Note 94 — English Authors on Gardening. (continued 3)

Sterne mentions a traveller who always set out with the spleen and jaundice,—"without one generous connection, or pleasurable anecdote to tell of,—travelling straight on, looking neither to his right hand or his left, lest love or pity should seduce him out of the road." Mr. Loudon seems to be a very different kind of a traveller: for his horticultural spirit and benevolent views, pervade almost every page of his late tour through Bavaria. One envies his feelings, too, in another rural excursion, through the romantic scenery of Bury, at Mr. Barclay's, and of Mr. Hope's at Deepdene; and particularly when he paints his own emotions on viewing the room of sculpture there. He even could not, in October last, take his rural ride from Edgware to St. Alban's without thus awakening in each traveller a love of gardens, and giving this gentle hint to an honest landlord:—"A new inn, in the outskirts of St. Alban's, in the Dunstable road, has an ample garden, not made the most of. Such a piece of ground, and a gardener of taste, would give an inn, so situated, so great a superiority, that every one would be tempted to stop there; but the garden of this Boniface, exhibits but the beginning of a good idea." When travelling along our English roads, his mind no doubt frequently reverts to those road-side gardens in the Netherlands, which he thus happily adverts to in p. 32 of his Encyclopædia: "The gardens of the cottagers in these countries, are undoubtedly better managed and more productive than those of any other country; no man who has a cottage is without a garden attached; often small, but rendered useful to a poor family, by the high degree of culture given to it." Linnæus, in his eloquent oration at Upsal, enforces the pleasure of travelling in one's own country, through its fields and roads. Mr. Heath, the zealous and affectionate historian of Monmouth, in his account of that town and its romantic neighbourhood, (published in 1804,) omits no opportunity of noticing the many neat gardens, which add to the other rural charms of its rich scenery, thus mentions another Boniface:—"The late Thomas Moxley, who kept the public-house at Manson Cross, was a person that took great delight in fruit-trees, and had a large piece of ground let him, for the purpose of planting it with apple-trees; but his death (which followed soon after) prevented the plan from being carried to the extent he intended, though some of the land bears evidence of his zeal and labour." Mr. Heath cannot even travel on the turnpike road, from Monmouth to Hereford, without benevolently remarking, that "a number of laborious families have erected small tenements, with a garden to each, most of which are thickly planted with apple-trees, whose produce considerably adds to the owner's support."