so fondly and minutely described by the proprietor himself, would appear
to little advantage in the eyes of a true worshipper of Flora, if
compared with Pope's retreat at Twickenham. The ancients had a taste for
the _rural_, not for the _gardenesque_, nor perhaps even for the
_picturesque_. The English have a taste for all three. Hence they have
good landscape-gardeners and first-rate landscape-painters. The old
Romans had neither. But though, some of our Spitalfields weavers have
shown a deeper love, and perhaps even a finer taste, for flowers, than
were exhibited by the citizens of Rome, abundant evidence is furnished
to us by the poets in all ages and in all countries that nature, in some
form or another has ever charmed the eye and the heart of man. The
following version of a famous passage in Virgil, especially the lines in
Italics, may give the English reader some idea of a Roman's dream of

RURAL HAPPINESS.

Ah! happy Swains! if they their bliss but knew,
Whom, far from boisterous war, Earth's bosom true
With easy food supplies. If they behold
No lofty dome its gorgeous gates unfold
And pour at morn from all its chambers wide
Of flattering visitants the mighty tide;
Nor gaze on beauteous columns richly wrought,
Or tissued robes, or busts from Corinth brought;
Nor their white wool with Tyrian poison soil,
Nor taint with Cassia's bark their native oil;
_Yet peace is theirs; a life true bliss that yields;
And various wealth; leisure mid ample fields,
Grottoes, and living lakes, and vallies green,
And lowing herds; and 'neath a sylvan screen,