MONTHLY RECORD.

THERE is no pursuit requiring corporeal labour unremittingly employed, which, for quiet amusement, and satisfactory results, can be compared with agriculture. The term is here used in its widest sense, and includes horticulture and arboriculture. Nihil est agriculturâ melius, nihil uberius, nihil libero dignius. The first employment of man, it was intended to occupy a large proportion of the species, and accordingly, we find the agricultural interest becoming daily more important and engrossing. It is not, however, agriculture, used in its widest sense, that is about to occupy our attention, for I wish rather to speak of the ornamental portion of the art.

From the very earliest ages, mankind have shown a fondness for forming places of repose and recreation, and storing them with trees and flowers. Man's first residence was a garden, and a garden seems the fitting spot for his last slumber. The luxurious nations of the east were adepts in the art of gardening, and among the refined and elegant ancients, flowers had a meaning and a use. The philosophy that flowed from the lips of Epicurus found at least as many auditors as that of his opponent, for the luxurious youth of Greece loved better to ramble in the Garden than to linger in the Portico. Without seeking to trace,

step by step, the struggles of the art, it is sufficient to observe that it progressed rapidly, and was successfully cultivated, as well by the inhabitants of Europe as by those of Africa and Asia: the severe climates of northern regions were set at defiance by human skill, and artificial means rendered the soil of Russia, in certain seasons, as prolific as the more favored districts of the south.

Gardening excited, at quite an early period, considerable interest in England, and, in the age of Queen Anne, was quite a fashionable amusement. Earlier than that, Lord Bacon had spoken in its favor, and his eulogy is still preserved and quoted by the lovers of the peaceful labors of the garden. God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirit of man, without which, buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks.' Sir Philip Sidney gives us the following account of an old English garden : The back side of the house was neither field, nor garden, nor orchard; or rather, it was both field, garden, and orchard, for as soone as the descending of the staires had delivered them downe, they came into a place cunningly set with trees of the most taste-pleasing fruits; but scarcely had they taken that into their consideration, but they were sodainely stept into a delicate greene; of each side of the greene a thicket, and behind the thickets againe new beds of flowers, which being under, the trees were to them a pavillion, and they to the trees a mosaicall floore, so that it seemed that arte therein must needs be delightfull, by counterfeiting his enemie errour, and making order in confusion. In the middest of all the place was a faire pond, whose shaking chrystall was a perfect mirror to all the other beauties, so that it bear show of two gardens-one in deed, the other in shadows.' The last idea would seem, par parenthése, to be the germ of Wordsworth's

The swan on sweet St. Mary's lake,
Floats double - swan and shadow.'

Bolingbroke, Pope, and the victorious Earl of Peterborough were enthusiastic gardeners, practically proving what Cicero says, Agricultura proxima sapientiæ. Do you wish, dear reader, for other authorities? Here they are-Shenstone, John Evelyn, Cowper. Shakspeare must have been very fond of gardening, else would he have written that fine passage about the 'sweet south,' or have placed Romeo in a garden to make love to Juliet ?

I am not much of a botanist, but I love flowers, and, although an old man, seem to renew my youth, while treading the alleys of my little garden, and inquiring into the state of my pretty protegées. 'And because the breath of flowers is farre sweeter in

the aire, (where it comes and goes like the warbling of musicke) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight, than to know what be the flowers and plants, which doe best perfume the aire.'*

The flowers greet me, as I stoop to water them, like familiar beings, and each speaks an intelligent language, from 'the yellow cowslip and pale primrose,' to the dark, rich red rose of midAnd foremost in the fragrant train comes the yellow

summer.

violet.

"Of all her train, the hands of spring
First plant thee in the watery mould;
And I have seen thee blossoming,
Beside the snow-bank's edges cold.'

But of all the beauties of the seasons, commend me to the rose, the flower that, according to Juliet, by any other name would smell as sweet.' Within the parterres of the fortunate possessors of gardens, in the flower-pots of more humble individuals, and in wreaths, twined around the heads of youth and beauty, it now appears profusely. The snug, Sunday-clad citizen, bears a rose in his button hole, and his comely dame, a more generous bouquet at her waist, while their worthy offspring, if they have any, bring up the rear, some with tremendous bunches of flowers, which seem to give evidence of their having taken by storm and devastated some delicious garden, as did the Visigoths fair Italy, the garden of all Europe. There are some indeed, circumstanced like Robert Faulconbridge, of whom the bastard says

'In his ear he dare not stick a rose,

Lest men should say look where three farthings goes.'

Roses have been used from time immemorial, by poets and lovers as the representatives of female beauty, and as among the most worthy objects in nature to which fair ladies might be justly compared and it is fortunate for the credit of the complimentary system, that there is so great a variety. The dark African may, without falsehood, compare his dusky mate to the rose, since the 'coal black rose' is a noted as well as curious species of the flower. Old maids, in the last stages of a green and yellow melancholy,' may be likened to the yellow Chinese rose, the fading beauty to the white, and the buxom country damsel to the damask. Ladies themselves, however, after wavering in their predilections between the York and the Lancaster, are generally found to be in favour of the Union to a man.

Our early ideas of beauty and pleasure seem to be connected, in some degree, with roses; the frequent mention made of them by the poets, the manner in which ladies use them in ornament

* Bacon.

ing their persons, impressing this association on the mind. Moore, who, by the way, introduces a rose into almost every one of his lyrics, makes one of the victims of the veiled Prophet of Khorassan express, with a sad and sweet earnestness, her kindred love for the flowers and the home of her childhood, in the beautiful song, beginning,

There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream."

I was charmed with the sentiments of a young Frenchman, who, having lost his mistress, carved with his own hands a rose upon her tombstone, beneath which he inscribed C'est ainsi qu'elle fut!

Ovid, in some beautiful verses, thus figuratively describes the day-breaking.

Dumque ea magnanimus Phaethon miratur opusque

Perspicit ecce vigil nitido patefacit ab ortu
Purpureas Aurora feres, et plena rosarum
Atria

Among the poets who have celebrated the rose, and made it a moral teacher, Goethe, in modern times, has been the most successful. What can be more exquisite than his

Regardless of its thorny spray,

The child would tear the rose away;
The rose bewailed with sob and sigh,
But all in vain, no help was nigh

To quell the urchin's power.

My little rose, my rose bud dear!

My rose that bloom'd the road-side near!

When roses were first introduced into England, they were exceedingly rare, and used principally in the decoration of churches;