United States or Cyprus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was late in the afternoon of the following day before I was able to join the party assembled at the merchant's house; it was a villa about two miles out of the town, pleasantly situated amidst flower-gardens celebrated in the neighbourhood for their beauty.
We were particularly attracted by public and, private flower-gardens, fruit orchards, and ornamental trees, disposed in such an excellent manner as to give the general effect of a finely and naturally-wooded country; and yet we were told that before the English took possession and built up the European quarter, Lahore was only a city surrounded by sterile fields, and absolutely without a tree, ornamental or otherwise, within its extended borders.
The fields had been left uncultivated, weeds and gaudy flowers sprung up, or where a few wheat-fields shewed signs of the living hopes of the husbandman, the work had been left halfway, the ploughman had died beside the plough; the horses had deserted the furrow, and no seedsman had approached the dead; the cattle unattended wandered over the fields and through the lanes; the tame inhabitants of the poultry yard, baulked of their daily food, had become wild young lambs were dropt in flower-gardens, and the cow stalled in the hall of pleasure.
Nevertheless, many of the imaginations that take form there are of real though temporary beauty, and a visitor who knew of nothing higher might wander contentedly enough there among forests and mountains, lovely lakes and pleasant flower-gardens, or might even construct such surroundings to suit his own fancies.
Everything is in favour of the young. When they adopt elaborate or rich toilets, when they make flower-gardens of their heads, or wear strong and glaring colours, the chances are that they disfigure themselves. A young girl should never make herself conspicuous by her dress. Let it be as good as she pleases, as costly as she can afford, still let it be simple and unobtrusive.
Its club-house is a gem, comprising a small theatre, billiard-room and bowling- alley everything complete. The colonel took us for a stroll about the settlement, and pressed us to join a party he was just about taking over the river to visit the best flower-gardens of the city. We could not decline such a treat, and this gave us the pleasure of meeting Mrs.
She used to be shut off from the wide acres of the farm, and had no voice in the world's politics; she must stay in the house, or only hold sway out of doors in this prim corner of land where she was queen. No wonder that women clung to their rights in their flower-gardens then, and no wonder that they have grown a little careless of them now, and that lawn mowers find so ready a sale.
The garden gates open upon a pavement of nine feet in width; the carriage-road is thirty feet across; and on the opposite side is another but lower terrace, surmounted with handsome semi-detached villas, with ample flower-gardens both in front and rear, those in the front being planted, but rather sparingly, with limes, birches, and a few specimens of the white-ash, which in summertime overshadow the pavement, and shelter a passing pedestrian when caught in a shower.
The arches afforded vistas of different and delightful prospects of the park at every quarter of the card woodland, savanna-like lawns, flower-gardens, kitchen-gardens, and orchards in their pride. "This is a lovely place," protested Evander. "One might sit here and dream of seeing the shy wood-nymphs flitting through these aisles if one had no better thoughts for one's idleness," he added.
It would be difficult to describe all the rare and lovely plants which are found here in a profusion that surpasses even the flower-gardens of the Cornice, and reminds one of the most favoured Alpine valleys in their early spring.
Word Of The Day