WINDOW-GARDENING IN LONDON. 



I send a sketch to illustrate the taste for flowers often to be seen 

 in the lowest parts of London, among the weavers of Spitalfields. 

 Cowper, in " The Task," happily describes this instinct : — 



" These serve him with a hint 

 That Nature lives ; that sight-refreshing green 

 Is still the livery she delights to wear, 

 Though sickly samples of the exuberant whole. 

 What are the casements lined with? creeping herbs; 

 The prouder sashes fronted with a range 

 Of orange, myrtle, or the fragrant weed, 

 The Frenchman's darling: are they not all proofs 

 That man, immured in cities, still retains 

 His inborn inextinguishable thirst 

 Of rural scenes, compensating his loss 

 By supplemental shifts the best he may? 

 The most unfurnish'd with the means of life, 

 And they that never pass their brick-wall bounds 

 To range the fields and treat their lungs with air, 

 Yet feel the burning instinct : overhead 

 Suspend their crazy boxes, planted thick, 

 And waterM daily. There the pitcher stands 

 A fragment, and the spoutless teapot there ; 

 Sad witnesses how close-pent man regrets 

 The country • with what ardour he contrives 

 A peep at Nature, when he can no more." 



