APRIL. 85 



very high significance. The question is one to which the minds of 

 all thinking men are beginning to turn with an earnestness fully 

 justified by its importance, and which the incessant tide of emigra- 

 tion now rolling from our shores will ere long endow with increasing 

 gravity. The days are well nigh numbered when the interest of 

 the employer in the employed will be considered to end with the 

 termination of the allotted task. That interest should not cease at 

 this point. It should be extended to the home and the hearth of 

 the employed, there to be enshrined amidst his household gods ; 

 it should warn him in the time of temptation, encourage him in 

 difficulty, comfort and support him in affliction ; nor should it 

 disdain to be with him even in his hour of amusement and relax- 

 ation. 



The expediency, nay more, the necessity of increased sympathy 

 between the different grades of society may be taken as an established 

 fact, the object in view being to expand the faculties, to enlighten 

 the understanding, and to improve the social condition of the poor. 

 To this end the means are many and various, and fully worthy the 

 serious consideration, severally, of the divine, the philosopher, the 

 philanthropist, and the political economist. It would be foreign to 

 the purpose of your Miscellany to discuss herein the more important 

 phases of this interesting subject ; but among its many bearings, 

 there is one which, as it comes strictly within the scope of these 

 pages, may fairly challenge a few brief comments. I allude to gar- 

 dening in relation to the working classes. 



I should premise that I reside in a rural and purely agricultural 

 neighbourhood ; that my avocations render me thoroughly conversant 

 with the habits and dispositions of the farm-labourers, who comprise 

 the whole of the poor of the district ; and that it is to this class ex- 

 clusively my observations refer. 



It is a remarkable fact, and one to which I scarcely know an 

 exception, that the state of the cottage-garden is a tolerably correct 

 index to the internal condition of the tenement and its inhabitants. 

 Whenever I find outside the door a neat and well-cropped garden, 

 and more especially if I observe one cherished spot, radiant with the 

 brightest of flowers (can any one tell me why cottage-flowers are 

 always so very, very bright?), I am certain to find cleanliness, order, 

 and comfort within. The cottager who takes a delight in his garden 

 is essentially a domestic man. It is there, at home, surrounded by his 

 family, he finds relaxation and amusement after the fatigues of the 

 day. And when he seeks his humble couch (sweet and invigorating 

 be his slumber !), will any one dare to affirm that the bosom of this 

 wearied son of the soil does not glow with a feeling of honest pride, 

 a sense of the dignity of the man within him, that the mightiest noble 

 of the land might envy? I regret that so many of our cottages are 

 without gardens. I fear there exists a prejudice in the minds of the 

 large occupiers of land, which fixes too narrow a limit to the cottage- 

 garden ; and although this evil has been somewhat remedied of late 

 years, there is still considerable room for improvement in this respect. 

 I am at a loss to account for this prejudice, as it would be no diffi- 



