296 Landscape Gardening 



with the same want of sympathy. 'A world' full of hopes, 

 and loves, and endeavors, and of her own life and loveli- 

 ness, is a far greater thing in her eyes, rest assured, than a 

 'bubble;' and, a fortiori, many worlds, or a 'system,' far 

 greater than the 'atom,' talked of with so much complacency 

 by this divine little whipper-snapper. Ergo, the moment 

 the kind mother gives promise of a renewed year, with these 

 green and budding signals, be certain she is not going to 

 falsify them; and that being sure of April, we are sure as 

 far as November. As for an existence any further, that, 

 we conceive, depends somewhat upon how we behave our- 

 selves; and therefore we would exhort everybody to do 

 their best for the earth, and all that is upon it, in order that 

 it and they may be thought worth continuance. 



"What! Shall we be put into a beautiful garden, and 

 turn up our noses at it, and call it a 'vale of tears,' and all 

 sorts of bad names (helping thereby to make it so), and yet 

 confidently reckon that nature will never shut it up, and 

 have done with it, or set about forming a better stock of 

 inhabitants? Recollect, we beseech you, dear ' Lord Worldly 

 Wiseman,' and you, 'Sir Having,' and my 'Lady Greedy,' 

 that there is reason for supposing that man was not always 

 an inhabitant of this very fashionable world, and somewhat 

 larger globe; and that perhaps the chief occupant before 

 him was only an inferior species to ourselves (odd as you 

 may think it), who could not be brought to know what a 

 beautiful place he lived in, and so had a different chance 

 given him in a different shape. Good heavens! If there 

 were none but mere ladies and gentlemen, and city-men, 

 and soldiers, upon earth, and no poets, readers, and milk- 

 maids, to remind us that there is such a thing as Nature, we 

 really should begin to tremble for Almacks and Change 

 Alley (the 'upper ten' and Wall-street), about the 20th of 

 next October." 



