[003] “That which peculiarly distinguishes the gardens of England,” says Repton, “is the beauty of English verdure:  the grass of the mown lawn, uniting with, the grass of the adjoining pastures, and presenting that permanent verdure which is the natural consequence of our soft and humid clime, but unknown to the cold region of the North or the parching temperature of the South.  This it is impossible to enjoy in Portugal where it would be as practicable to cover the general surface with the snow of Lapland as with the verdure of England.”  It is much the same in France.  “There is everywhere in France,” says Loudon, “a want of close green turf, of ever-green bushes and of good adhesive gravel.”  Some French admirers of English gardens do their best to imitate our lawns, and it is said that they sometimes partially succeed with English grass seed, rich manure, and constant irrigation.  In Bengal there is a very beautiful species of grass called Doob grass, (Panicum Dactylon,) but it only flourishes on wide and exposed plains with few trees on them, and on the sides of public roads, Shakespeare makes Falstaff say that “the camomile the more it is trodden on the faster it grows” and, this is the case with the Doob grass.  The attempt to produce a permanent Doob grass lawn is quite idle unless the ground is extensive and open, and much trodden by men or sheep.  A friend of mine tells me that he covered a large lawn of the coarse Ooloo grass (Saccharum cylindricum) with mats, which soon killed it, and on removing the mats, the finest Doob grass sprang up in its place.  But the Ooloo grass soon again over-grew the Doob.

[004] I allude here chiefly to the ryots of wealthy Zemindars and to other poor Hindu people in the service of their own countrymen.  All the subjects of the British Crown, even in India, are politically free, but individually the poorer Hindus, (especially those who reside at a distance from large towns,) are unconscious of their rights, and even the wealthier classes have rarely indeed that proud and noble feeling of personal independence which characterizes people of all classes and conditions in England.  The feeling with which even a Hindu of wealth and rank approaches a man in power is very different indeed from that of the poorest Englishman under similar circumstances.  But national education will soon communicate to the natives of India a larger measure of true self-respect.  It will not be long, I hope, before the Hindus will understand our favorite maxim of English law, that “Every man’s house is his castle,”—­a maxim so finely amplified by Lord Chatham:  “The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown.  It may be frail—­its roof may shake—­the wind may blow through it—­the storm may enter—­but the king of England cannot enter!—­all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.”

[005] Literary Recreations.