In sunny garden bowers
    Where vernal winds each tree’s low tones awaken,
    And buds and bells with changes mark the hours.

He discovered that it was more profitable to solicit nature than to flatter the great.

For Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.

People of a poetical temperament—­all true lovers of nature—­can afford, far better than more essentially worldly beings, to exclaim with Thomson.

    I care not Fortune what you me deny,
    You cannot bar me of free Nature’s grace,
    You cannot shut the windows of the sky
    Through which Aurora shows her brightening face: 
    You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
    The woods and lawns and living streams at eve: 
    Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
    And I their toys to the great children leave:—­
    Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.

The pride in a garden laid out under one’s own directions and partly cultivated by one’s own hand has been alluded to as in some degree unworthy of the dignity of manhood, not only by mere men of the world, or silly coxcombs, but by people who should have known better.  Even Sir William Temple, though so enthusiastic about his fruit-trees, tells us that he will not enter upon any account of flowers, having only pleased himself with seeing or smelling them, and not troubled himself with the care of them, which he observes “is more the ladies part than the men’s.”  Sir William makes some amends for this almost contemptuous allusion to flowers in particular by his ardent appreciation of the use of gardens and gardening in general.  He thus speaks of their attractions and advantages:  “The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of the smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercise of working or walking, but above all, the exemption from cares and solicitude, seem equally to favor and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease of the body and mind.”  Again:  “As gardening has been the inclination of kings and the choice of philosophers, so it has been the common favorite of public and private men, a pleasure of the greatest and the care of the meanest; and indeed an employment and a possession for which no man is too high or too low.”  This is just and liberal; though I can hardly help still feeling a little sore at Sir William’s having implied in the passage previously quoted, that the care of flowers is but a feminine occupation.  As an elegant amusement, it is surely equally well fitted for all lovers of the beautiful, without reference to their sex.

It is not women and children only who delight in flower-gardens.  Lord Bacon and William Pitt and the Earl of Chatham and Fox and Burke and Warren Hastings—­all lovers of flowers—­were assuredly not men of frivolous minds or of feminine habits.  They were always eager to exhibit to visitors the beauty of their parterres.  In his declining years the stately John Kemble left the stage for his garden.  That sturdy English yeoman, William Cobbett, was almost as proud of his beds of flowers as of the pages of his Political Register.  He thus speaks of gardening: