Rural life, says Cicero, "is not delightful by reason of cornfields only and meadows, and vineyards and groves, but also for its gardens and orchards, for the feeding of cattle, the swarms of bees, and the variety of all kinds of flowers." Bacon considered that a garden is "the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handyworks, and a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection."
No doubt "the pleasure which we take in a garden is one of the most innocent delights in human life."[22] Elsewhere there may be scattered flowers, or sheets of colour due to one or two species, but in gardens one glory follows another. Here are brought together all the
quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf sucked the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk rose, and the well attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears.[23]
We cannot, happily we need not try to, contrast or compare the beauty of gardens with that of woods and fields.
And yet to the true lover of Nature wild flowers have a charm which no garden can equal. Cultivated plants are but a living herbarium. They surpass, no doubt, the dried specimens of a museum, but, lovely as they are, they can be no more compared with the natural vegetation of our woods and fields than the captives in the Zoological Gardens with the same wild species in their native forests and mountains.
Often indeed, our woods and fields rival gardens even in the richness of colour. We have all seen meadows white with Narcissus, glowing with Buttercups, Cowslips, early purple Orchis, or Cuckoo Flowers; cornfields blazing with Poppies; woods carpeted with Bluebells, Anemones, Primroses, and Forget-me-nots; commons with the yellow Lady's Bedstraw, Harebells, and the sweet Thyme; marshy places with the yellow stars of the Bog Asphodel, the Sun-dew sparkling with diamonds, Ragged Robin, the beautifully fringed petals of the Buckbean, the lovely little Bog Pimpernel, or the feathery tufts of Cotton Grass; hedgerows with Hawthorn and Traveller's Joy, Wild Rose and Honeysuckle, while underneath are the curious leaves and orange fruit of the Lords and Ladies, the snowy stars of the Stitchwort, Succory, Yarrow, and several kinds of Violets; while all along the banks of streams are the tall red spikes of the Loosestrife, the Hemp Agrimony, Water Groundsel, Sedges, Bulrushes, Flowering Rush, Sweet Flag, etc.
Many other sweet names will also at once occur to us—Snowdrops, Daffodils and Hearts-ease, Lady's Mantles and Lady's Tresses, Eyebright, Milkwort, Foxgloves, Herb Roberts, Geraniums, and among rarer species, at least in England, Columbines and Lilies.
But Nature does not provide delights for the eye only. The other senses are not forgotten. A thousand sounds—many delightful in themselves, and all by association—songs of birds, hum of insects, rustle of leaves, ripple of water, seem to fill the air.
Flowers again are sweet, as well as lovely. The scent of pine woods, which is said to be very healthy, is certainly delicious, and the effect of Woodland scenery is good for the mind as well as for the body.
"Resting quietly under an ash tree, with the scent of flowers, and the odour of green buds and leaves, a ray of sunlight yonder lighting up the lichen and the moss on the oak trunk, a gentle air stirring in the branches above, giving glimpses of fleecy clouds sailing in the ether, there comes into the mind a feeling of intense joy in the simple fact of living."[24]