to which it seems so congenial, I may safely assert that it is
peculiarly favorable, with, rare exceptions, to the sweet children of
Flora. There is no country in the world in which there are at this day
such innumerable tribes of flowers. There are in England two thousand
varieties of the rose alone, and I venture to express a doubt whether
the richest gardens of Persia or Cashmere could produce finer specimens
of that universal favorite than are to be found in some of the small but
highly cultivated enclosures of respectable English rustics.

The actual beauty of some of the commonest flowers in our gardens can be
in no degree exaggerated--even in the daydreams of the most inspired
poet. And when the author of Lalla Rookh talks so musically and
pleasantly of the fragrant bowers of Amberabad, the country of Delight,
a Province in Jinnistan or Fairy Land, he is only thinking of the
shrubberies and flower-beds at Sloperton Cottage, and the green hills
and vales of Wiltshire.

Sir William Temple observes that "besides the temper of our climate
there are two things particular to us, that contribute much to the
beauty and elegance of our gardens--which are, _the gravel of our walks
and the fineness and almost perpetual greenness of our turf_."

"The face of England is so beautiful," says Horace Walpole, "that I do
not believe that Tempe or Arcadia was half so rural; for both lying in
hot climates must have wanted _the moss of our gardens_." Meyer, a
German, a scientific practical gardener, who was also a writer on
gardening, and had studied his art in the Royal Gardens at Paris, and
afterwards visited England, was a great admirer of English Gardens, but
despaired of introducing our style of gardening into Germany, _chiefly
on account of its inferior turf for lawns_. "Lawns and gravel walks,"