_A dont de la chambre s’avance,_ _De là le vit en i. prael_ _U ele faisoit un capiel._ --Blonde of Oxford, p. 30. Our cut No. 195, taken from a well-known manuscript in the British Museum, of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), represents a party of ladies in the garden, gathering flowers, and making garlands. The love of flowers, as I have stated in a former chapter, seems to have prevailed generally among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and affectionate allusions to them occur, not unfrequently, in the literary remains of that early period. Many of our old favourite garden-flowers are, I believe, derived from the Anglo-Saxon gardens. Proofs of a similar attachment to flowers might be quoted in abundance from the writings of the periods subsequent to the entrance of the Normans. The wearing of garlands or chaplets of flowers was a common practice with both sexes. In the romantic history of the Fitz-Warines, written in the thirteenth century, the hero, in travelling, meets a young knight who, in token of his joyous humour, carries a chaplet of flowers on his head. In the later English romance of the “Squyer of Lowe Degree,” when the “squyer” was preparing to do his office of carver in the hall-- _There he araied him in scarlet red,_ _And set a chaplet upon his hed;_ _A belte about his sydes two,_ _White brod barres to and fro._ Walter de Biblesworth talks of ladies dancing the carole, their heads crowned with garlands of the blue-bottle flower-- _Mener karole_ _Desouz chapeau de blaverole._--Vocabularies, p. 161. Garlands of flowers were also the common rewards for success in the popular games. [Illustration: _No. 195. Ladies making Garlands._] All these enjoyments naturally rendered the garden a favourite and important part of every man’s domestic establishment; during the warmer months of the year it was a chosen place of resort, especially after dinner. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” Begues is represented as descending from his palace, after dinner, to walk with his fair wife Beatrice in his garden-- _En son palais fu Begues de Belin;_ _Après mangier entra en un jardin,_ _Aveuc lui fu la belle Biatris._ --Roman de Garin, vol. ii. p. 97. In another part of the same romance, Begues de Belin and his barons, on rising from the table, went to seek recreation in the fields-- _Quant mangié ont et beu à loisir,_ _Les napes ostent, et en prés sunt sailli._ --Ibid., vol. i. p. 203. The manuscript in the British Museum, from which we took our last illustration, furnishes the accompanying representation of a group of ladies walking in the garden, and gathering flowers (No. 196). [Illustration: _No. 196. Ladies walking in the Garden._]