The Fish, Too, Make A More
Considerable Feature Of The Brookside, And The Trout Plumping In
The Shadow Takes The Ear.
A stream should, besides, be narrow
enough to cross, or the burn hard by a bridge, or we are at once
shut out of Eden.
The quantity of water need be of no concern, for
the mind sets the scale, and can enjoy a Niagara Fall of thirty
inches. Let us approve the singer of
'Shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.'
If the sea is to be our ornamental water, choose an open seaboard
with a heavy beat of surf; one much broken in outline, with small
havens and dwarf headlands; if possible a few islets; and as a
first necessity, rocks reaching out into deep water. Such a rock
on a calm day is a better station than the top of Teneriffe or
Chimborazo. In short, both for the desert and the water, the
conjunction of many near and bold details is bold scenery for the
imagination and keeps the mind alive.
Given these two prime luxuries, the nature of the country where we
are to live is, I had almost said, indifferent; after that inside
the garden, we can construct a country of our own. Several old
trees, a considerable variety of level, several well-grown hedges
to divide our garden into provinces, a good extent of old well-set
turf, and thickets of shrubs and ever-greens to be cut into and
cleared at the new owner's pleasure, are the qualities to be sought
for in your chosen land. Nothing is more delightful than a
succession of small lawns, opening one out of the other through
tall hedges; these have all the charm of the old bowling-green
repeated, do not require the labour of many trimmers, and afford a
series of changes. You must have much lawn against the early
summer, so as to have a great field of daisies, the year's morning
frost; as you must have a wood of lilacs, to enjoy to the full the
period of their blossoming. Hawthorn is another of the Spring's
ingredients; but it is even best to have a rough public lane at one
side of your enclosure which, at the right season, shall become an
avenue of bloom and odour. The old flowers are the best and should
grow carelessly in corners. Indeed, the ideal fortune is to find
an old garden, once very richly cared for, since sunk into neglect,
and to tend, not repair, that neglect; it will thus have a smack of
nature and wildness which skilful dispositions cannot overtake.
The gardener should be an idler, and have a gross partiality to the
kitchen plots: an eager or toilful gardener misbecomes the garden
landscape; a tasteful gardener will be ever meddling, will keep the
borders raw, and take the bloom off nature. Close adjoining, if
you are in the south, an olive-yard, if in the north, a swarded
apple-orchard reaching to the stream, completes your miniature
domain; but this is perhaps best entered through a door in the high
fruit-wall; so that you close the door behind you on your sunny
plots, your hedges and evergreen jungle, when you go down to watch
the apples falling in the pool.
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