SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS
ENGLISH COUNTRY LIFE.
The country seats of England form, indeed, one of the most remarkable features, not only in English landscape, but yet more in what may be termed the genius and economy of English manners. Their great number throughout the country, the varied grandeur and beauty of their parks and gardens, the extent, magnificence, and various architecture of the houses, the luxurious comfort and completeness of their internal arrangements, and their relation generally to the character of the peasantry surrounding them, justify fully the expression we have used. No where has this mode of life attained so high a degree of perfection and refinement. We will allude to two circumstances, amongst many others, in illustration. The first of these is, the very great number of valuable libraries belonging to our family seats. It has been sometimes remarked as singular, that England should possess so few great public libraries, while a poorer country, like Germany, can boast of its numerous and vast collections at Vienna, Prague, Munich, Stutgard, Goettingen, Wolfenbuttel, &c. The fact is partly explained by the many political divisions and capitals, and by the number of universities in Germany. But a further explanation may be found in the innumerable private libraries dispersed throughout England—many of them equal to public ones in extent and value, and most of them well furnished in classics, and in English and French literature.
The other peculiarity we would name about our English country-houses is, that they do not insulate their residents from the society and business of active life; which insulation is probably a cause, why so many proprietors in other countries pass their whole time in the metropolis or larger towns. The facility and speed of communication in England link together all places, however remote, and all interests, political and social, of the community. The country gentleman, sitting at his breakfast table a hundred miles from London, receives the newspapers printed there the night before; his books come to him still damp from the press; and the debates in parliament travel to every country-house in England within fifty or sixty hours of the time when they have taken place. The like facility exists as to provincial interests of every kind. The nobleman or country gentleman is a public functionary within his district, and no man residing on his estates is, or need feel himself, unimportant to the community. Quarterly Rev.
FLOWERS.
When summer's delightful season arrives, rarely in this country too warm to be enjoyed throughout the day in the open air, there is nothing more grateful than a profusion of choice flowers around and within our dwellings. The humblest apartments ornamented with these beautiful productions of nature have, in my view, a more delightful effect than the proudest saloons with gilded ceilings and hangings of Genoa velvet. The richness of the latter, indeed, would be heightened, and their elegance increased, by the judicious introduction of flowers and foliage into them. The odour of flowers, the cool appearance of the dark green leaves of some species, and the beautiful tints and varied forms of others, are singularly grateful to the sight, and refreshing at the same time. Vases of Etruscan mould, containing plants of the commonest kind, offer those lines of beauty which the eye delights in following; and variform leaves hanging festooned over them, and shading them if they be of a light colour, with a soft grateful hue, add much to their pleasing effect. These decorations are simple and cheap.
Lord Bacon, whose magnificence of mind exempts him from every objection as a model for the rest of mankind, (in all but the unfortunate error to which, perhaps, his sordid pursuit in life led him, to the degradation of his nobler intellect), was enthusiastically attached to flowers, and kept a succession of them about him in his study and at his table. Now the union of books and flowers is more particularly agreeable. Nothing, in my view, is half so delightful as a library set off with these beautiful productions of the earth during summer, or indeed, any other season of the year. A library or study, opening on green turf, and having the view of a distant rugged country, with a peep at the ocean between hills, a small fertile space forming the nearest ground, and an easy chair and books, is just as much of local enjoyment as a thinking man can desire—I reck not if under a thatched or slated roof, to me it is the same thing. A favourite author on my table, in the midst of my bouquets, and I speedily forget how the rest of the world wags. I fancy I am enjoying nature and art together, a consummation of luxury that never palls upon the appetite—a dessert of uncloying sweets.
Madame Roland seems to have felt very strongly the union of mental pleasure with that afforded to the senses by flowers. She somewhere says, "La vûe d'une fleur carresse mon imagination et flatte mes sens à un point inexprimable; elle réveille avec volupté le sentiment de mon existence. Sous le tranquil abri du toit paternel, j'étois heureuse des enfance avec des fleurs et des livres; dans l'étroite enciente d'une prison, au milieu des fers imposés par la tyrannie la plus revoltante, j'oublie l'injustice des hommes, leurs sottises, et mes maux, avec des livres et des fleurs." These pleasures, however, are too simple to be universally felt.