Planting and transplanting were our delight; the seed
which our tiny hands let fall into the bosom of the earth, we almost
watched peeping through little clods, after the kind and quickening
showers of spring; and we regarded the germinating of an upturned bean
with all the surprise and curiosity of our nature. As we grew in mind
and stature, we learned the loftier lessons of philosophy, and threw
aside the "Pocket Gardener," for the sublime chapters of Bacon and
Temple; and as the stream of life carried us into its vortex, we learned
to contemplate their pages as the living parterres of a garden, and
their bright imageries as fascinating flowers. As we journeyed onward
through the busy herds of crowded cities, we learned the holier
influences of gardens in reflecting that a garden has been the scene of
man's birth--his fall--and proffered redemption.
It would be difficult to find a subject which has been more fervently
treated by poets and philosophers, than the _love of gardens_. In old
Rome, poets sung of their gardens. Ovid is so fond of flowers, that in
his account of the Rape of Proserpine, in his Fasti, he devotes several
lines to the enumeration of flowers gathered by her attendants. But the
passion for gardening, which evidently came from the East, never
prevailed much in Europe till the times of the religious orders, who
greatly improved it.
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