ers of the past. We doubt even whether there are now many masters of fox-hounds who would give two thousand guineas for a pack of hounds—the price which was paid for Mr. Warde's, who, by the way, was a master of hounds for over fifty-seven years. There are great packs in existence to-day, and numerous followers of the hounds, but too many of the latter have a closer resemblance to the types which the late Mr. Surtees drew in "Mr. Soapey Sponge and "Mr. Facy Romford," than to Warde, Osbaldestone, or Assheton Smith. It may even be questioned whether there are many huntsmen left like the famous George Carter, who had but one wish that he might be laid by his master, with two hunters, and "a fine couple of his honor's hounds, all ready to start again together in the next world" -a sentiment for which the red man of the plains would have hailed him with delight as a friend and a brother. It will be understood, then, that we have nothing to say against fox-hunting. Some writers have affirmed, we know not on what authority, that the eel likes to be skinned. "None of us know for certain," as the old huntsman remarked to his mistress after his master's death, when the pack was to be broken up, "that the foxes don't like to be hunted;" and this we will say, that the fox often, shows as much enjoyment in the sport as if he did. A crafty veteran, the sire of a numerous progeny, who thoroughly knows his way about the country, and has learned that neither hounds nor men are infallible, will treat the hunt as a little relaxation from the monotony of existence, and enter into it with quite as much alacrity as could reasonably be expected from him. Even when all his earths are stopped, the chances are that his native cunning will save him from the pursuers -as in the case of the fox which tucked himself up comfortably in a drain-pipe lying in a farm yard shed, and calmly continued the slumber which the hounds had interrupted. Moreover, the fox must either be disposed of in some way or other, or all the ducks and chickens within a dozen miles of his lair will disappear. We have known him to empty a poultry yard in a couple of nights, and take a sitting duck off her nest, and then come back for the eggs, so that he might not be accused of letting anything be wasted. In hard weather, we have seen his tracks right up to the kitchen door of a house; it was only a wonder that he did not get in. One day last summer, in broad daylight, a fox made a raid upon a farmyard, in full view of several men who were at work close by. A laborer who was on the top of a stack threw a fork at the daring intruder, but the fox went straight up to the fowl which he had marked, and carried it off in triumph. He had depended for refuge upon the standing corn near the house, which covered his operations until he made the final sortie. The quantity of feathers and bones round a fox-hole where some young are receiving their daily rations, would astonish any one who had not taken the meas. ure of Reynard's inexhaustible stomach. If he once works his way into a poultry house, he will clear it out, first killing the occupants rapidly to stop their noise, and then returning for them as fast as his legs can carry him; and thus, with a well-filled larder, he and his family carouse in perfect safety, in some snug recess not far from the principal entrance to the mansion. The fox, if he had a choice in the matter, would doubtless prefer to be set on foot in his native haunts, with a pack of hounds behind him, and the whole country before him, rather than be taken in a trap or slain by poison. The temptation of a supper of ducks' heads and other "fixings" overpowers the suspicion and caution of the wisest fox in existence, and then to find that the duck was stuffed with arsenic or strychnine instead of with sage and onions must be a sad surprise to him. Death is welcome after this de struction of all confidence in the treach erous human race. Poison would be the doom of the fox-for it is not easy to catch him in a trap-if the passion for hunting were to die out. Every good housewife and every careful farmer would rise up in arms against him; and even now, in many districts where the foxes are too abundant, the inclination to invoke the aid of the chemist is very strong. We have no doubt that when the partridge is almost in danger of extermination by the fox, the fatal dish of têtes de canards is spread for him oftener than masters of hounds suppose, the ghastly proof of the crime being huddled under ground at the dead of night. One day last winter, however, we came upon two dead foxes which had not been thus secreted, perhaps because they had strayed some distance to die. Such a sight as this would have been almost fatal to Assheton Smith, who greatly alarmed his family one morning by turning very white, and dropping the paper with an exclamation of horror. After recovering himself, he was just able to explain, in words broken by emotion, that a dog fox had been burnt to death in | touched by it as by the genial influences a barn. Some people object to fox-hunting on the score of cruelty, while they can see nothing cruel in salmon-fishing, although a salmon with a hook in his gills can scarcely be said to have a fair "run" for bis life. Others object to partridge and pheasant shooting, but we never knew them object to eating a partridge or a pheasant when shot. We cannot sympa thize with either class, but it is easy to understand the outcry which is renewed louder and louder every year against harehunting. It is curious that so much excitement should be found in tearing madly after a timid little creature which has scarcely any chance of escape its eyes protruding in an agony of terror, gasping for breath, outnumbered and outmatched, half paralyzed by fatigue and dread, until at last a pack of thirty or forty hounds overtake and despatch it, the poor animal screaming like a child in some awful extremity of pain. It might be supposed that a woman who had once heard that scream would be particularly careful not to place herself in a position where she would be likely to hear it again; and yet a good field will probably have half a score of horsewomen in it, and twice as many men, all thirsting for the blood of a hare. "She run for nearly two hours," said a man to us once on the spot where a hare had just succumbed to her implacable foes, "and at last she was so worn out that she actually could not move a step further. She dropped right down. What a splendid run!" It was not precisely the criticism which we should have been disposed to make on such a piece of work. À moderate taste for sport will do a man no harm when he is living in the country, although, as we have intimated already, and hope to prove, he ought to be able to get on perfectly well without it. No doubt it may often be an advantage to have a strong motive for going out for a long walk, such as is supplied by the prospect of picking up a couple of brace or so of birds in the course of the afternoon. With a dog and a gun, one may wander on for hours without a thought of feeling tired. But if love of the country is in a man, he has only to put on his hat and walk out of doors, and an ample fund of amusement is always spread before him. There is always something new offering itself for notice, even in winter. "I please myself," says Emerson, "with observing the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much of summer. To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty." Some of the pleasantest days we can recall in the country have been those in winter. If the weather is rough and fierce, so much the better chance is there of meeting a rare bird far off on the hills, or among the secluded hollows, where perhaps there is an old battered tree, or long couch grass, to afford a little shelter. On a stormy day, indeed, there is a wild sense of exultation in going on in the teeth of half a gale of wind, with black clouds driving swiftly overhead, and the sea roaring in the distance. for if one lives in a country where the sea can be made out from the tops of the hills, it is a great advantage, since on no two days do hills and sea ever wear the same aspect. Some new effect of cloud or sunshine always strikes the eye. All this can only be appreciated in the country, for what can we do in bad weather in the city-against London rain, for instance, which returns spitefully from the pavement mixed with mud? No place is so wretched or so filthy as a great town on a wet day; whereas in the country there are the trees and the green grass, all sweet and pure, with the song of a bird or two to enliven the spirits if they are disposed to flag. And if no other attraction can be found outside, there is always the garden, that great and unfailing source of interest and pleasure to every man or woman whom the world has not quite demoralized. A man who lives in the country is sure to be warned by his friends that he will grow rusty, and he may sometimes fear that it is even so; but let him take good heart. There is nothing dropped which cannot very soon be picked up. When he leaves his snug harborage, and goes out into the great world again, does he find that people are so much more contented than he is are they happier amid their gay surroundings, or fresher in mind or body? What does it all come to, this wonderful London talk, when it is sifted out and weighed in the balance? Ideas that are worth having are not more numerous in the world than they were, and there is no magic in the city which causes them to spring up in the mind unsought for. If the dweller in the country has used his time well, he will find that his faculties have been sharpened by seclusion and reflection, rather than blunted; he has read a good deal, perhaps, and at any rate he has thought. He is entirely independent of the resources which make up nearly all tence: 46 the pleasures of life in the eyes of the devotee of the town. He can live for a few weeks, if necessary, without once entering a club or going to a dinner party. He knows the sort of gossip that is always running on in slightly different channels, and the desire to hear more of it is not at all keen within him. As for the men in great positions—as for the ruling intellects, the profound minds, the gifted statesmen - who that has closely studied their lives and acts, and keeps their past careers well in view, has not often repeated to himself that saying of the great chancellor Oxenstierna, who, after having been behind the scenes for fifty years, and made himself familiar with all the springs which control the actions of men, summed up his experience in one pregnant senNescis, mi fili, quantula sapientia regatur mundus." If we are to worship the modern statesman, it is absolutely necessary that we should forget many things that he has said, and most things that he has done; for when we look back over his whole life, and judge of him by the foresight and general wisdom he has shown, he will shrink into an amazingly small compass. We are then driven to Carlyle's conclusion, that the great English nation is "all going off into wind and tongue," and that "future generations will look back on us with pity and incredulous astonishment." The babblement of this or that metropolis is not likely to be of much service in any emergency. It is far away from its din that most of the truly great discoveries have been made or the vast designs pondered; we need only remember Newton in his garden, or Napoleon in Corsica, a humble sub-lieutenant, meditating amid the chaos of the Revolution the conquest of a world. The mighty problems of the heavens have been worked out under the silent skies, not amid the turmoil and distractions of a great city. It is absolutely necessary that the lover of the country should have some resources of his own to fall back upon, for he will find few or none in the people around him, unless he is peculiarly favorably situated. In this respect, the advocates of the town have the best of the argument. When we want society, London bears off the palm; there is no place in the wide world equal to it. Be entirely in the country, or in the heart of the metropolis at once, for all the land of villadom is barren, and an ordinary country town is divided up into foolish little cliques, devoured with small jealousies, and agitated over questions of so supremely insignificant a character, that a stranger cannot at first help fearing that there is something in the air of the provinces which stifles the sense of humor. Even village life is not always free from strife. There is frequently a local tyrant, probably of the female sex, who rules over the rest, either by virtue of owning a few acres of land, or by sheer force of self-assertion. She may always be depended upon to find out something wrong in most of the people within a few miles of her. Perhaps they drink; perhaps they are in debt; or they do not keep up a proper establishment; or the wife is suspiciously good-looking. There is nothing to be talked about but such scandal as can be raked together, by hook or by crook, and an active-minded social leader will never permit herself to be found at a loss for the ingredients of a highly spiced dish. Sometimes it is the landlord who is singled out as the victim a grasping, extortionate, avaricious landlord, as we are taught to believe the whole class is now; or, perchance, a new-comer; or better than all, the clergyman. It is hard to say what quarrelsome people in the country would do without the parson. If he is not the same way inclined himself — as he occasionally is, human nature being but weak-it is always possible to find cause of offence in him. Some people do not like long sermons, some people do not like them short, a great many do not like them at all—especially the ordinary village sermon, which eludes comprehension and defies analysis. But the sermon is not the clergyman's only vulnerable point the cut and shape of his garments have to be narrowly scanned, for his High Church tendencies may be shown as unmistakably by what an old lady called the curate's "petticoats "as by any number of candles or genuflexions. Where the clergyman is not unwilling to go halfway to meet the impending quarrel, the town or village is sure of matter for conversation all the year round. He is perhaps new to the place, and his first and chief desire is to change everything. The choir must be put into surplices cially if it consists merely of a handful of untrained children, in some village remote from everywhere. The times of the services must be altered, the old hymn-books discarded, the harmonium player got rid of, the schoolmistress dismissed, and the people generally shaken out of their accustomed ruts. vicar of this kind, and the local termagant, wars and rumors of wars never cease. espe. Between a Then there are the dinner parties, fussy | counties, when all vegetation is burnt up. and mournful, and the dreadful concerts In most country places there is no water where the militia captain sings senti- to spare, and, at the best, artificial watermental songs, and the occasional panorama which ought to have been exported to the Sandwich Islands twenty years ago. The only safety for the man who would pass his life in peace, and who has not the advantage of living among really congenial neighbors, consists in causing it to be understood that he never goes anywhere, as Steele long ago pointed out in The Spectator." "My uneasiness in the country," he remarked, "arises rather from the society than the solitude of it. To be obliged to receive and return visits from and to a circle of neighbors who, through diversity of age or inclinations can neither be entertaining nor serviceable to us, is a vile loss of time, and a slavery from which a man should deliver himself, if possible." He can so deliver himself by finding his society chiefly in his family circle, and his home amusements in his garden and his books. The garden ranks first, for it will naturally occupy the greater part of his spare time. Gardening is the most fascinating pursuit in the world, when once a man has given his heart to it; if it were not so, we never should be able to fight against the disappointments which too often attend it. We hope for good fortune this year and next, and then we go on hoping for it again, putting in our seeds and plants, and looking forward with undiminished confidence to the perfect season that never comes. In that respect, as in many others, the garden presents a true emblem of life. Horace Walpole appears to have had an idea that the only way to keep a garden in proper order was to put it all under glass, and shut the owner in with it. "The way to ensure summer in England," he wrote, in 1774, "is to have it framed and glazed." We have no right, he contended, to set up a claim to any such season as summer, the conception of it in the English mind resting on nothing more solid than a few conceits of the poets. But Horace Walpole was troubled with the rheumatism and gout-two com plaints which disturb accuracy of judg. ment. In ordinary years, we have a very fair share of good weather, although it is not to be denied that the patience of the lover of gardens is often put to severe tests. There is the year-as in 1879 when everything is ruined by the rain, and when nothing comes out of the earth but weeds; or there is a long drought, as in the past summer of 1884 in our home ing cannot compensate for the absence of Equally hard to bear are the years when everything goes on marvellously well till the end of April or the beginning of May, when a violent storm arises, and sweeps everything before it as on the 29th of April, 1882. In less than a couple of hours every tree looked as if a fire had been lit beneath it, and the fruit was gone for that year, and most of it for the next year also, for it took two seasons for the trees to recover from that pitiless blast, destructive as the sirocco. There is al ways the poet's month of May to dread, with its inevitable east winds, and very likely more than one heavy frost at night. We say nothing of the innumerable enemies which beset the garden; the mice, the birds, the insects, the foes above and below ground, which fight hard for the best of everything, and spoil even more than they consume. It is a cruel sight to see a bed of roses devoured by the green fly and during a long prevalence of east winds or drought it is impossible to extirpate this pest, for it comes up in dark clouds in the air, like the locust in the east. When the fruit season arrives, the blackbird goes round driving the "cold dagger "of his bill into every peach or plum, in defiance of nets; and the ant, the earwig, or the wood-louse, soon finishes what he has been pleased to leave. Yet in spite of these and a thousand other de- | being, no doubt, the true gilly-flower, the feats and mischances, who that once has clou-de-giroflée, Dianthus caryophyllus. had a garden would willingly give it up But though the stock is called a gillyforever, or who does not find his interest flower in this very essay of Bacon's, and in his flowers and trees increase year after many other plants have been so named,* year, no matter how many failures bestrew the clove-carnation has the best right to his path? Nothing, indeed, keeps the be thus distinguished. An old gardener, heart so young as a garden, for there na- William Lawson, in the work which we ture is perpetually at work, hiding the have cited at the head of this article, past, closing up old scars, renewing itself speaks of "July-flowres, commonly called in its serene and noiseless way, holding Gilly-flowres, or Clove-july-flowres (I call out fresh promise for the future, and lead- them so because they flowre in July). ing us on to begin again with unflagging They have the names of Cloves of their hope. If there is not always a new flower scent. I may well call them the king of or plant to be seen, there is always some- flowres (except the rose), and the best sort thing to be done; in the midst of winter of them are called Queene-July-flowres. I we are making ready for the spring, and have of them nine or ten several colors, on the hardest day of the year an observ. divers of them as bigge as roses. Of all ant man will find something in his garden flowres (save the damask rose) they are to divert his thoughts from the more anx- the most pleasant to sight and smell: they ious cares and duties of life. last not past three or four years unremoved. . . Their use is much in ornament, and comforting the spirits by the sense of smelling." We have many more varieties in color in the present day than Lawson could boast of, but they lack the peculiar glory of the old-fashioned clove, its incomparable perfume, which alone would entitle it to an honored place in the garden. "It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man," wrote Francis Bacon, and he probably gave this testimony to the consoling influences of a garden after his grievous fall, for the paper in which it occurs appears only in the later editions of his " Essays." There are alterations in it which were certainly not made till the year before his death.* The length of this "Essay"—it is one of the longest of them all the careful list which is given of the special products of each month in the year, the minute attention which is directed to the colors and perfumes of plants all this serves to show that Bacon, was a practical gardener, after the stiff and formal manner of his time. His directions for laying out a garden are devised with the extravagance which was characteristic of the man thirty acres was the least that could content him, and there were to be fountains, and "ornaments of images gilt or of marble," and turrets for birds but he admits that his plan is for a "princely garden," and that he "spared for no cost." Some of his recommendations were in advance of his age to dispense with "knots and fig ures," for instances, which reminded him of the cook's ornamental work on tarts; to avoid cutting juniper-trees into shapes, which "be for children," and to have a wild garden or heath, "set with violets, strawberries, and prime- roses." His sweet-scented flowers still adorn every garden roses, wall-flowers, "Pincks and Gilly Flowers," specially the "Matted Pinck and Clove Gilly flower the last * See Mr. Aldis Wright's notes to the "Essays," pp. 395-6 (1862). Lawson, it will be observed, will not allow the rose to be put second to any flower; and he was right. There are many flowers, and many tastes, but the rose remains queen over all, or if its preeminence is ever disputed, it has only to show itself in its full beauty to compel the homage which rightfully belongs to it. It is, however, a wayward and fickle mistress, and the amateur who has seen some fine roses at a flower show, and is thereby moved to become a rose-grower, is launching out on a long journey, in the course of which he will meet with many rebuffs, and have to put up with sore disappointments. His ambition, if his purse and ground are both limited, will soon be brought down from its first lofty flights. The first step the selection of choice specimens from the florists' lists-presents no difficulty, for these lists are delightful to read, and when the order is made out and sent off, and the plants arrive, great is the amateur's delight, and very confident does he feel that now for the first time good roses will be seen in his part of the country. Before another year has gone, bis thoughts on the subject will have undergone great modification; many of his roses are dead, See Dr. Prior's "Popular Names of British Plants," an interesting little work, and Canon Ellacombe's "Plant-lore and Garden Craft of Shakespeare." |