A GARDEN LABYRINTH with a scale in feet.
Of strictly Oriental trees and shrubs and flowers, perhaps the majority of Anglo Indians think with much less enthusiasm than of the common weeds of England. The remembrance of the simplest wild flower of their native fields will make them look with perfect indifference on the decorations of an Indian Garden. This is in no degree surprizing. Yet nature is lovely in all lands.
Indian scenery has not been so much the subject of description in either prose or verse as it deserves, but some two or three of our Anglo-Indian authors have touched upon it. Here is a pleasant and truthful passage from an article entitled "A Morning Walk in India," written by the late Mr. Lawson, the Missionary, a truly good and a highly gifted man:--
"The rounded clumps that afford the deepest shade, are formed by the mangoe, the banian, and the cotton trees. At the verge of this deep- green forest are to be seen the long and slender hosts of the betle and cocoanut trees; and the grey bark of their trunks, as they catch the light of the morning, is in clear relief from the richness of the back- ground. These as they wave their feathery tops, add much to the picturesque interest of the straw-built hovels beneath them, which are variegated with every tinge to be found amongst the browns and yellows, according to the respective periods of their construction. Some of them are enveloped in blue smoke, which oozes through every interstice of the thatch, and spreads itself, like a cloud hovering over these frail habitations, or moves slowly along, like a strata of vapour not far from the ground, as though too heavy to ascend, and loses itself in the thin air, so inspiring to all who have courage to leave their beds and enjoy it. The champa tree forms a beautiful object in this jungle. It may be recognized immediately from the surrounding scenery. It has always been a favourite with me. I suppose most persons, at times, have been unaccountably attracted by an object comparatively trifling in itself. There are also particular seasons, when the mind is susceptible of peculiar impressions, and the moments of happy, careless youth, rush upon the imagination with a thousand tender feelings. There are few that do not recollect with what pleasure they have grasped a bunch of wild flowers, when, in the days of their childhood, the languor of a lingering fever has prevented them for some weary months from enjoying that chief of all the pleasures of a robust English boy, a ramble through the fields, where every tree, and bush, and hillock, and blossom, are endeared to him, because, next to a mother's caresses, they were the first things in the world upon which he opened his eyes, and, doubtless, the first which gave him those indescribable feelings of fairy pleasure, which even in his dreams were excited; while the coloured clouds of heaven, the golden sunshine of a landscape, the fresh nosegay of dog-roses and early daisies, and the sounds of busy whispering trees and tinkling brooks presented to the sleeping child all the pure pleasure of his waking moments. And who is there here that does not sometimes recal some of those feelings which were his solace perhaps thirty years ago? Should I be wrong, were I to say that even, at his desk, amid all the excitements and anxieties of commercial pursuits, the weary Calcutta merchant has been lulled into a sort of pensive reminiscence of the past, and, with his pen placed between his lips and his fevered forehead leaning upon his hand, has felt his heart bound at some vivid picture rising upon his imagination. The forms of a fond mother, and an almost angel-looking sister, have been so strongly conjured up with the scenes of his boyish days, that the pen has been unceremoniously dashed to the ground, and 'I will go home' was the sigh that heaved from a bosom full of kindness and English feeling; while, as the dream vanished, plain truth told its tale, and the man of commerce is still to be seen at his desk, pale, and getting into years and perhaps less desirous than ever of winding up his concern. No wonder! because the dearest ties of his heart have been broken, and those who were the charm of home have gone down to the cold grave, the home of all. Why then should he revisit his native place? What is the cottage of his birth to him? What charms has the village now for the gentleman just arrived from India? Every well remembered object of nature, seen after a lapse of twenty years, would only serve to renew a host of buried, painful feelings. Every visit to the house of a surviving neighbour would but bring to mind some melancholy incident; for into what house could he enter, to idle away an hour, without seeing some wreck of his own family, such as a venerable clock, once so loved for the painted moon that waxed and waned to the astonishment of the gazer, or some favorite ancient chair, edged so nobly with rows of brass nails,
--but perforated sore, and dull'd in holesBy worms voracious, eating through and through.
These are little things, but they are objects which will live in his memory to the latest day of his life, and with which are associated in his mind the dearest feelings and thoughts of his happiest hours."
Here is an attempt at a description in verse of some of the most common
TREES AND FLOWERS OF BENGAL
This land is not my father land,And yet I love it--for the handOf God hath left its mark sublimeOn nature's face in every clime--Though from home and friends we part,Nature and the human heartStill may soothe the wanderer's care--And his God is every whereBeneath BENGALA'S azure skies,No vallies sink, no green hills rise,Like those the vast sea billows make--The land is level as a lake[111]But, oh, what giants of the woodWave their wide arms, or calmly broodEach o'er his own deep rounded shadeWhen noon's fierce sun the breeze hath laid,And all is still. On every plainHow green the sward, or rich the grain!In jungle wild and garden trim,And open lawn and covert dim,What glorious shrubs and flowerets gay,Bright buds, and lordly beasts of prey!How prodigally Gunga poursHer wealth of waves through verdant shoresO'er which the sacred peepul bends,And oft its skeleton lines extendsOf twisted root, well laved and bare,Half in water, half in air!Fair scenes! where breeze and sun diffuseThe sweetest odours, fairest hues--Where brightest the bright day god shows,And where his gentle sister throwsHer softest spell on silent plain,And stirless wood, and slumbering main--Where the lucid starry skyOpens most to mortal eyeThe wide and mystic dome sereneMeant for visitants unseen,A dream like temple, air built hall,Where spirits pure hold festival!Fair scenes! whence envious Art might stealMore charms than fancy's realms reveal--Where the tall palm to the skyLifts its wreath triumphantly--And the bambu's tapering boughLoves its flexile arch to throw--Where sleeps the favored lotus white,On the still lake's bosom bright--Where the champac's[112]blossoms shine,Offerings meet for Brahma's shrine,While the fragrance floateth wideO'er velvet lawn and glassy tide--Where the mangoe tope bestowsNight at noon day--cool repose,Neath burning heavens--a hush profoundBreathing o'er the shaded ground--Where the medicinal neem,Of palest foliage, softest gleam,And the small leafed tamarindTremble at each whispering wind--And the long plumed cocoas standLike the princes of the land,Near the betel's pillar slim,With capital richly wrought and trim--And the neglected wild sonailDrops her yellow ringlets pale--And light airs summer odours throwFrom the bala's breast of snow--Where the Briarean banyan shadesThe crowded ghat, while Indian maids,Untouched by noon tide's scorching rays,Lave the sleek limb, or fill the vaseWith liquid life, or on the headReplace it, and with graceful treadAnd form erect, and movement slow,Back to their simple dwellings go--[Walls of earth, that stoutly stand,Neatly smoothed with wetted hand--Straw roofs, yellow once and gay,Turned by time and tempest gray--]Where the merry minahs crowdUnbrageous haunts, and chirrup loud--And shrilly talk the parrots green'Midst the thick leaves dimly seen--And through the quivering foliage play,Light as buds, the squirrels gay,Quickly as the noontide beamsDance upon the rippled streams--Where the pariah[113]howls with fear,If the white man passeth near--Where the beast that mocks our raceWith taper finger, solemn face,In the cool shade sits at easeCalm and grave as Socrates--Where the sluggish buffaloeWallows in mud--and huge and slow,Like massive cloud of sombre van,Moves the land leviathan--[114]Where beneath the jungle's screenClose enwoven, lurks unseenThe couchant tiger--and the snakeHis sly and sinuous way doth makeThrough the rich mead's grassy net,Like a miniature rivulet--Where small white cattle, scattered wide,Browse, from dawn to even tide--Where the river watered soilScarce demands the ryot's toil--And the rice field's emerald lightOut vies Italian meadows bright,--Where leaves of every shape and dye,And blossoms varied as the sky,The fancy kindle,--fingers fairThat never closed on aught but air--Hearts, that never heaved a sigh--Wings, that never learned to fly--Cups, that ne'er went table round--Bells, that never rang with sound--Golden crowns, of little worth--Silver stars, that strew the earth--Filagree fine and curious braid,Breathed, not labored, grown, not made--Tresses like the beams of mornWithout a thought of triumph worn--Tongues that prate not--many an eyeUntaught midst hidden things to pry--Brazen trumpets, long and bright,That never summoned to the fight--Shafts, that never pierced a side--And plumes that never waved with pride;--Scarcely Art a shape may knowBut Nature here that shape can show.Through this soft air, o'er this warm sod,Stern deadly Winter never trod;The woods their pride for centuries wear,And not a living branch is bare;Each field for ever boasts its bowers,And every season brings its flowers.
D.L.R.
We all "uphold Adam's profession": we are all gardeners, either practically or theoretically. The love of trees and flowers, and shrubs and the green sward, with a summer sky above them, is an almost universal sentiment. It may be smothered for a time by some one or other of the innumerable chances and occupations of busy life; but a painting in oils by Claude or Gainsborough, or a picture in words by Spenser or Shakespeare that shall for ever
Live in description and look green in song,
or the sight of a few flowers on a window-sill in the city, can fill the eye with tears of tenderness, or make the secret passion for nature burst out again in sudden gusts of tumultuous pleasure and lighten up the soul with images of rural beauty. There are few, indeed, who, when they have the good fortune to escape on a summer holiday from the crowded and smoky city and find themselves in the heart of a delicious garden, have not a secret consciousness within them that the scene affords them a glimpse of a true paradise below. Rich foliage and gay flowers and rural quiet and seclusion and a smiling sun are ever associated with ideas of earthly felicity.
And oh, if there be an Elysium on earth,It is this, it is this!
The princely merchant and the petty trader, the soldier and the sailor, the politician and the lawyer, the artist and the artisan, when they pause for a moment in the midst of their career, and dream of the happiness of some future day, almost invariably fix their imaginary palace or cottage of delight in a garden, amidst embowering trees and fragrant flowers. This disposition, even in the busiest men, to indulge occasionally in fond anticipations of rural bliss--
In visions so profuse of pleasantness--
shows that God meant us to appreciate and enjoy the beauty of his works. The taste for a garden is the one common feeling that unites us all.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
There is this much of poetical sensibility--of a sense of natural beauty--at the core of almost every human heart. The monarch shares it with the peasant, and Nature takes care that as the thirst for her society is the universal passion, the power of gratifying it shall be more or less within the reach of all.[115]
Our present Chief Justice, Sir Lawrence Peel, who has set so excellent an example to his countrymen here in respect to Horticultural pursuits and the tasteful embellishment of what we call our "compounds" and who, like Sir William Jones and Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, sees no reason why Themis should be hostile to the Muses, has obliged me with the following stanzas on the moral or rather religious influence of a garden. They form a highly appropriate and acceptable contribution to this volume.
I HEARD THY VOICE IN THE GARDEN.
That voice yet speaketh, heed it well--But not in tones of wrath it chideth,The moss rose, and the lily smellOf God--in them his voice abideth.There is a blessing on the spotThe poor man decks--the sun delightethTo smile upon each homely plot,And why? The voice of God inviteth.God knows that he is worshipped there,The chaliced cowslip's graceful bendingIs mute devotion, and the airIs sweet with incense of her lending.The primrose, aye the children's pet,Pale bride, yet proud of its uprooting,The crocus, snowdrop, violetAnd sweet-briar with its soft leaves shooting.There nestles each--a Preacher each--(Oh heart of man! be slow to harden)Each cottage flower in sooth doth teachGod walketh with us in the garden.
I am surprized that in this city (of Calcutta) where so many kinds of experiments in education have been proposed, the directors of public instruction have never thought of attaching tasteful Gardens to the Government Colleges--especially where Botany is in the regular course of Collegiate studies. The Company's Botanic Garden being on the other side of the river and at an inconvenient distance from the city cannot be much resorted to by any one whose time is precious. An attempt was made not long ago to have the Garden of the Horticultural Society (now forming part of the Company's Botanic Garden) on this side of the river, but the public subscriptions that were called for to meet the necessary expenses were so inadequate to the purpose that the money realized was returned to the subscribers, and the idea relinquished, to the great regret of many of the inhabitants of Calcutta who would have been delighted to possess such a place of recreation and instruction within a few minutes' drive.
Hindu students, unlike English boys in general, remind us of Beattie's Minstrel:--
The exploit of strength, dexterity and speedTo him nor vanity, nor joy could bring.
A sort of Garden Academy, therefore, full of pleasant shades, would be peculiarly suited to the tastes and habits of our Indian Collegians. They are not fond of cricket or leap-frog. They would rejoice to devote a leisure hour to pensive letterings in a pleasure-garden, and on an occasional holiday would gladly pursue even their severest studies, book in hand, amidst verdant bowers. A stranger from Europe beholding them, in their half-Grecian garments, thus wandering amidst the trees, would be reminded of the disciples of Plato.
"It is not easy," observes Lord Kames, "to suppress a degree of enthusiasm, when we reflect on the advantages of gardening with respect to virtuous education. In the beginning of life the deepest impressions are made; and it is a sad truth, that the young student, familiarized to the dirtiness and disorder of many colleges pent within narrow bounds in populous cities, is rendered in a measure insensible to the elegant beauties of art and nature. It seems to me far from an exaggeration, that good professors are not more essential to a college, than a spacious garden, sweetly ornamented, but without any thing glaring or fantastic, is upon the whole to inspire our youth with a taste no less for simplicity than for elegance. In this respect the University of Oxford may justly be deemed a model."
It may be expected that I should offer a few hints on the laying out of gardens. Much has been said (by writers on ornamental and landscape gardening) onartandnature, and almost always has it been implied that these must necessarily be in direct opposition. I am far from being of this opinion. If art and nature be not in some points of view almost identical, they are at least very good friends, or may easily be made so. They are not necessarily hostile. They admit of the most harmonious combinations. In no place are such combinations more easy or more proper than in a garden. Walter Scott very truly calls a garden the child of Art. But is it not also the child of Nature?--of Nature and Art together? To attempt to exclude art--or even, the appearance of art-- from a small garden enclosure, is idle and absurd. He who objects to all art in the arrangement of a flower-bed, ought, if consistent with himself, to turn away with an expression of disgust from a well arranged nosegay in a rich porcelain vase. But who would not loathe or laugh at such manifest affectation or such thoroughly bad taste? As there is a time for every thing, so also is there a place for every thing. No man of true judgment would desire to trace the hand of human art on the form of nature in remote and gigantic forests, and amidst vast mountains, as irregular as the billows of a troubled sea. In such scenery there is a sublime grace in wildness,--there"the very weeds are beautiful." But what true judgment would be enchanted with weeds and wildness in the small parterre. As Pope rightly says, we must
Consult the genius of the place in all.
It is pleasant to enter a rural lane overgrown with field-flowers, or to behold an extensive common irregularly decorated with prickly gorse or fern and thistle, but surely no man of taste would admire nature in this wild and dishevelled state in a little suburban garden. Symmetry, elegance and beauty, (--nosublimityorgrandeur--) trimness, snugness, privacy, cleanliness, comfort, and convenience--the results of a happy conjunction of art and nature--are all that we can aim at within a limited extent of ground. In a small parterre we either trace with pleasure the marks of the gardener's attention or are disgusted with his negligence. In a mere patch of earth around a domestic dwelling nature ought not to be left entirely to herself.
What is agreeable in one sphere of life is offensive in another. A dirty smock frock and a soiled face in a ploughman's child who has been swinging on rustic gates a long summer morning or rolling down the slopes of hills, or grubbing in the soil of his small garden, may remind us, not unpleasantly, of one of Gainsborough's pictures; but we look for a different sort of nature on the canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds or Sir Thomas Lawrence, or in the brilliant drawing-rooms of the nobility; and yet an Earl's child looks and moves at least asnaturallyas a peasant's.
There is nature every where--in the palace as well as in the hut, in the cultivated garden as well as in the wild wood. Civilized life is, after all, as natural as savage life. All our faculties are natural, and civilized man cultivates his mental powers and studies the arts of life by as true an instinct as that which leads the savage to make the most of his mud hut, and to improve himself or his child as a hunter, a fisherman, or a warrior. The mind of man is the noblest work of its Maker (--in this world--) and the movements of man's mind may be quite as natural, and quite as poetical too, as the life that rises from the ground. It is as natural for the mind, as it is for a tree or flower to advance towards perfection. Nature suggests art, and art again imitates and approximates to nature, and this principle of action and reaction brings man by degrees towards that point of comparative excellence for which God seems to have intended him. The mind of a Milton or a Shakespeare is surely not in a more unnatural condition than that of an ignorant rustic. We ought not then to decry refinement nor deem all connection of art with nature an offensive incongruity. A noble mansion in a spacious and well kept park is an object which even an observer who has no share himself in the property may look upon with pleasure. It makes him proud of his race.[116]We cannot witness so harmonious a conjunction of art and nature without feeling that man is something better than a mere beast of the field or forest. We see him turn both art and nature to his service, and we cannot contemplate the lordly dwelling and the richly decorated land around it--and the neatness and security and order of the whole scene--without associating them with the high accomplishments and refined tastes that in all probability distinguish the proprietor and his family. It is a strange mistake to suppose that nothing is natural beyond savage ignorance--that all refinement is unnatural--that there is only one sort of simplicity. For the mind elevated by civilization is in a more natural state than a mind that has scarcely passed the boundary of brutal instinct, and the simplicity of a savage's hut, does not prevent there being a nobler simplicity in a Grecian temple.
Kent[117]the famous landscape gardener, tells us thatnatureabhors a straight line. And so she does--in some cases--but not in all. A ray of light is a straight line, and so also is a Grecian nose, and so also is the stem of the betel-nut tree. It must, indeed, be admitted that he who should now lay out a large park or pleasure-ground on strictly geometrical principles or in the old topiary style would exhibit a deplorable want of taste and judgment. But the provinces of the landscape gardener and the parterre gardener are perfectly distinct. The landscape gardener demands a wide canvas. All his operations are on a large scale. In a small garden we have chiefly to aim at thegardenesqueand in an extensive park at thepicturesque. Even in the latter case, however, though
'Tis Nature still, 'tis nature methodized:
Or in other words:
Nature to advantage dressed.
for even in the largest parks or pleasure-grounds, an observer of true taste is offended by an air of negligence or the absence of all traces of human art or care. Such places ought to indicate the presence of civilized life and security and order. We are not pleased to see weeds and jungle--or litter of any sort--even dry leaves--upon the princely domain, which should look like a portion of nature set apart or devoted to the especial care and enjoyment of the owner and his friends:--a strictly private property. The grass carpet should be trimly shorn and well swept. The trees should be tastefully separated from each other at irregular but judicious distances. They should have fine round heads of foliage, clean stems, and no weeds or underwood below, nor a single dead branch above. When we visit the finest estates of the nobility and gentry in England it is impossible not to perceive in every case a marked distinction between the wild nature of a wood and the civilized nature of a park. In the latter you cannot overlook the fact that every thing injurious to the health and growth and beauty of each individual tree has been studiously removed, while on the other hand, light, air, space, all things in fact that, if sentient, the tree could itself be supposed to desire, are most liberally supplied. There is as great a difference between the general aspect of the trees in a nobleman's pleasure ground and those in a jungle, as between the rustics of a village and the well bred gentry of a great city. Park trees have generally a fine air of aristocracy about them.
A Gainsborough or a Morland would seek his subjects in remote villages and a Watteau or a Stothard in the well kept pleasure ground. The ruder nature of woods and villages, of sturdy ploughmen and the healthy though soiled and ragged children in rural neighbourhoods, affords a by no means unpleasing contrast and introduction to the trim trees and smoothly undulating lawns, and curved walks, and gay parterres, and fine ladies and well dressed and graceful children on some old ancestral estate. We look for rusticity in the village, and for elegance in the park. The sleek and noble air of patrician trees, standing proudly on the rich velvet sward, the order and grace and beauty of all that meets the eye, lead us, as I have said already, to form a high opinion of the owner. In this we may of course be sometimes disappointed; but a man's character is generally to be traced in almost every object around him over which he has the power of a proprietor, and in few things are a man's taste and habits more distinctly marked than in his park and garden. If we find the owner of a neatly kept garden and an elegant mansion slovenly, rude and vulgar in appearance and manners, we inevitably experience that shock of surprize which is excited by every thing that is incongruous or out of keeping. On the other hand if the garden be neglected and overgrown with weeds, or if every thing in its arrangement indicate a want of taste, and a disregard of neatness and order, we feel no astonishment whatever in discovering that the proprietor is as negligent of his mind and person as of his shrubberies and his lawns.
A civilized country ought not to look like a savage one. We need not have wild nature in front of our neatly finished porticos. Nothing can be more strictly artificial than all architecture. It would be absurd to erect an elegantly finished residence in the heart of a jungle. There should be an harmonious gradation from the house to the grounds, and true taste ought not to object to terraces of elegant design and graceful urns and fine statues in the immediate neighbourhood of a noble dwelling.
Undoubtedly as a general rule, the undulating curve in garden scenery is preferable to straight lines or abrupt turns or sharp angles, but if there should happen to be only a few yards between the outer gateway and the house, could anything be more fantastical or preposterous than an attempt to give the ground between them a serpentine irregularity? Even in the most spacious grounds the walks should not seem too studiously winding, as if the short turns were meant for no other purpose than to perplex or delay the walker.[118]They should have a natural sweep, and seem to meander rather in accordance with the nature of the ground and the points to which they lead than in obedience to some idle sport of fancy. They should not remind us of Gray's description of the divisions of an old mansion:
Long passages that lead to nothing.
Foot-paths in small gardens need not be broader than will allow two persons to walk abreast with ease. A spacious garden may have walks of greater breadth. A path for one person only is inconvenient and has a mean look.
I have made most of the foregoing observations in something of a spirit of opposition to those Landscape gardeners who I think once carried a true principle to an absurd excess. I dislike, as much as any one can, the old topiary style of our remote ancestors, but the talk about free nature degenerated at last into downright cant, and sheer extravagance; the reformers were for bringing weeds and jungle right under our parlour windows, and applied to an acre of ground those rules of Landscape gardening which required a whole county for their proper exemplification. It is true that Milton's Paradise had "no nice art" in it, but then it was not a little suburban pleasure ground but a world. When Milton alluded to private gardens, he spoke of their trimness.
Retired LeisureThat intrimgardens takes his pleasure.
The larger an estate the less necessary is it to make it merely neat, and symmetrical, especially in those parts of the ground that are distant from the house; but near the architecture some degree of finish and precision is always necessary, or at least advisable, to prevent the too sudden contrast between the straight lines and artificial construction of the dwelling and the flowing curves and wild but beautiful irregularities of nature unmoulded by art. A garden adjacent to the house should give the owner a sense ofhome. He should not feel himself abroad at his own door. If it were only for the sake of variety there should be some distinction between the private garden and the open field. If the garden gradually blends itself with a spacious park or chase, the more the ground recedes from the house the more it may legitimately assume the aspect of a natural landscape. It will then be necessary to appeal to the eye of a landscape gardener or a painter or a poet before the owner, if ignorant of the principles of fine art, attempt the completion of the general design.
I should like to see my Native friends who have extensive grounds, vary the shape of their tanks, but if they dislike a more natural form of water, irregular or winding, and are determined to have them with four sharp corners, let them at all events avoid the evil of several small tanks in the same "compound." A large tank is more likely to have good water and to retain it through the whole summer season than a smaller one and is more easily kept clean and grassy to the water's edge. I do not say that it would be proper to have a piece of winding water in a small compound--that indeed would be impracticable. But even an oval or round tank would be better than a square one.[119]
If the Native gentry could obtain the aid of tasteful gardeners, I would recommend that the level land should be varied with an occasional artificial elevation, nicely sloped or graduated; but Nativemaleeswould be sure to aim rather at the production of abrupt round knobs resembling warts or excrescences than easy and natural undulations of the surface.
With respect to lawns, the late Mr. Speede recommended the use of thedoobgrass, but it is so extremely difficult to keep it clear of any intermixture of theooloograss, which, when it intrudes upon thedoobgives the lawn a patchwork and shabby look, that it is better to use theooloograss only, for it is far more manageable; and if kept well rolled and closely shorn it has a very neat, and indeed, beautiful appearance. The lawns in the compound of the Government House in Calcutta are formed ofoolooglass only, but as they have been very carefully attended to they have really a most brilliant and agreeable aspect. In fact, their beautiful bright green, in the hottest summer, attracts even the notice and admiration of the stranger fresh from England. Theooloograss, however, on close inspection is found to be extremely coarse, nor has even the finestdoobthe close texture and velvet softness of the grass of English lawns.
Flower beds should be well rounded. They should never have long narrow necks or sharp angles in which no plant can have room to grow freely. Nor should they be divided into compartments, too minute or numerous, for so arranged they must always look petty and toy-like. A lawn should be as open and spacious as the ground will fairly admit without too greatly limiting the space for flowers. Nor should there be an unnecessary multiplicity of walks. We should aim at a certain breadth of style. Flower beds may be here and there distributed over the lawn, but care should be taken that it be not too much broken up by them. A few trees may be introduced upon the lawn, but they must not be placed so close together as to prevent the growth of the grass by obstructing either light or air. No large trees should be allowed to smother up the house, particularly on the southern and western sides, for besides impeding the circulation through the rooms of the most wholesome winds of this country, they would attract mosquitoes, and give an air of gloominess to the whole place.
Natives are too fond of over-crowding their gardens with trees and shrubs and flowers of all sorts, with no regard to individual or general effects, with no eye to arrangement of size, form or color; and in this hot and moist climate the consequent exclusion of free air and the necessary degree of light has a most injurious influence not only upon the health of the resident but upon vegetation itself. Neither the finest blossoms nor the finest fruits can be expected from an overstocked garden. The native malee generally plants his fruit trees so close together that they impede each other's growth and strength. Every Englishman when he enters a native's garden feels how much he could improve its productiveness and beauty by a free use of the hatchet. Too many trees and too much embellishment of a small garden make it look still smaller, and even on a large piece of ground they produce confused and disagreeable effects and indicate an absence of all true judgment. This practice of over-filling a garden is an instance of bad taste, analogous to that which is so conspicuously characteristic of our own countrymen in India with respect to their apartments, which look more like an upholsterer's show-rooms or splendid ornament-shops than drawing-rooms or parlours. There is scarcely space enough to turn in them without fracturing some frail and costly bauble. Where a garden is over-planted the whole place is darkened, the ground is green and slimy, the grass thin, sickly and straggling, and the trees and shrubs deficient in freshness and vigor.
Not only should the native gentry avoid having their flower-borders too thickly filled,--they should take care also that they are not too broad. We ought not to be obliged to leave the regular path and go across the soft earth of the bed to obtain a sight of a particular shrub or flower. Close and entangled foliage keeps the ground too damp, obstructs wholesome air, and harbours snakes and a great variety of other noxious reptiles. Similar objections suggest the propriety of having no shrubs or flowers or even a grass-plot immediately under the windows and about the doors of the house. A well exposed gravel or brick walk should be laid down on all sides of the house, as a necessary safeguard against both moisture and vermin.
I have spoken already of the unrivalled beauty of English gravel. It cannot be too much admired.Kunkur[120]looks extremely smart for a few weeks while it preserves its solidity and freshness, but it is rapidly ground into powder under carriage wheels or blackened by occasional rain and the permanent moisture of low grounds when only partially exposed to the sun and air. Why should not an opulent Rajah or Nawaub send for a cargo of beautiful red gravel from the gravel pits at Kensington? Any English House of Agency here would obtain it for him. It would be cheap in the end, for it lasts at least five times as long as the kunkur, and if of a proper depth admits of repeated turnings with the spade, looking on every turn almost as fresh as the day on which it was first laid down.
Instead of brick-bat edgings, the wealthy Oriental nobleman might trim all his flower-borders with the green box-plant of England, which would flourish I suppose in this climate or in any other. Cobbett in hisEnglish Gardenerspeaks with so much enthusiasm and so much to the purpose on the subject of box as an edging, that I must here repeat his eulogium on it.
The box is at once the most efficient of all possible things, and the prettiest plant that can possibly be conceived; the color of its leaf; the form of its leaf; its docility as to height, width and shape; the compactness of its little branches; its great durability as a plant; its thriving in all sorts of soils and in all sorts of aspects;its freshness under the hottest sun, and its defiance of all shade and drip: these are the beauties and qualities which, for ages upon ages, have marked it out as the chosen plant for this very important purpose.
The edging ought to be clipped in the winter or very early in spring on both sides and at top; a line ought to be used to regulate the movements of the shears; it ought to be clipped again in the same manner about midsummer; and if there bea more neat and beautiful thing than this in the world, all that I can say is, that I never saw that thing.
A small green edging for a flower bed can hardly be tootrim; but large hedges with tops and sides cut as flat as boards, and trees fantastically shaped with the shears into an exhibition as full of incongruities as the wildest dream, have deservedly gone out of fashion in England. Poets and prose writers have agreed to ridicule all verdant sculpture on a large scale. Here is a description of the old topiary gardens.
These likewise mote be seen on every sideThe shapely box, of all its branching prideUngently shorn, and, with preposterous skillTo various beasts, and birds of sundry quillTransformed, and human shapes of monstrous size.
Also other wonders of the sportive shearsFair Nature misadorning; there were foundGlobes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piersWith spouting urns and budding statues crowned;And horizontal dials on the groundIn living box, by cunning artists traced,And galleys trim, or on long voyage bound,But by their roots there ever anchored fast.
G. West.
The same taste for torturing nature into artificial forms prevailed amongst the ancients long after architecture and statuary had been carried to such perfection that the finest British artists of these times can do nothing but copy and repeat what was accomplished so many ages ago by the people of another nation. Pliny, in his description of his Tuscan villa, speaks of some of his trees having been cut into letters and the forms of animals, and of others placed in such regular order that they reminded the spectator of files of soldiers.[121]The Dutch therefore should not bear all the odium of the topiary style of gardening which they are said to have introduced into England and other countries of Europe. They were not the first sinners against natural taste.
The Hindus are very fond of formally cut hedges and trimmed trees. All sorts of verdant hedges are in some degree objectionable in a hot moist country, rife with deadly vermin. I would recommend ornamental iron railings or neatly cut and well painted wooden pales, as more airy, light, and cheerful, and less favorable to snakes and centipedes.
This is the finest country in the world for making gardens speedily. In the rainy season vegetation springs up at once, as at the stroke of an Enchanter's wand. The Landscape gardeners in England used to grieve that they could hardly expect to live long enough to see the effect of their designs. Such artists would have less reason, to grieve on that account in this country. Indeed even in England, the source of uneasiness alluded to, is now removed. "The deliberation with which trees grow," wrote Horace Walpole, in a letter to a friend, "is extremely inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous an age when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am persuaded that 150 years hence it will be as common to remove oaks 150 years old as it now is to plant tulip roots." The writer was not a bad prophet. He has not yet been dead much more than half a century and his expectations are already more than half realized. Shakespeare could not have anticipated this triumph of art when he made Macbeth ask
Who can impress the forest? Bid the treeUnfix his earth-bound root?
The gardeners have at last discovered that the largest (though not perhaps theoldest) trees can be removed from one place to another with comparative facility and safety. Sir H. Stewart moved several hundred lofty trees without the least injury to any of them. And if broad and lofty trees can be transplanted in England, how much more easily and securely might such a process be effected in the rainy season in this country. In half a year a new garden might be made to look like a garden of half a century. Or an old and ill-arranged plantation might thus be speedily re-adjusted to the taste of the owner. The main object is to secure a good ball of earth round the root, and the main difficulty is to raise the tree and remove it. Many most ingenious machines for raising a tree from the ground, and trucks for removing it, have been lately invented by scientific gardeners in England. A Scotchman, Mr. McGlashen, has been amongst the most successful of late transplanters. He exhibited one of his machines at Paris to the present Emperor of the French, and lifted with it a fir tree thirty feet high. The French ruler lavished the warmest commendations on the ingenious artist and purchased his apparatus at a large price.[122]
Bengal is enriched with a boundless variety of noble trees admirably suited to parks and pleasure grounds. These should be scattered about a spacious compound with a spirited and graceful irregularity, and so disposed with reference to the dwelling as in some degree to vary the view of it, and occasionally to conceal it from the visitor driving up the winding road from the outer gate to the portico. The trees, I must repeat, should be so divided as to give them a free growth and admit sufficient light and air beneath them to allow the grass to flourish. Grassless ground under park trees has a look of barrenness, discomfort and neglect, and is out of keeping with the general character of the scene.
The Banyan (Ficus Indica or Bengaliensis)--
The Indian tree, whose branches downward bent,Take root again, a boundless canopy--
and the Peepul or Pippul (Ficus Religiosa) are amongst the finest trees in this country--or perhaps in the world--and on a very spacious pleasure ground or park they would present truly magnificent aspects. Colonel Sykes alludes to a Banyan at the village of Nikow in Poonah with 68 stems descending from and supporting the branches. This tree is said to be capable of affording shelter to 20,000 men. It is a tree of this sort which Milton so well describes.
The fig tree, not that kind for fruit renowned,But such as at this day, to Indians knownIn Malabar or Deccan, spreads her armsBranching so broad and long, a pillared shade,High over arched, and echoing walks betweenThere oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herdsAt loop holes cut through the thickest shade those leaves,They gathered, broad as Amazonian taige;And with what skill they had together sewed,To gird their waste.
Milton is mistaken as to the size of the leaves of this tree, though he has given its general character with great exactness.[123]
A remarkable banyan or buri tree, near Manjee, twenty miles west of Patna, is 375 inches in diameter, the circumference of its shadow at noon measuring 1116 feet. It has sixty stems, or dropped branches that have taken root. Under this tree once sat a naked fakir who had occupied that situation for 25 years; but he did not continue there the whole year, for his vow obliged him to be during the four cold months up to his neck in the water of the Ganges![124]
It is said that there is a banyan tree near Gombroon on the Persian gulf, computed to cover nearly 1,700 yards.
The Banyan tree in the Company's Botanic garden, is a fine tree, but it is of small dimensions compared with those of the trees just mentioned.[125]
The cocoanut tree has a characteristically Oriental aspect and a natural grace, but it is not well suited to the ornamental garden or the princely villa. It is too suggestive of the rudest village scenery, and perhaps also of utilitarian ideas of mere profit, as every poor man who has half a dozen cocoanut trees on his ground disposes of the produce in the bazar.
I would recommend my native friends to confine their clumps of plaintain trees to the kitchen garden, for though the leaf of the plaintain is a proud specimen of oriental foliage when it is first opened out to the sun, it soon gets torn to shreds by the lightest breeze. The tattered leaves then dry up and the whole of the tree presents the most beggarly aspect imaginable. The stem is as ragged and untidy as the leaves.
The kitchen garden and the orchard should be in the rear of the house. The former should not be too visible from the windows and the latter is on many accounts better at the extremity of the grounds than close to the house, as we too often find it. A native of high rank should keep as much out of sight as possible every thing that would remind a visitor that any portion of the ground was intended rather for pecuniary profit than the immediate pleasure of the owner. The people of India do not seem to be sufficiently aware that any sign of parsimony in the management of a large park or pleasure ground produces in the mind of the visitor an unfavorable impression of the character of the owner. I have seen in Calcutta vast mansions of which every little niche and corner towards the street was let out to very small traders at a few annas a month. What would the people of England think of an opulent English Nobleman who should try to squeeze a few pence from the poor by dividing the street front of his palace into little pigeon-sheds of petty shops for the retail of petty wares? Oh! Princes of India "reform this altogether." This sordid saving, this widely published parsimony, is not only not princely, it is not only not decorous, it is positively disgusting to every passer-by who himself possesses any right thought or feeling.
The Natives seem every day more and more inclined to imitate European fashions, and there are few European fashions, which could be borrowed by the highest or lowest of the people of this country with a more humanizing and delightful effect than that attention to the exterior elegance and neatness of the dwelling-house, and that tasteful garniture of the contiguous ground, which in England is a taste common to the prince and the peasant, and which has made that noble country so full of those beautiful homes which surprize and enchant its foreign visitors.
The climate and soil of this country are peculiarly favorable to the cultivation of trees and shrubs and flowers; and the garden here is at no season of the year without its ornaments.
The example of the Horticultural Society of India, and the attractions of the Company's Botanic Garden ought to have created a more general taste amongst us for the culture of flowers. Bishop Heber tells us that the Botanic Garden here reminded hint more of Milton's description of the Garden of Eden than any other public garden, that he had ever seen.[126]
There is a Botanic Garden at Serampore. In 1813 it was in charge of Dr. Roxburgh. Subsequently came the amiable and able Dr. Wallich; then the venerable Dr. Carey was for a time the Officiating Superintendent. Dr. Voigt followed and then one of the greatest of our Anglo-Indian botanists, Dr. Griffiths. After him came Dr. McLelland, who is at this present time counting the teak trees in the forests of Pegu. He was succeeded by Dr. Falconer who left this country but a few months ago. The garden is now in charge of Dr. Thomson who is said to be an enthusiast in his profession. He explored the region beyond the snowy range I think with Captain Cunningham, some years ago. With the exceptions of Voigt and Carey, all who have had charge of the garden at Serampore have held at the same time the more important appointment of Superintendent of the Company's Botanic Garden at Garden Beach.
There is a Botanic Garden at Bhagulpore, which owes its origin to Major Napleton. I have been unable to obtain any information regarding its present condition. A good Botanic Garden has been already established in the Punjab, where there is also an Agricultural and Horticultural Society.
I regret that it should have been deemed necessary to make stupid pedants of Hindu malees by providing them with a classical nomenclature for plants. Hindostanee names would have answered the purpose just as well. The natives make a sad mess of our simplest English names, but their Greek must be Greek indeed! AQuarterly Reviewerobserves that Miss Mitford has found it difficult to make the maurandias and alstraemerias and eschxholtzias--the commonest flowers of our modern garden--look passable even in prose. But what are these, he asks, to the pollopostemonopetalae and eleutheroromacrostemones of Wachendorf, with such daily additions as the native name of iztactepotzacuxochitl icohueyo, or the more classical ponderosity of Erisymum Peroffskyanum.