30 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



almost universal in the country, where any thing like a garden 

 exists; and the better class of houses are surrounded and adorned 

 with a great variety of flowering shrubs and plants, presenting, 

 through the season, a charming succession of gay and brilliant 

 ornaments. Even the laborer s humble cottage, ordinarily, I 

 am compelled to admit, any thing but a picturesque object, will 

 occasionally have its flowering shrubs adorning its door-way, and 

 the ivy hanging its beautiful tresses over its window, forming, as 

 it were, a mirror, set in a frame of the richest green. The vil 

 lage of Marr, in Yorkshire, not far from Doncaster, and the 

 village of Edensor, in Derbyshire, near Chatsworth, and the 

 village of Lord Brownlow, in Lincolnshire, the best built and 

 by far the handsomest villages I have yet seen in England, to 

 cottages of an excellent and tasteful construction, monuments of 

 the liberality of their proprietors, add these beautiful rural embel 

 lishments of shrubs and flowers, and compel a reflecting mind to 

 admit the moral influence of such arrangements upon the char 

 acter and manners of their inhabitants. Churches and ruins, 

 likewise, are often seen spread over with the richest mantlings 

 of ivy ; and, among many others, the venerable and magnificent 

 remains of Hardwicke Hall, for example, are covered, I may 

 say, in the season of its flowering, with a gorgeous robe of it, 

 matting its sides with indescribable luxuriance, climbing its 

 lofty battlements, and fringing its empty windows and broken 

 arches, as though Nature would make the pall of death exqui 

 sitely beautiful and splendid, that she might conceal the hideous- 

 ness of decay, and shut from the sight of frail mortals these 

 affecting monuments of the vanity of human grandeur and pride. 



I have said and written a great deal to my countrymen about 

 the cultivation of flowers, ornamental gardening, and rural em 

 bellishments ; and I would read them a homily on the subject 

 every day of every remaining year of my life, if I thought it 

 would have the effect which I desire, of inducing them to make 

 this matter of particular attention and care. When any man 

 asks me what is the use of shrubs and flowers, my first impulse 

 always is, to look under his hat and see the length of his ears. 

 I am heartily sick of measuring every thing by a standard of 

 mere utility and profit; and as heartily do I pity the man who 

 can see no good in life but in pecuniary gain, or in the mere 

 animal indulgences of eating and drinking. 



The establishment of horticultural societies in Salem, Boston, 



