Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1876Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1876
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
A few yards off stood a still bigger and
more luxuriant pyramid, some ten feet high, covered with the large,
delicate and regular pink bloom of the souvenir de Malmaison. When I
talk of _a_ bush I only mean one especial bush which caught my eye. I
suppose there were fifty cloth-of-gold and fifty souvenir rose bushes
in that garden. Red roses, white roses, tea roses, blush-roses, moss
roses, and, last not least, the dear old-fashioned, homely cabbage
rose, sweetest and most sturdy of all. You could wander for acres and
acres among fruit trees and plantations of oaks and willows and
other trees, but you never got away from the roses. There they were,
beautiful, delicious things at every turn--hedges of them, screens of
them and giant bushes of them on either hand. As I have said before,
though kept free from weeds by some half dozen scantily-clad but
stalwart Kafirs with their awkward hoes, it was not a bit like a trim
English garden. It was like a garden in which Lalla Rookh might have
wandered by moonlight talking sentimental philosophy with her minstrel
prince under old Fadladeen's chaperonage, or a garden that Boccaccio
might have peopled with his Arcadian fine ladies and gentlemen. It was
emphatically a poet's or a painter's garden, not a gardener's garden.
Then, as though nothing should be wanting to make the scene lovely,
one could hear through the fragrant silence the tinkling of the little
"spruit" or brook at the bottom of the garden, and the sweet song of
the Cape canary, the same sort of greenish finch which is the parent
stock of all our canaries, and whose acquaintance I first made in
Madeira. A very sweet warbler it is, and the clear, flute-like notes
sounded prettily among the roses. From blossom to blossom lovely
butterflies flitted, perching quite fearlessly on the red clay walk
just before me, folding and unfolding their big painted wings. Every
day I see a new kind of butterfly, and the moths which one comes upon
hidden away under the leaves of the creepers during the bright noisy
day are lovely beyond the power of words. One little fellow is a great
pet of mine. He wears pure white wings, with vermilion stripes drawn
in regular horizontal lines across his back, and between the lines are
shorter, broken streaks of black, which is at once neat and uncommon;
but he is always in the last stage of sleepiness when I see him.
I am so glad little G---- is not old enough to want to catch them all
and impale them upon corks in a glass case; so the pretty creatures
live out their brief and happy life in the sunshine, without let or
hinderance from him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account