On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening,: with Biographical Notices of Them, 2nd edition, with considerable additionsFelton, Samuel
History
On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening,: with Biographical Notices of Them, 2nd edition, with considerable additions
Felton, Samuel
Gardening -- Bibliography; Horticulturists -- England
[94] _Sterne_ mentions a traveller who always set out with the spleen
and jaundice,--"without one generous connection, or pleasurable anecdote
to tell of,--travelling straight on, looking neither to his right hand
or his left, lest love or pity should seduce him out of the road." Mr.
Loudon seems to be a very different kind of a traveller: for his
horticultural spirit and benevolent views, pervade almost every page of
his late tour through _Bavaria_. One envies his feelings, too, in
another rural excursion, through the romantic scenery of _Bury_, at Mr.
Barclay's, and of Mr. Hope's at _Deepdene_; and particularly when he
paints his own emotions on viewing the room of sculpture there. He even
could not, in October last, take his rural ride from _Edgware_ to _St.
Alban's_ without thus awakening in each traveller a love of gardens, and
giving this gentle hint to an honest landlord:--"A new inn, in the
outskirts of _St. Alban's_, in the _Dunstable_ road, has an ample
garden, not made the most of. Such a piece of ground, and a gardener of
taste, would give an inn, so situated, so great a superiority, that
_every one would be tempted to stop there_; but the garden of this
Boniface, exhibits but the beginning of a good idea." When travelling
along our English roads, his mind no doubt frequently reverts to those
road-side gardens in the Netherlands, which he thus happily adverts to
in p. 32 of his Encyclopædia: "The gardens of the cottagers in these
countries, are undoubtedly better managed and more productive than those
of any other country; no man who has a cottage is without a garden
attached; often small, but rendered useful to a poor family, by the high
degree of culture given to it." Linnæus, in his eloquent oration at
Upsal, enforces the pleasure of travelling in one's own country, through
its fields _and roads_. Mr. Heath, the zealous and affectionate
historian of Monmouth, in his account of that town and its romantic
neighbourhood, (published in 1804,) omits no opportunity of noticing the
many neat gardens, which add to the other rural charms of its rich
scenery, thus mentions another Boniface:--"The late Thomas Moxley, who
kept the public-house at Manson Cross, was a person that took great
delight in fruit-trees, and had a large piece of ground let him, for the
purpose of planting it with apple-trees; but his death (which followed
soon after) prevented the plan from being carried to the extent he
intended, though some of the land bears evidence of his zeal and
labour." Mr. Heath cannot even travel on the turnpike road, from
Monmouth to Hereford, without benevolently remarking, that "a number of
laborious families have erected small tenements, with a garden to each,
most of which are thickly planted with apple-trees, whose produce
considerably adds to the owner's support."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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