the remainder of my life only to the culture of them and the study of nature,” The late Miss Mitford, whose writings breathe so freshly of the nature that she loved so dearly, realized for herself a similar desire.  It is said that she had the cottage of a peasant with the garden of a Duchess.  Cowley is not contented with expressing in plain prose his appreciation of garden enjoyments.  He repeatedly alludes to them in verse.

    Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil’s praise)
    The old Corycian yeoman passed his days;
    Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent;
    Th’ ambassadors, which the great emperor sent
    To offer him a crown, with wonder found
    The reverend gardener, hoeing of his ground;
    Unwillingly and slow and discontent
    From his loved cottage to a throne he went;
    And oft he stopped, on his triumphant way: 
    And oft looked back:  and oft was heard to say
    Not without sighs, Alas!  I there forsake
    A happier kingdom than I go to take.

Lib.  IV.  Plantarum.

Here is a similar allusion by the same poet to the delights which great men amongst the ancients have taken in a rural retirement.

    Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walk
    In the Salonian garden’s noble shade
    Which by his own imperial hands was made,
    I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk
    With the ambassadors, who come in vain
    To entice him to a throne again.

    “If I, my friends,” said he, “should to you show
    All the delights which in these gardens grow,
    ’Tis likelier much that you should with me stay,
    Than ’tis that you should carry me away: 
    And trust me not, my friends, if every day
    I walk not here with more delight,

    Than ever, after the most happy sight
    In triumph to the Capitol I rode,
    To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god,”

The Garden.

Cowley does not omit the important moral which a garden furnishes.

Where does the wisdom and the power divine In a more bright and sweet reflection shine?  Where do we finer strokes and colors see Of the Creator’s real poetry.  Than when we with attention look Upon the third day’s volume of the book?  If we could open and intend our eye We all, like Moses, might espy, E’en in a bush, the radiant Deity.

In Leigh Hunt’s charming book entitled The Town, I find the following notice of the partiality of poets for houses with gardens attached to them:—­