the man who can forbear to join

"the general smile

Of Nature? Can fierce passions vex his soul,
While every gale is peace, and every grove

Is melody?"

THOMSON.

"Where every breeze shall medicine every wound."

Rapin says,

SHENSTONE.

"Thrice happy they who these delights pursue;
For whether they their plants in order view,
Or overladen boughs with props relieve,
Or if to foreign fruits new names they give,
If they the taste of every plum explore,

To eat at second course, what would they more?
What greater happiness can be desired,

Than what by these diversions is acquired ?"

The Chinese have no school for the study of physic; but they make use of simples and roots, and are generally well experienced in the knowledge of the several virtues of all the herbs growing in their country; and which every master of a family teaches his servant. Lewis and Clark, and other travellers up the Mississipi, observe, that the native Americans always carried with them roots and herbs, of which they had discovered the use.

The predilection of the ancient Syrians for gardening gave rise to the proverb of the

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Greeks, Many worts and pot-herbs in Syria."

The Greeks had physic-gardens in the time of Theophrastus; and Pliny often mentions the medicinal herb-gardens of the Ro

mans.

We meet with no English work on plants prior to the sixteenth century. In 1552, all books on geography and astronomy in England were ordered to be destroyed, as being, it was supposed, infected with magic. It is very probable, that works on the virtues of herbs underwent the same fate; as witchcraft was thought to be assisted by various plants. The Babylonians had their magical observations in gathering certain herbs; and the Latin poets inform us, how superstitious the Romans were on this head.

"These poisonous plants, for magic use design'd,
(The noblest and the best of all the baneful kind)
Old Moris brought me from the Pontic strand,
And cull'd the mischief of a bounteous land.
Smear'd with these powerful juices, on the plain
He howls a wolf among the hungry train :
And oft the mighty necromancer boasts,
With these, to call from tombs the stalking ghost,
And from the roots to tear the standing corn,
Which, whirl'd aloft, to distant fields is borne:
Such is the strength of spells."

VIRGIL.

"In a large caldron now the medicine boils,
Compounded of her late collected spoils,
Blending into the mash the various powers
Of wonder-working juices, roots, and flowers."

OVID.

Our immortal bard, availing himself of the credulity of the age, makes the weird sisters, in their incantations, employ

"Root of hemlock, digg'd i' the dark;

Liver of blaspheming Jew:

Gall of goat, and slips of yew."

Macbeth.

The English surgeons and apothecaries began to attend to the cultivation of medicinal herbs in the time of Henry the Eighth. Gerard, the father of English herbalists, had the principal garden of those days, attached to his house in Holborn, and which we think was in existence as late as 1659; for on the 7th of June in that year, Evelyn mentions in his Diary, that he " went to see the foundation laying for a street and buildings in Hatton Garden, designed for a little towne, lately an ample garden."

Gerard mentions several private herb-gardens in 1597, but does not notice any public establishment for the encouragement of his art. We therefore presume, that Oxford has to boast of the earliest public physic

to

garden in this country, which appears have been planted about the year 1640, when Parkinson first published his work on plants; as in a letter written to that author by Thomas Clayton, his Majesty's professor of physic at Oxford, to compliment him on his "Herculean botanical labours," he says, "Oxford and England are happy in the formation of a specious illustrious physickegarden, compleatly beautifully walled and gated, now in levelling, and planting, with the charges and expences of thousands, by the many ways Honourable Earl of Danby, the furnishing and enriching whereof, and of many a glorious Tempe, with all useful delightfull plants, will be the better expedited by your painfull, happy, satisfying worke."

We may infer how little the art of gardening was understood in this country at that period, when we find the garden at Oxford was put under the direction of a German, who continued to hold that situation in the time of Evelyn, as appears by his Diary: "24 Oct. 1664, I went to the Physic-garden at Oxford, where were two large locust-trees, as many platana*, and some rare plants, under

* We

presume this was the Plantain tree, Musa.

the culture of old Bobart."-" Jacob Bobart was a German, and was appointed the first keeper of the Physic-garden at Oxford.”

A botanic garden was planted at Padua in 1533, and one at Presburg in 1564. At the present time there are twenty-three botanic gardens in the Austrian monarchy. France has two noble establishments for the encouragement of this art; and Amsterdam may boast, not only of having enriched Europe, but the West Indies also, with plants from her public garden; while Sweden may justly pride herself on giving the world a Linnæus.

Evelyn, whose Sylva has immortalized his name, notices in his Diary, June 10, 1658, "I went to see the medical garden at Westminster, well stored with plants, under Morgan, a skilful botanist." This remark has given rise to a supposition, that it was the garden belonging to the Apothecaries of London, prior to its being removed to Chelsea; but this was not the case, as Coles mentions it as a private garden, in his Paradise of Plants, published in 1657, where (in chapter 8) he says, some plants grow only in the gardens of herbarists, as in Mr. Morgan's garden at Westminster."

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