[006] I have in some moods preferred the paintings of our own Gainsborough even to those of Claude—­and for this single reason, that the former gives a peculiar and more touching interest to his landscapes by the introduction of sweet groups of children.  These lovely little figures are moreover so thoroughly English, and have such an out-of-doors air, and seem so much a part of external nature, that an Englishman who is a lover of rural scenery and a patriot, can hardly fail to be enchanted with the style of his celebrated countryman.—­Literary Recreations.

[007] Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his ’Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees,’ &c. his name would have excited the gratitude of posterity.  The voice of the patriot exults in his dedication to Charles II, prefixed to one of the later editions:—­’I need not acquaint your Majesty, how many millions of timber-trees, besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted throughout your vast dominions, at the instigation and by the sole direction of this work, because your Majesty has been pleased to own it publicly for my encouragement.’  And surely while Britain retains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the ‘Sylva’ of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks.  It was a retired philosopher who aroused the genius of the nation, and who casting a prophetic eye towards the age in which we live, has contributed to secure our sovereignty of the seas.  The present navy of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted.—­D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature.

[008] Crisped knots are figures curled or twisted, or having waving lines intersecting each other.  They are sometimes planted in box.  Children, even in these days, indulge their fancy in sowing mustard and cress, &c. in ‘curious knots,’ or in favorite names and sentences.  I have done it myself, “I know not how oft,”—­and alas, how long ago!  But I still remember with what anxiety I watered and watched the ground, and with what rapture I at last saw the surface gradually rising and breaking on the light green heads of the delicate little new-born plants, all exactly in their proper lines or stations, like a well-drilled Lilliputian battalion.

Shakespeare makes mention of garden knots in his Richard the Second, where he compares an ill governed state to a neglected garden.

    Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
    Keep law, and form, and due proportion,
    Showing, as in a model, our firm estate? 
    When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
    Is full of weeds; her finest flowers choked up,
    Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
    Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
    Swarming with caterpillars.

There is an allusion to garden knots in Holinshed’s Chronicle.  In 1512 the Earl of Northumberland “had but one gardener who attended hourly in the garden for setting of erbis and chipping of knottis and sweeping the said garden clean.”