to l)e based upon forty years* experience, and is said
to have met with great favor. I name it only be-
cause it embodies these old couplets, which still lead a
vagabond life up and down the pages of coxmtry-
almanacs: —

* See Article of Philip Pusey, M. P., in Trarwicticm oj (he Boyal
«ofM<y, Vol. XIV.



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228 WET DAYS.

**If the grass gn>ws in Janiveer,
It grows the worst for 't all the year."

** The Welshman had rather see his dam os tlie biat
Than to see a fair Februeer.''

" When April blows his horn,
It 's good both for haj and com.**

** A cold May and a windy
Makes a fiill bam and a findy.*'

'* A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay;
But a swarm in July
Is not worth a fly."

Will any couplets of Tennyson leap as large a
fame?

About the same period, John Mills, a Fellow of the
Royal Society, published a work of a totally different
character, — being very methodic, very full, very clear.
It was distributed through five volimies. He enforces
the teachings of Evelyn and Duhamel, and is com-
mendatory of the views of Tull. The Rotherham
plough is figured in his work, as well as thirteen of
the natural grasses. He speaks of potatoes and turnips
as established crops, and enlarges upon their impor-
tance. He clings to the Virgilian theory of small
farms, and to the better theory of thorough tillage.

In 1759 was issued the seventh edition of MiUer'i



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CLARIDGE, MILLS, Ai^o^^j^\N^

* Gardener's Dictionary," * in which was for the first
dme adapted (in English) the classical system of Lin«*
3iseus. If I have not before alluded to Philip Miller,
it is not because he is undeserving. He was a cor-
respondent of the chiefs in science over the Continent
of Europe, and united to his knowledge a rare practical
skill. He was superintendent of the fiunous Chelsea
Gardens of the Apothecaries Company. He lies
buried in the Chelsea Church-yard, where the Fellows
of the Linnaean and Horticultural Societies of London
have erected a monument to his memory. Has the
reader ever sailed up the Thames, beyond Westmin-
ster ? And does he remember a little sp#t of garden-
ground, walled in by dingy houses, that lies upon the
right bank of the river near to Chelsea Hospital?
If he can recall two gaunt, flat-topped cedars which
sentinel the walk leading to the river -gate, he will
have the spot in his mind, where, nearly two himdred
years ago, and a full century before the Kew parterres
were laid down, the Chelsea Garden of the Apothe-
caries Company was established. It was in the open
country then ; and even Philip Miller, in 1722, walked
to his work between hedge - rows, where sparrows
chirped in spring, and in winter the fieldfare chat-
tered: but the town has swallowed it; the city-smoke
has starved it; even the marble image of Sir Hani
* First published in 1734.



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230 WET DAYS,

Sloane in its centre is but the mummy of a statue
Yet ill che Physic Garden there are trees struggling
still which Philip Miller planted; and I can readily
believe, that, when the old man, at seventy - eight,
(through some quarrel with the Apothecaries,) took
his last walk to the river-bank, he did it with a sink-
ing at the heart which kept by him till he died.

Thomas Whately.

X COME now to speak of Thomas Whately, to whom
-*- I have already alluded, and of whom, from the
scantiness of all record of his life, it is possible to say
only very little. He lived at Nonsuch Park, in Surrey,
not many miles from London, on the road to Epsom.
He was engaged in public affairs, being at one time
secretary to the Earl of Suffolk, and also a member of
Parliament But I enroll him in my wet-day service
simply as the author of the most appreciative and most
tasteful treatise upon landscape-gardening which has
ever been written, — not excepting either Price or
Repton. It is entitled, "Observations on Modem
Gardening," and was first published in 1770. It w^as
llie same year translated into French by Latapie, and
was to the Continental gardeners the first revelation
of the graces which belonged to English cultivated
landscape. In the course of the book he gives vivid



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1



THOMAS WHATELY, 231

•
descriptions of Blenheim, Hagley, Leasowes, Gare-

mont, and several other well-known British places.
He treats separately of Parks, Water, Farms, Gar-
dens, Hidings, etc., illustrating each with delicate and
tender transcripts of natural scenes. Now he takes
us to the cliffs of Matlock, and again to the farm-flats
of Woburn. His criticisms upon the places reviewed
are piquant, full of rare apprehension of the most
delicate natural beauties, and based on principles
which every man of taste must accept at sight As
you read him, he does not seem so much a theorizer
or expounder as he does the simple interpreter of
graces which had escaped your notice. His sugges-
tions come upon you with such a momentum of truth-
fulness, that you cannot stay to challenge them.

There is no argumentation, and no occasion for it.
On such a bluff he tells us wood should be planted,
and we wonder that a hundred people had not said
the same thing before; on such a river-meadow the
grassy level should lie open to the sun, and we wonder
who could ever have doubted it. Nor is it in matters
of taste alone, I think, that the best things we hear
seem always to have a smack of oldness in them, —
as if we remembered their virtue. " Capital ! " we say ;
•* but has n't it been said before ? " or, " Precisely 1
I wonder I did n't do or say the same thing myself.*'
Whenever you hear such criticisms upon any perform



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«a2 WET DAYS.

ance, you may be sure that it has been directed by a
sound instinct It is not a sort of criticism any one
is apt to make upon flashy rhetoric, or upon flash gar-
dening. •

Whately alludes to the analogy between landscape-
painting and landscape-gardening: the true artists in
either pursuit aim at the production of rich pictorial
effects, but their means are different. Does the
painter seek to give steepness to a declivity? — then
he may add to his shading a figure or two toiling up.
The gardener, indeed, cannot plant a man there ; but
a copse upon the summit will add to the apparent
height, and he may indicate the difficulty of ascent
by a hand-rail running along the path. The painter
will extend his distance by the diminuendo of his
mountains, or of trees stretching toward the horizon :
the gardener has, indeed, no handling of successive
mountains, but he may increase apparent distance by
leafy avenues leading toward the limit of vision ; he
may even exaggerate the effect still further by so grad-
uating the size of his trees as to make a counterfeit
perspective.

When I read such a book as this of Whately's, —
so informed and leavened as it is by an elegant taste,
— I am most painfully impressed by the shortcomings
of very much which is called good landscape-garden-
ing with us. As if serpentine walks, and glimpses of



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THOMAS WHATELY, 233

elaborated turf-ground, and dots of exotic evergreens
in little circlets of spaded earth, compassed at all those
broad effects which a good designer should keep in
mind ! We are gorged with petit-^makre-vsai, and pretty
littlenesses of all kinds. We have the daintiest of
walks, and the rarest of shrubs, and the best of drain-
age; but of those grand, bold effects which at once
seize upon the imagination, and inspire it with new wor«
ship of Nature, we have great lack. In private grounds
we cannot of course command the opportunity which
the long tenure under British privilege gives ; but the
conservators of public parks have scope and verge ;
let them look to it, that their resources be not wasted
in the niceties of mere gardening, or in elaborate ar-
chitectural devices. Banks of blossoming shrubs and
tangled wild vines and labyrinthine walks will count
for nothing in park -effect, when, fifty years hence,
the scheme shall have ripened, and hoary pines pile
along the ridges, and gaunt single trees spot here
and there the glades, to invite the noontide wayfarer.
A true artist should keep these ultimate effects always
in his eye, — effects that may be greatly impaired, if
not utterly sacrificed, by an injudicious multiplication
of small and meretricious beauties, which in no way
conspire to the grand and final poise of the scene.

But I must not dwell upon so enticing a topic, ot
mj wet day will run over into sunshine. One word



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234 WET DAYS.

more, however, I liave to say of the personality of
the author who has suggested it The reader of
Sparks's Works and Life of Franklin may remember,
that, in the fourth volume, under the head of " Hutch-
inson's Letters," the Doctor details difficulties which
he fell into in connection with "certain papers" he
obtained indirectly from one of His Majesty's officials,
and communicated to Thomas Gushing, Speaker of
the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay,
The difficulty involved others besides the Doctor, and
a duel came of it between William Whately and Mr.
Temple. This William Whately was the brother of
Thomas Whately, — the author in question, and the
secretary to Lord Grenville,* in which capacity he
died in 1772.t The " papers " ulluded to were letters
from Governor Hutchinson and others, expressing
sympathy with the British Ministry in their efforts
to enforce a grievous Colonial taxation. It was cur-
rently supposed that Mr. Thomas Whately was the
recipient of these letters; and upon their being made
public afler his death, Wm. Whately, his brother and
executor, conceived that Mr. Temple was the instru-
ment of thiBir transfer. Hence the duel. Dr. Frank-
lin, however, by public letter, declared that this alle-
gation was ill-founded, but would never reveal the

* I find him named, in Dodsley's Annual Regisler for 1771, '' Koepef
«f His Majesty's Private Roads."
t Louden makes an en or in giving 1780 as the year of liif death.



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HORACE WALPOLE. 235

Dame of the party to whom he was indebted. The
Doctor lost his place of Postmaster General for the'
Colonies, and was egregiously insulted by Wedder-
bum in open Council; but he could console himself
with the friendship of such men as Lawyer Dunning,
(one of the suspected authors of " Junius,") and with
the eulogiiun of Lord Chatham.



Horace Walpole.

npHERE are three more names belonging to this
-*- period, which I shall bring under review, to finish
up my day. These are Horace Walpole, (Lord Or-
ford,) Edmund Burke, and Oliver Goldsmith. Wal-
pole was the proprietor of Strawberry Hill, and wrote
upon gardening : Burke was the owner of a noble farm
at Beaconsfield, which he managed with rare sagacity :
Groldsmith could never claim land enough to dig a
grave upon, until the day he was buried ; but he wrote
the story of " The Vicar of Wakefield," and the sweet
poem of " The Deserted Village."

I take a huge pleasure in dipping from time to time
into the books of Horace Walpole, and an almost equal
pleasure in cherishing a hearty contempt for the man.
With a certain native cleverness, and the tact of a
showman, he paraded his resources, whether of garden,
or villa, or memory, or ingenuity, so as to carry a larger



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236 WET DAYS.

reputation for ability than he ever has deserved His
money, and the distinction of his father, gave hLn an
association with cultivated people, — artists, politicians,
poets, — which the metal of his own mind would never
have foimd by reason of its own gravitating power.
He courted notoriety in a way that would have made
him, if a poorer man, the toadying Boswell of some
other Johnson giant, and, if very poor, the welcome
buffoon of some gossiping journal, who would never
weary of contortions, and who would brutify himself
at the death, to kindle an admiring smile.

He writes pleasantiy about painters, and condescend-
ingly of gardeners and gardening. Of the special
beauties of Strawberry Hill he is himself historiog-
rapher; elaborate copper plates, elegant paper, and
a particularity that is ludicrous, set forth the charms
of a villa which never supplied a single incentive to
correct taste, or a single scene that has the embalm-
ment of genius. He tells us grandly how this room
was hung with crimson, and that other with gold ; how
"the tea-room was adorned with green paper and
prints, .... on the hearth, a large green vase of
German ware, with a spread eagle, and lizards for
handles," — which vase (if tiie observation be not
counted disloyal by sensitive gentiemen) must have
been a very absurd bit of pottery. " On a shelf and
brackets are two pot-pourrii of Nankin china; two



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HORACE W ALP OLE.' 237

pierced blue and white basons of old Delft ; and two
sceaus [8ic\ of coloured Seve ; a biue and white vase
and cover ; and two old Fayence bottles."

When a man writes about his own furniture in this
style for large type and quarto, we pity him more than
if he had kept to such fantastic nightmares as the
" Castle of Otranto." The Earl of Orford speaks in
high terms of the literary abilities of the Earl of
Bath: have any of my readers ever chanced to see
any literary work of the Earl of Bath ? If not, I will
sup])ly the omission, in the shape of a ballad, " to the
tune of a former song by George Bubb Doddingtoo."
It is entitled, « Strawberry Hill."

" Some cry up Gunnersbury,

For Slon some declare;
And some say that with Chiswick House

No villa can compare.
But ask the beaux of Middlesex,

Who know the countiy well,
If Strawb'iy Hill, if Strawb'ry Hill

Don't bear away the bell ?

Since Denham sung of Cooper's,

There 's scarce a hill around -
But what in song or ditty

Is turned to &iiy ground.
Ah, peace be with their memories !

I wish them wondrous well;
But Strawb'ry HiU, but Strawb'ry Hfli

Must bear away the bell.'*



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238 WET DAYS.

Tt is no way surprising that a noble poet capable of
writing such a ballad should have admired the villa of
Horace Walpole : it is no way surprising that a propri-
etor capable of admiring such a ballad should have
printed his own glorification of Strawberry Hill.

I am not insensible to the easy grace and the piq-
uancy of his letters ; no man could ever pour more de-
lightful twaddle into the ear of a great friend ; no man
could more delight in doing it, if only the friend were
really great I am aware that he was highly cultivated,
— that he had observed widely at home and abroad, —
that he was a welcome guest in distinguished circles ;
but he never made or had a sterling friend ; and the
news of the old man's death caused no severer shock
than if one of his Fayence pipkins had broken.

But what most irks me is the absurd dilettanteism
and presumption of the man. He writes a tale as if
he were giving dignity to romance ; he applauds an
artist as Dives might have thrown crumbs to Lazarus ;
vain to the last degree of all that he wrote or said, he
was yet too fine a gentleman to be called author ; if
there had been a way of printing books, without recourse
to the vulgar media of type and paper, — a way of which
titled gentlemen could command the monopoly, — I
think he would have written more. As I turn over the
velvety pages of his works, and look at his catalogues,
his hon-mots, his drawings, his affectations of magnifr



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EDMUND BURKE. 2S9

oence, I seem to see the fastidious old man shuffling
witli gouty step up and down, from drawing-room to li
brary, — stopping here and there to admire some newly
arrived bit of pottery, — pulling out his golden snuff-
box, and whisking a delicate pinch into his old nostrils,
— then dusting his affluent shirt-frill with the tips of his
dainty fingers, with an air of gratitude to Providence
for having created so fine a gentleman as Horace Wal-
pole, and of gratitude to Horace Walpole for having
created so fine a place as Strawberry Hill.

Edmund Burke.

T TURN from this ancient specimen of titled elegance
-■- to a consideration of Mr. Burke, with much the
same relief with which I would go out from a perfumed
drawing-room into the breezy air of a June morning.
Lord Kames has told us that Mr. Burke preferred oxen
to horses for field-labor; and we have Burke's letters
to his bailifi^ showing a nice attention to the economies
of farming, and a complete mastery of its working de-
tails. But more than anywhere else does his agricul-
tural sagacity declare itself in his " Thoughts and De-
tails on Scarcity." *

Will the reader pardon me the transcript of a pas-
sage or two ? " It is a perilous thing to try experimentf

• Presented to William Pitt, 1795.



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MO WET DAYS,

on the farmer. The farmer's capital (except in a few
persons, and hi a very few places) is far more feeble
than is commonly imagined. The trade is a very poor
trade ; it is subject to great risks and losses. The capital,
such as it is, is turned but once in the year ; in some
branches it requires three years before the money is
paid ; I believe never less than three in the turnip and

grass-land course It is very rare that the most

prosperous farmer, counting the value of his quick and
dead stock, the interest of the money he turns, together
with his own wages as a bailiff or overseer, ever does
make twelve or fifteen per centum by the year on his
capital. In most parts of England which have fallen
within my observation, I have rarely known a farmer
wno to his own trade has not added some other employ-
ment or traffic, that, after a course of the most unre-
mitting parsimony and labor, and persevering in hia
business for a long course of years, died worth more
than paid his debts, leaving his posterity to continue in
nearly the same equal conflict between industry and
want in which the last predecessor, and a long line of
predecessors before him, lived and died."

In confirmation of this last statement, I may mention
that Samuel Ireland, writing in 1792, (" Picturesque
Views on the River Thames,") speaks of a farmer named
Wapshote, near Chertsey, whose ancestors had resided
on the place ever since the time of Alfred the Great ;



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EDMUND BURKE. 241

and amid all the chances and changes of centuries, not
one of the descendants had either bettered or marred
his fortunes. The truthfulness of the story is confirmed
in a number of the " Monthly Review " for the sainq
year.

Mr. Burke conunends the excellent and most useful
works of his " friend Arthur Young," (of whom I shall
have somewhat to say another time,) but regrets that he
should intimate the largeness of a farmer's profits. He
discusses the drill-culture, (for wheat,) which, he says,
is well, provided " the soil is not excessively heavy, or
encumbered with large, loose stones,* and provided the
most vigilant superintendence, the most prompt activity,
which has no such day as to-morrow in its calendar, com-
bine to speed the plough ; in this case I admit," he says,
"its superiority over the old and general methods."
And again he says, — " It requires ten times more of
labor, of vigilance, of attention, of skill, and, let me
add, of good fortune also, to carry on the business of a
farmer with success, than what belongs to any other
trade."

May not a farmer take a little pride in such testi-
mony as this ?

One of his biographers tells us, that, in his later
years, the neighbors saw him on one occasion, at his home

* At that day, horse-hoeinj^^ at regular intervals, was understoiKi t«
fonn part of what was counted driU-culture.
16



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142 WET DATS

of BeacoDsficld, leaning upon the shoulder of a fiivorite
old horse, (which had the privilege of the lawn,) and
sobbing. Whereupon the gossiping villagers reported
the great man crazed. Ay, crazed, — broken by the
memory of his only and lost sou Richard, with whom
this aged saddle-horse had been a special favorite, —
crazed, no doubt, at thought of the strong young hand
whose touch the old beast waited for in vain, — crazed
and broken, — an oak, ruined and blasted by storms.
The great mind .in this man was married to a great
heart

Goldsmith.

r\0 I not name a fitting companion for a wet dav
-*-^ in the country, when I name Oliver Goldsmith ?
Yet he can tell me nothing about farming, or about
crops. He knew nothing of them and cared nothing
for them. He would have made the worst farmer in
the world. A farmer should be prudent and fore-
sighted, whereas poor Gk)ldsmith was always as improv-
ident as a boy. A farmer should be industrious and
methodical : Goldsmith had no conception of either
industry or method. A farmer should be willing to be
taught every day of his life, and Goldsmith was willing
to bo taught nothing.

He had no more knowledge of gardening and of itii
proper appliances, than he had of economy I have



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GOLDSMITH. 248

DO doubt that the grafting of a cheny-tiee would have
been as abstruse a problem for him as the balancing
of his accoimt-book. Nay, if we may believe his owii
story, he had very little eye for the picturesque. He
was delighted with the flat land and canals of Holland
and reckoned them far prettier than the hills and rockn
of Scotland. Writing to an early friend of the coun-
try about Leyden, he says, "Nothing can equal its
beauty. Wherever I turn my eyes, fine houses, ele-
gant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas, present them-
selves ; but when you enter their towns, you are
charmed beyond description. .... In Scotland hills
and rocks intercept every prospect; here, 'tis all a
continued plain. The Scotch may be compared to
a tulip planted in dung; but I never see a Dutch-
man in his own house, but I think of a magnifi*
cent Egyptian temple dedicated to an ox." I have
no doubt that this indifference to the picturesque as-
pects of Nature was as honest as his debts. And yet,
foi all this, and though circled about by rural scenes,
I do still keep his "Essays" or his "Vicar" in my
hand, or in my thought most lovingly. He carried
with him out of Kilkenny West the heart of an Irish
country-lad, and the odor of the meadows of West-
meath never wholly left his thought

The world is accustomed to regard his littie novel;
which Dr. Johnson bargained away for sixty guineaa.



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244 WET DAYS.

as a rural tale : it is so quiet ; it is so simple ; its at
mosphere is altogether so redolent of the country
And yet all, save some few critical readers, will be
siupiised to learn that there is not a picture of natural
scenery in the book of any length ; and wherever an
allusion of the kind appears, it does not bear the im-
press of a mind familiar with the country, and prac-
tically at home there. The Doctor used to go out
upon the Edgeware road, — not for his love of trees,
but to escape noise and duns. Yet we overlook liter-
alness, charmed as we are by the development of his
characters and by the sweet burden of his story. The
statement may seem extraordinary, but I could tran-
scribe every rural, out-of-door scene in the " Vicar of
Wakefield " upon a single half-page of foolscap. Of
the first home of the Vicar we have only this account :
— " We had an elegant house, situated in a fine coun-
try and a good neighborhood." Of his second home
there is this more full description : — " Our little habi-
tation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered
with a beautiful underwood behind, and a prattling river
before : on one side a meadow, on the other a green.
My farm consisted of about twenty acres of excellent
land, having given a hundred pounds for my predeces-
sor's good-will. Nothing could exceed the neatness of
my little enclosures : the elms and hedge-rows appear*
ing with inexpressible beauty. My house ccmsisted of



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GOLDSMITH. 24d

but one story, and was covered with thatch, which gave
it an air of great snugness." It is quite <;ertain that an
author familiar with the country, and with a memory
stocked with a multitude of kindred scenes, would have
given a more determinate outline to this picture. But
whether he would have given to his definite outline the
fascination that belongs to the vagueness of Goldsmith,
is wholly another question*

Again, in the sixth chapter, Mr. Burchell is called
upon to assist the Vicar and his family in ^< saving an
after-growth of hay." " Our labors," he says, " went on