GARDEN WHIMSIES. There must be something, we are inclined to imagine, intoxicating in having much to do with flowers and gardens. Possibly a sort of hortifloral love may have to be reckoned by the psychologist among the passions of the human breast; if so, we would set down as one of its first general laws, that this sentiment has a great tendency to attain an extravagant height, and to pass all the common boundaries of common sense. Of the flower-love, we have the familiar instance of the Tulipomania as an illustration; and we may learn, in addition, that sober Dutchmen, headover-ears in this passion, have been known to half starve themselves, that they might feed their anemones to lose entire days in love-sick gazing upon a hyacinthine beauty and to tremble for the consequences of a careless stranger breathing over a fair auricula. We happen to have known a person in the outskirts of London who carried his passion for tulips to such a pitch of frenzy that he ruined his family, and almost broke the heart of his wife. Finally, his household was reduced to a single bedstead; but this he one day took and placed over a group of tulips, tent-wise, to keep off the too ardent glare of the sun; having performed this droll feat, he sat down, pipe in hand, and for hours gazed with delight on the resplendent tints of his favorites. Cases of this nature supply us with a strong presumption that a love for flowers is liable to run into monomania. The extravagances of garden-makers are at all events curious, and worthy of notice. It was according to rule that the excitable people of Italy would be among the greatest sufferers by the attacks of this disorder. A modern writer on Italy is lost in admiration of the garden doings of some of the cardinals of former days. Their riches, their taste, their learning, their leisure, their frugality, all conspired in this one object. "The eminent founder would expend thousands upon his garden, but allot only a crown for his own dinner!" The garden of the Borghese villa, of all others, was costly, luxurious, and whimsical. We read that from a distance this garden appeared like a great town, the wall being interrupted here and there with castles, turrets, and banqueting-houses. "Within,” exclaims enthusiastic Evelyn, "it was an elysium of delight." It abounded with all kinds of delicious fruits; exotic plants of the rarest description breathed out odors the most pleasing, and spent their vegetable lives amid the music of a thousand fountains and the murmur of countless rivulets. It contained a grotto of the most rare แ device, in which, at the visitor's pleasure, there fell down showers of artificial rain, which, we may add, often wetted him through against that will. Water in this place put on the character of Proteus; it was now jetting up in a full round bore, and, dashing against the roof of the grot, came tumbling down in millions of sparkles; now it was streaming out into an elegant vase, brilliant, liquid, inconstant; and now it flew into the form of a great convolvulus, or radiated away into an aster. If we may take the good gossip's word for it, and we are fully disposed to do so, nothing but what was magnificent was to be seen in that paradise." The gardens of the Vatican, at the same period, were laid out and ornamented, and be-whimsied to an extent even surpassing their Borghese rival. They abounded in curious fountains, many of which tossed their water to the clouds. There were also wonderful grottoes of the most artificial' construction, and mimic lakes adorned the scene, on which floated diminutive men of war; and there also three bees poured from copper trunks three jets of water, under which was written some very witty Latin. An estimate of the splendor of the Horti Matthai may be obtained from the circumstance, that, on pain of forfeiture of the inheritance, an annual outlay of not less than six thousand crowns was necessary to be expended on them. The gardens of Frascati were of wide celebrity: in the centre rose a hill covered with wood, and naturally carved into such a fantastic outline, as if it had been a work of art. From its summit fell a cascade, which precipitated itself into a noble theatre of water, and as it fell, shone with an iridescence, when gleaming in the sunshine, which might vie even with the rainbow. Here was nature. But under the falling waters there was a grotto upon which vast sums must have been spent; and in it was a variety of instruments, played by the unwilling waters of the cascade. There were hydraulic organs; grumbling, uncomfortable, out-of-breath contrivances, now bellowing away might and main, then, as the air-chest got hydrothorocized, sighing out some indistinct notes of nobody knew what; while a spasmodic Cupid, as leader of the band, would twitch his arms and baton in a distressing irregularity of time; and three Titans at the farther end pound with wooden hammers a sham bit of iron on a sham anvil of deal; and a dance of skeletons enliven with their monotonous gyrations the background of the apparatus. Besides these, there was a monster to frighten ladies and queteers took a generally successful aim at the visitor with their water-charges. little children, by roaring through a terrific horn; | this place of wonders, two sharp-shooting musand finally, the representation of a storm, with such a fury of wind, rain, and tempest, as one would imagine the elements might themselves envy. The Dutch gardens were mathematical whimsicalities. Triangles of orange-trees, ellipses of water, rhomboids of parterres, and parallel lines of groves, were the delight and glory of this taste. The very fountains partook of the same squareset character, and played with a sober steadiness altogether unlike the gambols in which that element generally wantons. The garden of St. Germain was famous for its subterraneous artificial caverns, where scenes of various kinds were performed by the force of water. Here were mills revolving, men fishing, birds chirrupping, and sundry other devices of curious sort, especially an Orpheus, surrounded by dancing animals. The celebrated gardens of Versailles contained, besides numerous other remarkables, a series of fountains which represented Æsop's fables. The animals were all of brass, and painted in their proper colors, and cast forth water, in different forms, out of their mouths. The fox and the crane were thus personated: upon a rock stood a fox, lapping something from a flat gilded dish; while the unhappy crane, whose length of bill offered a serious obstacle to its joining in the feast, spouted water up into the Every one has heard tell of the famous garden of Tivoli. It seems to have been an exquisite place, and it cost altogether nearly a million. It was crowded with innumerable statues, and abounded in stately fountains. One long and broad walk was full of jets d'eau, and each fountain represented one of Ovid's metamorphoses. Its principal lion was a large model of the imperial city, when 'she sat a queen' over the kingdoms of the earth. It represented all her amphitheatres, shows, temples, aqueducts, arches, and streets; and through it wandered a little rivulet, the representative of old Tiber, which gushed out of an urn held by a statue of the god. Farther on, a fountain of dragons roared out water; and a grotto, by a strange misnomer called the Grotto di Natura, resounded with the melodious wind and water strains of a large hydraulic organ. The great Cardinal Richelieu had also expended an enormous sum in embellishing the gardens attached to his palace at Ruelle. These splendid gardens contained a piece of real nature in the midst of them, consisting of a corn-field, vineyards, mead-air by way of complaint. There were altogether ows, and groves, which bare corn, and yielded thirty-nine such follies, occupying different walks. grapes, and grew grass and leaves, the same as These gardens cost two hundred millions of francs, an ordinary farm. Here reaping, and harvest- and altogether cover two hundred acres of ground. ing, and every agricultural occupation were M. Girardin, who expended a fortune on his served up for the cardinal's amusement. But gardens, added to their attractions that of a little he was a great water wit also. In one of the patch, desolate and neglected, which he called walks was a basilisk of copper, near which some his "garden in ruins." He was very vain of the practical joker of a fountaineer was sure to be "points" about his grounds; and to call proper placed; and as the visitor was wondering at the attention to them, used to employ a band of metallic monster, he would be suddenly saluted music to wander from spot to spot, so that the with a powerful jet of water from its mouth; eyes of visitors might be drawn in succession to and if he fled, the wily basilisk would set to re- the different lions of the place. "In the ducal volving rapidly, and shooting out its water to an gardens at Gotha," says the Quarterly, "is a immense distance, so that it was a certain thing ruined castle, which was built complete, and for him to get drenched to the skin. At the then ruined exprès by a few rounds of artillery!" end of another walk was an admirable view of Constantine's arch, painted in oil upon the wall, with the clear blue sky appearing so faithfully, that birds were frequently found dead at its foot, having dashed against the wall in the attempt to fly through it. Artificial cascades filled the air with glittering spray, and sheets of water like glass gleamed in the summer's sun. There was a grotto here too, and this was a grotto such as nature never beheld. In the midst of it was a marble table, all round which a sort of water banquet was displayed, various jets continually playing in the form of crystal goblets, glasses, crosses, flowers, and crowns. The roof showered down an everlasting rain; and in emerging from At home, another sort of oddity disfigured our gardens. This was called the Topiary Art. Under the hands of Loudon and Wise, our evergreens underwent metamorphoses more wonderful than Ovid's. It was said they left the marks of their scissors on every plant and bush. The ingenious Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of Oxfordshire, expresses himself in warm terms of admiration upon these feats of the primary shears. At Hampton Court were some remarkable animals and castles cut in box, and a mighty wren's nest, which was sufficiently capacious to receive a man on a seat inside. Box-trees were often cut into sun-dials and coats-of-arms, and now and then some venerable mansion gloried The visit is never re After a while we are growing out of these whimsies, and a purer taste is diffusing itself over our pleasure-grounds; but to this hour the Chinese are even more full of them than were we, or any other nation, at our worst. Macartney says, "it is the excellence of a Chinese gardner to conquer nature," and it must be confessed it is an excellence which is pretty common in China, for by no stretch of the imagina tion can nature be recognized, excepting in her productions in their gardens. The Chinese emperor's pleasure-garden contained, it is said, two hundred palaces, and was on a scale of great magnificence. Artificial rocks rose up out of flat plains; canals and serpentizing bridges enlivened the scene; and here the emperor played at agriculture and commerce. A small corn-field was reaped and carried home right under his celestial eyes; and as an amusement for him within doors, shops were erected, and business done as in the city, with all its minutiæ, especially with the tricks of trade. Practical jokes are still in great vogue, and the walks are broken of purpose into holes and foot-traps, the fun being to get into them and get out again with limping, if not broken limbs. Nice, tempting, green, grassy little plots intersect some of them, on which, if the visitor plant his foot, he sinks to his middle in a bog. In these cases, however, the fun must not unfrequently become rather serious. in a couple of giant guards, "clothed in living | to the weeping tree. We might go on almost ad infinitum on this inexhaustible subject: we prefer to stop. Our object has been to expose the puerilities with which the childish taste of men has dishonored what Lord Bacon declared to be "the purest of all human pleasures." At no time do the most exquisite works of man endure a comparison with those of his Maker-how much less so when it is a few childish toys, with their babbling and squirting absurdities, which are unnaturally united with the exquisite scenery and chaste creations which have proceeded from His hands! Chambers' Edinburgh Journal. HOW A REVIEWER MAY AVOID PREJUDICE. -In the palmy days of the Edinburgh Review, Sidney Smith happened to call on a colleague, whom he found to his surprise actually reading a book for the purpose of reviewing it. Having expressed his astonishment in the strongest terms, his friend inquired how he managed, when performing the critical office? "Oh," said Sidney Smith, "I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so." THOR WALDSEN. FROM THE DANISH OF H. C. ANDERSEN. A rich page in the history of Art lies unrolled and deciphered before us! Thorwaldsen has lived! His life was a continued triumph: fortune and victory waited on him, and art was recognized and reverenced in his person. The life of this happy one - this triumphal marchmay be painted in words, as with colors. To represent the whole in painting, we should sketch three scenes. The first is a Danish beech-forest, where the king stands before an altar of rude stone blocks, surrounded by the priests, with a thick gold circlet on his head. This is the King of Denmark, Harald Hildetand. His eye sparkles- his head is proudly raisedfor the mighty gods have sworn to him that, after many centuries, one of his descendants shall stretch out his sceptre from the North Cape to the southernmost point of Europe - far towards east and west- and his name shall be recorded in the book of nations. See the next scene! Centuries have rolled by, and it is our own age; a poor boy, with a little red cap on his golden hair, carries an earthen pitcher, slung by a cord, through one of the narrow streets of Copenhagen-he is bringing dinner to his father, who works in the dockyard, carving rude figure-heads for the ships. But observe this child! he is the youngest of King Harald Hildetand's race, and in him the promise shall be fulfilled. But how? The third scene will show. The boy has become a man - the yellow hair white-but it hangs upon his powerful shoulders in a rich profusion; around stand noble marble forms-Jason with the golden fleece, the Graces, the Holy Apostles; it is the King of Artists whom we see the scion of Harald Hildetand-the poor boy, who now as a man stretches his sceptre in the realm of Art, over the countries of Europe-it is Bertel Thorwaldsen. It is not the imagination of a poet-it is reality - which has furnished the subject for each picture. Iceland has preserved for the northern nations their ancient language, mythology, and history. Their genealogies may be found accurately in the Sagas; and thus we have Thorwald sen's. The family is descended from the Danish king, Harald Hildetand; from Denmark it fled to Norway, and afterwards to Iceland. We read in the Saga of the Laxdölern, that one of this stock, Oluf Paa, was a powerful chief, whose taste for works of art is celebrated in the songs of the bards. Bertel Thorwaldsen's spirit stirred in the chieftain's breast. Hear the Saga: "Oluf Paa built a larger and more beautiful banquetting-hall than was ever seen before. On the walls and ceiling were painted celebrated events from the old Sagas; and they were so finely executed, that the hall was far more beautiful than if it had been hung with tapestry. When the hall was finished, Oluf Paa gave a great banquet, to which the bard Ulfa Uggason came, who composed a poem upon Oluf Paa and the Sagas which were pictured on the walls. This poem was called 'Hunsdrapa."" A likeness in intellectual peculiarities, as well as in features and manners, may be preserved through many generations; and those of Oluf Paa, elevated and heightened, shone forth in our Thorwaldsen. At Copenhagen, on the 19th of November, 1770, Karen Grönland, the daughter of a Jutland preacher, and the wife of the image-carver, Gottschalk Thorwaldsen, bore her husband a son, who at his baptism received the name of Bertel. The father had come over from Iceland, and was in needy circumstances; the couple dwelt in the small Grünstrasse, not far from the Academy of Arts. The moon looked often into the poor chamber-she has told us of it herself:-* "Father and mother were sleeping; but the little son slept not. I saw," said the moon, "the flowered chintz bed-curtains move the child looked out. I thought at first he was watching the clock, it was painted so gaily in red and green. A cuckoo sat above it-there were heavy weights-and the pendulum, with its shining brass-plate, went backwards and forwards, tick, tick. But it was not that he looked at: no! it was his mother's spinning-wheel. This stood exactly under the clock, and it was the boy's favorite piece of furniture; but he dared not touch it, else he should get a slap on his finger. He could sit whole hours, when his mother spun, watching the humming spool, and circling wheel; and he had his own thoughts then. Ah! could he but spin upon the wheel! Father and mother slept: he looked at themhe looked at the wheel- and soon after one little naked foot peeped out of bed, and then another little naked foot, then came two little legs- he stood upon the floor! He turned back once, to see if father and mother were asleep, and then he went softly-quite softly - in "Picture-book without Pictures." 24th Evening. nothing but his little short shirt, to the spinningwheel, and began to spin. The band flew off, and the wheel turned quickly. At the same instant the mother awoke the curtain moved - she looked out, and thought it was a Kobold or some other little sprite. "In Jesus' name!' said she, and touched her husband timidly." "He opened his eyes, rubbed them, and looked at the busy little creature." "That is Bertel!' said he." What the moon relates is here the first picture in Thorwaldsen's Life Gallery for it is a real scene. Thorwaldsen himself, in familiar conversation with the author, at Nysö, has related, almost word for word, what he has made the moon say in his poem. It was one of Thorwaldsen's earliest remembrances- how he sat in his little short shirt in the moonshine, spinning at his mother's wheel, and how the dear mother took him for a little sprite. "Is it your brother who has won the silver medal?" asked the pastor. "It is I myself," said Bertel. The clergyman looked at him benignantly, placed him above the other boys, and called him henceforth "Monsieur Thorwaldsen." Oh, how this word vibrated through his heart! he has often since said it sounded greater than any title kings could bestow; he never forgot it. In a little house in "Aabenraa," the street where Holberg places the dwelling of his poor poet, Bertel Thorwaldsen lived with his parents, and divided his time between art and his labors for his father. The small gold medal of the Academy was to be given as a prize for sculpture. Thorwaldsen was twenty years of age. His friends knew his powers better than himself, and they obliged him to undertake the proposed subject—"Heliodorus driven from the Tem ple." We are at Charlottenburg, but the little room where Thorwaldsen sat a few minutes before, completing his sketch, is empty, and he is hurrying down the narrow back stairs, chased by the demons of fear and distrust, to return no more. In the life of a great genius nothing is accidental; the hand of Providence guides the apparent trifle. Thorwaldsen was destined to fulfil his task. Who is it that stops him on the dark back stairs? One of the professors is just coming that way-speaks to him, questions him, exhorts him; he returns, and in four hours the sketch is completed, and the small gold medal won. This was on the 15th of August, 1791. The minister of state, Count Ditlew von Rewentlow, saw the young artist's work, and became his patron. He procured him employment, and placed his own name at the head of a subscription, which gained him freer opportunity of de Some years ago there was still living an old ship-carpenter, who remembered the little fair blue-eyed Bertel, who used to come to his father in the carving-house of the dockyard. He was to learn his father's trade; and as the latter felt the disadvantage of not being able to draw, the boy at eleven years of age was sent to the free school of the Academy of Arts, where he made rapid progress. Two years later, Bertel could help his father, and even improve his work. See the ship heaving in the dock! the Danish flag is waving the workmen sit in the shade round their simple breakfast; but in the front stands the principal figure in this picture; it is a boy, who boldly carves the features of the wooden image at the ship's prow. It is its guardian spirit; and shall wander through the wide world as the work of Bertel Thorwaldsen's hand. The ever-heaving sea shall baptize it with its wa-voting himself to his studies. Two years afterters, and wreathe garlands of sea-plants round it! Our next picture represents a later period. Unobserved amongst the other boys, he has frequented the school of the Academy for six years, where he stands silent and sparing of words before his drawing-board. His answers are yes or no- a nod or shake of the head; but gentleness beams in his countenance, and kindliness in every gesture. The picture shows us Bertel at his confirmation. He is seventeen years old no very early age to acknowledge his baptismal obligations; he is placed before the pastor in the lowest rank, his knowledge not entitling him to a higher. A short time before, the newspapers had announced that the pupil Thorwaldsen had received the small silver medal from the Academy.* *The bas-relief which gained the prize, represents a sleeping Cupid. wards, the large gold medal was won, and with it a sum of money for the expenses of travelling; but before his departure, his education was to be attended to. A year passed; he read and studied; the Academy countenanced him, and he advanced in knowledge. We will glance upon an object dear to him at this time. We find it at his feet in those pleasant evening scenes, when he sat in the merry club, with men like Rahbek and Steffens, a silent looker-on; we find it in a corner behind the large stove; at home in the shabby room, which contrasted strongly with the well-dressed gentlemen who visited it; we see it fastened by a string behind the door of the theatre, where Thorwaldsen has to speak two replies in his little part in the "Barber of Seville;" it is his favorite dog, who is connected *A royal palace in New Market. |