first warmly smote
    The open field, and where the unpierced shade
    Imbrown’d the noontide bowers; thus was this place
    A happy rural seat of various view;
    Groves whose rich, trees wept odorous gums and balm;
    Others whose fruit, burnish’d with golden rind,
    Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,
    If true, here only, and of delicious taste: 
    Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
    Grazing the tender herb, were interposed;
    Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap
    Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
    Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose: 
    Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
    Of cool recess, o’er which the mantling vine
    Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
    Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall
    Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
    That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown’d
    Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams. 
    The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
    Breathing the smell of field and grove attune,
    The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
    Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
    Led on the eternal Spring.

Pope in his grounds at Twickenham, and Shenstone in his garden farm of the Leasowes, taught their countrymen to understand how much taste and refinement of soul may be connected with the laying out of gardens and the cultivation of flowers.  I am sorry to learn that the famous retreats of these poets are not now what they were.  The lovely nest of the little Nightingale of Twickenham has fallen into vulgar hands.  And when Mr. Loudon visited (in 1831) the once beautiful grounds of Shenstone, he “found them in a state of indescribable neglect and ruin.”

Pope said that of all his works that of which he was proudest was his garden.  It was of but five acres, or perhaps less, but to this he is said to have given a charming variety.  He enumerates amongst the friends who assisted him in the improvement of his grounds, the gallant Earl of Peterborough “whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines.”

    Know, all the distant din that world can keep,
    Rolls o’er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep. 
    There my retreat the best companions grace
    Chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place. 
    There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl
    The feast of reason and the flow of soul;
    And he whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines
    Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines;
    Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain
    Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.

Frederick Prince of Wales took a lively interest in Pope’s tasteful Tusculanum and made him a present of some urns or vases either for his “laurel circus or to terminate his points.”  His famous grotto, which he is so fond of alluding to, was excavated to avoid an inconvenience.  His property lying on both sides of the public highway, he contrived his highly ornamented passage under the road to preserve privacy and to connect the two portions of his estate.