drew inspiration from Samuel Hartlib, or rather Child's "Legacy of Husbandry," published in 1651:—

Because Gardening is of few years standing in England, and therefore not deeply rooted, nor well understood. About fifty years ago, about which time Ingenuities began to flourish in England: This Art of Gardening, began to creep into England, into Sandwich, and Surrey, Fulham, and other places.

Some old men in Surrey, where it flourisheth very much at present; report That they knew the first Gardiners that came into those parts to plant Cabages, Colleflowers, and to sow Turneps, Carrets, and Parsnips, to sow Raith (or early ripe) Pease, Rape, all which at that time were great rarities, we having few or none in England, but what came from Holland and Flanders.

We have not Gardening-ware in that plenty and cheapness (unless perhaps about London) as in Holland, and other places, where they not onely feed themselves with Gardiner's ware, but also fat their Hogs and Cows.

We have as yet divers things from beyond seas, which the Gardiners may easily raise at home, though nothing nigh so much as formerly; for in Queen Elizabeth's time, we had not only our Gardiner's ware from Holland, but also Cherries from Flaunders; Apples from France; Saffron, Licorish from Spain; Hops from the Low-Countreys: and the Frenchman who writes the Treasure Politick saith, That it's one of the great Deficiencies of England, that Hops will not grow, whereas now it is known, that Licorish, Saffron, Cherries, Apples, Pears, Hops, Cabages, of England, are the best in the world. Notwithstanding we as yet want many things as for example: We want Onnions, very many coming to England from Flaunders, Spain, &c., Madder for dying coming from Zurich-Sea by Zealand; we have Red Roses from France, Annice-seeds, Fennel-seeds, Cumine, Caraway, Rice from Italy, which without question would grow very well in divers moist lands in England;

yea Sweet Marjoram, Barley, and further Gromwell-seed and Virga Aurea, and Would, from the Western Isles, though they grow in our hedges in England.

Sir William Temple was born in the reign of Charles I. in 1628, the year of Buckingham's assassination, and died in 1698, four years before his Royal Master, William III.

Every one knows from Macaulay's "pictured page that Sir William negotiated the famous Triple Alliance with Holland and Sweden in 1668, learnt from his grateful Sovereign how to cut Asparagus in the Dutch fashion, and finally, weary of diplomacy and etiquette, retired Diocletian-like from Court and ceremony, first to Sheen and later to his beloved More Park, near Farnham in Surrey (not Moor Park in Hertfordshire, the subject of his eulogy). Here he devoted himself to a lettered leisure amid books and apricots, pears and vines-took the losing side as the champion of Antiquity in the great Book-War then raging between the hosts of Ancients and Moderns (led by the truculent scholar Bentley), which some of us still look on safely from our arm-chairs in the satyric pages of Swift's "Battle of the Books"; and finally dying, as he had lived, an Epicurean philosopher of the school of Gassendi and St. Evremond, bequeathed his heart

to the little spot of Mother Earth near the sun-dial in the Garden he had cultivated and immortalised, while by his own direction the rest of his ashes were deposited in Westminster Abbey.

Temple's Essay is entitled "Upon the Gardens of Epicurus," and over Temple's generation, as well as over himself personally, the doctrine of Epicurus, the Philosopher of the Garden, in one or other of its Protean manifestations, was a dominating influence. For Epicureanism is an elastic philosophy, stretching from the varying heights of a Lucretius, a Gassendi,1 a Peiresc or a Temple, to the witty shallows of a Grammont or the swinish depths of a Shadwell, a Wycherley, and a Rochester. The name shelters alike virtue and sensuality. Whether interpreted with the urbanity and refinement of St. Evremond, or the more sledge-hammer sensualism and self-interest of Hobbes, the Philosophy of the Garden permeated

1 It is too much to expect that, even when Epicurus comes into his own again, Gassendi's De Vita, Moribus, et Doctrinâ Epicuri, which constituted him the Defender of the Garden Faith, will ever become popular-although old Dr. Charlton's Manual may; but there is no reason why a judicious and worthy reprint of Gassendi's Life of that "Incomparable Virtuoso" Peiresc—“ Englished" by Dr. Rand and eulogised by Evelyn and Isaac Disraeli—should not yield a substantial harvest.

b

both the thought and action of the cultured Carolines and Jacobines. The Age, moreover, was an eclectic one, wherein the world prenait son bien (ou son mal) où on le trouvait; and while some "sauntered" in the Garden and inhaled its spiritual aroma, others pondered in the Porch, and yet others lingered amid the Groves of the Academy-according as they were pleasurably, stoically, or platonically moulded. The Lyceum alone attracted few loungers, for Aristotle made too great demands upon the supine Spirit of the Age. Among the more intellectual, the Academy was in the ascendant; indeed, Academies, in a general sense, in some shape or other, seemed the Recreation of the Contemplative Man, who preferred casting lines for rational beings to "compleatly " angling chubb.

Richelieu and Colbert's foundation of the French Academies of Letters and Sciences, (based upon earlier Italian models) and Mazarin's Library, had set a fashion-for France under Louis XIV. was the lawgiver to Europe in matters of taste, culture and esprit. Both Cowley and Evelyn, with many others, floated schemes for the formation of Academies. Cowley's foundered at his death, but Evelyn's finally resulted in the establishment of that Royal Society-the godparent of all later Royal Institutions, of which Lord

Brouncker was the first President, Evelyn and Boyle original Fellows, and Sprat, Bishop of Rochester (Cowley's Biographer), the first Historian. Had the Royal Society interpreted Science more liberally and done its duty towards Letters as Evelyn desired and planned, the British Academy founded in 1904 would not have been called upon to fill the vacuum it did in regard to the literary and historical Sciences.

Almost there would seem to be some subtle psychological nexus between the Garden Spirit and the Soul of Universities and Academies-the classic and sacred Groves of Thought, Learning and "Impassioned Contemplation"-for its reawakening or Palingenesia in our own generation synchronises with much ferment in regard to the needs and obligations of Universities and other allied and endowed Corporations. And perhaps it is well that when the Schoolmaster and Professor are abroad-the spirit and soul of Gardens should be also alive and active. And everywhere it hovers around us! Whether it be manifested in the practical care and culture of Gardens, and the revival of Garden Aesthetic and Design, or take the purely lyrical form of Henley's "Hawthorn and Lavender": whether, like Mr. Douglas Ainslie's lilting "Chinese Pleasaunce," it recalls the far-off charm of the willow-pattern and