OF SELBORNE. 249 
a little to the sweetening their blood and correcting 
their juices; for the inhabitants of mountainous dis- 
tricts to this day are still liable to cutaneous disor- 
ders, from a wretchedness and poverty of diet. 
As to the produce of a garden, every middls 
aged person of observation may perceive, withi: 
his own memory, both in town and country, how 
vastly the consumption of vegetables is increased. 
Green-stalls in cities now support multitudes in a 
comfortable state, while gardeners get fortunes. 
Every decent labourer, also, has his garden, which 
is half his support as well as his delight; and 
common farmers provide plenty of beans, pease, 
and greens for their hinds to eat with their bacon; 
and those few that do not are despised for their 
sordid parsimony, and looked upon as regardless 
of the welfare of their dependants. Potatoes have 
prevailed in this little district, by means of pre- 
miums, within these twenty years only, and are 
much esteemed here now by the poor, who would 
scarce have ventured to taste them in the last 
reign. 
Our Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of 
cabbage, because they call the month of February 
sprout-cale ; but long after their days the cultiva. 
tion of gardens was little attended to. The religi- 
ous, being men of leisure, and keeping up a constant 
correspondence with Italy, were the first people 
among us who had gardens and fruit-trees in any 
perfection, within the walls of their abbeys* and 
* “Tn monasteries the lamp of knowledge continued to burn, 
however dimly. In them the men of business were formed for 
the state. The art of writing was cultivated by the monks ; 
they were the only proficients in mechanics, gardening, and ar- 
ehitecture.”—-See DaALRYMPLE’s Annals of Scotiand, 
