Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

less exalted members of the peerage — some men, some women. The ' Magazine ' to this day is interesting, useful, and full of instruction as regards the cultivation of desirable and uncommon greenhouse and stove plants. The title-page is quite simple. Evidently the fashion for adornment, allegorical or otherwise, hitherto so much in use, seems to have entirely died away, and plainness rules the day. The page has nothing on it but the title and the famous Bacon quotation, which can never be too often repeated : ' God Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures : it is the greatest refreshment to the spirit of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks ; and a man shall ever see that, when ages grow to civility and elegance, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection.' Bacon is delightfully solemn, but one cannot help remembering Adam found it so very dull till Eve came that he even sacrificed a rib for the sake of a com- panion. There is a sad falling-off in the plates, both wood-cuts and coloured ones, though they are executed by different people, and some are much better than others. Paxton must have studied hard, as he constantly refers to the older books. What is of chief interest about him is that he was the greatest unconscious instrument in the move- ment he helped to develop, which altered the gardening of the whole of England, and consequently of the world. He used the old patterns of Italy and France for designs of beds, filling them, as had never been done before, with cuttings of tender exotics, which were kept under glass during the whole winter. Endless sums of money were at his disposal, and everything was done which could facilitate his efforts to make the terraces of Chatsworth a blaze of colour during the months of August and September, NOVEMBER 225 the months when his master came from town. From his point of view this was a most praiseworthy object, and no doubt gave great satisfaction. It was copied, for the same reasons, by most of the great houses in England. But what was really unfortunate, and can only recall the old fable of the ox and the frog, was the imitation of this system in all the gardens of England, down to the half- acre surrounding a vicarage, or the plot of ground in front of a suburban residence. The ox, as we know, was big by nature ; and when the frog imitated him, it was flattering to the ox, but the frog came to grief. So I think to this day, if bedding-out is ever tolerable, it is on the broad terraces facing large stone houses, with which we have nothing to do here. Where it becomes in- tolerable, and perhaps it is hard to blame Paxton for this, is in the miniature Chatsworths, with their little lawns and their little beds, their Pelargoniums — often only coloured leaves, like the Mrs. Pollock — their dwarf Calceo- larias, their purple Verbenas, and their blue Lobelias; where the lady is not allowed to pick, and where the gardener, if he is masterful and gets his own way, turns the old herbaceous border in front of the house into that terrible abomination called 'carpet-bedding.' Paxton was a very remarkable man in his way.