigram- 
 matic strength and poetic weakness lay in the 
 fact that he had no continuity of thought. 
 Any couplet of Pope's will stand alone. The 
 only writer who outdoes him in this respect is 
 Gray, whose very words will bear transposition. 
 Nobody can tell whether he meant a comma 
 to follow the word tolls in the first line of the 
 famous 'Elegy.' AYho can remember whether 
 the third line should be 
 
 ' The ploughman homeward plods his weary way," 
 
 or 
 
 ' Homeward the weary ploughman plods his way,' 
 
 or 
 
 ' The weary ploughman homeward plods his way,' 
 
 or something else ? Dryden and Byron thought
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 235 
 
 continuously ; Pope thought discontiuuously, 
 as doe.s a poet otherwise quite unlike him — 
 Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 Aug. 7. 
 
 ' Saint Lubbock's Day ' was a great success 
 this year; and the scientific hanker will he 
 thoroughly rewarded for his philanthropy by 
 the gratitude of those who, customarily ' in 
 populous city pent,' find time annually to 
 drink seaside breezes, or to tire and strengthen 
 their muscles on Thames. You generally get 
 true summer in August : this year it has been 
 unusually sestival, and the wheat is wondrous 
 early. For my own part, I think we might 
 have a few more holidays ; more work is often 
 done in less time ; and the health of the many 
 is of greater value than the wealth of the few. 
 
 Aug. lii. 
 
 The London beggar is pretty well kept in 
 order by the police, but the country tramp is 
 irrepressible, and the rural constabulary are 
 not numerous enough to keep him in order. 
 1 Him,' we say, but the feminine section is the
 
 236 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 worse. Their impudence would be deliciously 
 laughable if it were not a nuisance. They 
 come armed with sixpenny licenses and tin 
 kettles or brooms to sell ; they walk through 
 your front gate straight into the middle of a 
 garden-party ; they brandish their brooms as 
 weapons of offence, and threaten an action for 
 damages if your dogs bark at them. The 
 plaintive poet who wrote : 
 
 ' "Whene'er I take my walks abroad, 
 How many poor I see ! 
 "What do I pay my poor rates for, 
 If they're to pester me ?' 
 
 deserves sympathy and consideration ; but 
 when the pauper nomad insists on entering 
 your premises, things are still more serious. 
 
 Aug. 28. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that the profession 
 of a Nomenclator mipiit be successful. It wants 
 imagination to give a good name. Take streets. 
 There are in London scores of Kino; Streets, 
 Queen Streets, James Streets, and John Streets, 
 and when the names of streets are altered, very 
 little originality is shown in renaming them.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 237 
 
 Our forefathers hit upon good names enough : 
 what can be better than Piccadilly, Pall Mall, 
 the Strand, Holborn, Cheapside, Cornhill % 
 Ships, again, are a perplexity to their owners : 
 one company is driven to use for its steamers 
 words all ending with ic, taken presumably 
 from the Rhyming Dictionary ; another takes 
 names of cities only, as ' City of York,' etc. 
 Racehorses are even more difficult : the shifts 
 to which their owners are driven are most 
 amusing, and one well-known owner of horses 
 declined to give his colts and fillies any names 
 at all. Lord Palmerston once named a mare 
 after Priam's eldest daughter, who is said to 
 have brought up her youngest brother as her 
 own son and her son as her brother. There 
 must have been some difference in the ages of 
 Ilione and Poly dor us, if the unlucky King of 
 Ilion had a hundred children. When the turf- 
 men wanted to know how to pronounce this 
 name, Palmerston (doubtless for fun) answered 
 HiUionnee. That was in 1841, when Lord 
 Neave wrote some am using verses in Blackwood y 
 beginning :
 
 238 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 1 The Whigs can boast of many a name, 
 Great Normanby and Little Johnny ; 
 But far their foremost child of fame 
 Is he that owns fleet Hillionnee.' 
 
 Had his lordship quite forgotten his Virgil, I 
 wonder ? 
 
 ' Prasterea sceptrum, Ilione quod gesserat olim, 
 Maxima natarum Priami.' 
 
 Scientific nomenclature is just as puzzling. 
 Paxtori tells us that nemophila is so called 
 because it loves the shade, whereas it will only 
 grow well in sunny spots, and was probably 
 called nemopltylla, in allusion to its spreading 
 leaves. The Brighton Aquarium people have 
 an octopus, and want sadly to know whether, 
 if they had two, they would be octopi or octo- 
 pusses. Now, here the christening is contrary 
 to usage ; following such examples as tripod 
 and pyramid, the eight-footed monster should 
 have been called an octopod. As to the naming 
 of children, it has become so anomalous that I 
 marvel people who design to be prolific don't 
 take to the Greek or some other alphabet. 
 Alpha Smith or Beta Jones would be better
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 259 
 
 than the Howards and Yernons, Clintons and 
 Stanleys, that are common with people of no 
 family, who reverence family names. Words- 
 worth and Coleridge hit on a poetic idea when 
 they gave their children the names of the 
 rivers Rotha and Derwent ; but this would not 
 do for ordinary folk. By the way, a grand- 
 daughter of Coleridge's (whom I may mention 
 without harm, as she is a writer of fiction) bears 
 the appropriate name of Christabel. 
 
 Sept. 18. 
 
 In dealing with the question of modern 
 education, the idea of a commercial training 
 for the middle classes is made too prominent. 
 We want to train rulers and workers to have 
 an upioTOKpaTia and a people. Among the rulers 
 I place not merely statesmen, lawyers, cap- 
 tains, but poets, painters, philosophers, leading 
 thinkers of every kind. The middle class — 
 the intermediary unproducing class — is increas- 
 ing, and ought to be diminished. 
 
 There are ten times as many shopkeepers of 
 every sort as are wanted. To regenerate Ensr- 
 land we need more work done, both with mind
 
 240 Thoughts in my Garden 
 
 and body. But shopkeeping is an idle and 
 
 easy way of growing rich, so it prospers, sorely 
 
 to the detriment of England's true prosperity. 
 
 The natural operation of the present system is 
 
 to render the rich richer and the poor poorer, 
 
 and, worse even than this, to deprive myriads 
 
 of the middle class of any power either to 
 
 think clearly or to work hard. Hence gold 
 
 famines, coal famines, meat famines — by-and- 
 
 by utter famine of brain and soul, of courage 
 
 and virtue. 
 
 Oct. 9. 
 
 Devonshire abounds in rustic minstrels, like 
 unto Beany Dawe, described by Mr. Blackmore 
 in his charming romance, ' Clara Vaughan,' who 
 vindicated his sublime art in the following 
 tetrastich : 
 
 ' And if zo hap, I be a pout grand, 
 Thee needn't jah, 'cos thee doon't understand. 
 A pout, laike a 'ooman, or a bell, 
 Must have his clack out, and can't help hiszell.' 
 
 Bards, from the times of Homer and Anacreon, 
 have been thirsty souls ; they like to irrigate 
 their brains, as Aristophanes hath it ; no
 
 TJwiights in my Garden. 241 
 
 wonder, therefore, that the wayside innkeeper 
 often has a poetic legend, on his sign. Here is 
 one that used to decorate the ' New House ' on 
 Dartmoor, a little hostelry with a rabbit-warren 
 close : 
 
 1 John Roberts lives here, 
 Sells brandy and beer. 
 Your spirits to cheer ; 
 And should you want meat 
 To make up the treat, 
 There be rabbits to eat.' 
 
 At beautiful Anstis Cove, near the terrace 
 town of Torquay, where the many-coloured 
 cliffs look down upon a beach of shining shingle, 
 there is a more poetical, though less alcoholic 
 announcement : 
 
 ' Picnics supplied with hot water and tea 
 In a nice little cottage just down by the sea, 
 And salmon sometimes, and red mullets and grey, 
 Fresh crabs and lobsters every day. 
 Neat and cheap pleasure boats too you can hire, 
 Fishing tackle as you may desire, 
 Bathing machines for ladies are kept, 
 And dresses and bathing gowns all quite correct. 
 The man's name is Thomas who supplies everything, 
 And likewise teaches young gentlemen to swim.' 
 
 This useful gentleman, who supplies the ladies 
 vol. 1. 1G
 
 2X? Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 with ' quite correct bathing-gowns,' deserves a 
 visit from any explorers of the sweet South 
 Devon coast. A graceful Latinist,* whose 
 name Harrow knows full well, being at Anstis 
 Cove a few weeks ago, turned this quaint 
 legend into capital verse, as thus : 
 
 ' Lympha calens frondesque herba? Sinensis emuntur 
 
 Hasc casula in ponti margine munda nitet ; 
 Saspe illic salmo et mulli glaucique rubrique, 
 
 Cammarus et cancer semper habendus inest. 
 Conduces nitidos modica mercede phaselos, 
 
 Aptaqne captandis piscibus arma libens. 
 Membra lavaturas qua? velent claustra puellas, 
 
 In freta vestitas ut decet ire sinunt. 
 Et pueros idem Tbomas qui cnncta ministrat 
 
 Per vada Neptuni salsa natare docet.' 
 
 How charmingly the decent bathing gowns arc. 
 rendered in w. 7, 8 — ut decet ire — not in the 
 fashion of the foam-born goddess ! Thomas of 
 Anstis Cove has got his fly buried in fine 
 classic amber : 
 
 ' Implicuit tenuem succina gutta feram.' 
 
 By the way, a few days ago, some ladies, going 
 to this delightful angle of Devon for the first 
 
 * Colonel Drury.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 243 
 
 time, disputed as to the proper pronunciation 
 of Anstis. The eldest lady had it right ; her 
 daughter thought it began with an aspirate. 
 Appeal was made to the cabman, who promptly 
 decided : ' It's Hanstey's, m'm, without a H.' 
 
 Oct. 16. 
 Now, while the passionate publicans are 
 fighting the still more passionate ' Good Tem- 
 plars,' may not the philosophic voice of the 
 medical psychologist be heard ?* History 
 shows clearly enough that alcohol is inevitable. 
 Noah, and Dionysus, and Bacchus have all 
 had praise as cultors of the vine. But alcohol 
 is one thing and fusel oil is quite another ; and 
 your Rechabite or Good Templar would think 
 it much 1 utter to drink fusel oil or any other 
 amylie abomination than that pure invigorating 
 essence of the grape which God gave the patri- 
 arch (when also He gave him the rainbow) to 
 console him for the drowned world, to make 
 him hopeful of the new world sprung from his 
 loins alone. 
 
 * Mortimer Collins has elsewhere characterised teetotalism 
 as 'intemperate temperance.'— F. C. 
 
 1 G— 2
 
 244 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 The Duke of St. Albans has been reading 
 
 to the art-students of Mansfield a lecture of 
 Buskin's. I cannot help being pleased with 
 the thought that Mr. Ruskin likes spiders, and 
 imagines them sensible, and proud, and happy. 
 Why not ? Look at the lovely way in which 
 their webs combine beauty with utility ! Look 
 at the power they possess of passing from 
 place to place by help of a thin self-spun 
 thread ! Look at their value in destroying 
 wasps and blue-bottles, gnats, midges, and all 
 manner of ' catawampuses,' as the ladies call 
 them, when their white skins are damaged by 
 the attacks of such creatures, and ammonia and 
 glycerine will not cure the smart ! I agree 
 with Mr. Ruskin in having a friendly feeling 
 
 toward Arachne. 
 
 Oct. 23. 
 
 The leaves of autumn are flvino- before rains 
 
 and wind. They drive athwart my lawn, a 
 
 versi-coloured shower. The copper beech is 
 
 burning its deepest russet, the Canadian oak is 
 
 a tangled web of slpvering saffron, soon the
 
 Tlioughts in my Garden. 245 
 
 turf will be clear swept, to the weary gardener's 
 high delight, and the eye's chief solace will be 
 the glossy green of laurel and holly. The 
 summer has been brief, as have all our 
 summers since that of 1868 ; if the meteoro- 
 logde theorists who think we have alternate 
 weather-cycles of five years are at all right, we 
 ought to have beautiful weather next year. 
 As 
 
 1 Hope springs eternal in the human breast,' 
 
 let this thought help us to bear the agues and 
 rheumatisms of the coming winter. 
 
 Oct. 29. 
 How far are publishers responsible for the 
 character of the books they issue ? This ques- 
 tion is suggested to me by a volume of the 
 dullest travel I ever opened, bearing the im- 
 print of a firm which is rather famous for good 
 books, it is impossible to conceive that the 
 man got his book printed without paying all 
 its expenses ; but I take it that a first-class 
 publisher does himself harm by bringing out a 
 worthless book, however lavishly he is paid for 
 it. When you don't know an author's name,
 
 246 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 you naturally look at the publisher's : if it is 
 
 well, just a few that I will not mention— 
 
 you naturally send for the book. Now, when 
 a great publisher brings out a poor book, he 
 shakes his credit with the great world of 
 readers. I am careful not to ' name names,' as 
 they say in the House — for, alas ! I have 
 written books, and must write more yet — but 
 I have recently noticed combinations of author 
 and publisher which rather amazed me. Bavius 
 and Maevius have found their way to the Sosii. 
 Why not? B. and M. have money, and are 
 popular with fools. But are the Sosii loyal to 
 their vocation when they, for money's sake, sell 
 to fools the books of fools ? I think not. 
 
 And, observe, I think the publisher holds an 
 honourable and responsible position in these 
 days of ' many books.' He is not a mere 
 tradesman. He can scarcely do his work well 
 unless he has a wide acquaintance with the 
 world of literature — so wide as to lift him 
 above the level of the shop. Among gentle- 
 men of this order, whom I know personally, I 
 have found — as, indeed, might be predicated —
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 247 
 
 culture, courtesy, and honour at their highest 
 points. But I have also found men. with pro- 
 minent names, who possessed neither of the 
 three, otherwise than infinitesimally. It is, of 
 course, the same in all lines of business. Only 
 a, publisher of high order, who will neither 
 deign to make unfair profit by his authors, nor 
 to give the public books that he knows to be 
 bad, is a great power in literature, a man to be 
 revered. He does more to keep down bad 
 writing and to foster good than all the 
 critics. 
 
 Nov. 4. 
 
 It is curious that the use of numbers in that 
 volume of exalted vision, the Revelation, has 
 caused men with purely arithmetical brains to 
 imagine they could fathom and interpret it. 
 They have thought that ability to reckon by 
 sevens was all they needed to understand the 
 Apocalypse. There is no book in the world 
 so supremely transcendental ; there is no book 
 in tin'- world that has been so often dragged 
 through the mud of commonplace. Dr. Cum- 
 mins is the last offender in this direction —
 
 248 
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 perhaps also the worst. He lowers the Apoca- 
 lypse to the level of Zadkiel's Almanac. We 
 are not goinsf to enter into historical criticism 
 on this occasion, but his dealing with the book 
 of Daniel in the introduction is irritatingly 
 ignorant. His narrow-minded hatred to the 
 religion of Rome blinds him utterly. His last 
 explanation of ' the number of the Beast' would 
 have been thought a witty piece of 'persiflage 
 if attributed to him in jest by our friend 
 Mr. Punch.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 1874. JANUARY TO JUNE. 
 
 What's the use of loving in 
 
 Such a world as this is, 
 Where they say that love's a sin 
 
 Deep in sin's abysses ? 
 
 Toil and strive, and thereby thrive, 
 
 Shun whate'er is sunny : 
 If you're fool enough to wive, 
 
 Mind you marry money. 
 
 May the God who made the sun, 
 Trees, birds, woman's beauty, 
 
 Scourge the fools who have begun 
 Thus to teach men duty. 
 
 While my lady's heart's astir, 
 'Neath its milk-white cover, 
 
 All the birds shall sing of her, 
 All who see her love her.
 
 250 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Jan. 22. 
 
 Keats begins what is perhaps the finest of his 
 poems with the lines : 
 
 ' Saint Agnes' Eve ! Ah, bitter chill it was : 
 The owl, with all his feathers, was a- cold.' 
 
 Saint Agnes' Eve came on Tuesday, and was 
 all sunshine in my part of the world : indeed, 
 I saw a pair of tame owls taking a bath on 
 that day. It is marvellous weather. The 
 huntsman in Leech's sketch who complained of 
 the scent being spoilt by ' them stinking vio- 
 lets,' would have had wondrous good reason 
 this year. Not only snowdrops, but even 
 crocuses, are to the front. Honeysuckle and 
 hawthorn are in leaf ; lilac and lime are in bud ; 
 thrushes and starlings are sitting. The old 
 adage tells us that — 
 
 ' A January spring 
 Is not good for anything,' 
 
 and old-fashioned folk are saying that the wheat 
 is ' winter-proud.' March will come, with its 
 east wind and frosts, and we may have a bad 
 year after all. Still, let us remember that we
 
 Thoughts in my Ga?'deu. 2 5 1 
 
 have had five bad years, and that according to 
 
 the meteorologic theory 1874 ought to be the 
 
 first of five good ones. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 This is an age in which the impossibility of 
 omniscience is forced upon one at every step. 
 How little does the frequenter of Piccadilly 
 know what goes on in Mincing Lane ! I take 
 up a financial journal, the Daily Recorder, 
 which you won't see at White's or Brooks's, 
 and I find that somebody has for sale : — 
 ' Ostrich feathers, 50 cases 5 parcels ; vulture 
 ditto, 4 ditto ; osprey ditto, 67 ditto ; peacock 
 ditto, 6 ditto ; bird skins, 36 packages various, 
 28,284 jay, 12,021 kingfisher, 1,696 magpie; 
 pheasants, 179 Impeyan, 5 Argus ; birds of 
 Paradise, 501 ; butterflies, 12 boxes ; beetles, 
 22,940.' Vulture feathers ! ladies of fashion, 
 how do you expect to look in the plumage of 
 those carrion - loving birds ? Twenty-eight 
 thousand jays have been killed for a single 
 day's sale ; and twelve thousand kingfishers, 
 that cross a stream like a Hash of rainbow. 
 And what beauty is lost in twelve boxes of
 
 252 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 butterflies ! As to the twenty thousand beetles 
 — why, if you like such decorations, I don't 
 grumble. Have your own way. Martial tells 
 us Glaucilla liked to wear around her neck a 
 living snake. Is that sort of boa sold by 
 auction in Billiter Street and Mincing; Lane ? 
 
 But what in the world, I asked myself, is a 
 Penang lawyer, when I saw that somebody had 
 ten thousand to sell ? Are there not lawyers 
 enough at Westminster that ten thousand from 
 Penang should be on sale in the City ? I refer. 
 The Penang lawyer is a walking-stick made 
 from the Licuala acutifolia. In Penang, I 
 presume, a lawsuit is settled with a stick. The 
 method has its advantages. I am told these 
 sticks average six-and-eightpence each. 
 
 March 19. 
 
 Which is the second city in the Empire ? 
 Well, there are many second cities, according 
 to the special line they take, for to London all 
 lines converge — Manchester for wealth perhaps, 
 Liverpool for enterprise, Bath or Edinburgh 
 for literature, York for society, and so on, ad 
 infinitum. Glasgow, I believe, is the second
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 253 
 
 for population. Judging, however, from ac- 
 counts which I read in the Glasgow News, it 
 must be absolutely first in two ' isms ' of the 
 present day, Spiritualism and Kevivalism. It- 
 is just now honoured by the visit of an Ame- 
 rican ' medium,' who receives gentlemen at her 
 hotel, and of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, one 
 eloquent and the other musical, who get up a 
 series of monster meetings for prayer and 
 hymn-singing, which can only develop morbid 
 and hysteric feelings instead of real religious 
 faith, and which it would be wise of the lead- 
 ing journals, if not strong enough to mark the 
 movement with disfavour, to leave unnoticed 
 altogether. 
 
 At the prayer-meetings of Messrs. Moody 
 and Sankey, from a hundred to two hundred 
 requests for special prayer are daily sent in, and 
 each request is usually accompanied by a dis- 
 sertation of some length on the wickedness of the 
 person prayed for. The Glasgow News attempts 
 to classify these requests. Here are some : 
 
 ' For a nephew gone to England to occupy his talents in 
 Satan's service.
 
 254 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 ' For an only brother and his wife, very young, for whom 
 many prayers have been offered by a mother. 
 
 ' For a mother's son— her only son. 
 
 ' For an unconverted brother and his whole household. 
 
 1 For two sisters, far advanced in life, who as yet give no 
 evidence that they believe in the Sun of Righteousness with 
 the heart unto righteousness. 
 
 ' For two grand parents, that they may receive salvation ; 
 and for two brothers-in-law, that they may see the error of 
 their ■ways.' 
 
 Look at the first and last of these. We are 
 told by the candid reporter of the News, who 
 seems to care very little for the work his editor 
 has given him, that most of these requests for 
 prayer come from the female sex. It is absurd 
 to suppose that grim personage, a Scotch uncle, 
 would pray for his nephew ; so we must con- 
 ceive a kind-hearted aunt is the author of this 
 desire. But what is the ' Satan's service ' he 
 has undertaken ? Has he become an attorney's 
 clerk, an actor at a minor theatre, or a reporter 
 for a Tory journal ? Again, imagine the imper- 
 tinence of the forward young person who asks 
 prayer for her grandfather and grandmother ! 
 Doubtless the old folk are a world wiser and 
 more religious than she ; but Moody and 
 Sankey have turned her silly head, and this is
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 255 
 
 the result. Those two revivalists have evi- 
 dently hit on a brilliant idea — almost as bril- 
 liant as the woman's whisky war in America. 
 
 They also hold special meetings for children 
 (I don't know what their parents are about to 
 let them go), where the prayers requested are 
 even more absurd — ' Prayers for a girls' school 
 at Penrith,' for instance. And the following; : 
 
 ' Their prayers are requested for a young man who got 
 cold at some of the meetings, and is spitting blood, that he 
 may be restored to health and strength, as he is the only 
 comfort and support of an aged father and sister. 
 
 • Would you please pray for five young believers, that we 
 may have more faith to trust in the Friend whom, having 
 not seen, we love, and are trying to serve, and that we may have 
 more peace V We are young, and wish to be guided. Please 
 pray for us at the children's meeting on Saturday, as we will 
 be there, and would like to hear ourselves prayed for.' 
 
 Would it not be more logical to commence the 
 meeting with prayer that no one present 
 should "get cold'? Is it not clear that the 
 ' five young believers ' who ' would like to 
 hear themselves prayed for ' are simply in 
 search of excitement? I regard the whole 
 affair as the popularisation of blasphemy. It 
 does permanent harm. Years ago, I saw
 
 256 ThougJits in my Garden. 
 
 something of these revivals, and I know that 
 many young people, influenced by the storm 
 of superstitious enthusiasm, never again rose 
 to the level of ordinary common sense. Such 
 movements are a sin against one of God's 
 greatest gifts to man — the power of prayer. 
 
 I pass from Messrs. Moody and Sankey's 
 crowded conventicle, where a thousand boys 
 and girls are thinking that a prayer meeting is 
 better fun than a, picnic, to Miss Fowler's 
 hotel, where two grave journalists 'interview' 
 the medium. 
 
 [Here follows an account of the interview.] 
 I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw 
 this deplorable nonsense in the leading daily 
 paper of Glasgow. Imagine a spirit, a disem- 
 bodied dweller in a higher sphere, concerning 
 itself about an unfilled tax-paper. All the 
 rest of the story is despicable rubbish, but this 
 is really too absurd, even from the fluent pen 
 of 'Our Special Commissioner.' As a result, 
 Miss Fowler, if she leaves her hotel for the 
 platform, will probably be as successful in 
 Glasgow as Messrs. Moody and Sankey are.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 257 
 
 But no sane person can believe, unless col- 
 lusion be assumed, that she told these two 
 interviewers what she told the public. What 
 an essay might be written on ' American 
 Spiritualism and Scotch Common - sense' ! 
 What is the true function between miscalled 
 Spiritualism on the one hand, and on the 
 other the hysterica passio of religion, that 
 belongs to the English press ? Not, surely, to 
 encourage them by sensational reports which 
 amount to actual advertisement. The clever 
 trickery of Miss Fowler will probably delude 
 many foolish persons ; the wild meetings of 
 Moody and Sankey will certainly unfit a great 
 many of the young for taking a proper part in 
 the business of life. The press ought to cheek 
 these things. 
 
 April '.». 
 
 Dr. Schliemann's very important work on 
 'Trojan Antiquities' received in tin 4 Times 
 last week a review which showed curiously 
 how difficult it is for original investigators (as 
 indeed for original writers) to conquer the pre- 
 judices of ignorant critics. Professor Max 
 
 v:jl. 1. 17
 
 258 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Muller has decided that there never was a 
 Troy, or an Achilles, or a Horner, but that the 
 whole story has grown incongruously and acci- 
 dentally from myths which came from the 
 Sanskrit, and adumbrated the rising and 
 setting of the sun, and other celestial phe- 
 nomena. The Times dares no more to contra- 
 dict Max Miiller on Homer than Darwin on 
 ape-ancestors, or Gladstone on income-tax ; so, 
 when a learned German works for three 
 years in the Troad, and spends in wages £12 
 a day, and finds Troy, the leading journal of 
 Europe laughs at him as an amiable enthu- 
 siast. And in doing this, the critic show* an 
 immense amount of ignorance. Thus we are 
 told that ' Homer, singing of a city which he 
 never saw, made it greater than it was.' The 
 greatest modern Homeric scholar, Savage 
 Landor, held on good grounds that Homer 
 knew Troy, knew Scheria, knew Laertes in 
 Ithaca. Dr. Schliemann has found that Troy 
 could have held only 5,000 inhabitants — ' and 
 5,000 inhabitants,' says the Times, 'represent 
 at most 500 fighting men.' Why, what Dr.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 259 
 
 Schliemann has found is the citadel, where the 
 
 King and his guards and servants dwelt, and 
 into which the dwellers in the villages around 
 crowded at alarm of war, bringing their cattle 
 with them. Has this reviewer ever seen Old 
 Sarum ? That was a city on the Trojan 
 mode]. What Dr. Schliemann has found is, 
 in strictness, not Troy, but Ilion ; the citadel, 
 not the city : for the metropolis of Priam was 
 a, congeries of villages (as London was a cen- 
 tury ago), and the only durable part was the 
 King's stronghold, where a legion of warriors 
 always congregated. 
 
 Here is another egregious blunder : ' Herr 
 Schliemann wearies himself to prove that the 
 pottery he has found is the very pottery de- 
 scribed in the Homeric Poems, and that from 
 tin; owl-headed lids of some of the vases he 
 lias found it is plain that the " Glaukopis 
 Athene" of Homer is not the goddess with 
 ' flashing grey eyes," but one worshipped 
 under the shape of a divinity with the head of 
 an owl ; strong in which belief he is now exca- 
 vating the site of Mycenae, in the expectation 
 
 17—2
 
 260 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 — which many of our readers will devoutly 
 hope may be disappointed — of finding 
 " Boopis Here," or Juno, represented with 
 the head of a cow.' That epithet y\avKOTrlg 
 has puzzled all the translators, Lord Derby 
 and Worsley not excepted ; but the proverb 
 in the ' Birds ' of Aristophanes, where bring- 
 ing owls to Athens prefigures our carrying 
 coals to Newcastle, might satisfy most people 
 that the divinity who favoured the city of the 
 violet crown had eyes like the owl — and it 
 would be hard to find eyes more beautiful. 
 The eyes of the owl {crede experto, for a pair 
 of tame owls are in a cage near me, and have 
 just dined on an unlucky young blackbird that 
 some lout had injured) are full of a deep 
 serene light. ' Flashing grey ' is a ridiculous 
 attempt to render yXavKomi;. As to Boopis 
 Here, with a cow's head, what is more natural? 
 Eemember Isis and Io. The cow, the mother 
 of cream, was identified with productiveness 
 in the ethnic myth. To call the goddess 
 Boopis because her eyes were large and mild, 
 like those of kine, is an idea more suitable to
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 261 
 
 Tennyson, or his prototype, Thomson, than to 
 downright Homer. 
 
 i-c % 3fc % % 
 
 Talking to a publisher the other clay, I 
 heard of some odd specimens of printers' 
 errors. Some years ago, a novelist wrote a 
 story called ' The Moneyed Man.' He wanted 
 to spell it 'The Monied Man,' but the pub- 
 lishers (not unusual) had better English than 
 the author, and corrected his orthography. 
 However, the result was rather unlucky, for 
 when the book came to be reviewed, the 
 wickedness of eompositors turned it to ' The 
 One-eyed Man.' And so, within the last 
 month or two, a story called ' Broken Bonds ' 
 has been usually reviewed as ' Broken Bones ' 
 — less sentimental, doubtless, but more sug- 
 gestive of fun. 
 
 May 2. 
 
 Among the valuable meetings of persons 
 interested in the progress of society, few arc 
 likely to be more important than the annual 
 conferences (commenced three years ago) of 
 the Chairmen and Vice-Chairmen of Boards of
 
 262 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Guardians. The office of Guardian of the 
 Poor is one that may he said to have heen 
 instituted hy Christ Himself, when He said : 
 ' The poor ye have always with you.' It is 
 a strange hut altogether inevitable result of 
 the accumulation of wealth that it intensifies 
 poverty : the greater the opulence and luxury 
 of Dives, the more terribly abject is the 
 misery of Lazarus. The Guardian of the 
 Poor is, of course, secondarily, the Guardian 
 of the Poor-rate ; but, unluckily, there are 
 those who would make this last his primary 
 duty, and lessen the ratepayers' burden by a 
 parsimonious treatment of pauperism. Now, 
 as pauperism is a necessary excrescence of 
 opulent society, it should not be treated as a 
 crime : and we ought, I venture to think, to 
 find some more scientific method of treatment 
 than has yet been discovered. 
 
 Among the papers read at the last Con- 
 ference of Guardians, there was a very able 
 one by Mr. Brudenell Carter, a well-known 
 authority on ophthalmia. He dealt with 
 the prevalence of that distressing disease in
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 263 
 
 workhouse and pauper schools, and showed 
 
 beyond question that it is due to the low- 
 amount of feeding, the bad ventilation, and 
 the herding of children together in an unclean 
 state, in institutions improperly managed. 
 Mr. Carter has evidently taken infinite care 
 to investigate the causes of the disease. A 
 boy at an orphan school has to wash in the 
 same water with twenty or thirty other boys, 
 and one towel only between them. Can it be 
 wondered that some malady attacks him ? 
 Why the attack should be upon the eyes 
 Mr. Carter does not attempt to tell us ; but it 
 is imaginable that one of the most delicate of 
 our organs would be the earliest to suffer 
 under severe pressure. At any rate, it is 
 only too lamentably certain that hundreds of 
 children totally or partially lose their eyesight 
 from the wickedly careless way in which they 
 are treated in pauper schools. An opponent 
 of Mr. Brudenell Carter, in the subsequent 
 discussion, maintained that 'ophthalmia was 
 very general among all people, though often 
 overlooked." I < - that I never knew ;i
 
 264 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 case among my friends or acquaintance, and a 
 malady that in time destroys the eyesight en- 
 tirely is not a thing easy to overlook. 
 
 Sir Charles Trevelyan was truer in his 
 thought, when he said that ' ophthalmia was 
 the outward symptom of a great moral evil. 
 Our Creator provided that children should be 
 brought up in small groups, in which there 
 was a possibility of fostering personal affec- 
 tions. It was not at all necessary that those 
 who were at the head of these groups should 
 be fathers and mothers. Strong- ties of affec- 
 tion under such conditions soon grew up be- 
 tween children and those who had previously 
 been strangers to them. In the varied expe- 
 rience of family life the affections and feelings 
 were drawn out, and every necessary know- 
 ledge of common things was acquired. On 
 the contrary, large establishments must be 
 regulated by strict discipline and wholesale 
 economic arrangements. There must be a 
 hard system founded upon fear, and this could 
 not develop the affections. The result of this, 
 especially upon girls, was most lamentable,
 
 Thoztghts in my Garden. 265 
 
 and was shown in a stupid, hard, sullen dis- 
 position — a state of mind unsoftened l>y the 
 affections, and a strange absence of ordinary 
 knowledge.' However, Mr. Barringer, of 
 Poplar, had a reply to this. ' He did not 
 think that the affections of the children in 
 their schools were destroyed by the system 
 under which they were brought up. He 
 could answer for the affectionate way in which 
 they acted towards each other ; this was amply 
 shown by the demeanour of the girls who had 
 left the school when they responded to the 
 invitation of the board to visit it. No one 
 who had witnessed the scenes which then 
 occurred could go away with the opinion that 
 those wdio had been brought up in the schools 
 were deficient in affection.' 
 
 The fact is, that Sir Charles's observation 
 and Mr. Barringer's have both some truth in 
 them. Poor children shut up in an asylum 
 oscillate between two extremes — a gushing, 
 unreasonable affection for each other and a 
 dreary sullenness. They have lost their 
 parents, and find no substitute I can con-
 
 266 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 ceive Mr. Barringer, of Poplar, delighted at 
 seeing girls rushing affectionately into each 
 other's arms ; but this is merely a suppositi- 
 tious affection. I attach great weight to the 
 brief words reported of Mr. Loudon, of 
 Coventry, who ' denied that the boarding- 
 out system was a failure. It was universal 
 in Scotland, and such a disease as ophthalmia 
 was unknown there. Family ties sprang up, 
 and the children were treated by those who 
 had the care of them as if they were their 
 own.' 
 
 Real national wealth lies in the well-beino- 
 of the nation. The death or degradation of 
 thousands of children is a worse loss than 
 millions in gold. If orphan and pauper 
 children are to be suppressed, build a great 
 Car of Juggernauth, and crush the poor little 
 creatures who did not ask to be born into 
 this troublous world ; but if it is worth while 
 to keep them alive, give them at least healthy 
 food and pure water, and the semblance (which 
 often grows to reality) of a father's and 
 mother's love.
 
 Thoughts in my Ga7'den. 267 
 
 June 4. 
 
 That Mr. Frederick Locker's ' London Lyrics' 
 has reached a seventh edition seems to show 
 that the taste for what may be called gentle- 
 manly poetry is tolerably strong. It is a taste 
 that I hope may continue to flourish. Oddly 
 enough, nobody seems able to invent an 
 English name for this style of verse, though 
 the English are certainly its ablest masters ; 
 so we borrow from the French, and use the 
 awkward, unsatisfactory term, ' vers de societeV 
 Must not the poets of this order be slightly 
 unoriginal, since they fail to find a name for 
 their own productions 1 Mr. Locker calls his 
 volume ' London Lyrics,' though the majority 
 of the poems are not lyrical, nor have many 
 of them anything to do with London. 
 
 Of Mr. Locker's poems it is needless to say 
 anything ; their gaiety, variety, and polish 
 are too well known. But I am disposed to 
 make a note on his notes. Speaking of 
 Thackeray as a verse -writer, he describes him 
 as 'almost as humorous as Swift, and some- 
 times almost as tender as Cowper, and one
 
 268 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 does not exactly see why lie might not have 
 been as good an artist as any of those above- 
 mentioned.' I think him quite as good an 
 artist as any of them. What writer has ex- 
 celled ' The Cane-bottomed Chair '? ' The Pen 
 and the Album' is as Horatian as any poem in 
 the lano-uao-e. 
 
 Lovelace, says Mr. Locker, ' is one of our 
 really popular poets, and all for the sake of 
 some two short pages of verse ;' but I would 
 rather have written the few brief poems by 
 which Lovelace or Suckling is known than the 
 ' Task,' or the ' Night Thoughts,' or the ' Idylls 
 of the King,' or the ' King and the Book.' A 
 small diamond of the purest water is worth 
 more than a cartload of rock crystals. It is 
 the perfect spontaneity of their verse which 
 gives it an inimitable charm ; the best artist 
 in this line will never reach his highest point 
 when he has to think what to say. Hence 
 the most fortunate of such versicles are as 
 brief and bright as a bird's song — delightful 
 trifles which once heard can never be for- 
 gotten. There are few of them, but those
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 269 
 
 few are imperishable and will live in the 
 memories of men.'"" 
 
 M. C. was himself one of the very best writers of 
 ' society ' verse which England possesses. His delicate and 
 playful fancy, his classical culture, his good temper, and his 
 love of good living, all combined to imbue him with the true 
 Horatian spirit. His versatility was wonderful, and he seized 
 upon subjects proposed to him with the greatest readiness 
 and ease. I wrote to him once, asking him to send me some 
 verses by return of post — ' Some of the old musical stuff, with 
 a dash of impudence,' I said, and the next day I received the 
 following : 
 
 'MUSIC AND IMPUDENCE.' 
 
 ' Some of the old musical stuff, with a dash of impudence !' 
 
 Editor's Order. 
 
 ' Music and impudence ! Mixture delectable ; 
 
 Can't be repeated too often, I find — 
 Though it may sadden the highly respectable, 
 
 Drive the discordant fools out of their mind. 
 Nymphs, hederigerant, wine that's refrigerant, 
 
 These are the joy of the poets and gods ; 
 If pachydermatous pietists squirm at us, 
 
 Dear Mr. Editor, what is the odds ? 
 
 ' Aye, but I know what you mean by your order ; 
 
 Ladies are fonder of man than of muff. 
 "Never o'ersfep the conventional border • 
 
 Take what is given, cud think it enough." 
 Advice not erroneous from grave old Polonius, 
 
 "Who has travell'd the world through and found it amiss ; 
 But it will not be taken while beauty is shaken 
 
 By passion, and rose lips are ready to kiss.
 
 2/Q Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Popular science in these days is too often 
 mere smattering ; and I welcome as an excep- 
 tion Sir John Lubbock's ' Origin and Meta- 
 morphoses of Insects,' which ought to set all 
 young readers with keen eyes foraging among 
 ant-hills, and noticino- the transformations of 
 crickets, earwigs, butterflies, and wasps. The 
 mysteries of ant-hills are many, and curious 
 discoveries await the patient explorer. Ants 
 keep aphides, beetles, and other insects in 
 their nests, as if they were domestic animals ; 
 and there is a blind beetle, of a kind found 
 only in ants' nests, which the ants tend very 
 carefully, and which seems to be of no service 
 to them. It has been suggested that perhaps 
 
 I am not impudent, Editor affable ; 
 
 Adam made love in green Eden's cool shades. 
 All the world goes the same way — it is laughable ; 
 
 Daring the men are, and willing the maids. 
 Red lips that make a kiss sweetly, will take a kiss ; 
 
 Bright eyes will teach us the way how to woo ; 
 Beauty will sing to us, laugh to us, cling to us — 
 
 There will be music — and impudence too.' 
 
 E. Y.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 271 
 
 the ants have a feeling of reverence for them — 
 a kind of undeveloped Egyptian idolatry ! 
 
 Who in these days reads the ' Characteris- 
 ticks' of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury ? Look- 
 ing into that wonderful hook, just now, I came 
 on a sentence which Mr. Gladstone ought to 
 have pondered before he began his wild work 
 of destruction. ' Tis necessary a People should 
 have a Publich Leading in Religion. For to 
 deny the Magistrate a Worship, or take away 
 a National Church, is as mere Enthusiasm as 
 the Nation which sets up Persecution. For 
 why should there not be publick Walks, as 
 well as private Gardens ? Why not publick 
 Librarys, as well as private Education and 
 Home-Tutors?' Had Lord Shaftesbury lived 
 now, he would have been amazed that a party 
 should illogically maintain that the magistrate 
 ought to lead in education, but by no means 
 in religion. Without religion education has 
 no real existence. The atheists and nega- 
 tivists of the day fondly fancy that if they 
 are allowed to teach children plenty of what 
 they call science (saying no more of God than
 
 272 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 of any other myth !), they would produce a 
 perfect civilisation. Why, a nation in which 
 this were possible would relapse into barbarism, 
 passing through revolution into slavery, long 
 before the century's end. 
 
 I sometimes wonder whether the fast pro- 
 cedure of the current doctrinaires is in any 
 degree caused by the lamentable disuse of 
 quill pens and sealing wax. There may be 
 something in it, A man who, after writing 
 a few sentences, has to mend his pen (a work 
 of art), will have time to consider whether he 
 has been writing; idiotic rubbish or not. A 
 man who before he sends away a letter seals 
 it with his crest (also a work of art), will have 
 time to think whether its contents are worthy 
 of some time-honoured motto, such as Festina 
 lente, or Sans Dieu rien. The former belonged 
 to Csesar Augustus, and has been adopted by 
 the family of Onslow (being a capital pun on 
 their name); and I think Mr. "Whalley's col- 
 league in the ' Claimant' fiasco must by this 
 time wish he had acted on it.
 
 Thong Jits in my Garden. 273 
 
 June 1 1. 
 
 Some years ago, a farmer of my neighbour- 
 hood named Dearlove happened to be on busi- 
 ness at my house, and we had a chat about his 
 curious name. It occurred to me at once that 
 it was the Saxon ' Deer Hlaf,' a hill of wild 
 animals, and that probably my neighbour's 
 ancestors w r ere warreners or gamekeepers in 
 the days when they got their patronymic. 
 The notion struck me of putting together a 
 few names which have 2,'ot odd sicmifications 
 entirely different from their true etymology, 
 and I did it in a short paper in the Graphic. 
 Only a day or two ago my worthy neighbour 
 reminded me of the conversation ; his daughter, 
 who is in the grocery line down West, had 
 found her paternal name in a copy of the 
 Graphic among her waste paper, and sent it 
 
 
 
 him as a curiosity. So the old farmer at once 
 set me down as having put him in print. A 
 curious exemplar of the adage — Litem scripta 
 manet. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Some impudent person persists in sending 
 vol. 1. 18
 
 274 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 me at intervals Bradlaugh's hideous heb- 
 domadal, the National Reformer. It is full 
 at present of a discussion between Bradlaugh 
 and the ' Eev.' Brewin Grant as to ' the 
 relative merits of secularism and Christianity.' 
 It would be just as well to inform us what 
 church or sect is represented by Mr. Brewin 
 Grant. A wicked wit might separate the 
 ' g ' from his patronymic, and call him 
 ' Brewing Rant.' He looks to me like a 
 pseudo-clerical ninepin, set up specially to be 
 bowled down by Bradlaugh. Both disputants 
 waste their time (if the time of such men can 
 be wasted) in personal abuse. 
 
 The character of Mr. Bradlaugh's feeble print 
 maybe judged from a single paragraph : 'We 
 are pleased to be able to announce that 
 Mr. Alfred King, an avowed Atheist, has just 
 been elected to the Hollinoton School Board. 
 The Rev. Dr. Ledsam, Church of England, was 
 also elected ; but the votes given for the 
 Atheist made a majority exceeding the total 
 votes recorded for the clergyman, and that 
 was done without the slightest canvassing.'
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 275 
 
 I don't know where Hollington is ; but I am 
 heartily sorry that there is any place in this 
 lovely land, for which God does so much, 
 whose inhabitants can choose an ' avowed 
 Atheist ' as a director of their children's 
 education. Do the mothers of Hollington 
 teach their little children to kneel down and 
 say, ' Onr Father, which art in heaven ' 1 
 
 A new caprice of periodic literature is an- 
 nounced — the World, edited, I am told, by 
 that indefatigable versatile writer, Edmund 
 Yates. The first number is to appear on 
 Wednesday, the 8th of July, and the price 
 will be sixpence. The prospectus is very 
 amusing : one paragraph specially arrides me : 
 ' The World will publish that rarest of all 
 things — candid reviews of o-ood books, good 
 plays, good pictures, and discoveries in science ; 
 treating them as the natural expression of 
 tlic highest form of intellect, and actually 
 In- towing honest praise on living genius.' I 
 have often said that a literary journal which 
 would decline to notice anything but what is 
 good is a real desideratum. If the World will 
 
 18—2
 
 276 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 do this, its conductors may put me on the free 
 list.*" 
 
 June 18. 
 
 I had, years ago, at Nottingham, a tame 
 hawk that would allow a robin to pick up the 
 fragments of meat I gave him, though he killed 
 all the sparrows in the garden. I find also 
 robins fearlessly frequent a cage in which I 
 have a pair of owls. The theory I have heard 
 on this matter is that the robin is too bitter for 
 other birds to eat. But the other morning, 
 about five o'clock, I picked up a robin that had 
 evidently been killed in one of those fights for 
 which they are noted, and one of my owls 
 swallowed him without hesitation. So there 
 must be some other reasons for the robin's 
 defiant impunity. It is said that sharks won't 
 eat negroes : is that true ? 
 
 * He was not merely put on the free list ; he was one of 
 the first persons to whom I wrote for aid and collaboration. 
 A delightfully bright and witty poem of his, ' The World, 
 the Flesh, and the Devil,' appeared in the first number, and 
 so long as he lived he was a frequent and always welcome 
 contributor. I have the pleasure of thinking that some of 
 Mortimer Collins's best verses were printed under my editor- 
 ship, many of the subjects being suggested by me. — E. Y.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 277 
 
 English gardens may be widely improved by 
 cultivating tender plants which are commonly 
 grown under glass only. The Japanese plants 
 and shrubs seem curiously to suit our English 
 soil and climate ; take, for example, the wis- 
 taria (a plant which novelists who never heard 
 of Caspar Wistar, usually spell westerid), the 
 Pyrus japonica, the diaslytra, the superb Cle- 
 matis azurea, and Clematis lanuginosa. The cul- 
 tivation of the loquat, or Japanese medlar, seems 
 to be growing more successful, judging from the 
 correspondence of Mr. Shirley Hibberd's periodi- 
 cal, the Gardener s Magazine. I do not know 
 whether it has fruited except under glass in 
 England, but it fruits well in the south of France 
 and Malta, and I think would succeed in Devon- 
 shire and the Channel Islands. Even if it 
 bears no fruit, it is a handsome evergreen. I 
 have seen the 'limoncina (Aloysia citriodora) 
 covering the front of a farm-house, and Mr. 
 Alexander Dean writes thus : ' It is worthy of 
 note, however, that at Colston Bassett, in Not- 
 tinghamshire, that beautiful greenhouse climber, 
 the Lapageria rosea, grows finely in the open air,
 
 278 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 and is there planted out quite largely, climbing 
 up the stems of trees and producing a beauti- 
 ful effect. This is another instance of what 
 can be done with some of our so-called tender 
 plants.' The lapageria comes from Chili. It 
 
 must look superb as an outdoor climber. 
 % % * -::- -:;- 
 
 A boy of fourteen in my village is fined six 
 shillings for playing pitch and toss. His father 
 earns twelve shillings a week, and that with 
 difficulty, for he is an old soldier, and suffers 
 terribly from a wound received before Sebasto- 
 pol. The boy's mother had just given birth to 
 her ninth child ; but, to save her son from the 
 contamination of a gaol, she went to beg time 
 from the superintendent of police, six miles 
 from her home, until she could ol >tain aid from 
 her neighbours. I saw the young offender, 
 who of course cared nothing about his mother's 
 trouble, and who will doubtless play the game- 
 over again at the first opportunity. Pitch and 
 toss is a vulgar game, though identical in essence 
 with the speculations of the Stock Exchange and 
 of Tattersall's. How would it work if, whenever
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 279 
 
 a young gentleman is discovered betting on 
 race-horses, his father was mulcted in just one- 
 hundredth of his annual income ? A man with 
 ten thousand a year would feel a fine of a 
 hundred less than this poor labourer feels the 
 demand for six shillings. If pitch and toss 
 is to he put down, cannot the boys be whipped 
 for the offence ? Ouo-ht there not also to be 
 
 o 
 
 uniformity ? Three lads who were taken before 
 another bench of magistrates in the neighbour- 
 hood for the same offence were sent to prison 
 for seven days, without the option of a fine. 
 W ho can estimate the harm done to them by a 
 week in the company of accomplished thieves ? 
 Even if they escape such harm, the disgrace 
 will lower them in the eyes of their neighs 
 hours. 
 
 June 2.3. 
 
 The publican seems this year to be the chief 
 figure in the political affray. XXX outdoes 
 all the other x's of the statesman's algebra. 
 The fio-ht has been amusing;, though not very 
 instructive ; and Sir Wilfrid Lawson has aired 
 his teetotalism in a jaunty fashion that concili-
 
 2 So Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 atecl his opponents. His best saying was that, 
 though Mr. Disraeli had proclaimed himself on 
 the side of the angels, he had never before 
 taken the side of the spirits. 
 
 Well, I suppose we are all agreed that what 
 has been done is not what is wanted. It is 
 impossible now to affront Sir Wilfrid's ' twenty 
 brewers,' but the time will certainly come for a 
 statesmanlike measure. I take the case of a 
 parish which I know well. There are eleven 
 public-houses for eight hundred inhabitants. 
 How can the owners live without swindling ? 
 Each of them, with one exception, is in the 
 hands of a 1 irewing firm in one of the neigfh- 
 bouring towns. The exception that I name is 
 the principal house ; it was leased to a great 
 brewing firm, but the lord of the manor a few 
 years ago declined to renew their lease ; it be- 
 came a free house, and they immediately ob- 
 tained land within three hundred yards, and 
 built another that was utterly unnecessary. 
 The liquor sold at all these places is quite 
 unfit for human consumption. How can it be 
 otherwise, if any profit is to be made, where
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 28 e 
 
 there is a drinking-place to every seventy- 
 seven people, infants included— therefore to 
 about every sixteen households ? Can a seller 
 of ale and spirits live honestly on the custom 
 of sixteen households ? In the case I describe 
 some have other occupations ; some are carriers, 
 some labourers, some poachers, some thieves. 
 Is it not much the same wherever this unli- 
 censed licensing prevails ? Both Permissive 
 and Prohibitory theories are absurd ; indeed, 
 as to all Permissive Bills, they are a confession 
 of imbecility on the part of Parliament. All 
 laws made should be absolute. And as to pro- 
 hibition, why it is the fancy of a small clique 
 who having no particular intellectual work to 
 do, or intellect to do it with, can live and thrive 
 upon tea and slops. Let them. But let them 
 not debar men of a higher class from living as 
 they please. 
 
 We Knirlish are an illogical race, and show 
 it always. Why should we license a publican 
 and not a preacher, or demand a diploma from 
 a doctor and not from a schoolmaster 1 ? Analogy 
 points to free trade in alcoholic liquor as the
 
 282 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 wisest tiling, if 011I3' the revenue would stand 
 it. If, however, publicans are to be exception- 
 ally placed beneath magisterial control, it is 
 most clear that there should be a definite limit 
 in their number. Make the sale of drink free, 
 and demand would soon check supply. Make 
 the publican's a licensed and privileged trade, 
 and you offer a premium to adulteration, a 
 reward for speculative competition. The re- 
 venue will not admit the abolition of the malt 
 tax, and the Lawsonian intellect cannot yet 
 accept the idea that perfect freedom is the best 
 check to intemperance : so for the present the 
 better course would be to restrict gradually 
 the renewal of licenses. I know it will not be 
 done. Parliament fights over such trifles as 
 closing hours, and leaves more momentous 
 matters unchecked. Why not attack the main 
 question? Why not take statistics of the 
 publicans, and pass an Act to disestablish 
 nine-tenths of them? This is the right thins; 
 to do, as the public mind is not educated 
 enough to see that all trade should be left un- 
 checked. After all, the House itself is a sinner:
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 2 S3 
 
 I have often had a glass of something iced at 
 four in the morning, in the lobby — very re- 
 frigerant after a slow debate. 
 
 Although the publican is not disestablished, 
 the attorney is. This is amusing. ' On and 
 after ' — some date or other — all attorneys are 
 to be known as solicitors. To use an old Joe 
 Miller, a crocodile isn't improved by calling 
 him an alligator. Still, the attorney is gone. 
 He used to like to call himself a solicitor — 
 now he can do it with a clear conscience, if he 
 has such a thing. There is an odd thing about 
 attorneys — they never know any law. Though 
 I hate litigation I have had to pay many of 
 their bills, chiefly I think because I look easily 
 swindleable (to coin a word) — and the blunders 
 they make, their ignorance of elementary law, 
 their terror of acting without advice of counsel 
 (who knows little more than they) would be 
 laughable if it were not harmful. If Lord 
 Cairns could simplify technicalities, and make 
 it possible for any man of sense to go through 
 a lawsuit without help, he would save enormous 
 loss of money. Some time ago a poor fellow
 
 284 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 whom I knew had an execution in his house — 
 
 a barbarous procedure, by the way, which will 
 
 have to be abolished, like personal arrest. He 
 
 hated the notion of a sale on the premises. I 
 
 told him to order the sheriff to take the things 
 
 off and sell them where he chose. This he 
 
 did; but his lawyers, though keen London 
 
 practitioners, did not know he had the power 
 
 to compel the removal. I hope the solicitor 
 
 of the future will have a little more brain and 
 
 a little less greed than our late lamented 
 
 attorneys. 
 
 ***** 
 
 I have two birds that puzzle me. They are 
 just brought over from Australia by a maritime 
 friend, who got six pair, but brought only one 
 pair safely. They have puzzled Land and 
 Water as well as me. Their name is the first 
 thing : are they betcherry ghas, or budgerry 
 ghas, or budgerigars as the dealers spell it ? 
 What may they eat and drink ? I am warned 
 to give them no water, or it will kill them, 
 and not a drop have they had : but the cock 
 seemed out of form, so I gave him a little
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 2%\ 
 
 salad oil, and he came round again very fast. 
 They don't sing ; but they have a rippling 
 watery note like the house-marten's ; and they 
 talk and scold like blackbirds. The green of 
 their plumage is exquisite, with lovely touches 
 of blue and orange in it. If any of my readers 
 are familiar with these little fellows, perhaps 
 they will send me some information. The 
 acclimatisation of foreign birds is as well worth 
 consideration as that of foreign plants, which I 
 lately noticed. There are thousands of birds 
 which would dwell among us if the fools who 
 carry unlicensed guns did not shoot down every 
 rarity they see. One sharp winter when the 
 pine grosbeak came from Norway and bred in 
 the trees near my house, all the louts of the 
 neighbourhood went out to try and shoot 
 them. Luckily they could not shoot straight. 
 However, I think it is quite time we had a 
 sensible Bird Bill, for at present we are all in 
 a fog, and the schedule of the existing Act is a 
 thorough muddle. The person who drafted it 
 seemed never to have heard of some very 
 valuable birds, while he put down others under
 
 286 
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 two or three different names. For my own 
 part, I think not enough is done to preserve 
 birds from wanton destruction in England. 
 Let the publican go and welcome, I don't want 
 him ; let the attorney vanish, I still less want 
 him ; but oh, preserve the bird, the angel of 
 the air.
 
 
 k 
 
 pfe^gfr 
 
 M 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SUMMER, 1874. 
 
 ' The North -wind chills, the East wind stings, 
 The West wind woos, the South wind sings.' 
 
 The Ladder of Light. 
 
 ' . . . . mulier cnpido quod dicit amanti 
 
 In vento et rapid a scribere oportet aqua.' 
 
 Catullus. 
 
 The South wind blew, and its breath was a song, 
 
 As we loiter'd the shore along, 
 
 Under the light of the sun-kiss'd moon, 
 
 Setting soon. 
 Whisper'd the ripples, murmur'd the leaves, 
 Melody soft of the autumn eves ; 
 But the song of the South came sweeter far, 
 Like a voice from Venus, evening star. 
 
 And I said, ' O women and winds, they change, 
 And through every point of the compass range ! 
 "Who cares for the daughter of Aquilo, 
 
 Fast yet slow ?
 
 288 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 With the eagle's scream and the eagle's beak, 
 That's the woman of science, a creature unique. 1 
 My lady laugh'd, and her rosy mouth 
 Seem'd to echo the song of the South. 
 
 ' Daughter of Eurus is still worse churl, 
 With her stinging sneer at a prettier girl, 
 With scandalous stories eager to blight 
 
 Love's delight. 
 Never she'll tread Cythera's glade, 
 But go to the devil a sour old maid.' 
 Like the drip of a fountain crystal clear 
 Was my lady's laugh at the words severe. 
 
 ' But the musical daughter of Auster sings 
 Melody sweeter than aught with wings ; 
 And thy nymph as a wooer comes to us, 
 
 Zephyrus ! 
 The girl of the South is a fairy flower, 
 With a fragrance strange at the midnight hour ; 
 The girl cf the West is a deep red rose, 
 On whose happy breast there is sweet repose.' 
 
 The moon was dipping. My lady laugh'd : 
 1 Little you know of a woman's craft. 
 I, to a bore or a canting priest, 
 
 Blow due East ; 
 I've a Northern chill for the fools who annoy, 
 And a Southern song for lovers of joy ; 
 And now I shift to the West, and woo 
 Somebody — somebody : you know who.' 
 
 July 2. 
 
 An Irish lady of my acquaintance, who lately 
 sent a friend in England some trinkets of boo- 
 oak, sent also this epigram :
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 2 89 
 
 ' Your old primeval forests turned to coal, 
 As if they thought utility a duty ; 
 Green Ireland's woods had a poetic soul, 
 And (as these earrings show) stopped short at beauty.' 
 
 The Irish possess both beauty and wit, as 
 the epigram and its writer conjunctly prove ; 
 and, when in the humour, they can also con- 
 descend to utility. The thirstier portion of 
 the human race would miss the stout that is 
 brewed by a staunch Tory — not to mention 
 that whisky of Erin which is now said to be 
 wickedly adulterated in bond with a fluid from 
 Scotland. And what would the ladies do 
 without linen from Ulster and Balbriggan 
 stockings 1 
 
 The probable results of the rapid extinction 
 of turnpike trusts has caused some correspond- 
 ence in the Times. I have received a note 011 
 this subject from a gentleman who was a 
 commissioner of turnpike roads in the Cotswold 
 district (oolite limestone) about sixty years. 
 As the Act of Parliament limited the outlay, 
 and the roads could not be kept in order within 
 
 vol. 1. 19
 
 290 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 the limit, they were turned over to the way- 
 wardens, the parishes making up the deficiency. 
 The consequence is that the roads have grown 
 worse each year. ' I am come to the con- 
 clusion,' writes my correspondent, ' that the 
 whole question requires thorough investigation 
 and a reformed General Highway Act, in which 
 there shall he a surveyor competent to oversee, 
 a competent body of waywardens, a district 
 system to accord with geological formation, 
 free roads everywhere, and as highways are 
 used by all classes, therefore made ways safe 
 and easy for use, and by judicious planting, 
 and the preservation of wild flowers, the delight 
 of all for pleasure and use. Under the late 
 Government I addressed a letter on this subject 
 in vain. I trust our Conservatives on this 
 point will show they are deserving the name. 
 I shall shortly write to the head of the depart- 
 ment, and as before point out it is too im- 
 portant to act without previous inquiry by a 
 competent commission. Although eighty-two, 
 I hope to give such evidence as will show what 
 is the present case, and my view as to the
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 291 
 
 future.' The importance of districts coincident 
 with geological manifestations is manifest, and 
 I think that planting trees by the roadside 
 ought to be a public business. For miles of 
 our high roads there is no need for this. You 
 pass beneath the umbrageous shade of park 
 foliage and of hedge-row elms ; but elsewhere 
 are long stretches utterly shadeless, which 
 might be beautified in a few years at a trifling- 
 expense. As turnpikes must gradually be 
 extinguished, something should be done to 
 prevent the Queen's highway from falling into 
 the condition of the railways of Spain, which 
 are said to be the most picturesque ruins in 
 that generally ruinous country. By the way, 
 this is a matter that the Peers and M.P.'s in 
 the Four-in-Hand and Coaching Clubs should 
 not neglect, if the pleasure of a drive behind 
 four horses to Brighton and Windsor and else- 
 where is to be preserved to the Londoners. 
 
 July 8. 
 
 The chimney-swallow builds in my chim- 
 neys. Sand -martins have made numerous 
 
 19-— 2
 
 292 TJwiights in my Garden. 
 
 nests in the quarry of Knowl Hill, but the 
 village boys give them no peace. We are 
 without a School Board ; and, as Mr. Auberon 
 Herbert has found no place in Parliament, 
 there seems no chance for us either of a piano 
 in every cottage,* or of an efficient Bill for the 
 preservation of the small birds. 
 
 The blue titmouse made himself a nest in 
 the hollow of an old tree-stump on my lawn, 
 and very cosy he seemed. He flitted in and 
 out of a hole about the size of a shilling; — a 
 tiny blue atom, full of vigour and life. I 
 hang scraps of meat from the trees for the 
 benefit of the tomtits and titmice in the 
 winter, but this year has been so mild that 
 they found food elsewhere, and left their 
 larder untouched. In the winter of 1872-3 
 I was visited by the pine grosbeak from 
 Norway, who brought up a brood in the firs 
 close by, and greatly relished the peas on 
 
 * When Mr. Auberon Herbert unsuccessfully contested 
 the election for Berkshire, he said, in the course of one of 
 his speeches, that he hoped to see the time -when there 
 should be a piano in every cottage. Then, indeed, remarked 
 Mortimer Collins, ' the isle will be full of noises.'— F. C.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 29 
 
 which my tumbler pigeons are fed, and stayed 
 here till Easter-week. 
 
 The young robins grow russet-breasted here 
 also ; but where are the crimson-breasted 
 old robins gone ? Do they migrate and get 
 eaten by Frenchmen ? Mr. Morris is lucky in 
 having so few slugs and snails ; the blackbirds 
 and thrushes do good work among them here, 
 but do not succeed in keeping them down. 
 Swifts shriek in scores across the garden every 
 evening, serenading their sitting mates accord- 
 
 ing to Gilbert White. 
 
 I have not seen the golden-crested wren 
 here for some years, but other wrens are 
 numerous. A bird that adheres to this neigh- 
 bourhood, defying the gardeners, who shoot 
 him down mercilessly as an eater of fruit -buds, 
 is that beautiful air-minstrel, the bullfinch. 
 He sways on the top of a rose-briar, and flutes 
 away deliciously. Knowl Hill is full of them. 
 From the top of that hill you can see Windsor 
 Castle (always catching the sunshine (if there 
 is any in the sky), Cliefden, New Lodge, hal- 
 lowed by the remembrance of the illustrious
 
 294 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Belgian ; Ascot, Sandhurst, Guildford Castle, 
 St. Martha's Hill, Bearwood, the towers and 
 chimneys of Reading — sometimes, on fine 
 evenings, the Crystal Palace, looking like a 
 meteor on the horizon. The mellow music of 
 the bullfinches is a pleasant accompaniment, 
 and I could wish the gardeners would not 
 shoot them down. Have the birds no friend 
 in the House of Commons ? The existing Act 
 is really useless. 
 
 July 0. 
 
 Clergymen are a little too apt to under- 
 rate the services of journalists to the Church 
 of England.""" The contemptible sectarian 
 periodicals which exist by flattering the follies 
 of small parties in the Church are not worth 
 notice ; but the chief journalists of the Con- 
 stitutional Party, who regard the State and 
 the Church as indissolubly connected, do much 
 more in the defence of the Church than many 
 clergymen imagine. What the journalist has 
 
 * This was written some few months after the arrival of 
 the new incumbent at Knowl Hill. The young gentleman 
 seemed to think that because Mortimer Collins was a 
 journalist, he was necessarily a bad man. — F. C.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 295 
 
 at heart is the maintenance of that high 
 clerical type which no other Church has ever 
 developed — the parson who, though apostolic, 
 is a man of the world ; though devout, never 
 eccentric ; though a lover of reverent service, 
 a hater of frivolities ; though the spiritual 
 pastor and master, yet not the despot of his 
 parish. Such men will find sufficient material 
 for sermons within the limits of the Gospels 
 and Epistles, as applied to the consciences of 
 those whom they teach, without troubling 
 themselves to discuss the myriad sensations 
 of a period of religious pyrotechny. The 
 model clergyman is perhaps the finest figure 
 in our modern social life, whether he be a pre- 
 late or only a ' Vicar of Wakefield*. ' To de- 
 scribe him negatively is easy : he is not 
 polemic, he is not sensational, he is not poli- 
 tical, he is not ritualistic, lie is not fashion- 
 able. Yet he can tell an opponent the reason 
 of his faith ; he can make the vast Verities of 
 God intelligible to all hearers : he can warn 
 his hearers against all democracies save the 
 only conceivable one (vide Coleridge), the
 
 296 Thotights in my Garden. 
 
 Church itself; he can place architecture and 
 music in their proper positions, subsidiary to 
 religion ; he can hold his own in society, as a 
 scholar and a gentleman. There are, I know, 
 a multitude of such men in Holy Orders, of 
 whom the general public is quite unaware, 
 since they write no letters to partisan journals. 
 They axe content to do their duty in that state 
 of life into which it has pleased God to call 
 them, and it may he said of them truly that 
 they are ' the salt of the earth.' Long may it 
 be ere the true parish priest disappears amid 
 the modern whirl of ecclesiastical vagary ; the 
 Church itself will too soon follow him. 
 
 rp Tf» *i» *> 
 
 An article by Mr. Archibald Banks on 
 ' Birds and Beasts in Captivity ' has much 
 interested, me. Mr. Banks is evidently a true 
 lover of animals, and this is a love which 
 animals always return. Although his expe- 
 rience in this direction has been large, he does 
 not know everything;. He writes : ' I never 
 possessed a cormorant ; but it is well known 
 to be tamable, and is utilised by the Chinese
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 297 
 
 to catch fish. To domesticate the cormorant 
 would be the greatest achievement over the 
 animal kingdom in historical times.' Mr. 
 Banks is evidently unaware that tame cormo- 
 rants arc taught to catch fish on the English 
 lakes ; and he cannot have heard of that 
 famous hen cormorant of Grantley Berkeley's, 
 that insisted on regarding her master as her 
 mate, and tried to make a nest under him 
 as he sat on his lawn. I quite agree with 
 all Mr. Banks has to say about the defunct 
 Acclimatisation Society. I also was at that 
 last dinner, when Mr. Bernal Osborne declared 
 the Duke of Newcastle wouldn't take the chair 
 because he was afraid conger soup would make 
 him sick. Mr. Sala sat opposite me, and put 
 some frogs' bones in his waistcoat pocket, and 
 made a very good article out of it afterwards. 
 Mr. Banks is probably right in assuming that 
 acclimatisation is not the chief object of such a 
 society, seeing that this English climate seems 
 to suit animals and plants from every part of 
 the world. 
 
 Mr. Banks is quite wrong about pigeons.
 
 298 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 Mine, having plenty of peas, fresh water, 
 green grass, gravel, and salt, are deliciously 
 eatable. In the first half of this year I have 
 bred for the table forty-two birds from six 
 pairs. Eaten before they fly (for the act of 
 flight toughens them) they are uncommonly 
 nice. Despise the arts of French cookery ; 
 broil them, enveloped in a slice of bacon, and 
 yon can eat them, bones and all. My birds 
 are white tumblers ; but I have lately acquired 
 some runts that look as if they were designed 
 to be eaten. 
 
 July 1G. 
 
 It is hard to think that a clergyman really 
 has faith in Christ, the simplest and severest of 
 teachers, when he sets his heart on fripperies 
 and attitudes and antics, and thinks more of 
 such matters than of the vast spiritual respon- 
 sibility which he accepted in ordination. I am 
 for a noble yet simple service ; I love the 
 great cathedrals, psalms in stone, to most of 
 which in England I have made frequent 
 pilgrimage ; I have no idea of a dreary, drab 
 form of religion. But the childish whims of
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 299 
 
 what now is called Ritualism arc beneath con- 
 tempt ; and it is a matter to be regretted that 
 the heavy machinery of the law must be used 
 to check them. Seeing what a sublime career 
 is the priesthood, what immeasurable power 
 for good lies in the hand of the man who is 
 authorised to instruct the people, it is humilia- 
 ting to think that the mysticism and millinery 
 of the Ritualist parsons require to be legally 
 regulated. It is also humiliating that the first 
 man of the Liberals (so for first that nobody 
 can name a second) is prepared to insult the 
 unconquerable common sense of Englishmen 
 by asking protection for that solemn harle- 
 quin, the Ritualist. 
 
 I have been lying on the grass for hours, 
 reading with delight the experiences of a man 
 w T hom all the inferior creatures understand and 
 love because he loves and understands them 
 well.'" It is most true that you cannot under- 
 stand animals unless you love them first, even 
 
 * Mr. Grantley Berkeley's ' Fact against Fiction.'
 
 o 
 
 co Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 as it is impossible to understand or believe in 
 God without first lovino- Him. 
 
 Mr. Berkeley is, of course, very strong 
 against Darwin. The journals that profess a 
 
 rain smattering of science will naturally 
 be severe on him for this. The present mania 
 for sham science is quite amusing : everybody 
 has come to the famous theory enunciated by 
 the author of ; The British Birds ' : 
 
 ' There was an Ape in the days that were earlier ; 
 Centuries passed, and his hair became curlier : 
 Centuries more gave a thumb to his fist — 
 Then he was Man. and a Positivi^t.' 
 
 There are many obvious objections to Darwin- 
 ism which nobody seems to notice. For ex- 
 
 ■ 
 
 ample, the nearest creatures to man in form 
 are not the nearest in intellect. The elephant, 
 and dog, and horse, which have no formal 
 affinity to man, have a far closer intellectual 
 affinity than those pets of Darwinism, the 
 gorilla and chimpanzee. Again, man is om- 
 nivorous — the stronger races of men, from the 
 Greeks before Troy to the English of to-day, 
 are primarily carnivorous. But no monkeys
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 501 
 
 or apes are carnivorous. If man is to 1 
 
 veloped from a lower creature, he is nearer to 
 the monkey in form, to his faithful friend the 
 
 1 in mind. But from neither source is 
 there power to develop that noble entity wl 
 with all his faults, was made by God in His 
 own imaee. 
 
 The charm of Mr. Grantley Berkeley's 
 voliim - asts in his exquisitely keen 1 - 
 
 j'.vinent of natui A long and varied 
 
 experience has made him acquainted with 
 livino; creatures of all kinds — has taught 
 him how to gain their confiden Ev 
 
 page of his book reveals his familia: :th 
 
 the sweet - - of nature, and tells 
 
 that, long as he may live, every day he 
 
 learn something new. I. who hav< - 
 the pheasants feeding on his lawn at Alden 
 Manor, and the tame ducks fluttering: at his 
 :. am personal wit: ss of ~ magic in- 
 fluence whieh he exerts nd 
 
 he loves them well. And 
 of th«n makes him pn fcesl si ogly 
 
 against many cruelties and stupid:;:' - of the
 
 o 
 
 02 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 day. He hates the present system of shoot- 
 ing — the ostentatious tramp in line which has 
 superseded the healthy trudge through the 
 turnips. 'He, this mere gunner absorbed in 
 his gun and grouse, sees not the loveliness 
 of the scene he wanders over. He takes no 
 heed of the surrounding beauty of nature, 
 the blooming blush of her honey-bearing 
 heather reflected back as caught from the 
 mountain brow by the still waters of the 
 placid lake stretched in the vale below; nor 
 does he care for the painstaking, mysteriously 
 gifted and carefully educated dog, who labours 
 the day throughout, not to find anything that 
 he (in this case the dog, not the man) can eat, 
 but with an unselfish unweariness which never 
 tires, the setter or pointer labours only to 
 please the gun-man, and to give him delica- 
 cies for the table. Of course I speak of the 
 gunner — I can't call him a sportsman — of the 
 present day.' 
 
 Mr. Grantley Berkeley's chapter (the fourth 
 of the first volume) on distemper and madness 
 deserves to be carefully read by those easily
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 50 ? 
 
 3 
 
 frightened persons who think a clog must hav< 
 hydrophobia the moment his actions are at all 
 irregular. Nothing is more rare than hydro- 
 phobia ; while distemper madness, which 
 occurs frequently, is incommunicable to a 
 human being by a bite. Every now and 
 then there is a mad-dog panic, which seems 
 to me to show that town councillors and 
 policemen want the muzzle far more than the 
 unhappy dogs they torture. I have never 
 been without dogs ; I have been bitten by 
 dogs many a time ; I have never had the 
 slightest fear on the subject. But there are 
 people whom no argument will cure of 
 cowardice 
 
 July 23. 
 
 What is the chief reason why Africa remains 
 uncivilised ? The immense demand for ivory 
 in civilised countries. Ladies must have 
 prayer-books in ivory binding ; billiard-players 
 must have ivory balls. The consequence is 
 that the elephant, noblest of quadrupeds, is 
 ruthlessly exterminated for the sake of his 
 tusks, and is gradually disappearing from
 
 304 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 inland Africa. Meanwhile, the ivory trader 
 is a great prince among the barbarous African 
 chieftains, and the price he pays them for 
 elephants' tusks prevents their caring to 
 develop any of the latent resources of the 
 mysterious continent. In a double way, 
 therefore, the immoderate demand for ivory 
 is injuring Africa. It strangles other trades, 
 and it destroys the whole race of elephants 
 placed there by the Creator to do good ser- 
 vice. No other animal can be used to such 
 effect in civilising tropical countries. Could 
 not the Royal Geographical Society add to 
 their numerous services to the nation and the 
 world by doing something toward the protec- 
 tion of elephants in Africa ? Look seriously 
 at the matter. Here is this wise and noble 
 creature, designed for the service of man, and 
 loving that service, shot down because the 
 ivory of his tusks is a pretty thing to take 
 to church as a clothing to the liturgy, or to 
 study dynamics with on a parallelogram of 
 green cloth. Here are all the other trades 
 of fertile Africa neglected and paralysed, be-
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 305 
 
 cause this ivory trade (as bad as trade in 
 
 opium) is so paramount in profit. Really I 
 
 think the R.Gr.S. might do something to 
 
 reform this. What says Sir Bartle Frere ? 
 
 I know what the great translator of Aristo- 
 
 phanes would have said. 
 
 ***** 
 
 We are likely to have a summer of trying 
 drought. Already the springs are very low 
 in many places ; the farmers are using their 
 teams all day long to fetch water : what will 
 be the state of affairs in a month, unless we 
 have unusual rain, it is unpleasant to forecast. 
 Years ago Mr. Grantley Berkeley showed that 
 this must inevitably be the result of the 
 ferocious drainage now fashionable. The rain 
 rushes through pipes to the river, without a 
 moment's delay to refresh the springs. I fear 
 that nothing sliort of a stringent Act of 
 Parliament will compel the farmers to adopt 
 the sole remedy — storage of water. It must 
 be done, unless we are to have periodical 
 droughts. Experience shows that we are 
 likely to have hot summers till 1878 ; and, 
 
 vol. 1. 20
 
 306 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 if no arrangement be made for storing surplus 
 water in winter, there will be greater suffering 
 each successive year. The Government ought 
 to move in this matter before the session 
 closes. Drought is a terrible calamity, and 
 a very severe drought is certain unless strong 
 measures are taken. There are few villages 
 where methods of storing water are not ob- 
 vious to anyone who investigates the matter, 
 but they are wickedly neglected. Central 
 action and skilled surveyors will be requisite. 
 
 July 30. 
 
 A famous scientific inventor,* now more 
 than eighty years old, has been heard to say 
 that he should like to live twenty years more, 
 to see realised his previsions of great material 
 change. Such a feeling, on the part of one 
 who can see farther into the future of science 
 than we ordinary men, is quite intelligible : 
 yet is it reasonable % Might not the scientific 
 spirit be expected to rejoice in the prospect 
 of passing into a world where guesses become 
 
 * The late Sir William Fairbaiin.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 307 
 
 certainties, where the keen faculty of the dis- 
 coverer is superseded by a higher intuition ? 
 As well might an enthusiastic archaeologist 
 wish he had been born when Stonehenge was 
 built, forgetful that in that case Stonehenge 
 would have interested him as little as the 
 last-built railway terminus does now, and that 
 his retrospective genius would have driven 
 him to inquire into earlier records of the past. 
 If the gentleman of whom I write should (as I 
 hope he may) complete his century, he will 
 want another — for what will be the scientific 
 triumphs of 1894 to those of 1994 \ Not even 
 the years of Methuselah would content him. 
 Better that we should regard with satisfaction 
 the thought of looking upon the universe from 
 a higher point, and with minds cleared from 
 sublunary prej ujlice. 
 
 Lately I was visiting an eminent man of 
 letters,"" in every room of whose charming 
 house there was so much rare china that I 
 (being an awkward person) felt almost afraid 
 to move, and he told me that when he was 
 
 * The late Mr. Tom Taylor. 
 
 20—2
 
 308 Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 fatigued with work, or annoyed by any of the 
 innumerable 'worries inevitable as upward- 
 flying sparks/ he recovered cheerfulness in a 
 moment if he met with some purchasable 
 rarity. An artist of my acquaintance writes 
 to me from Branscombe,* in Devon, where he 
 is inhaling ozone, asking me if I can tell him 
 where he might hope to pick up any old china 
 or carved oak chests. He could not have 
 applied to anyone worse qualified. I am 
 desperately ignorant of what makes china 
 delightful in the collector's eyes. My only 
 hobby in the way of collection is books ; but 
 I do not care for them as the real bibliomaniac 
 does, because they are rare or because they are 
 old. What I like is a great author in noble 
 type — the Baskerville ' Virgil,' for example, 
 where the soft type is so appropriate to the 
 Eoman's divine grace and elegance ; or the 
 Tonson ' Lucretius,' whose vivid black letters 
 are just as suitable to the Epicurean poet's 
 stalwart verse, rugged from very strength. By 
 the way, my correspondent is sketching a cot- 
 
 * Mr. Thomas Macquoid.
 
 Thoughts in my Garden. 309 
 
 tage at Bransconibe, doomed to be pulled 
 down, on whose chimney is the date 1580. 
 Very picturesque, he tells me. I wonder who 
 built it in good Queen Elizabeth's days ? 
 
 Aug. 27. 
 I have made a very pleasant acquaintance — 
 a young and vivacious person, musical and gar- 
 rulous, grateful for small kindnesses, and never 
 a bore. He is, to avoid the mysterious, a robin 
 redbreast — a young cock, whose waistcoat has 
 not yet attained its fullest scarlet, nor his song 
 its complete music. There are lots of them on 
 my lawn, in various stages of adolescence ; but 
 this little beauty got into my book-room one 
 morning, and flew in a fright against the win- 
 dow when I entered, and fell on the floor half- 
 stunned. I took him up and got him to drink 
 a little water, rfnd put him on the grass. He 
 soon recovered, and now he follows me all over 
 the place. He waits to welcome me the first 
 thing in the morning. He perches on my knee 
 as I sit writing on the lawn, and twitters out 
 a sweet low song. He is very inquisitive about 
 everything new that comes out when we en-
 
 -5io Thoughts in my Garden. 
 
 o 
 
 camp under the trees, examining work-baskets, 
 writing-baskets, straw hats, with an evident 
 thirst for knowledge. He comes on my writing- 
 table to pick up crumbs, then suddenly darts 
 away in a hurry to seize something more en- 
 ticing — a fat spider, or a daddy longlegs, or a 
 butterfly. He cares nothing for the dogs. 
 There is something curious in the friendship of 
 this feathered atom, born out of gratitude. I 
 wish I knew the language of birds, like the 
 famous Dervish in the Eastern tale, and could 
 get a little instruction from my robin's musical 
 talk* 
 
 * We made the intimate acquaintance of many robins, but 
 this was an especial favourite. He continued to be friendly 
 until the spring of the following year, and spent the greater 
 part of the winter in the house, thereby causing great 
 jealousy to two other robins, who were also favourites, who 
 used to watch for him to come out of the house, and attack 
 him. He would often perch on my husband's shoulder, or 
 walk over his manuscript as he wrote. He would also perch 
 on our big wolf-hound's head, while the old dog would look 
 very grave, as if he thought it was not quite the thing for 
 his dignity. — F. C. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 KILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS AND ELECTROTYPERS, GUILDFORD. 
 
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