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were zealous cultivators of science, Townley, Milbourn, Horrox, Crabtree, and Gascoigne, belong to the succeeding generation.

But if it cannot be found that he published any thing in this later period of his life, to carry out the design which in his youth he seems to have conceived, we have a remarkable proof of his attachment to those studies having continued with him in the place of his retired abode; for in his will he describes himself thus :-"John Feild of Ardslow, fermor, sometymes studente in the mathematicall sciences." This last clause was not necessary for his identification, and can have been introduced only as an expression of his attachment to the studies of his youth; an affectionate remembrance of them, coupled perhaps with something of regret, that they had been too much abandoned. The will to which this description of the testator is prefixed, was made in his last illness. He describes himself in the usual form, as then "weak in body." The date is December 28, 1586, and the probate is dated May 3, 1587. There is also something peculiar in the disposition of his body, which he directs shall be interred "in the church porch at Ardsley, where I am now a parishioner.' The appointments respecting his property show that he was a man of substance, and I would venture to infer of a generous and liberal mind. To fulfil his engagement to his wife at their marriage, he gives her all his interest in the farmhold where he dwells, and the water corn-mill belonging, held on lease, with power to leave it to which of her sons she pleases. To James Field and Martin Field, his two youngest sons, he gives all his plate and jewels, of gold and silver. To five hundred poor folks, a penny dole, and dining to all his poor neighbours. He gives something to all his godchildren. Articles of apparel to different persons, and "to my gossoppe William Sherley and Rowland of the New Park (he is so described), my hunting-horn and the rest pertaining to it, with an English book, at my wife's discretion." He was not without his trials: "To my disloyal and loose-lived son Richard one silver spoon, in full payment and satisfaction of his child's part; and if not satisfied with it, that he lose the benefit of it." The residue of his estate he gives to his eight younger children, to be bestowed equally at the discretion of his wife. He makes her executrix, and names for supervisors Robert Greenwood, gent.* Robert Allott of Bentley, tanner, and Mr. William Dyneley of Swillington.

The will of Field is in the registry of the Archbishop's court at York, where also is the will of Jane Field his widow, who survived till 1609, continuing to reside at Ardsley. It bears date July 17, 1609, and the probate the 6th of February following. She desires to be buried near her husband in the porch at Ardsley. She gives 20 shillings to the poor who shall be at her burying. To her sons Thomas, James, and Martin, each 10 shillings; to Mary Field, daughter of Richard Field, ten marks, when 21, or married with consent of her uncles Matthew and William Field. "To my son Matthew, my ring off my finger. To his wife 10 shillings in gold, to make her a ring. To my son Matthew's children, 31. 6s. 8d. to be divided among them." The residue to her son William, whom she makes executor. Her son Matthew and her next neighbour, Henry Walker, to be the supervisors.

Ardsley has not been careful to preserve the memory of its old inhabitants. There is no memorial of this somewhat remarkable person in the porch where he lies interred, or in or about any part of the church. The early parish registers have been suffered to disappear. Those now existing begin in 1654, and 1662. The village contains no house which can be supposed to have been the residence of Field, for the manor house has the date 1653, and this is the only house which has any appearance of antiquity. There is nothing come down by tradition. I add, as a somewhat remarkable fact, that though what

This Greenwood was an attorney; a near neighbour of Field, having bought lands at East and West Ardsley, in the 15th of Elizabeth. He was a supervisor of the will of John Freston of Altofts, an intended great public benefactor, in 37th of Elizabeth. His son, James Greenwood of Westerton, was Clerk of the Peace for the West Riding. Christopher Saxton was one of the witnesses to Freston's will, which shows his residence in these parts.

I have here recovered is beyond all suspicion authentic, there is not, as far as I know, any notice of him in the large collections of Dodsworth, Hopkinson, Thoresby, or Brooke, for Yorkshire history and Yorkshire writers.

The manor-house has the owl carved upon the porch. This is the ancient and favourite badge of the family of Savile, to whose possessions Ardsley, or the chiefest part of it, accrued. It was the branch who had the splendid seat at Howley. The Earl of Cardigan is now the representative.

Of the children of Field, Richard, the eldest, who was born in 1562, was, as we have seen, renounced. A daughter of his was living in 1609, but there is no notice of any son. Of Christopher, John, Thomas, James, Martin, and Anne, all named in the Visitation pedigree, and most of them in the wills, nothing more has been recovered. Two other sons remain, Matthew, the second, and William, the fifth. These seem to have been the most trusted by the mother in 1609.

Matthew Field was living at Ardsley in 1615, when, in conjunction with William Field, then of Carhead in the parish of Silkston, he demised one fourth part of the manor of Idle, with lands in Idle, Thorpe, Wrose, and Windhill, lately purchased by them of Sir John Savile.

William Field became seated at Carhead, in consequence of his marriage with the widow of George Burdet of that place, gent. a daughter of John Sotwell, who was vicar of Peniston. Nothing is known of any issue. But a "Judith Field of Peniston in Yorkshire," who appears in the Berkshire Visitation of 1664, as then the wife of John Mundy, Mayor of Newbury, may be conjectured to belong to this part of the family, Mr. Sotwell the vicar, having come into the North from the part of the country where Berkshire adjoins to Wiltshire.

Matthew Field took by fine from Clifton, one of the coheirs of the Sir John Constable before mentioned, the manor of Thurnscoe, in the parts of Yorkshire between Barnsley and Doncaster. It appears by the will of his mother in 1609, that he was then married and had issue. He was living at Ardsley in 1617, in which year, being described as Matthew Field of Ardsley, gent. he entered into a bond with Richard Waterhouse of Clayton in BradfordDale, for performance of covenants; and to this bond his son and heir apparent, so described, James Field was made a party.

This James Field, the only child of Matthew at present known, resided at Thurnscoe, where he appears in the Register having several children baptised, whose names are James, Robert, and Anne, 1628, 1631, and 1639. The last died an infant. What became of the other two, I have not discovered, but as there is no notice of the family in Dugdale's Visitation in 1665-6, it may be presumed that they had left the county. The register of Thurnscoe is very imperfect, and does not show even the death of the elder James. He had another child, whose name was Judith, who, by the description of "Judith Field of Thurnscoe in Yorkshire," is entered in the parish register of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, as married on Nov. 7, 1648, at Rothwell, to Joshua Sylvester of Mansfield, gent. The issue of this marriage was six sons, Joshua, James, Field, Gregory, Oliver, and a second Joshua; and four daughters, Judith, Cassandra, Jane, and Margaret, who became the wife of Lieut.-Col. George Etherege. Field Sylvester lived in great reputation at Sheffield in Yorkshire, and died in 1717.

Future inquirers, if such should arise, may be more successful in tracing the descendants of this somewhat remarkable person; and pity it is, that inquiries of this kind should be so often rendered unsuccessful by the destruction of monuments and registers, and that there should not be provided that which would be the greatest of all assistance to inquiries such as these, printed calendars of testators whose wills are to be found. We have seen of what use evidence of this kind has been; and what use it is here, that it is in all families of the rank and condition of the one before us. We have seen also, that when this source of evidence fails, how poor and imperfect an account can be rendered. Testamentary evidence no doubt does exist in some of the many depositories of that species of evidence, but it is to incur endless expense, and to

suffer perpetual disappointments, to inquire at various offices without having the assistance which a printed calendar would at once afford.

Field, I

Beside the purchase of a part of the manor of Idle, the Fields had other transactions with the Saviles of Howley. Sir John Savile made one of his daughters his executrix, and she employed Daniel Foxcroft and believe James, to manage the affairs. This it probably was, which placed Field and the first Lord Savile, son of Sir John, in that hostile position in which we find them in 1633, and thence to 1638, when they had a Star-chamber matter, Field asserting that Savile locked him in a room of his house, and there by threats, producing a dagger, compelled him to sign a certain writing, and then to take an oath on the Bible never to reveal what had passed. The subject is often alluded to in the published Correspondence of the Earl of Strafford.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GARDENING, BY J. C. LOUDON. 4 Parts, 1833. WE envy Mr. Loudon the serene nature of his pursuits, the tranquillity of his studies, and the elegance of his subjects, free from the tumults of passion, the corrosions of care, and the contradiction of those people with whom the land swarms,―scribes, pharisees, publicans, and sinners. While other men are toiling along the dusty and dirty roads of life, immured in business, eager for gain, distracted with hopes, or sick of vexation and disappointment, our author peeps forth from the loophole of his retreat on the restless and busy crowd, contemplates them with the same indifference as he would the ant-hill at his feet; and then turns back delighted to his charming occupations, of arranging and collecting the treasures of nature; numbering the flowers of the field, and bringing before him the whole hive of Flora's sweets and smells. What a distinct language Mr. Loudon speaks from that of ordinary mortals; in what different characters his thoughts and recollections move! Common mortals are discoursing of broad cloths and kersemeres, of block tin, and pit-coal, and culm; of proof gin, and rum and molasses; of omnium and scrip, and navy five per cents; of writs and pleas, and demurrers and tam qui actions; and all the jargon that has been invented to express the restless and various occupations and complicated concerns of busy life. Mr. Loudon, in his museum at Bayswater, hears not a whisper of this, does not know of its existence. He never notices silver or gold, or if he does, it is when he speaks of the golden rod, the silver fir, and the copper beech. He talks only with fauns and silvans; sees no one but a dryad with a blue apron, like a gardener, or Pomona herself in the shape of a market woman; while his conversation is of magnolias and proteas, and liriodendrons, and the pinus palustris, and the eleagnus argentea; of magnificent araucarias, or splendid citronieres; what cares he what Mr. Rothschild and Mr. Baring are doing; what thousands they are adding to the millions already got? What thinks he of my Lord Grey and Mr. Poulett Thompson, and the fight between the Corn Bill and the spinning jennies, and the Church Reform and the quaking Bishops, and the growling Dissenters ? All this to him is "as the sound of thunder heard remote;" it rolls by his grotto, and does not even disturb his sleep. No! his heroes are Monsieur Boursault and Monsieur Bodin, and Admiral Tchitchazoff, and Josephine; and his heart is in the garden of Malmaison and the pleasure-grounds at Epenal. There can be no doubt that he is the happiest man in existence, and that all besides are in "wandering error lost." Men doomed, like the mole, to be toiling and moiling in the earth, while he is soaring and fluttering, and sipping the nectar of wisdom and delight from a thousand sweets in the Elysée Bourbon, and the garden of Bel Respiro.

The Work before us contains a history of Horticulture in various countries and its various branches; and an account of all the finest and choicest gardens, and vegetable productions now existing. The first Number chiefly includes the gardens of Italy. It is unnecessary to say that they bear but little resemblance to those of England, either in the constituents of their beauty, their form, or GENT. MAG. VOL. I. 3 R

their productions. All gardens must be suited to the climate and soil which they possess. The Sun of Italy forbids a verdant and luxuriant * lawn to expand its ample bosom, and refresh the eye with its smooth and pleasing surface; and if the Italians could have green carpets spread by nature, no one would think of sunning himself upon them. An open lawn would be the very thing avoided and feared. Therefore, they delight in thickets of evergreen oak, and arbutus, and bay; in fine open groves, formed of the tall pillars of the stone pine,† and its broad shadowy canopy above; in fountains tossed aloft from marble basins, refreshing both the sight and feeling; in orchards perfumed by orange trees; in cypresses waving their tall and gigantic plumes § beside the lake; in carob-trees, || and palms, and pomegranates; in arbours and boscages, and trellised walks, and open colonnades, and in topiary designs, and statuary and antique urns, and that select and classical ornament that unites the richness of architecture to the form and beauty of the landscape. Many of the gardens at Rome will illustrate this description; those of the Ludovisi Palace in particular. Naples also affords some delightful and luxurious grounds, filled with palms, magnolias,¶ and exotic trees, and refreshed by gales loaded with the perfume of the citron and the orange; and enjoying superb views over the enchanting Bay, the Isle of Capri, and the long and varied shore towards Sorento, and the shells of gold. More northerly, the finest gardens are the Boboli at Florence, and those bearing the regal name at Monza, near to Milan. Some of the Genoese gardens, though on a smaller scale, are very beautiful; and were the Italian nobles as rich, as free, as intelligent, and as enterprising as the English, doubtless they might realize almost the fairy garden of Armida, and bring forth into creation the highest fictions of poetry and romance. Scenery in all its parts, of the finest kind, they possess ; and in the south of Italy, they might unite many of the richest vegetable productions of the tropics to those belonging to the latitudes of northern Europe; but transit gloria mundi! — Confiscation and robbery finished what bigotry and tyranny, and luxury and distress, and despotism and vice began.

"We turn where France expands her gay domain." And here indeed we find horticulture to be in a high state of perfection. Not much advance was made during the reign of Napoleon: the greatest, we presume, was to be seen in the garden of Malmaison, where the amiable, enlightened, and the unfortunate

* The solitary green lawn in Italy is in the English garden at Caserta. It is irrigated from the neighbouring cascade. The gravel of this garden was brought from Kensington. The gardener, who came from Mile-end, was murdered by the Italians. + We remember a magnificent grove of tall stone pines near the Cascina at Florence; and, shocked to see the axe applied to them, we held the hand of the ruthless woodcutter, while we asked him the reason of the unnatural havock,-" Lest the cones should fall on the heads of the Grand Duke's children," was the reply, and the axe went again to work.

There is an orange orchard in Sardinia above three miles long; those on the south of Italy can be scented at a great distance.

§ Some of the cypresses of the Lago Maggiore, and the Lago de Como are of immense size. There is one said to be 2000 years old; there were some on the Lake of Como whose girth we could not span with less than three embraces of our extended arms. Their age undoubtedly is very great.

|| How far north will the carob-tree (the ceratenia) grow? Is it in the Jardin des Plantes, in the pleine terre ?

There is a very large magnolia grandiflora in a walled garden near the Chiaia; and a beautiful palm near the church where the poet Sannazar is buried. We found upon inquiry that the palm was of exceedingly slow growth indeed, which appeared to be the reason that it was little planted. What a fine one stands by the road-side, on the way to Pæstum ! The manner in which the palm increases in size, is different from that of other trees.

In Sicily the sugarcane, the date palm, the pepper-tree (which also grows near Naples), the papyrus, and the banana, flourish in the open air. Mr. Eustace, in his Travels in Italy, said that the trees on the Chiaia at Naples were orange trees. Mr. Hobhouse ridiculed him extremely for his mistake, and said they were acacias; but, lo, and behold, they are neither! they consist of the ailanthus glandulosa, and the melea azederach. So much for criticism! "Critics there are that other names deface."

Josephine had formed a superb collection at an immense expense. But foreign plants were not to be procured by the French during the war; for they found their way into the holds of English cruisers, and got to Kew and Kensington, instead of the Jardin des Plantes; and it is said that Napoleon never saw a pine apple on his own table. When peace came, the amateurs of Faunus and Flora flocked over here, and sent immense stores from our great nurseries at Hammersmith and Fulham, and Hackney, to enrich their collections. As regards the French and ourselves, we mutually excel and are excelled,-petimusque damusque vicissim. Our advantages are in a milder winter, a more various soil, and a green and finer turf. Theirs, in an earlier spring, a more vigorous and richer summer, a drier air, and a more mellow autumn. We think that the balance of advantage clearly lies in their favour; and if they could obtain a fine binding gravel for their walks, and could select such grasses as would give them a soft, short, fine, elastic, equal turf, they then would have nothing more to ask of us. We cannot compete with them in the most distant way in our orangeries; * and, indeed, our climate, and especially our long, damp, and foggy winters, are extremely unfavourable to the whole tribe of citrons. The oleander and pomegranate are no ornaments to our gardens; they form the glory and pride of the French. The datura arborea is seldom seen here in perfection; but in the autumn it is common even in the streets of Paris; and its long tube-like snowy flowers are splendid indeed. It is astonishing how small a change of latitude affects the flowering of plants. Even so far north, as in the markets of Rouen and Brussels and Ghent, the pomegranate bears profusely. Our standard magnolia (grandiflora) are mere sickly dwarfs compared to those near Paris. Their Judas trees are magnificent. The deciduous magnolias ripen their seeds, which they seldom or ever do here. The catalpa and gleditchia bear their fine long pods or sced vessels, which we never saw in England. The minosa julibrissin will not grow as a standard here, and imperfectly against a wall. In the garden at Rouen (so near!!!) there is a fine specimen. We wish particularly that Mr. Loudon would give us an account of the comparative height of the thermometer during the summer months, at Paris, Rouen, Brussels, London, and Reading (or Oxford, or any other town, beyond the reach of the artificial heat of the Metropolis,) we should then be able better to estimate the causes of the great superiority which France possesses, in so slight a variation of latitude, over us; and it might suggest some hints to us, as regards the flowering of our plants. We believe the annual range of the thermometer with us is highest at Cheltenham and Gosport but can Mr. Loudon tell us what county, or what part of England, enjoys the highest summer temperature, and how nearly that approaches the summer temperature of Normandy? We should much like an answer to this question.

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The gardens of Holland (and we are writing from personal observations and recollections on these points) are more favourable to American plants and the magnolia tribe, than our own. Chiefly, we suppose, from their possessing an extremely kindly soil (peat and heath), and from the moisture of the climate, and their comparative freedom from high winds. The same may be said of the Netherlands. It appears to us that the parts of England best suited to the

Mr. Tate, the gardener in Sloane-square, purchased all the fine old orange trees belonging to the Montmorenci family near Rouen. He brought them over in a steam vessel; and last year they perfumed the air in Sloane-street and Cadogan-place. He purposes to treat them as the French do; immure them in the winter in darkness, without water or heat, so that they lose their leaves, and bring them out in the spring; an experiment which, if it succeed, will be of great advantage to us, in our future treatment of this plant.

+ The Judas tree is the underwood of the Neapolitan woods; it fills the place of our hazel; as the terebinthus on the heath and hills does of our furze or heath. The hedges near Padua are formed of Judas and pomegranate.

One of the finest specimens of the gleditschia triacanthos in England, is in the garden of Sylvanus Urban, Gent. at Hammersmith, as fine as those at Lord Tankerville's. There is a very fine one in the Clock-house garden at Chelsea.

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