their thick changeless
leaves, unpleasant to the touch; no one ever gathers a spray.

Rhododendrons it is unkind to attack, for in themselves they afford a
rich flower. It is not the rhododendron, but the abuse of it, which must
be protested against. Whether the soil suits or not--and, for the most
part, it does not suit--rhododendrons are thrust in everywhere. Just
walk in amongst them--behind the show--and look at the spindly, crooked
stems, straggling how they may, and then look at the earth under them,
where not a weed even will grow. The rhododendron is admirable in its
place, but it is often overdone and a failure, and has no right to
exclude those shrubs that are fitter. Most of the foreign shrubs about
these semi-country seats look exactly like the stiff and painted little
wooden trees that are sold for children's toys, and, like the toys, are
the same colour all the year round.

Now, if you enter a copse in spring the eye is delighted with cowslips
on the banks where the sunlight comes, with blue-bells, or earlier with
anemones and violets, while later the ferns rise. But enter the
semi-parks of the semi-country seat, with its affected assumption of
countryness, and there is not one of these. The fern is actually
purposely eradicated--just think! Purposely! Though indeed they would
not grow, one would think, under rhododendrons and laurels, cold-blooded
laurels. They will grow under hawthorn, ash, or beside the bramble
bushes.

If there chance to be a little pond or "fountain," there is no such
thing as a reed, or a flag, or a rush. How the rushes would be hastily
hauled out and hurled away with execrations!

Besides the greater beauty of English trees, shrubs, and plants, they
also attract the birds, without which the grandest plantation is a
vacancy, and another interest, too, arises from watching the progress of
their growth and the advance of the season. Our own trees and shrubs
literally keep pace with the stars which shine in our northern skies. An
astronomical floral almanack might almost be constructed, showing how,
as the constellations marched on by night, the buds and leaves and
flowers appeared by day.

The lower that brilliant Sirius sinks in the western sky after ruling
the winter heavens, and the higher that red Arcturus rises, so the buds
thicken, open, and bloom. When the Pleiades begin to rise in the early
evening, the leaves are turning colour, and the seed vessels of the
flowers take t