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atuettes of the eighteenth century are especially interesting to collectors. There are figures to suit all; musicians may delight in that of Handel; others in the busts of Wesley and Whitfield; explorers in the statue of Benjamin Franklin made about 1770, and some in that of John Wilks seated near an old column of a still earlier date. There is also a cleverly modelled figure of Geoffrey Chaucer. One of the best known groups is that of the "Vicar and Moses," made by Wood, of Burslem. Garden Curios. It is said that garden craft, like most other forms of art, came from the East; that the cultivation of gardens commenced in Egypt, Persia, and Assyria, travelling westward through Greece and Rome; and in some of the early English gardens which horticulturists are so fond of copying to-day there are traces of Eastern influence still remaining. Although the garden is the place where we expect to find flowers, foliage, and perhaps fruit and vegetables, it has always been associated with home life, and some of the charms of domestic comradeship owe their greatness to the garden and pleasance. It has always been the aim of the professional and the amateur gardener to furnish the lawn and flower-beds with appropriate settings, some of which have become very quaint in the eyes of twentieth-century horticulturists. The Egyptians had their trellised bowers, and their tiny pools of clear water. The Greeks, however, were fortunate in having undulated and even hilly ground to cultivate, and their gardens were much more picturesque than the level ground of Egypt, although the Orientals built terraces, and by artificial means enhanced the beauty of their gardens. The adornment of gardens with statuary comes to us from Greece, and many modern reproductions of ancient Greek statues are regarded as the curios of the modern garden. Delightful, indeed, are some of the statuettes in stone and lead representing Aphrodite and the Graces. The Roman gardens were magnificent in their miniature temples, replicas of which are found in the old Georgian summer-houses, such as may be seen at Kew, and in many private grounds, dating from that period. The Romans were lovers of roses, and had many charming rose bowers, curiously and cunningly formed. The dawn of gardening on some approved plan, and then ornamenting the portions not covered with greenery, began in monastic days. The oldest of the occupations of civilized man, it was long held
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