Gardens and orchards plant themselves by sympathy about our dwellings, as if their seeds were preserved in us by inheritance. They distinguish Man properly from the forester and hunter. The country, as discriminated from the woods, is of man's creation. The savage has no country. Nor are farms and shops, trade, cities, but civilization in passing and formation. Civilization begins with persons, ideas; the garden and orchard showing the place of their occupants in the scale; these dotting the earth with symbols of civility wherever they ornament its face. Thus by mingling his mind with nature, and so transforming the landscape into his essence, Man generates the homestead, and opens a country to civilization and the arts.
In like manner, are the woods meliorated and made ours. Melancholy and morose, standing in their loneliness, we trim them into keeping with our wishes and so adopt them into our good graces, as ornaments of our estates, heraldries of our gentility.
Our human history neither opens in forests nor in cities, but in gardens and orchards whose mythologies are woven into the faith of our race; the poets having made these their chosen themes from the beginning. And we turn, as with emotions of country and consanguinity to the classic pictures of the Paradise, "planted by the Lord God eastward in Eden, and wherein he put the man, whom he had formed to dress and keep it;" where,
"Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste; Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balms, Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, Hung amiable,— Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose;"—
to this; or, of scarce inferior fame, to the gardens of the Hesperides with their golden apples;—or, to those other
"——gardens feigned Or of revived Adonis, or renowned Alcinous,"
whereof Homer sings:
"Without the hall and close upon the gate A goodly orchard ground was situate Of near ten acres, about which was led A lofty quickset. In it flourished High and broad fruit trees that pomegranates bore; Sweet figs, pears, olives, and a number more Most useful plants did there produce their store, Whose fruits the hardest winter could not kill, Nor hottest summers wither. There was still Fruit in his proper season; all the year Sweet zephyr breathed upon them blasts that were Of varied tempers: these, he made to bear Ripe fruits; these blossoms; pear grew after pear, Apple succeeded apple, grape the grape, Fig after fig; Time made never rape Of any dainty there. A sprightly vine Spread here her roots, whose fruit a hot sunshine Made ripe betimes; there grew another green, Here some were gathering; here some pressing seen; A large allotted several each fruit had, And all th' adorn'd grounds their appearance made In flower and fruit."
Or again to those preferred by the royal guest of Solomon above all other splendors of his court,
"Though she on silver floors did tread, With bright Assyrian carpets on them spread, To hide the metal's poverty; Though she looked up to roofs of gold, And naught around her could behold But silk and rich embroidery, And Babylonian tapestry, And wealthy Hiram's princely dye; Tho' Ophir's starry stones met everywhere her eye, Though she herself and her gay host were drest With all the shining glories of the East,— When lavish art her costly work had done, The honor and the prize of bravery Was by the garden from the palace won; And every rose and lily there did stand Better attired by nature's hand; The case thus judged against the king you see, By one that would not be so rich, though wiser far than he."