purposely left to the human mind, that man may be induced to follow it from the charms which novelty confers; and the sentiments which it awakens are not expressly enjoined, that they may be enjoyed as the spontaneous growth of our own imagination. While they seem, however, to spring up unbidden in the mind, they are, in fact, produced by the spirit of religion; and those who imagine that they are not the fit subjects of Christian instruction, are ignorant of the secret workings, and finer analogies, of the faith which they profess. MY DAUGHTER'S BOOK. GARDENS AND GARDENING. I HAVE a love for every thing in the shape of a garden. Even that little square plot at the back of my house, which from the narrowness of its superficies, and the height of its walls, looks not unlike a draw-well, and where a few straggling blades of grass find with difficulty air and sunshine enough to keep them alive, has a corner in my affections. This love I am inclined to regard as in some sort an elementary feeling an innate attachment, born with me, and wanting but the presence of a suitable object to call it into full activity. From the first moment I knew what a garden was, I felt a longing for some patch of earth, however small, where I might turn up the mould, and plant and water. It was long before I had an opportunity of indulging my inclination. Window-boxes were recommended; but they proved sorry substitutes. I could not stand in them. There was a cellar in my mother's house in which the potatoes were kept. One or two of them had rolled into a corner, and having lain there unnoticed for a length of time, they shot out, at last, some long white runners. These could scarcely be called vegetation. They were colourless and leafless but they were something growing, and upon the ground, and I watched them as a florist would do his rarest flower. Our housemaid was one of those unfortunate persons who are troubled with a propensity to tidiness, and one day when I was at school, she swept away my subterraneous garden bodily. I wept, and refused to be comforted; till one day I observed a green leaf protruding through a chink between the two steps by which we ascended from the street to the door of our dwelling. A bean had dropped into it by accident, and finding a small portion of earth at the bottom, had struck out roots and leaves. This was a treasure, but one day some heavy-footed monster trampled upon it-it withered. Not Jack himself, had he seen his miraculous bean-stalk cut down as he was about to attempt his voyage of discovery to its summit, could have suffered more than I did. When about ten years of age, it was judged expedient to send me to a school at some distance from home; and there I at last attained what I had so long ardently coveted. Each boy had a border allotted to him in the master's large garden, which he was allowed to manage according to his own fancy. Was I not happy? I felt, as I stood in my little territory, the first dawnings of the pride and pleasure of ownership. I watched with unwearying interest the progress of every plant from its appearance above the soil, till I collected its ripe seed. I changed continually the arrangement of my flowers. My leisure moments, my little pocket money, all were devoted to my garden. There was a tall tree in the centre of it. During summer, I used to con my tasks, or read Robinson Crusoe, seated up among the branches. My favourite passages were those that described Robinson's horticultural attempts. Old fool that I am! What has carried me back just now to the days of my boyhood, and set me to describe childish trifles with an eager and accurate gravity, as strongly contrasted with the trifling objects of description, as the wonderful wealth of art lavished by some Flemish painters upon their pictures of still life, with the meanness of the pots and pans which compose them? Strange how trifles will at times assume a burlesque importance in our estimation! I have experienced many crosses of life, but at this moment none touches me so nearly as that it has never been in my power to indulge my passion for gardening. That little spot of ground-my first, my only garden-stands out with a brightness among the recollections of my life, akin to that which, in the mind of our first father, must have attached itself to the only spot where he tasted unalloyed happiness. I have, however, in the course of my life, managed to derive much enjoyment from the conversation of gardeners, and from lounging about in the gardens of others. Bartoline Saddletree was never happy but when he was in the Parliament House, seeing causes managed, if he had none to manage himself. I have known people to whom the monthly perusal of the "Sporting Magazine" was a sufficient succedaneum for their inability to join in the sports of the field. Everybody has at times met with younkers who wear spurs on Sunday, and who, "When the circling glass warms their vain heads, I acknowledge myself to be free of the corporation of "Would-be's," one of those who long for what they can never have, and seek at times to cheat themselves, by dint of conversing with the more fortunate, into a half belief that their wishes are attained. A more innocent self-delusion than mine can scarcely well be. Th They are a pleasant set of fellows, your gardeners-both the professional gentlemen and the amateurs. The former in particular are less known than they deserve to be. They belong, in virtue of their breeding and employment, to the labouring classes; but there is something in the scenes by which they are surrounded, and in the objects upon which their labour is expended, calculated to awaken the sentiments of romance, and the aspirings after knowledge, which are in general trodden down and stifled by the dull routine of mechanical exertion. When was a grocer ever known to have his love of learning excited by a curiosity to know the natural history of the articles he deals in? But where shall we find a gardener who has not a smattering of botany?-ay, and a comfortable assortment of Latin remnants to deck the fag-ends of his sentences? Lawyers, it is true, have something of the same, but their Latin wants the natural grace of the gardener's; they speak according to a cold, formal system and a proverbially bad system; but with the gardener, it is as if some handsfull of Latin words had been scattered in his mind, and had there struck root, and sprung up in a thousand agreeable varieties, and original groups. But it may be said, that these advantages of the gardener are common to all agricultural labourers. By no means. There is something too wholesale in the ploughman and the mower's style of working. They do not care for a single plant, but for a whole harvest; and we never find a mind thus prematurely accustomed to the contemplation of vague generalities, susceptible of the charms of knowledge. It is in the minute attention to individuals required at the hand of the gardener, that we are to look for the cause of that fine discriminating tact that leads him unavoidably on the way to learning. If Adam had been any other trade than a gardener, I wonder if the tree of knowledge would have been so irresistibly tempting. Then his sentiment! From the days of Shakspeare, the gardener has been noted for his sentimentality. The only one of Richard the Second's dependants who sympathises gracefully with the miseries of the unfortunate queen, is the gardener. What man, in his rank of life, but a gardener, could have thought of planting a bank of rue on the spot where the queen dropped a tear, in sad memorial of her woes? Then, (not to overwhelm the reader with examples,) is there not in later times the inimitable Andrew Fairservice? There are, we confess it with the deepest regret, some parts of Andrew's conduct which do not easily admit of a defence. He showed, in some instances, signs of a cold and selfish spirit; even his honesty was of a dubious kind; and his courage far from unquestionable. But the worse we make Andrew's character to be, the better for our theory. What other habits and pursuits could have rendered such a man capable of the fine burst of feeling with which he describes to Frank Osbaldistone the beauties of a bed of coleworts by moonlight? A |