blossomed myrtle and the tuberose, my old fragrant favourites, for this scentless (but triumphant) beauty; everybody who beheld the Phoebus begged for a plant or a cutting; and we, generous in our ostentation, willing to redeem the vice by the virtue, promised as many plants and cuttings as we could reasonably imagine the root might be made to produce - perhaps rather more; and half the dahliagrowers round rejoiced over the glories of the gorgeous flower, and speculated, as the wont is now, upon seedling after seedling to the twentieth generation.

Alas for the vanity of human expectations! February came, the twenty-second of February, the very St. Valentine of dahlias, when the roots which have been buried in the ground during the winter are disinterred, and placed in a hotbed to put forth their first shoots previous to the grand operations of potting and dividing them. Of course, the first object of search in the choicest corner of the nicely-labelled hoard, was the Phoebus: but no Phoebus was forthcoming; root and label had vanished bodily! There was, to be sure, a dahlia without a label, which we would gladly have transformed into the missing treasure; but, as we speedily discovered a label without a dahlia, it was but too obvious that they belonged to each other. Until last year we might have had plenty of the consolation which results from such divorces of the name from the thing; for our labels, sometimes written upon parchment, sometimes upon leather, sometimes upon wood, as each material happened to be recommended by gardening authorities, and fastened on with packthread, or whip-cord, or silk twist, had generally parted company from the roots, and frequently become utterly illegible, producing a state of confusion which most undoubtedly we never expected to regret: but this year we had followed the one perfect system of labels of unglazed china, highly varnished after writing on them, and fastened on by wire; and it had answered so completely, that one, and one only, had broken from its moorings. No hope could be gathered from that quarter. The Phoebus was gone. So much was clear; and our loss being fully ascertained, we all began, as the custom is, to divert our grief and exercise our ingenuity by different guesses as to the fate of the vanished treasure.

My father, although certain that he had written the label, and wired the root, had his misgivings about the place in which it had

*It is wonderful how many plants may, by dint of forcing, and cutting and forcing again, be extracted from one root. But the experiment is not always safe. Nature sometimes avenges herself for the encroachments of art, by weakening the progeny. The Napoleon Dahlia, for instance, the finest of last year's seedlings, being over-propagated, this season has hardly produced one perfect bloom, even in the hands of the most skilful cultivators.

been deposited, and half suspected that it had slipt in amongst a basket which he had sent as a present to Ireland; I myself, judging from a similar accident which had once happened to a choice hyacinth bulb, partly thought that one or other of us might have put it for care and safety in some snug córner, that it would be six months before it turned up; John, impressed with a high notion of the moneyvalue of the property, and estimating it something as a keeper of the regalia might estimate the most precious of the crown jewels, boldly affirmed that it was stolen; and Dick, who had just had a démêlé with the cook, upon the score of her refusal to dress a beef-steak for a sick greyhound, asserted, between jest and earnest, that that hard-hearted official had either ignorantly or maliciously boiled the root for a Jerusalem artichoke, and that we, who stood lamenting over our regretted Phobus, had actually eaten it, dished up with white sauce. John turned pale at the thought. The beautiful story of the Falcon, in Boccaccio, which the young knight killed to regale his mistress, or the still more tragical history of Couci, who minced his rival's heart, and served it up to his wife, could not have affected him more deeply. We grieved over our lost dahlia, as if it had been a thing of life.

Grieving, however, would not repair our loss; and we determined, as the only chance of becoming again possessed of this beautiful flower, to visit, as soon as the dahlia season began, all the celebrated collections in the neighbourhood, especially all those from which there was any chance of our having procured the root which had so mysteriously vanished. Early in September, I set forth on my voyage of discovery my voyages, I ought to say; for every day I and my pony-phaeton made our way to whatever garden within our reach bore a sufficiently high character to be suspected of harbouring the good Dahlia Phoebus.

Monday we called at Lady A.'s; Tuesday: at General B.'s; Wednesday at Sir John C.'s; Thursday at Mrs. D.'s; Friday at Lord E.'s; and Saturday at Mrs. F.'s. We might as well have staid at home; not a Phœbus had they, or any thing like one.

We then visited the nurseries, from Brown's, at Slough, a princely establishment, worthy of its regal neighbourhood, to the pretty rural gardens at South Warnborough, not forgetting our own most intelligent and obliging nurseryman, Mr. Sutton of Reading-(Belford Regis, I mean). whose collection of flowers of all sorts is amongst the most choice and select that I have ever known. Hundreds of magnificent blossoms did we see in our progress, but not the blossom we wanted.

of the desired colour. Besides a score of There was no lack, heaven knows, of dahlias Orange Perfections," bearing the names of their respective growers, we were introduced

66

to four Princes of Orange, three Kings of Holland, two Williams the Third, and one Lord Roden. We were even shown a bloom called the Phœbus, about as like to our Phobus" as I to Hercules." But the true Phoebus, "the real Simon Pure," was as far to seek as

ever.

Learnedly did I descant with the learned in dahlias over the merits of my lost beauty. **It was a cupped flower, Mr. Sutton," quoth I, to my agreeable and sympathising listener; (gardeners are a most cultivated and gentlemanly race;) "a cupped dahlia, of the genuine metropolitan shape; large as the Criterion, regular as the Springfield Rival, perfect as Dodd's Mary, with a long bloom stalk like those good old flowers, the Countess of Liverpool and the Widnall's Perfection. And such a free blower, and so true! I am quite sure that there is not so good a dahlia this year. I prefer it to Corinne,' over and over." And Mr. Sutton assented and condoled, and I was as near to being comforted as anybody could be, who had lost such a flower as the Phobus.

After so many vain researches, most persons would have abandoned the pursuit in despair. But despair is not in my nature. I have a comfortable share of the quality which the possessor is wont to call perseverance-whilst the uncivil world is apt to designate it by the name of obstinacy-and do not easily give in. Then the chase, however fruitless, led, like other chases, into beautiful scenery, and formed an excuse for my visiting or revisiting many of the prettiest places in the county.

Two of the most remarkable spots in the neighbourhood are, as it happens, famous for their collections of dahlias-Strathfield-saye, the seat of the Duke of Wellington, and the ruins of Reading Abbey.

Nothing can well be prettier than the drive to Strathfield-saye, passing, as we do, through a great part of Heckfield Heath, a tract of

*The nomenclature of dahlias is a curious sign of the times. It rivals in oddity that of the Racing Calendar. Next to the peerage, Shakspeare and Homer seem to be the chief sources whence they have derived their appellations. Thus we have Hectors and Diomedes of all colours, a very black Othello, and a very fair Desdemona. One beautiful blossom, which seems like a white ground thickly rouged with carmine, is called "the Honourable Mrs. Harris;" and it is droll to observe how punctiliously the working gardeners retain the dignified prefix in speaking of the flower. I heard the other day of a serious dahlia-grower who had called his seedlings after his favourite preachers, so that we shall have the Reverend Edward So-and-so, and the Reverend John Such-an-one, fraternizing with the profane Ariels and Imogenes, the Giaours and Medoras of the old catalogue. So much the better. Floriculture is amongst the most innocent and humanizing of all pleasures, and everything which tends to diffuse such pursuits amongst those who have too few amusements, is a point gained for happiness and for virtue.

t It may be interesting to the lovers of literature to hear that my accomplished friend Mrs. Trollope was

wild woodland, a forest, or rather a chase, full of fine sylvan beauty-thickets of fern and holly, and hawthorn and birch, surmounted by oaks and beeches, and interspersed with lawny glades and deep pools, letting light into the picture. Nothing can be prettier than the approach to the duke's lodge. And the entrance to the demesne, through a deep dell dark with magnificent firs, from which we emerge into a finely wooded park of the richest verdure, is also striking and impressive. But the distinctive feature of the place (for the mansion, merely a comfortable and convenient nobleman's house, hardly responds to the fame of its owner) is the grand avenue of noble elms, three quarters of a mile long, which leads to the front door. It is difficult to imagine anything which more completely realises the poetical fancy, that the pillars and arches of a Gothic cathedral were borrowed from the interlacing of the branches of trees planted at stated intervals, than this avenue, in which Nature has so completely succeeded in outrivalling her handmaiden Art, that not a single trunk, hardly even a bough or a twig, appears to mar the grand regularity of the design as a piece of perspective. No cathedral aisle was ever more perfect; and the effect, under every variety of aspect, the magical light and shadow of the cold white moonshine, the cold green light of a cloudy day, and the glancing sunbeams which pierce through the leafy umbrage in the bright summer noon, are such as no words can convey. Separately considered, each tree (and the north of Hampshire is celebrated for the size and shape of its elms) is a model of stately growth, and they are now just at perfection, probably about a hundred and thirty years old. There is scarcely perhaps in the kingdom such another avenue.

On one side of this noble approach is the garden, where, under the care of the skilful and excellent gardener, Mr. Cooper, so many magnificent dahlias are raised, but where, alas! the Phoebus was not; and between that and the mansion is the sunny, shady paddock, with its rich pasture and its roomy stable, where, for so many years, Copenhagen, the charger who carried the Duke at Waterloo, formed so great an object of attraction to the visiters of Strathfield-saye. Then came the

house itself, and then I returned home.

"raised," as her friends the Americans would say, upon this spot. Her father, the Rev. William Milton, himself a very clever man, and an able mechanician and engineer, held the living of Heckfield for many years.

† Copenhagen-(I had the honour of naming one of Mr. Cooper's dahlias after him-a sort of bay dahlia, if I may be permitted the expression)-Copenhagen was a most interesting horse. He died last year at the age of twenty-seven. 1le was therefore in his prime on the day of Waterloo, when the duke (then and still a man of iron) rode him for seventeen hours and a half, without dismounting. When his Grace got off, he patted him, and the horse kicked, to the great delight of his brave rider, as it proved that he

Well! this was one beautiful and fruitless drive. The ruins of Reading Abbey formed another as fruitless, and still more beautiful. Whether in the "palmy state" of the faith of Rome, the pillared aisles of the Abbey church might have vied in grandeur with the avenue at Strathfield-saye, I can hardly say; but certainly, as they stand, the venerable arched gateway, the rock-like masses of wall, the crumbling cloisters, and the exquisite finish of the surbases of the columns and other fragments, fresh as if chiseled yesterday, which are reappearing in the excavations now making, there is an interest which leaves the grandeur of life, palaces and their pageantry, parks and their adornments, all grandeur except the indestructible grandeur of nature, at an immeasurable distance. The place was a history. Centuries passed before us as we thought of the magnificent monastery, the third in size and splendour in England, with its area of thirty acres between the walls and gazed upon it now!

And yet, even now, how beautiful! Trees of every growth mingling with those grey ruins, creepers wreathing their fantastic garlands around the mouldering arches, gorgeous flowers flourishing in the midst of that decay! I almost forgot my search for the dear Phobus, as I rambled with my friend, Mr. Malone, the gardener, a man who would in any station be remarkable for acuteness and acquirement, amongst the august remains of the venerable abbey, with the history of which he was as conversant as with his own immediate profession. There was no speaking of smaller objects in the presence of the mighty past!Vide note at the end of this article.

was not beaten by that tremendous day's work. After his return, this paddock was assigned to him, in which he passed the rest of his life in the most perfect comfort that can be imagined; fed twice a-day, (latterly upon oats broken for him,) with a comfortable stable to retire to, and a rich pasture in which to range. The late amiable duchess used regularly to feed him with bread, and this kindness had given him the habit, (especially after her death,) of approaching every lady with the most confiding familiarity. He had been a fine animal, of middle size and a chestnut colour, but latterly he exhibited an interesting specimen of natural decay, in a state as nearly that of nature as can well be found in a civilized country. He had lost an eye from age, and had become lean and feeble, and, in the manner in which he approached even a casual visiter, there was something of the demand of sympathy, the appeal to human kindness, which one has so often observed from a very old dog towards his master. Poor Copenhagen, who, when alive, furnished so many reliques from his mane and tail to enthusiastic young ladies, who had his hair set in brooches and rings, was, after being interred with military honours, dug up by some miscreant, (never, I believe, discovered,) and one of his hoofs cut off, it is to be presumed, for a memorial, although one that would hardly go in the compass of a ring. A very fine portrait of Copenhagen has been executed by my young friend Edmund Havell, a youth of seventeen, whose genius as an animal painter will certainly place him second only to Landseer.

Gradually chilled by so much unsuccess, the ardour of my pursuit began to abate. I began to admit the merits of other dahlias of divers colours, and actually caught myself committing the inconstancy of considering which of the four Princes of Orange I should bespeak for next year. Time, in short, was beginning to play his part as the great comforter of human afflictions, and the poor Phobus seemed as likely to be forgotten as a last year's bonnet, or a last week's newspaperwhen, happening to walk with my father to look at a field of his, a pretty bit of upland pasture about a mile off, I was struck, in one corner where the manure for dressing had been deposited, and a heap of earth and dung still remained, to be spread, I suppose, next spring, with some tall plant surmounted with bright flowers. Could it be? was it possible? did my eyes play me false? - No; there it was, upon a dunghill-the object of all my researches and lamentations, the identical Phœbus! the lost dahlia !

NOTE-By far the most interesting object in our neighbourhood has always seemed to me the rock-like ruins of Reading Abbey, themselves a history; all the more interesting because, until lately, that, the most perty of my friend, Mr. Whebie, the present High important part of these remains has become the proSheriff of Berks, whose researches have drawn some attention to the subject, these venerable relics of an earlier day, situate close to a wealthy and populous sight of the great road from Bath and Bristol to the town, not forty miles from London, and actually within metropolis, have seemed utterly unnoticed and unknown. Here and there, indeed, some fanciful virtuoso, like Marshal Conway, (best known as the friend and correspondent of Horace Walpole,) has evinced his passion for antiquity by the desire of appropriating what he admired, and has dragged away whole masses of the walls to assist in his fantastical doings at Henley and elsewhere,-or a set of Goths and Vandals, the county magistrates of fifty years ago (sure am I that their successors would not have dreamed of such a desecration) have pitched upon the outskirts of the old monastery for the erection of their huge, staring, glaring gaol and Bridewell, with all its miserable associations of wretchedness and crime-or an education committee, with equal bad taste in a different | way (they really seem to have imagined that they had done a fine thing) have run up a roof of red tiles within the walls of the refectory, and moved the children of a national school, upon Dr. Bell's system, into the noble hall, where kings had signed ́edicts, and parliaments framed laws. This last nuisance has been abated. The children have now a schoolroom of their own, far better adapted to its object, more healthful and more comfortable, and the Abbey is left to the silence and solitude which best beseem the recollections and associations attendant on this stupendous structure.

Reading Abbey was founded by Henry the First, in the beginning of the year 1121, and dedicated to the honour of the Virgin Mary and St. John, as appears by the charter granted four years afterwardsvide Dugdale's Monasticon; "for my soul's health, and the souls of King William my father, of my son William, of Queen Matilda my mother, of Queen | Matilda my wife, and of all my predecessors and suc

cessors.

The charter then goes on to recite the immense pos.

sessions and regal privileges bestowed upon the monastery at Reading and its cells at Leominster and at Cholsey.

It grants them a mint, with the privilege of striking money.

It exempts them from all taxes, imposts, or contributions whatsoever, and from all levies of men for wars or other services.

It gives "the abbot and his monks full power to try all offences committed within or without the borough, in the highways, and all other places, whether by their own servants or strangers, with all causes which can or may arise with socca* and sacca,† tol, and theam, and infangentheft, and outfangentheft. and ham soena. within the borough and without the borough, in the roads and footpaths, and in all places, and with all causes which do or may arise.

"And the abbot and his monks shall hold courts of justice for trials of assaults, thefts, and murders, for the shedding of blood, and breaches of the peace, in the same manner that belongs to the royal authority," &c. &c. Then follows a paragraph which we insert in honour of the accomplished founder. It is worthy of Alfred. "But this also we determine and appoint to be for ever observed, that seeing the Abbot of Radynge hath no revenues but what are in common with his brethren; therefore, whoever by devise, consent, and canonical election shall be made abbot, shall not be stow the alms of the monastery on his lay kindred or any others, but reserve them for the entertainment of the poor and strangers."

And William of Malmesbury certifies that this part of the charter was so well observed, that there was always more expended upon strangers than upon the inhabitants, "the monks being," as he asserts, "great examples of piety."

The charter concludes with a strenuous recommendation to all succeeding kings to continue the above privileges and immunities to the monastery, and with this remarkable malison, the fear of which Beauclerc's burly successor, Henry, the eighth of that name, most assuredly had not before his eyes, when he hanged the abbot and knocked down the walls. "But if any one shall knowingly presume to infringe, diminish, or alter this our foundation charter, may the great God of all withdraw and eradicate him and his posterity, and may he remain without any inheritance, in misery and hunger," &c.

The extent and magnificence of the monastery were commensurate with the high privileges granted by the royal founder, and with the station of the superior, who ranked as third amongst the mitred abbots of England: next after the abbots of Glastenbury and St. Alban's.

A space of thirty acres was comprised within the outer walls; and though a considerable part of this was devoted to the inner and outer courts, the clois ters, and the gardens, yet the building itself was stupendous in size and in strength. I have seen decayed specimens of gothic architecture which bear more striking traces of lightness and ornament, but none that ever seemed so calculated for duration, so prodigally massive and solid. The great hall, whose noble proportions are eighty feet in length, forty in width, and forty to the centre of the arched stone ceiling,

*Socca, the place or precinct wherein the liberty of

court was exercised.

†Sacca, a liberty granted by the king to try and judge causes, and to receive the forfeitures arising from them. ↑ Theam, a privilege to take and keep bondsmen, villains, and serfs, with their generations, one after another. § Infangentheft, a liberty to try and judge a thief taken within the jurisdiction of the manor or borough.

Outfangentheft, the same privilege to try any thief taken out of the jurisdiction of the manor or borough. Ham Socna, the levying a fine on the disturbers of the king's peace.

had walls six feet thick, coated with freestone, and filled up with flints and stones, cemented with a mortar as durable as the materials themselves. This was the width of all the walls, inner as well as outer, and seems to be only a fair sample of the general proportions of the apartments. The foundations under ground were seven feet deep and twelve wide; and the excavations making in the church, of which many of the surbases of the columns, bits of stained glass and other ornamental parts, remain as fresh as if only finished yesterday, prove that the execution of this magnificent pile was as perfect and beautiful as the design was stupendous and grand. Sir Henry Englefield says, (Archælogia,) every form of Saxon moulding, and many never seen before, may be found in the stones dispersed through the town.

Everything belonging to these magnificent monks seems to have been conducted with this union of largeness and finish. They appear to have brought for their use, from the river Kennett, a canal called the Holy (or Hallowed) Brook, from Coley, an elevated spot nearly two miles from the Abbey, conducting it by a descent so equal and gradual, that it moved the Abbey mills (which still exist) with the same regularity in the most parching droughts or the wildest floods, even taking the precautions of paving it with brick, and arching it in great part over, during its passage through the town. And having thus provided themselves with soft water, and with the constant assurance of grinding their corn through every season, however unfavourable, they provided themselves with the luxury of spring water from the conduit, a celebrated spring rising on a hill on another side of Reading, and at least a mile from the abode of the lord abbot. This water was brought to the monastery in pipes, and from a discovery made accidentally by some labourers who were excavating a sawpit in a bank on the south side of the Kennett, in the middle of the last century, it appears to have passed under the Kennett. The story is told in Mann's history of Reading." They" (the men employed at the sawpit) "found a leaden pipe, about two inches in diameter, lying in the direction of the conduit, and passing under the river towards the Abbey, part of which, from its situation under the water, they were obliged to leave. The rest was sold for old lead." Coates also brings undoubted testimony to prove that the conduit spring supplied the Abbay, and that the water was brought under the Kennett.

Certainly, as the river runs between the conduit and the Abbey, the pipe must have gone under or over it; but the fact is worth mentioning as curious in itself, and as tending to prove, in these days, when we are a little apt, if not to overvalue our own doings, at least to undervalue those of our ancestors, that, not merely in architecture, (for in that grandest art we are pigmies indeed, compared to those great masters whose names are lost, though their works, in spite of a thousand foes, seem indestructible,) that not in architecture only, but in tunnel-making, we might take lessons from those old-fashioned personages the monks.

From the period of its consecration, we find the name of Reading Abbey occurring frequently in all the histories of the times. Parliaments and councils were holden there; legates received; traitors execu ted; kings, queens, and princes buried in the holy precincts. Speed mentions, picturesquely, King Henry and his Queen "who lay there veiled and crowned." Bishops were consecrated, joustings celebrated, knights | dubbed, and money coined.

One incident which has reference to the Abbey, related by Stowe, is so romantic that I cannot refrain from giving the story. It would make a fine dramatic scene-almost a drama.

"In 1167, a single combat was fought at Reading, between Robert de Montford, appellant, and Henry de Essex, defendant; the occasion of which was as follows. In an engagement which Henry the Second