SACRED GARDENS.
The origin of sacred gardens among the heathen nations may be traced up to the garden of Eden. The gardens of the Hesperides, of Adonis, of Flora, were famous among the Greeks and Romans. “The garden of Flora,” says Mr. Spence, (Polymetis,p.251) “I take to have been the Paradise in the Roman Mythology. The traditions and traces of Paradise among the ancients must be expected to have grown fainter and fainter in every transfusion from one people to another. The Romans probably derived their notions of it from the Greeks, among whom this idea seems to have been shadowed out under the stories of the gardens of Alcinous. In Africathey had the gardens of the Hesperides, and in the East those of Adonis, or theHorti Adonis, as Pliny calls them. The termHorti Adonideswas used by the ancients to signifygardens of pleasure, which answers to the very name of Paradise, or the garden of Eden, asHorti Adonisdoes to thegarden of theLord.”