Mr. W. Lobb in 1852, and in which it is quite hardy, though a little apt to get its glaucous-green foliage embrowned by severe winters. By common consent no English park or pleasaunce of any size allows itself to be without it; and we learn from the 'Heatherside Manual' that there is an avenue of Wellingtonias upwards of a mile in length, with each tree healthy and vigorous, at the Company's nurseries at Bagshot. The voids best filled with what Mason in his English Garden' (ii. 175), designates as all the stately progeny of pines,' the soils and situations they affect, and other such-like information, an amateur planter must, after all, ascertain in those visits to his silvan nurseries which, if he be in earnest, will be no more intermittent than a tender parent's interest in his living offspring. One thing is certain, he must not 'coddle' them. Books and practice alike enforce that conifers only need to be high and dry in a pure air, and being anything but gross feeders, enjoy their natural health without asking for a rich soil. But it is interesting, in connection with this, to note the facts relative to the causes of Dropmore's success as a home of conifers, and to see how far elsewhere kindred causes are leading to like results. The natural soil at Dropmore was poor and barren, at all events in that portion of the demesne with which we are concerned. It owes its transformation and wonderful tree-growths to the care of one man, its 'genius loci' in the best of senses, Mr. Frost. From the time, half a century ago, when he received commission from Lord Grenville to 'make his desert smile,' he has never failed to bestow special pains on preparing stations for the conifers before planting, and, after they have been planted, on maintaining a system of surface-dressing every autumn. However liberal the additional food annually bestowed, it is found that the plants root right into it,' and so teach a lesson to planters generally of the practical utilisation of road-scrapings, which make a capital surface-dressing, and which, nevertheless, the road surveyors not seldom find it hard to get carted from the roadsides. who has visited Dropmore under good Mr. Frost's intelligent escort, can miss the clue to successful conifer-growing contained in his two precautions; and we seem to see in the instance of Mr. Bassett's Pinetum and Plantations, a mile to the north of Leighton Buzzard (Beds.), a similar though not identical process in the utilisation of waste and sandy ground. The subsoil there is, no doubt, richer; but the surface soil is a thin mixture of sand and vegetable matter, which has to be trenched two spits deep. The mode of planting specimen conifers here is quite novel, and as follows: when it is determined where a permanent specimen No one specimen is to be placed, the ordinary trees of the plantation are cleared away, the ground is trenched twenty inches deep, and formed into an elevated circular platform one foot higher than the surrounding surface, with a slight rim, a little elevated to prevent the rain which falls on the surface from running off, and in diameter according to the vigour or nature of the ground to be planted. A platform six feet across is sufficient at first for the moderate-growing kinds; but for the more vigorous and robust-growing kinds a table of ten feet is requisite, leaving the trench open round the outside to receive the fallen leaves; afterwards, as the roots are found to reach the outside, which generally takes place in from two to three years, another addition is made of from three to four feet all round.'* If in this case the modus operandi is different to that at Dropmore, it is because at the latter the subsoil is less available; the trenching, the eleva• tion, and the addition to the platform from time to time, are seemingly applications of one and the same principle. It remains to be considered, as a practical conclusion of the above survey of our arboricultural taste and triumphs, whether more might not be done, both publicly and privately, to extend, popularise, and turn to wider national account so valuable a possession. If, as was said in the outset, trees are a special passion with Englishmen, the future of our woodlands and forests demands that an interest in their culture and conservation should be spread far and wide among our countrymen, and rise superior to utilitarian calculations or the selfish pleadings of private interest. To such an end nothing could be more conducive than the opening of private and public parks, pineta, and ornamental plantations, to the view of the working-class, under proper limits and restrictions, and a collateral resort to lectures by competent persons on the subject of their contents and products. As education becomes more widely diffused, it is not unreasonable to hope that the number of artisans and labourers will increase who will feel a quickened interest in the varieties and distinctions of deciduous and evergreen trees, which many of them already know in part; and such an interest would be cheaply fostered, were every proprietor of rare and diverse tree-collections to have his specimens legibly labelled, as is done so well at Victoria Park, Bath, and in other public parks we need not mention. A diffusion of knowledge of trees See The Field,' Aug. 12, 1871, and a privately-printed pamphlet, The Plantation, Leighton Buzzard,' 1872, which contains an interesting descriptive list of the Coniferæ and other trees growing in the seventy acres devoted to them, and planted under the superintendence of Mr. Robert Marnock, the landscape gardener. Vol. 142.-No. 283. and shrubs so simply facilitated might not only substitute an intelligent recreation for the grovelling pastimes which disgrace too many of our operatives, but might also lead, in their measure and within their means, to the embellishment and more cherishing of their homes. It would have the advantage of enlisting conservators for the arboreta and pineta of their betters; and the problem would not be so hard of solution, how far it is safe to remove the railings and fences of urban parks and gardens. The greatest possible credit is due to the proprietor of the Plantation near Leighton Buzzard, above referred to, for having had sufficient confidence in the wayfaring public to plant that part of his estate through which the high-road runs, for a considerable distance, with corresponding pairs, on either side, of Picea nobilis, grandis, amabilis, magnifica, Lowiana, Nordmanniana, and Pinsapo, as well as of the Wellingtonia and Thuja gigantea. This is one of the class of cases in which familiarity is not likely to breed contempt, but will rather school the eye, as it scans the turfy lawn, to 'Expect that harmony of light and shade and towards the fall, to hail 'A canvas, which when touched by autumn's hand And so might a more compact phalanx be organised to preserve the rights immemorial, which the Englishman inherits, to the New Forest, and Epping, and Dean, and the rest. "We talk,' says Mr. Wyse, in his charming history of the first of these, 'about the duty of reclaiming waste lands, and making corn spring up where none before grew. But it is often as much a duty to leave them alone. Land has higher and nobler offices to perform than to support houses or grow corn; to nourish not so much the body as the mind of man; to gladden the eye with its loveliness, and to brace his soul with that strength which is alone to be gained in the solitude of the moors and the woods." Another result might possibly be one which would recommend itself to the advocates of retrenchment. Were a popular wind to set strong and stedfast in the direction of practical and profitable arboriculture, there would be no reason why, as now, we should have to send our candidates for appointments in the Indian Forests department to perfect their arboricultural education in Germany at the cost of ratepayers, whose boast it is to have so many royal forests and national woodlands, not likely, it would *The New Forest: its History and its Scenery,' p. 48. seem seem from recent decisions, to run further risk of being disafforested, and turned to private and selfish use. In France some progress has, we believe, already been made in establishing a college of arboriculture and forestry, at the instance of M. Baltet, the clever author of a volume on 'Grafting and Budding.' The school of Nancy, and that at Tharrand in Germany, might at any rate provoke this country to a peaceful rivalry. Had we space we might notice how ably this project has been broached in the second chapter of the Forester,' a work to which, along with those of Grigor, Prideaux Selby, and Mongredien, we have been greatly indebted in the foregoing remarks. But in earnest, matter-of-fact England, a hobby retains its favour and prestige all the more permanently, if it combines advantage and utility with more æsthetic and sensuous attractions. We have endeavoured to show how far this combination has been achieved, and how much farther it may yet be achieved, in the extension of the science of arboriculture; and the labour will not have been vain if it help in anywise to stimulate a redoubled zeal in planters, great and small, public and private, and such a fashion for planting both deciduous and coniferous trees as may wax stronger and more deeply-rooted continually, 'till Albion smile One ample theatre of silvan grace.' ART. III.-1. Boswell's Life of Johnson. Edited by the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker. New Edition. London, 1848. 2. Essays on the Early Period of the French Revolution. By the late Right Hon. John Wilson Croker. Reprinted from the "Quarterly Review,' with additions and corrections. London, 1857. A MONG the causes which make biography one of the most difficult of literary efforts, is the grave and delicate responsibility which the writer of one man's life incurs towards the reputation of many others. The threads of human lives are so closely and marvellously intertwined, that none can be unravelled from the rest without destroying the pattern even of that one. This is a condition of our social existence: we neither live nor die alone, nor can the story of our lives be told alone. The biographer must needs fill in his canvas with the figures of those amongst whom the subject of his memoir moved and acted; and his successive pictures must show them in various relations to the chief figure, in attitudes which truth may G 2 compel compel him to describe as friendly or hostile, generous or malevolent, noble or contemptible. But, unless his pen be guided by a rare combination of discretion and of skill, he is in danger of feeling but a secondary sort of responsibility for his introduction and delineation of such characters; and he may draw them less as they were than as they appeared to the friend or hero whose steps he traces with admiring sympathy. In reproducing what is said of others in diaries and letters written with all the freedom of privacy, he may too often act like the manipulator of the lantern which casts upon the screen pictures painted by another hand, but also capable of being thrown into grotesque attitudes at the pleasure of the exhibitor. Among the figures made to pass across the scene of Lord Macaulay's Life by his nephew-to the merits of which work we have borne testimony in another article—one of the most conspicuous, and, we must say at once, the most recklessly caricatured, is that of the Right Honourable JOHN WILSON CROKER. Adopting the full bitterness of a political and literary feud-political before it became literary-which formed one of the least amiable features of Lord Macaulay's life, Mr. Trevelyan is pleased to class Mr. Croker with 'Sadler and poor Robert Montgomery, and the other less eminent objects of his wrath'to whom Lord Ellenborough is added in the next sentence !— who appear likely to enjoy just so much notoriety, and of such a nature, as he has thought fit to deal out to them in his pages.' This flippant judgment of a writer too young to remember those battles of giants on the Reform Bill, from which Macaulay, in the first flush of his parliamentary success, did not always come off victorious over his elder adversary,* may perhaps find its best excuse in the neglect of Mr. Croker's friends for his memory, while many men of less note in politics and letters have had their lives written in full. His Mr. Croker was the intimate and trusted friend of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, consulted by them on the most important measures of state policy; and, when released from the restraints of office, he shone forth at once as one of the leading and most successful debaters in the House of Commons. literary works were numerous, and of a range which proved the breadth and variety of his attainments; while his special knowledge of the most momentous chapter of contemporary history, the great French Revolution, was marked by the same vast scope and keen minuteness which characterised Macaulay. His con *In 1831 Macaulay was thirty-one years old; Croker was fifty-one. tributions |