some with germander, that gives a good flower to the eye, some with periwinkle, some with violets, some with strawberries, some with cowslips, some with daisies, some with red roses, some with lilium convallium, some with sweet-williams red, some with bear's-foot, and the like low flowers, being withal sweet and sightly. Part of which heaps are to be with standards of little bushes pricked upon their top, and part without. The standards to be roses, juniper, holly, berberries (but here and there, because of the smell of their blossom), red currants, gooseberry, rosemary, bays, sweet-briar, and such like. But these standards to be kept with cutting, that they grow not out of course.

For the side grounds, you are to fill them with variety of alleys, private, to give a full shade, some of them, wheresoever the sun be. You are to frame some of them likewise for shelter, that when the wind blows sharp, you may walk as in a gallery. And those alleys must be likewise hedged at both ends, to keep out the wind; and these closer alleys must be ever finely gravelled, and no grass, because of going wet. In many of these alleys likewise, you are to set fruit-trees of all sorts; as well upon the walls as in ranges. And this would be generally observed, that the borders wherein you plant your fruit-trees be fair and large and low, and not steep; and set with fine flowers, but thin and sparingly, lest they deceive the trees. At the end of both the side grounds, I would have a mount of some pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure breast high, to look abroad into the fields.

For the main garden, I do not deny but there should be some fair alleys, ranged on both sides with fruit-trees; and some pretty tufts of fruit-trees, and arbours with seats, set in some decent order; but these to be by no means set too thick; but to leave the main garden so as it be not close, but the air open and free. For as for shade, I would have you rest upon the alleys of the side grounds, there to walk, if you be disposed, in the heat of the year or day; but to make account that the main garden is for the more temperate parts of the

year; and, in the heat of summer, for the morning and the evening, or over-cast days.

For aviaries, I like them not, except they be of that largeness as they may be turfed, and have living plants and bushes set in them; that the birds may have more scope and natural nestling, and that no foulness appear in the floor of the aviary. So I have made a platform of a princely garden, partly by precept, partly by drawing, not a model, but some general lines of it; and in this I have spared for no cost. But it is nothing for great princes, that for the most part taking advice with workmen with no less cost set their things together, and sometimes add statuas, and such things, for state and magnificence, but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden.

ABRAHAM COWLEY (1618-1667)

THE DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN IN MUCH

COMPANY
(1668)

If twenty thousand naked Americans were not able to resist the assaults of but twenty well-armed Spaniards, I see little possibility for one honest man to defend himself against twenty thousand knaves, who are all furnished cap-à-pie with the defensive arms of worldly prudence, and the offensive, too, of craft and malice. He will find no less odds than this against him if he have much to do in human affairs. The only advice, therefore, which I can give him is, to be sure not to venture his person any longer in the open campaign, to retreat and entrench himself, to stop up all avenues, and draw up all bridges against so numerous an enemy. The truth of it is, that a man in much business must either make himself a knave, or else the world will make him a fool and if the injury went no farther than the being laughed at, a wise man would content himself with the revenge of retaliation; but the case is much worse, for these civil cannibals too, as well as the wild ones, not only dance about such a taken stranger, but at last devour him. A sober man cannot get too soon out of drunken company; though they be never so kind and merry among themselves, 't is not unpleasant only, but dangerous to him. Do ye wonder that a virtuous man should love to be alone? It is hard for him to be otherwise; he is so, when he is among ten thousand; neither is the solitude so uncomfortable to be alone without any other creature, as it is to be alone in the midst of wild beasts. Man is to man all kind of beasts

a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf,

a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture. The civilest, methinks, of all nations, are those whom we account the most barbarous; there is some moderation and good nature in the Toupinambaltians who eat no men but their enemies, whilst we learned and polite and Christian Europeans, like so many pikes and sharks, prey upon everything that we can swallow. It is the great boast of eloquence and philosophy, that they first congregated men dispersed, united them into societies, and built up the houses and the walls of cities. I wish they could unravel all they had woven; that we might have our woods and our innocence again instead of our castles and our policies. They have assembled many thousands of scattered people into one body: 't is true, they have done so, they have brought them together into cities to cozen, and into armies to murder, one another; they found them hunters and fishers of wild creatures, they have made them hunters and fishers of their brethren; they boast to have reduced them to a state of peace, when the truth is they have only taught them an art of war; they have framed, I must confess, wholesome laws for the restraint of vice, but they raised first that devil which now they conjure and cannot bind; though there were before no punishments for wickedness, yet there was less committed because there were no rewards for it. But the men who praise philosophy from this topic are much deceived; let oratory answer for itself, the tinkling, perhaps, of that may unite a swarm: it never was the work of philosophy to assemble multitudes, but to regulate only, and govern them when they were assembled, to make the best of an evil, and bring them, as much as is possible, to unity again. Avarice and ambition only were the first builders of towns, and founders of empire; they said, "Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth." What was the beginning of Rome, the metropolis of all the world? What was it but a concourse of thieves, and a sanctuary of criminals? It was justly named by the augury of no less than

twelve vultures, and the founder cemented his walls with the
blood of his brother. Not unlike to this was the beginning
even of the first town, too, in the world, and such is the origi-
nal sin of most cities: their actual increase daily with their age
and growth; the more people, the more wicked all of them;
every one brings in his part to inflame the contagion, which
becomes at last so universal and so strong, that no precepts
can be sufficient preservatives, nor anything secure our safety,
but flight from among the infected. We ought, in the choice
of a situation, to regard above all things the healthfulness of
the place, and the healthfulness of it for the mind rather than
for the body. But suppose (which is hardly to be supposed)
we had antidote enough against this poison; nay, suppose,
farther, we were always and at all pieces armed and provided
both against the assaults of hostility and the mines of treachery,
't will yet be but an uncomfortable life to be ever in alarms;
though we were compassed round with fire to defend ourselves
from wild beasts, the lodging would be unpleasant, because we
must always be obliged to watch that fire, and to fear no less
the defects of our guard than the diligences of our enemy.
The sum of this is, that a virtuous man is in danger to be trod
upon and destroyed in the crowd of his contraries; nay, which
is worse, to be changed and corrupted by them, and that 't is
impossible to escape both these inconveniences without so much
caution as will take away the whole quiet, that is, the happiness
of his life. Ye see, then, what he may lose; but, I pray, what
can he get there? Quid Romæ faciam? Mentiri nescio. What
should a man of truth and honesty do at Rome? He can neither
understand, nor speak the language of the place; a naked man
may swim in the sea, but 't is not the way to catch fish there ;
they are likelier to devour him than he them, if he bring no
nets and use no deceits. I think, therefore, it was wise and
friendly advice which Martial gave to Fabian when he met
him newly arrived at Rome.

Honest and poor, faithful in word and thought;
What has thee, Fabian, to the city brought?