come back again to us. In the centre of some vast avenue of majestic elms or limes, sweeping their boughs to the ground, the dial-stone, aged and green, arrests our attention and points not to the present hour, but to the past. Our historic memories are intimately connected with such places. Our Howards, Essexes, Surreys, and Wolseys, were the magnificent founders and creators of such places; and in such Shakspeare and Spenser, Milton and Bacon, and Sidney, mused. It is astonishing what numbers of our poets, philosophers, and literati, are connected with the history of our gardens by their writings, or their love of them. Sir Henry Wotton, Parkinson, Ray, John Evelyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, Bacon, Addison, Pope, Sir William Temple, who wrote not only "The Garden of Epicurus,' but so delighted in gardening that he directed, in his will, that his heart should be buried beneath the sun-dial in his garden at Moor Park, in Surrey, where it accordingly was deposited, in a silver box; Horace Walpole, Locke, Cowley, Shenstone, Charles Cotton, Waller, Bishop Fleetwood, Spence, the author of " Polymetis," Gilpin of the "Forest Scenery" Mason, Dr. Darwin, Cowper, and many others, have their fame linked to the history or the love of gardens." -HOWITT'S RURAL LIFE.

THE POOR MAN'S GARDEN.

Ah, yes, the poor man's garden!
It is great joy to me,

This little precious piece of ground
Before his door to see!

The rich man has his gardeners,-
His gardeners young and old;
He never takes a spade in hand,
Nor worketh in the mould.

It is not with the poor man so,-
Wealth, servants, he has none;
And all the work that's done for him
Must by himself be done.

A rich man has his wall-fruit,
And his delicious vines;

His fruit for every season,
His melons and his pines.

The poor man has his gooseberries,
His currants white and red,
His apple and his damson tree,
And a little strawberry-bed.

A happy man he thinks himself,
A man that's passing well,-
To have some fruit for the children,
And some besides to sell.

Around the rich man's trellised bower
Gay, costly creepers run;

The poor man has his scarlet beans
To screen him from the sun.

And there before the little bench,
O'ershadow'd by the bower,
Grow southernwood and lemon-thyme,
Sweetpea and gilliflower;

And pinks and clove-carnations,

Rich scented, side by side;

And at the end a hollyhock

With an edge of London-pride.

And here the old grandmother comes
When her day's work is done;
And here they bring the sickly babe
To cheer it in the sun.

And here on sabbath mornings,
The good man comes to get
His Sunday nosegay, moss-rose bud,
White pink, and mignonette.

And here on sabbath evenings,
Until the stars are out,

With a little one in either hand
He walketh all about.

For though his garden-plot is small,
Him doth it satisfy;

For there's no niche of all his ground

That does not fill his eye.

"Fancy a small plot of ground, with a pretty low irregular cottage at one end; a large granary, divided from the dwelling by a little court running along one side; and a long thatched shed open towards the garden, and supported by wooden pillars, on the other. The bottom is bounded half by an old wall, and half by an old paling, over which we see a pretty distance of woody hills. The house, the granary, wall, and paling, are covered with vines, cherrytrees, roses, honeysuckles, and jessamines, with great clusters of tall hollyhocks running up between them, a large elder overhanging the little gate, and a magnificent bay-tree, such a tree as shall scarcely be matched in these parts, breaking with its beautiful conical form the horizontal lines of the buildings. This is my garden; and the long pillared shed, the sort of rustic arcade which runs along one side, parted from the flower-beds by a row of rich geraniums, is our out-of-doors drawing-room.

"I know nothing so pleasant as to sit there on a summer afternoon, with the western sun flickering through the great elder-tree, and lighting up our gay parterres, where flowers and flowering shrubs are set as thick as grass in a field, a wilderness of blossom, interwoven, intertwined, wreathy, garlandy, profuse beyond all profusion, where we may guess there is such a thing as mould, but never see it. I know nothing so pleasant as to sit in the shade of that dark bower, with the eye resting on that bright piece of colour,

U

lighted so gloriously by the evening sun, now catching a glimpse of the little birds as they fly rapidly in and out of their nests-for there are always two or three bird-nests in the thick tapestry of cherry-trees, honeysuckles, and Chinaroses, which cover our walls- now tracing the gay gambols of the common butterflies as they sport round the dahlias; and watching that rarer moth, which the country people, fertile in pretty names, call the bee-bird; that bird-like insect which flutters in the hottest days over the sweetest flowers, inserting its long proboscis into the small tube of the jessamine, and hovering over the scarlet blossoms of the geranium, whose bright colours seem reflected on its own feathery breast, that insect which seems so thoroughly a creature of the air, never at rest; always, even when feeding, selfpoised and self-supported, and whose wings, in their ceaseless motion, have a sound so deep, so full, so lulling, so musical. Nothing so pleasant as to sit amid that mixture of flower and leaf watching the bee-bird! Nothing so pretty to look at as my garden! It is quite a picture; only, unluckily, it resembles a picture in more qualities than one-it is fit for nothing but to be looked at. One might as well think of walking in a bit of framed canvass. There are walks, to be sure, tiny paths of smooth gravel, called such by courtesy-but they are so overhung by roses and lilies, and such gay encroachers, so overhung by convolvulus, and heart's-ease, and mignonette, and other sweet stragglers, that, except to edge through them occasionally, for the purposes of planting, or weeding, or watering, there might as well be no paths at all. Nobody thinks of walking in my garden. Even my dog, May, glides about with a delicate and trackless step, like a swan through the water; and we, its two-footed denizens, are fain to treat it as if it were really a saloon, and go out for a walk towards sunset, just as if we had not been sitting in the open air all day."