The exploit of strength, dexterity and speed
    To him nor vanity, nor joy could bring.

A sort of Garden Academy, therefore, full of pleasant shades, would be peculiarly suited to the tastes and habits of our Indian Collegians.  They are not fond of cricket or leap-frog.  They would rejoice to devote a leisure hour to pensive letterings in a pleasure-garden, and on an occasional holiday would gladly pursue even their severest studies, book in hand, amidst verdant bowers.  A stranger from Europe beholding them, in their half-Grecian garments, thus wandering amidst the trees, would be reminded of the disciples of Plato.

“It is not easy,” observes Lord Kames, “to suppress a degree of enthusiasm, when we reflect on the advantages of gardening with respect to virtuous education.  In the beginning of life the deepest impressions are made; and it is a sad truth, that the young student, familiarized to the dirtiness and disorder of many colleges pent within narrow bounds in populous cities, is rendered in a measure insensible to the elegant beauties of art and nature.  It seems to me far from an exaggeration, that good professors are not more essential to a college, than a spacious garden, sweetly ornamented, but without any thing glaring or fantastic, is upon the whole to inspire our youth with a taste no less for simplicity than for elegance.  In this respect the University of Oxford may justly be deemed a model.”

It may be expected that I should offer a few hints on the laying out of gardens.  Much has been said (by writers on ornamental and landscape gardening) on art and nature, and almost always has it been implied that these must necessarily be in direct opposition.  I am far from being of this opinion.  If art and nature be not in some points of view almost identical, they are at least very good friends, or may easily be made so.  They are not necessarily hostile.  They admit of the most harmonious combinations.  In no place are such combinations more easy or more proper than in a garden.  Walter Scott very truly calls a garden the child of Art.  But is it not also the child of Nature?—­of Nature and Art together?  To attempt to exclude art—­or even, the appearance of art—­from a small garden enclosure, is idle and absurd.  He who objects to all art in the arrangement of a flower-bed, ought, if consistent with himself, to turn away with an expression of disgust from a well arranged nosegay in a rich porcelain vase.  But who would not loathe or laugh at such manifest affectation or such thoroughly bad taste?  As there is a time for every thing, so also is there a place for every thing.  No man of true judgment would desire to trace the hand of human art on the form of nature in remote and gigantic forests, and amidst vast mountains, as irregular as the billows of a troubled sea.  In such scenery there is a sublime grace in wildness,—­there “the very weeds are beautiful.”  But what true judgment would be enchanted with weeds and wildness in the small parterre.  As Pope rightly says, we must