class="i1">She plants and puts within my reach; Regales with all the garden grows, Whate'er the orchard buds and blows; Lifts o'er my head her sylvan screens, And sows my slopes with evergreens, While odorous roses, mint, and thyme, Steep soul and sense in softer clime; Preserves me when lapsed memory slips Fading in sleep's apocalypse; Surprising tasks and leisures sends, And crowns herself to give me friends; The morn's elixir pours for me, And brims my brain with ecstasy.

iv.—the orchard.

Orchards are even more personal in their charms than gardens, as they are more nearly human creations. Ornaments of the homestead, they subordinate other features of it; and such is their sway over the landscape that house and owner appear accidents without them. So men delight to build in an ancient orchard, when so fortunate as to possess one, that they may live in the beauty of its surroundings. Orchards are among the most coveted possessions; trees of ancient standing, and vines, being firm friends and royal neighbors forever. The profits, too, are as wonderful as their longevity. And if antiquity can add any worth to a thing, what possession has a man more noble than these? so unlike most others, which are best at first and grow worse till worth nothing; while fruit-trees and vines increase in worth and goodness for ages. An orchard in bloom is one of the most pleasing sights the eye beholds; as if the firmament had stooped to the tree-tops and touched every twig with spangles, and man had mingled his essence with the seasons, in its flushing tokens. And how rich the spectacle at the autumnal harvest:

Apples are general favorites. Every eye covets, every hand reaches to them. It is a noble fruit: the friend of immortality, its virtues blush to be tasted. Every Muse delights in it, as its mythology shows, from the gardens of the Hesperides to the orchard of Plato. A basket of pearmains, golden russets, or any of the choice kinds, standing in sight, shall perfume the scholar's composition as it refreshes his genius. He may snatch wildness from the woods, get shrewdness from cities, learning from libraries and universities, compliments from courts. But for subtlety of thought, for sovereign sense, for color, the graces of diction and behavior, he best betakes himself

Or to his bins, best, Columella says, when beechen chests, such as senators' and judges' robes were laid in in his day; these to be "placed in a dry place, free from frosts, where neither smoke, nor any thing noisome may come; the fruit spread on sawdust, and so arranged that the fleurets, or blossom ends, may look downwards, and the pedicles, or stalks, upwards, after the same manner as it grew upon the tree; and so as not to touch one another. And better if gathered a little green; the lids of the chests covering them close."

The ancient rustic authors give very little information concerning the apples and pears of their time, thinking them too well known to be described, as an author writing of our time might of ours. Most of them had their names from men who brought them into Italy and there cultivated them, and, "by so small a matter," says Pliny, "have rendered their names immortal."

Phillips thus describes the favorites of his time, most of which we find in our own orchards, and still in good repute:—

A quaint old Englishman, writing about orchards, quotes the proverb: "It will beggar a doctor to live where orchards thrive." So Cowley writes:—

Nor can we spare his praises of budding and grafting from our account:—