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art is to be found in the great centres of life, | whole neighborhood, and is intended to bear and if we therefore receive much from the coun- aloft our sacred flag with the holy symbol of try we are bound to give much in return, and carry our culture and knowledge into the villages and fields.

There is probably no piece of ground in the whole land better worth seeing than our Central Park, that work-shop of so much labor and studio of so much art. We ought to rejoice in it not only for its direct pleasures, but for its influence as a model garden upon the whole nation. Every man's acres ought to be lovelier for that careful and magnificent enterprise and achievement. There is something there for every man to learn, whether for the millionaire bent on laying out his princely acres wisely, or the thrifty workman who would know what is the best vine to trail over his cottage or the best shade trees to set before his door. The element of beauty is evidently becoming more and more a popular study with us, and the taste for landscape-gardening is making more general advances in America than any other art except music, which goes so well along with it and seems to call for it as the song of the bird calls for the grove and the flowers, "whose breath," says Lord Bacon, "is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand."

our faith. The cost was only about two hundred dollars at the worst of all seasons for building, and in common times it might have been built for little more than half that sum. Who will laugh at me for erecting three handsome buildings for two hundred and fifty dollars? Let him laugh who wins. I am willing to be laughed at by any body who will get more beauty and enjoyment for less money. Our acres are enriched for our lifetime, and our summers are idealized for a sum of money which might be easily spent upon a ball-dress or a dinner.

Sculpture as well as architecture belongs to the garden. It is well to have means to set up fountains, vases, and statues, for these do much to fill out and integrate the landscape. But little wealth is needed to bring the sculptor's eye for mass and form and light and shade to bear upon the prospect. Every grove and clump of trees or shrubs is a study in form and grouping. Swedenborg says that trees represent men; and whether he is right or not, we know that the finest statuesque effects may be produced by due selection and massing of trees and shrubs, so as fitly to combine and contrast the drooping willow or elm with the spire-like fir or hemlock, or the rounding maple or oak. At night the eye, in some respects, enjoys still more the sculptor's art of giving beauty and grandeur to mass and form. In our little domain it was a new revelation to me years ago, when I began to walk at evening in our groves of cedars and maples and oaks, and to note the sky-line of shadow and light which so brought out their expression. The place had a solemn, grand, cathedral look; and two or three cedars that had no particular charm in the daytime rose up into romantic beauty then, and their tips seemed to be ready to volunteer to be built into the walls of some old minster, in order to complete or repair the work of the glorious dreamer among the builders of the ancient times. The landscape-gardener must needs be a sculptor in taste if not in talent, and so arrange buildings, walks, lawns, trees, water, shrubbery, and all things in the view as to give all the true measure and proportion, and bring out new power and charm under all the changing lights and shades of nature. Every man of common sense practices the same art, however, when little conscious of it; and he who trains a woodbine upon a stately tree, or an ivy upon a solid wall, belongs to the illustrious craft that ranks Phidias and Michael Angelo among its princes. He is a sculptor not in dead wood or brass or stone, but in materials quite as ready to obey the call of taste and imagination, and give those effects of form and light and shade that lend the handiwork of the chisel its power and charm.

The beautiful arts are brought before us by this illustration in their two classes—the arts of the hand, that appeal to the eye, and the arts of the voice, that appeal to the ear. Now surely the garden is the atelier for both classes of arts, and on the one hand invites architecture, sculpture, and painting, and on the other hand rewards music, poetry, the drama, and eloquence. We must have some kind of building there, and any man of the least taste can play the architect upon some rustic bower, even if he has too much good sense or modesty to venture upon planning his own house or stable or conservatory. One may be well amused at the effect that may be produced by a little money, where there is plenty of rustic timber. I built two rough arbors several years ago, which cost but twenty and thirty dollars, and now that the vines have covered them they have risen into romantic beauty, and no costly summer-house of the old, artificial pattern can compare with them for a moment. My favorite retreat in the heat of the summer days is in the least costly of the two; and the pomp of millionaires seems ridiculous when I sit with some noble book in hand under the shelter of my twenty-dollar study, with stately oaks and walnuts around, with chirping birds and chattering squirrels, keeping company with the ceaseless murmur and rustle of their leaves. Last year I tried my hand at a statelier structure, under the spur of a generous gift, and with the help of a young student of architecture, who is now winning honors in the great school of And who shall tell the capacities of the gararchitects in Paris. His drawing was charm- den for the painter's art, with its display of figing, but the thing itself is more so; and the rus-ure, color, and perspective. Landscape gardentic tower with five pointed arches, on its stately ing is landscape painting, with a stouter instrurock foundation, is a picturesque feature of the ment than the pencil, indeed, and with richer

and more living colors than any on the pallet. 1 er finds them, in parcels assorted and labeled at

his order, but in natural combination. The rose is not of a single red, nor the pink or the violet of a single pink or violet shade. But there is great choice in the selection and grouping of flowers, shrubs, and trees, so as to bring out the true melody and harmony of color. We may call color the music of the light, and, as in music, we may find in color melody and har

ing cheek, has its own native air or melody, like the song of the robin or bluebird; and that fuschia, with pendent and jeweled drops, seems to answer the rose's queenly air with her own gentler tones. But group the whole array of plants of color duly, and what harmony is the result! Sometimes different clusters or beds of well-chosen flowers seem to answer each other like the responsive choirs of the cathedral ; and it may not be altogether conceit to say that in a well-concerted garden you may have all voices of color music, from the deep base of the ruddy rose to the thrilling soprano of the violet. We need to take account of all the changes of season and periods of vegetation to bring out the proper effects of color, and the good gardener will sow his seed and arrange his flowers so as to leave no month uncheered from the time when the bluebird pipes on the advanceguard of spring, and pecks at the swelling buds of the maple, to the time when the sere and yellow leaf gives such glory to autumn, and the snow-bird is seen on his way to summer skies. All the hues of nature, of course, should be made to contribute their part to the pictured series of months, and great account should be made of the constant features of the landscape, such as the evergreens and the mosses and the rocks that give such charm to winter when summer life is no more.

It may be that the material is so near at hand, and often so ample as to leave little to the invention of art; and he sometimes treats nature most generously who most scrupulously lets her alone in beauty unadorned, and thus adorned the most. But generally the loveliest ground needs clearing and arranging. In fact, rural art is never so perfect as when it brings out nature; and culture of the soil, as of the soul, re-mony. That rose, with drooping head and blushveals the fairest of its capacities, and lights up the face with its best expression. You must first be able to see your ground properly, and so also to see from it into the distance. If your garden is a wilderness of nature, where you can hardly see a rod before your face, you are not master of your domain; for you can not, either by sight or by imagination, take in its extent or richness, nor own it with your eye, that most imperial of the senses. True art will not show the whole at once, but what it does show will imply the rest, as the hand or foot implies the whole body. The thicket that you let remain will combine with that which you cut away to give the due proportion of seclusion and openness, and your pruning-knife or bush-hook well plied will sometimes do wonders in bringing your tangled wilderness into the proportions of a picture. One of our great painters showed me a few days ago a picture on canvas twelve feet by seven, which embodied only a week's work, and was a noble sketch of a storm in the Rocky Mountains, with all the features of snow-capped peaks, majestic cliffs, highland lakes, browsing deer, running brooks, stately trees, and gentle flowers. If he had been two months at work upon the piece the result before the eyes would be enough to show for the labor and time. Yet I have seen more marvelous transformations than that wrought by the knife and axe. Cut away a few bushes and branches within that grove on the hill, and there is a full view, a grand picture, of the sea, with its changing waters, and its rich effects of storm and calm, moonlight and sunlight, now with broad and unbroken surface, and now all alive with vessels under steam or sail. I have seen an arbor that Eve might not scorn made in a couple of hours by clearing out the interior of a thicket of alders and young cedars, opening a lovely carpet of ground pine under foot, and preparing the way for the woodbine, the clematis, and the honey-suckle to run up the bushes of the encircling walls, and to cover them with their rich and ever-varying festoons and arabesques.

The vocal arts can not fail to feel the power of the haunt thus prepared for them in the landscape; and music, poetry, the drama, and even eloquence, are ready to catch inspiration from the arts of rural architecture, sculpture, and painting. Nature surely gives us music enough to call out our voices; and it is no slight to the birds to practice their art on true principles, and make their wild melodies the prelude to the finer melodies and harmonies of the voice, the flute, the harp, or piano. We hear of chamber concerts and academy concerts. Why not have garden concerts more frequently? I have certainly sometimes thought even the organ-grinder a godsend in the country, and have there listened with delight to the old strains that I would The proper application of the principles of have closed my ears against in the city, so much perspective to any little domain as simple as ours does nature set off art, and the trees and flowers may not shame any painter's art, and what has ask to be interpreted into music. And as to already been done there is enough to show that poetry, we are all ready to be poets in the counthe pruning-knife is ally to the pencil, and both try; and if our fancy is dull of itself, and has may minister to the spirit of beauty. The ele- no Pegasus of its own to ride, it is quite ready ment of color, too, needs careful treatment, and to mount upon the pillion of some favored son is much under command of taste and imagina- of the Muses, and ride with him into the heaven tion. The hues of nature, indeed, we do not of ideals. How much poetry has been written create; but we find them, and not as the paint-in or about the garden every library is proof,

and Parnassus can never be a paved city. Even the policies and passions, the lights and shades, and follies and aspirations of city life come most to mind in the country, as they see the battle best who look upon it from some tranquil hill away from the din and smoke. The drama, too, belongs to the garden; and he who has the true eye may see tragedy and comedy all about him in the airs and attitudes, the loves and the quarrels of insects, reptiles, birds, and beasts, and the various play and mien of the more rational tenants and ramblers of the domain, with their walks and talks, their work and play. It is a good place, too, for actual dramatic scenes, especially for pastoral life, and there are many parts of our great dramatists that can be charmingly enacted in groves or dells, or among flower-beds and grassy lawns. Last year a little association of amateurs of letters spent a day with us in the country, and amused themselves and us with recitations. Among other selections they gave us the melancholy Jaques with his companions in the great scene in the Forest of Arden. The famous words "All the world's a stage" gave our little dell, with its canopy of oaks, elms, and walnuts, quite a Shakspearian dignity, and we were not at all ashamed to have such a scene brought to such a theatre. Nor would glorious Will himself have thought the performance altogether poor.

As to eloquence, the garden speaks for itself, and is sure to make its true friends and lovers speak; and the finest of all speech-that which calls for two parties only, and is very likely to fix the destiny of both-flows more freely and willingly there in some charming arbor or shady walk than in the city drawing-room or promenade. What sacred eloquence the garden may inspire none will deny who revere Him who bade us consider the lilies how they grow, and taught the hidden wisdom of the seed and the soil.

I have been anticipating the last branch of our subject, and have implied that the garden may be a gallery of elegant resort, a saloon of society and conversation. Why should not more stress be laid on this idea?

There is something in the place itself that favors companionship; and when left to ourselves, away from the distractions of the world, we make friends of books or find them in our neighbors. We feel our social nature more when less surfeited with society, and made to hunger and thirst for its nurture and refreshing. There is something, too, in the ready walks and various paths and scenes that invites conversation. The tongue insists on alternating with or relieving the active foot, and the eye, in time satiated with seeing, asks for the voice to give the listening ear its turn. The garden makes Peripatetics of us all, and after we have walked half an hour we are impatient to read or talk the next half hour, and keep up the balance between body and soul.

Then what socializers are fruits and flowers by their taste and beauty! The pear, peach,

apple, cherry, and all the smaller fruits of flavor, seem to be half soul and half body, and to mediate between the spirit and the flesh. Who cares to eat fine peaches or strawberries by himself? We must share the treasure, like a choice poem or sparkling paragraph. All persons of gentle culture have this feeling, and every goodhearted man, however rough his hand, is no stranger to it. How obvious it is in all fruitgrowers at their gatherings! and although the quantity of the choice fruit under view may be small, they insist upon sharing it in good fellowship. It may be a single choice apple or pear for the whole dozen of amateurs; but out comes the pocket-knife, and all have a fair portion. I believe that the growing of fine fruits has introduced a new element into society, and has made the taste of good things to educate the higher taste that feeds on the beautiful, and brings men together in the fellowship of refinement and intelligence. The strawberry, the raspberry, the peach, and the pear have been great civilizers in America, and their work is not done as yet.

The more express beauties of the garden carry out this work, and there is something wonderfully assimilating in all scenes and objects of pure taste. Flowers are wine to the eye, and they who enjoy them find themselves won to genial companionship, that softens and exalts and does not inebriate. When combined with the various charms of the landscape they have a certain enchantment, and the rose or the honeysuckle is a precious poem when it interprets our old homestead or our pet haunt. Then how comparatively small the cost of much of this rare beauty. Buy a dozen or two of roses or phloxes of choice kinds, as you can for some two or three dollars a dozen, and see what will come of them. What exquisite bloom in those bushroses, in that splendid Chateaubriand, that luxuriant Mrs. Elliott, that stately Pius IX.! and what witchery in those climbers that run like roguish imps upon every thing that will hold them, and are Puck in frolic and Ariel in aspiration! Those phloxes, I confess, amaze me by the perfection of their color and the continuance of their bloom. For two months that Valery has charmed us with its rich Magenta clusters, and that Alba perfecta has soothed and even evangelized us by those petals of exquisite white, with its interior of pink, as if love and purity were blending together, and the pure in heart were flaming into rapture as they begin to see God. Yet the twelve phloxes cost less than a good bottle of wine, and for two months their cups have been full of nectar, and now are filling again.

Dear reader, I must break off before I have wholly done; and should I say all that comes of itself to the pen on this theme, you might tire of my prattle if you were not moved to take up the word for yourself, and in your own garden at this charming season ramble and dream, and speak out what you and fair nature so well understand together without need of any go-between.

ARMADALE.

BY WILKIE COLLINS, AUTHOR OF “NO NAME," "THE WOMAN IN WHITE," ETC.

BOOK THE THIRD.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE NORFOLK BROADS.

THE little group gathered together in Major Milroy's parlor to wait for the carriages from Thorpe-Ambrose would hardly have conveyed the idea, to any previously uninstructed person introduced among them, of a party assembled in expectation of a picnic. They were almost dull enough, so far as outward appearances went, to have been a party assembled in expectation of a marriage.

The arrival of Allan, with his faithful follower, Pedgift Junior, at his heels, roused the flagging spirits of the party at the cottage. The plan for enabling the governess to join the picnic, if she arrived that day, satisfied even Major Milroy's anxiety to show all proper attention to the lady who was coming into his house. After writing the necessary note of apology and invitation, and addressing it in her very best handwriting to the new governess, Miss Milroy ran up stairs (a little anxiously) to say good-by to her mother, and returned, with a smiling face and a side-look of relief directed at her father, to announce that there was nothing now to keep any of them a moment longer indoors. The company at once directed their steps to the gar

second great difficulty of the day. How were the six persons of the picnic to be divided between the two open carriages that were in waiting for them?

Even Miss Milroy herself, though. conscious of looking her best in her bright muslin dress and her gayly-feathered new hat, was at this in-den-gate, and were there met face to face by the auspicious moment Miss Milroy under a cloud. Although Allan's note had assured her, in Allan's strongest language, that the one great object of reconciling the governess's arrival with the celebration of the picnic was an object achieved, the doubt still remained whether the plan proposed-whatever it might be-would meet with her father's approval. In a word, Miss Milroy declined to feel sure of her day's pleasure until the carriage made its appearance and took her from the door. The major, on his side, arrayed for the festive occasion in a tight blue frock-coat which he had not worn for years, and threatened with a whole long day of separation from his old friend and comrade the clock, was a man out of his element, if ever such a man existed yet. As for the friends who had been asked at Allan's request-the widow lady (otherwise Mrs. Pentecost) and her son (the Reverend Samuel) in delicate health-two people less capable (apparently) of adding to the hilarity of the day could hardly have been discovered in the length and breadth of all England. A young man who plays his part in society by looking on in green spectacles, and listening with a sickly smile, may be a prodigy of intellect and a mine of virtue, but he is hardly, perhaps, the right sort of man to have at a picnic. An old lady afflicted with deafness, whose one inexhaustible subject of interest is the subject of her son, and who (on the happily rare occasions when that son opens his lips) asks every body eagerly, "What does my boy say?" is a person to be pitied in respect of her infirmities, and a person to be admired in respect of her maternal devotedness, but not a person, if the thing could possibly be avoided, to take to a picnic. Such a man, nevertheless, was the Reverend Samuel Pentecost, and such a woman was the Reverend Samuel's mother, and, in the dearth of any other producible guests, there they were, engaged to eat, drink, and be merry for the day nt Mr. Armadale's pleasure-party to the Norfolk Broads.

Here, again, Pedgift Junior exhibited his invaluable faculty of contrivance, and solved the problem off-hand before two words could be said about it. This highly-cultivated young man possessed in an eminent degree an accomplishment more or less peculiar to all the young men of the age we live in-he was perfectly capable at all times and under all circumstances of taking his pleasure without forgetting his business. Such a client as the Master of ThorpeAmbrose fell but seldom in his father's way, and to pay special but unobtrusive attention to Allan all through the day, was the business of which young Pedgift, while proving himself to be the life and soul of the picnic, never once lost sight from the beginning of the merry-making to the end. He had detected the state of affairs between Miss Milroy and Allan at a glance, and he at once provided for his client's inclinations in that quarter, by offering (in virtue of his local knowledge) to lead the way in the first carriage, and by asking Major Milroy and the curate if they would do him the honor of accompanying him. "We shall pass a very interesting place to a military man, Sir," said young Pedgift, addressing the major, with his happy and unblushing confidence, "the remains of a Roman encampment. And my father, Sir, who is a subscriber," proceeded this rising lawyer, turning to the curate, "wished me to ask your opinion of the new Infant School buildings at Little Gill Beck. Would you kindly give it me, Sir, as we go along?" He opened the carriage-door, and helped in the major and the curate before they could either of them start any difficulties. The necessary result followed. Allan and Miss Milroy rode together in the same carriage, with the extra convenience of a deaf old lady in attendance to keep the squire's compliments within the necessary limits.

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Never yet had Allan enjoyed such an interview with Miss Milroy as the interview he now had on the road to the Broads. The dear old lady, after a little anecdote or two on the subject of her son, did the one thing wanting to secure the perfect felicity of her two youthful companions-she became considerately blind for the occasion as well as deaf. A quarter of an hour after the carriage left the major's cottage the poor old soul, reposing on snug cushions and fanned by a fine summer air, fell peaceably asleep. Allan made love, and Miss Milroy

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