attach far greater importance than we do in England. The ladies here are considered to be the most beautiful in the country, and, judging from the specimens which I had an opportunity of seeing, they certainly deserve their high character. Their dresses are of the richest material, made in a style at once graceful and elegant; and the only faults I could find with them were their small deformed feet, and the mode they have of painting or whitening their faces with a kind of powder made for this purpose." In January, 1845, the season of the year being unfavorable for further botanical operations in China, Mr. Fortune paid a short visit to the Island of Luzan, of which Manilla is the capital. Ilis object was orchidaceous plants, especially one kind, the Phalaenopsis Amabilis, a singularly beautiful species, the queen of Orchids; for the first imported specimen of which the Duke of Devonshire paid a hundred guineas. It was a prize of no little importance; so the woods of which it is a native were sought with proportionate eagerness. Many were the vexations and annoyances which were met with almost impenetrable thickets on the mountains, and swarins of two kinds of leeches in the moister plains, which made wounds upon the legs of the whole party, and were nearly as alarming as the banditti. But no hindrances were regarded; and his perseverance at last had its reward. "I was very anxious," he says, "to get some large specimens of the plant, and offered a dollar, which was a high sum in an Indian forest, for the largest which should be brought to me. The lover of this beautiful tribe will easily imagine the delight I felt, when one day I saw two Indians approaching with a plant of extraordinary size, having ten or twelve branching flower-stalks upon it, and upwards of a hundred flowers in full bloom. 6 There,' said they in triumph, 'is not that worth a dollar?' knowledged that they were well entitled to the reward, and took immediate possession of my prize. This plant is now in the garden of the Horticultural Society of London; and although it was a little reduced, in order to get it into the plant-case at Manilla, is still by far the largest specimen in Europe." (P. 337.) I ac The trials of a botanical collector in China are not over when he has packed his plants into their glass cases. Our collector had still to fight for his plants and for his life. Returning home by way of Chusan, the little fleet of wood junks, on board of which he had embarked, was attacked by four or five pirate vessels, when about sixty miles from Shanghai. The defence of the whole party was left to his single arm, assisted by his doublebarrelled gun. The exploit itself and his account of it are so Homeric, that his readers will be apt to think he has mistaken his profession. Had he been brought up to military instead of peaceful pursuits; had he always lived either in a fleet or in a camp, and never entered one of those glass houses from which our proverb expressly excludes all ideas of violence and aggression, he could not have acted with greater coolness and intrepidity. We must take this opportunity of telling the public - what our merchants know pretty well already that piracy bids fair to be as formidable off the coast of China as in the Indian Archipelago. In his day, Sir Henry Pottinger proposed to Keying that a flotilla for the suppression of piracy should be sup ported at the joint expense of China and Great Britain. The offer was rejected; and the crime has gradually increased, until no Chinese vessel can make a coasting voyage without imminent danger of capture, unless she is in charge of a convoy. It is now some months since 700 grain junks were blockaded in a port near Shanghai; and an expedition, it was reported, was to be fitted out for their relief. By the latest accounts, nothing had been done; and it was feared that the Chinese government would have to compound with the pirates for the release of the rice fleet. Meantime a British sloop of war had taken more vigorous measures; and had just destroyed two piratical junks that were lying in wait close in shore for the Amoy sugar junks, which at that season were daily going northward. The Friend of China (June 17), whom we are citing, may well bespeak the gratitude of the native merchants. The Chinese are a people to themselves. But we have some points in common; and if robbers are as much at their easc elsewhere in the interior, as they are said to be at Soo-chow, and if the coasting trade of the empire is at the mercy of bands of pirates, something more than a mechanical government must be raised up, or there will be ere long a change in, if not an end to, the most ancient form of society now existing in the world. But to return. Mr. Fortune must have felt infinite pride and satisfaction, when in May, 1846, he saw the beautiful productions of the flowery land, which he had collected with so much skill and perseverance, deposited in excellent order in the garden of the Horticultural Society at Chiswick. What proportion they bear to the botanical wealth of China, further experience alone can show. It is but a small space of this vast country, we must remember,-its sea-board only,-which has been actually explored. For the rest we have to depend on the presumption which the contents of the public gardens visited by Mr. Fortune may afford. Considering its celebrity, | Here we have signs of something more than every district of the empire might be expected the cultivation of flowers; though so little is to send the choicest representatives of its Flora intimated about scale, that we are not abto the nursery gardens of Soo-chow-foo; yet solutely sure that the lakes were more than our collector, it would seem, fell in there with ponds; or the enclosures and their ornaments very little which had not also found its way to much larger than those of a modern "tea garthe nursery gardens of the sea-port towns. den," of which the description a little reminds us. But whatever aid our gardens may have received or may be destined to receive from this Had Mr. Fortune remained in this country, quarter in their vegetable matériel, or the plants it was his intention to have published another themselves, the other very improbable notion work, which would have been confined to that the peculiar style or character of the En- Chinese gardening and gardens; and it is to glish garden, as distinguished from that of the be hoped that he will now avail himself of his European continent, had been copied from the additional opportunities. All the gardens of Chinese, is plainly without foundation. The the mandarins, however, which he saw (and notion is thus noticed by Gray, in a letter to he believes that he saw more than had been Mr. How, in 1762. He is writing about a seen before by any other person) were exceedbook lately published by Count Algarotti, and ingly small, like that at Ningpo. They may observes: "He is highly civil to our nation: be described in a few words; as very limited but there is one point in which he does not do in extent, intersected by ornamental walls us justice: I am the more solicitous about it, which have carved stone windows to admit of because it relates to the only taste we can call a glimpse through them, and full of beautiful our own; the only proof of our original talent flowering plants and dwarf trees, with here in matter of pleasure,-I mean our skill in and there some pretty rock-work representing gardening, or rather laying out grounds: and the rugged hills of the country. A Chinese this is no small honor to us, since neither Italy garden of this humbler kind, attached to one nor France have ever had the least notion of of our English gardens, might be interesting it, nor yet do at all comprehend it when they as a curiosity; but would hardly be accepted see it. That the Chinese have this beautiful as a model by those who could find room for art in high perfection, seems very probable something better than the fausse campagne it from the Jesuits' letters, and more from Cham- affects. Not but that we are sensible of the bers' little discourse, published some years charm of those trim monastic gardens, where ago; but it is very certain we copied nothing Milton in his day could still see pacing up and from them, nor had anything but nature for down the figure of "retired Leisure;" and our model. It is not forty years since the art the enjoyment of which he at least must have was born among us; and it is sure that there thought consistent with an admiration for the was nothing in Europe like it; and as sure grander style of landscape gardening-of that we then had no information on this head which in the Paradise Lost he is supposed by from China at all." (Letters, p. 385.) We some to have sown the first idea. It will be have looked over the Jesuits' letters, as well well indeed always to keep them distinct; as as the large work of Duhalde, who was like- the author whom we have quoted says that wise a Jesuit in the mission, for their informa- the Chinese at present keep them. Speaking tion on the state of Chinese gardening. There of their landscape gardens, he observes that are very few passages in either of them relat-"if you meet there with any squares or boring to it: What is said, however, is certainly evidence, in some cases, of considerable skill; though whether it be evidence of any general skill in the art of landscape gardening, is a very different question Duhalde, for instance, describing the better class of Chinese houses, tells us, On y voit des jardins, des lacs, et tout ce qui peut récréer la vue; il y en a qui forment des rochers et des montagnes artificielles percées de tous côtés avec divers détours en forme de labyrinthes, pour y prendre le frais quelques-un y nourrissent des cerfs et des daims quant ils ont assez d'espace pour faire une espèce de parc: ils y ont pareillement des viviers pour des poissons et des oiseaux de vivière." (Description de la Chine, p. 85.) 66 ders of cultivated flowers, their small extent seems to announce that it is a license which requires an apology." Even in England itself, at this time, more attention is paid to the raising of flowers than to the manner of displaying them-to the ornamental contents of the garden, than to its general appearance and effect. And there are obvious causes for this preference: flowers can be raised at a small cost compared with the sum required to form a well decorated pleasure ground; while many of them are so beautiful, that their intrinsic brilliancy and fragrance make them objects of sufficient satisfaction without the addition of accompaniments. Nevertheless, we confess, we miss the embel seen either at home or abroad. He praised the terraces and cloisters, the steps and the balusters, and said the whole might "serve for a pattern to the best gardens of our manner, and that are most proper for our country and climate." (Essays, p. 229.) When the tide turned, Moor Park and Sir W. Temple were accordingly selected as the favorite butt of the new race of connoisseurs. Emboldened by Gray's approval of the later style as more proper for our country and our climate,” Mason ventured to break forth "Behold what Temple called Step following step, by tedious flight of stairs. 66 (English Garden, p. 24.) lishments which our ancestors would certainly have bestowed upon their frame and setting. In modern times, we see, attached to houses of no lower than the third, and sometimes even of the second class, holes cut in the turf for the reception of flowers; arranged, it is true, more or less according to some pattern, but without any further conversion from the primary field, than a little levelling and some gravel walks. Had these gardens been formed in the days of the Tudors and the Stuarts, there would have been the stairs and balustrades, the vases and various stone work, the terraces, the alleys, and formal lines, which were certainly very imposing ornaments in the immediate neighborhood of their buildings. Nor need the adoption of such accessories in the slightest degree cast our favorite flowers into the shade; for no parterres will more prominently display, than those of a formal garden, the sparkling jewellery of our modern Flora. It must still be the natural, and indeed necessary, arrangement, that the flower In the same strain Horace Walpole laughed beds should form the life and light of the dec- at going down steps out of doors, and said, oration and as nearest the house, be constantly any man might design and build as sweet a in view. There was a time, however, when garden (as Moor Park) who had been born this architectural and elaborate taste was car- in and never stirred out of Holborn." (Esried too far. The higher class of gardeners, say on Modern Gardening, p. 256.) Pope, the decorators of grounds, who had arisen as in one of his Essays, and in the "Guardian, horticulture improved, were, at first, uniformly and Addison in the "Spectator," added their its advocates. While Le Notre practised it at condemnation of the taste of former times; Versailles and other palaces in France, London until, at length, the public voice was deterand Wise adopted it in England, in the king's mined by the concurrence of such great augardens, at Blenheim, and in many gentle- thorities; and a tribe of landscape gardeners men's residences. It did not leave enough to sprang up who founded their fame upon avoidnature. Things became worse, when, on the ing all appearance of design. Because their accession of King William, the Dutch taste predecessors had slighted the excellent maxim, was engrafted on the French. Formality, be- "ars est celare artem," Kent, Bridgman, fore too stiff, was now rendered rigid; and Brown, Wright, Southcote, and their disciples ornamental gardening was turned into an art, caricatured it; and because they conceived of which it appeared to be a first principle that nature to abhor a straight line, they cleared nature was to be studiously contradicted and the country of its ancient avenues, and brought suppressed, as something inconsistent with the their tortuous flower-beds and winding walks object of a garden. Even trees were not per- up to the very house walls, which (as Cowper mitted to retain their natural shapes: yews says of the sunbeam) they would also have were clipped into peacocks, and box-trees into made crooked had they been able. The hand statues; so as to provoke the observation, that of man was to be kept out of sight as much not only might one have had a wife like the as possible; objects never seen in nature were fruitful vine, and children like olive branches, to affect being natural. We cannot find it in but uncles and aunts like box and yew. All our hearts to quarrel with that application of this was absurd enough. But these errors the principle, by which even handsome resimight have been reformed without rushing dences were clothed with ivy and other plants. into the opposite extreme. This, however, But now-a-days it will scarcely be believed, was what was done and we are still suffering we hope, that Kent, in order the more effectfrom the violence of that reaction. ually to conceal every vestige of design, had some dead trees put in when he planted Kensington Gardens. Sir William Temple, many years before, had maintained, in his pretty Essay on gardening, that the Countess of Bedford's garden at Moor Park was the "perfectest figure of a garden," and the sweetest place he had ever Meantime many a beautiful place was irreparably injured. Cowper had a deep love of the country-much deeper than that of either the brick and mortar maker of Strawberry Hill or the poetical "maker" of Windsor Forest. His sorrowful lamentation over the process will live longer than Mason's descriptive satire on Moor Park: "Improvement, too, the idol of the age, Gray had made a list of the places in England which he thought worth seeing. We should have liked to have had from Cowper his more melancholy list of places, where the beauty which had been taken away by these improvers had had a superior character and charm about it—at least what he could not but feel to be so-to that by which it was replaced. Whately, one of our best writers upon the subject, is made so, very much in consequence of his not having so intense a horror of regularity and order as the rest. He admires, it is true, the gardeners of the natural school, and prefers their creations to those of London and Wise-and we quite agree with him, if there must be nothing but exclusiveness and extremes. Still he could tolerate a straight line, and the admission of architectural ornaments in gardening. There are cases, too, in which he would permit what was artificial to be visible. "Choice and arrangement, composition, improvement, and preservation," he writes, "are so many symptoms of art which may occasionally appear in several parts of a garden, but ought to be displayed without reserve near the house; nothing there should seem neglected; it is a scene of the most cultivated nature; it ought to be enriched; it ought to be adorned; and design may be avowed in the plan, and expense in the execution." (P. 141.) This is wholly at variance with the opinions of his contemporaries, who must have despised such old-fashioned notions. On certain other points, his taste was still more completely dif ferent from theirs. 66 Even regularity is not excluded (he continues): so capital a structure may extend its influence beyond its walls; but this power should be exercised only over its immediate appendages: the platform upon which the house stands is generally continued to a certain breadth on every side; and whether it be pavement or gravel, may undoubtedly coincide with the shape of the building. The road which leads up to the door may go off from it in an equal angle, so that the two sides shall exactly correspond: and certain ornaments, though detached, are yet rather within the province of architecture than of gardening; works of sculpture are not like building, objects familiar in scenes of cultivated nature; but vases, statues, and termini, are usual appendages to a considerable edifice, as such they may attend the mansion and trespass a little upon the garden, provided they are not carried so far as to lose their connection with the structure. (P. 141.) These distinctions appear to us to be very just; nothing can have a less satisfactory apperance than a mansion standing in a meadow or a forest. However beautiful the landscape may be, something is wanting to connect it with the house; the transition, at one step, from a large and decorated building to a wild external space, bearing no marks of the human hand on it, is unpleasing from its abruptness. The eye wishes for some blending, for some junction. Looking away from the house, it desires the architecture to merge by degrees into the landscape;, looking up to the house, it desires nature to be visibly tempered with art before it terminates against a building, which must always be artificial. How this union should be carried into effect; where obvious design should cease; at what distance from the mansion no art except ars celato ought to be employed, must vary with the circumstanThe space may be so small as necessarily to confine the floriculturist to a judicious selection and exhibition of his flowers. If larger, the style and arrangement ought to be governed not only by the nature of the grounds which are themselves to be adorned, but also by that of the surrounding country, as far as it is admitted into the view. ces. Many persons at present consider flowerbeds cut out in turf a sufficient connecting link between the landscape and the building; and there are cases, and those indeed the most numerous, where nothing more is necessary, nor perhaps appropriate. If a formal pattern. be adopted, and an artificial appearance maintained, in the disposition of the colors, flowerbeds may answer the purpose, round a villa or a cottage. We cannot, however, agree with those who think that this does all that is required, when the character of the building is more important. Round an ornamented house of any pretensions, it is indispensable for its full effect that the garden should likewise have architectural decoration. A terrace has many advantages; but whatever forms may be adopted, taking care to consult the ge nius of the place in all," they should be combined with lawn and walks, and with parterres broad in their lines and regular in their forms -a regularity which, in its turn, should gradually disappear and die away in the natural landscape. We have not a word to say, however, under any circumstances, in favor of the small irregular flower-beds, in the shape of butterflies, or hearts, and kidney beans, dotted here and there, without any reference to one another, by which so many of our modern gardens are disfigured. For the improvement of the natural scenery into which the formal garden should merge, among some over-refined suggestions, Whately offers many which are really valuable: And it was certainly no excess of refinement in Sir Uvedale Price, but great good sense, to advise us, if we would well lay out our grounds, to study the compositions of the best landscape painters. Though may seem at first to be reversing the order of things to strive to render the nature, which we have to deal with, like their pictures, yet it will be only giving nature back the benefit of her own lessons-restoring her a part of what the oculus eruditus of the artist had originally borrowed from her. This is particularly true of those points of view from which vistas or openings are to be made, in order to show a landscape as it appears at a given spot. A landscape gardener ought to learn as much from the Water-Color Exhibition, as any horticulturist can learn at Chiswick. it But we have no intention of being carried away into a discussion on landscape gardening. Our first object has been, to compare the conflicting accounts which had been given of the taste and practice of the Chinese, and to see how far they could be reconciled with each other; our next, to show that, whatever distance separates the spacious parks of the emperor from the ordinary and all but topiary garden of the mandarins, an almost equal diversity has prevailed-we are not sure that we might not say prevails-among ourselves. Not that we are a whit more indebted to Chinese precedents for the one style than the other. In a country like England, the two styles were pretty sure to spring up and maintain their ground, first one and then the other—or both together; and to have admirers in every class, according to the originality of individual fancies, or the current fashion of the day. On such a subject as the natural and the elaborate --and between different forms of art, according to the style or ornament preferred-each will always have its zealous advocates: provided only, when the several systems are put in opposition, that other circumstances are equally advantageous. No theory and no experience have yet established which of them produces the highest, most permanent, and most extensive pleasure. Lord Byron had a pride in thinking that our national taste, as it is conceived to be shown in what is called an English garden, had grown up less under the influence of our landscape painters than that of our descriptive poets*-more especially Milton and Pope. We should not wonder, notwithstanding-so variable a thing is taste in matters of this kind-if Temple were now to find almost as large a party to follow him to Moor Park, as would accompany Thomson and Pope to Stowe. A taste for flowers and scenery is now so widely spread and diligently cultivated, that it is only reasonable to expect a great improvement in the arts relating to them. The layer out of a garden has at present abundant power of forming his taste: statements of various systems are before him-comparisons of them and discussions without end. There is no excuse for him if he does not make himself so well acquainted with these, as to at least avoid the manifest errors thas they point out. He can likewise select for the decoration of his spaces, from so large and admirable a catalogue of trees, shrubs, and flowers, that any shape or color can be acquired. Cheap glass puts within his reach the vegetable productions of every climate. Never were means so ample. We confidently hope that a good use will be made of these facilities: but that this may be so, we cannot be too much on our guard against any extreme and exclusive system.Edinburgh Review. There is a very striking description in Mr. Stir ling's "Annals of the Artists of Spain" (624.), of the gardens of Aranjuez, its rivers and fountains and marble statues, its cathedral walks of hornbeam, and its few camels parading to and fro with garden burdens. The description is introduced by a notice of the many sketches made by Velasquez of its sweet garden scenes, as, for example, of the Avenue of the Queen, and the Fountain of the Tritons: And it is another instance how sociable are the arts, that Mr. Stirling should be in this manner conducted to do honor to Boccaccio, and the garden of his immortal 66 can never palace; creations which, he justly says, be sufficiently studied by the painter and the landscape architect." Prince Albert, as President of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufac tures, has given two gold medals for competition during the ensuing session: one for the best account of any new and improved machinery or processes employed in the cultivation or preparation of sugar in the British colonies, designed to economize labor and increase production - the other for the best cement for uniting glass, particularly for cementing glass pipes and glass roofs. |