not be dressed in that style of art upon which I pride myself, and handed exultingly round to friends after the woodcock and claret, as so much superior to the stale, insipid stuff purchased in the markets. Eggplants, richest of vegetables, were not to be pressed upon the surfeited guest as coming from my garden. Beans had proved a delusion, and tomato-vines a All my study of horticultural works was to snare. be thrown away. It is true, we had raised an egg-plant, but it was small—so small that we thought of sending it to the agricultural fair as a rare production: it measured one inch and a half in circumference. We also raised one tomato, but a careless wretch trod on it, and crushed it and our hopes together. There was a fine lot of wild radish, which my friends pronounced to be weeds, although I had hopes for a time that a few of them would become tame. I was disappointed, however: they covered the new beds, as fast as these were cleared and dug, with a luxuriant clothing of bright green, and their leaves were pretty and graceful, but their roots never would come to any thing worth mentioning. It is deeply to be regretted that Nature has so constituted plants and weeds respectively, that the former won't grow and the latter will. I did not eat a Daniel O'Rourke pea after all. THE CHAPTER VII. THE FLOWER GARDEN. HE results of the effort to produce a kitchen garden out of the raw material of virgin sod was discussed in the last chapter. When it was well under way, and after Weeville had, in his authoritative manner, taken it off my hands, I turned my attention to the flower garden. Of this I determined to take entire charge. I had not studied Bridgeman for weeks, nor peered into seedsmen's windows, and examined the peculiarities of all the plants that fell in my way, for nothing. Weeville might superintend the coarse vegetables if he pleased, but the delicate and elegant parterre of flowers that already existed in my mind's eye was to be my credit and responsibility alone. It was some time before I could induce the masons to remove the platform for mortar that they had, with instinctive stupidity, placed in the centre of what was to be my principal bed; but I got them off at last, al though they grumbled somewhat at being compelled to carry their loads a considerably longer distance. I had already marked out the general plan on paper with that skill which has been occasionally referred to; the main idea was taken from a Chinese puzzle, and had no equal in the most complicated productions of the ablest masters of landscape gardening, ancient or modern. There It is well known that, according to the highest standard of the art, the great point in laying out a garden is to avoid the monotony of tame regularity; and in that line little more could be done. were beds shaped like stars and ellipses, worms and circles, triangles and octagons; some were round on one side and flat on the other; some had big heads and little tails, and others diminished to nothing at each end; there were sinuosities and projections, sharp points and easy curves, imitation bays and promontories; large beds suddenly contracted, narrow ones expanded; what promised to be a long stretch was broken off unexpectedly, and there certainly was no danger of monotony. Amid these wound the paths in the most admired irregularity, never leading where one would naturally expect, and giving the mind a vivid impression of the labyrinth. The arrangement of the beds on paper was not difficult, but to trace them on the natural sod was another matter.. This could not be intrusted to a common workman; one, to whom the plan was shown, insisted upon mistaking the walks for beds, and even proposed some alterations, which he called improvements. Somehow, I never was very good at the practical part of a design. Moreover, the weather had been dry, for this point had been reached toward the close of one of the rainless terms that alternated with the floods of this particular season. The ground was hard, the sun was hot, and my experience with a shovel-spade my man called it--had been limited; but the difficulty had to be overcome, regardless of previous habits, and, grasping the shovel bravely, I set to work at once. The centre bed was a circle, and, by driving a stake in the ground, and attaching to it a string, there was no difficulty in making a faint impression of the outline on the grass. This outline I deepened into a shallow furrow with my spade, although my arms and back ached, and my clothes were damp with perspiration before I had finished. The next figure, which was a star, was not so easy; and when it came to the worms, and the bays, and promontories, there bid fair to be far too little monotony. In fact, the figures would not take the shapes they assumed on paper, and the more they were worked at the worse they grew. If they were narrowed, they became immediately too long; if they were lengthened, they had to be widened; if one part was taken off, another portion immediately bulged out; bays were either too deep or too shallow, promontories either stretched entirely across the adjoining walk or disappeared utterly. The walks were continually being squeezed into a strait that would not by any possibility admit the passage of modern crinoline, or spread out into a sort of desert waste. The truth is, such vulgar trivialities as are implied in practical performance are not suited to the intellectual mind. After working the plan several weeks, nearly killing myself, and sadly confusing the man I had hired for this express matter, I concluded to let him finish it alone. It is a matter of pride, however, that, in spite of some sad blunders through his ignorance, it still bears palpable traces of the original design, and entirely avoids the fatal fault of monotony. While the man was completing the physical part, there was an excellent opportunity to select the best flowers that were to be procured. The study of botany is not a branch of the legal profession, nor even included in the limits of a classical education; but, |