VEGETABLE AND FRUIT MARKETS. 357 



shrubs and plants, are at the side of, and immediately accessible 

 to, the drawing-rooms of the houses, furnishing, besides the most 

 beautiful objects of sight, an attractive recreation and delight to 

 the female members of the household, and a refreshing retreat 

 from the dissipations of society, or the harassing cares of do 

 mestic life.* 



The hothouse or greenhouse productions of England (such 

 as pine-apples and grapes, the natives of climates of a higher 

 temperature) are not surpassed by any which I have ever tasted. 

 The pines, or pine-a-pples, appear to me in size quite equal, and in 



* In one of the most beautiful parts of England, endeared to me by the hospi 

 talities of friends whose kindness I cannot too highly appreciate, I found even a 

 right reverend bishop, a man eminent for his intellectual powers and his lit 

 erary attainments, entering, with all the enthusiasm of Bacon, into the cultivation 

 of his garden, as &quot; one of the purest of human delights.&quot; He was then considered 

 as among the warmest patrons of a religious party, whose eminent piety no one 

 questions, who have, at least for a while, converted the Established Church into 

 the church militant, broken up the dead calm in which it had for years reposed, 

 and lashed its waves into a tempestuous foam. When I visited him, he was 

 anxious to show the friend who accompanied me, and myself, his rosary, as he 

 termed it, where, in a separate and extensive enclosure, he was cultivating a 

 great variety of roses, with something of the enthusiasm which is said to have 

 characterized the cultivation of tulips some years gone by. . I could not resist the 

 inclination to tell him, without any intentional discourtesy, that he had been for 

 some time suspected of certain heresies, but I hardly supposed matters had gone 

 so far with him that he would openly show his friends his rosary. He was then 

 in the midst of a religious war, if it be not an abuse of language to call any sort 

 of war, or any angry contest whatever, &quot; religious,&quot; and in the very heat of the fight 

 I could not avoid thinking, at the same time, what a refreshment to the soul, 

 as well as to the body, must it be thus to retire from the field of theological 

 controversy, bristling with points of angry dispute, like the bayonets of an 

 opposing column on a field of battle, to the charming quiet and delightful occupa 

 tions of rural life. Soothing it must have been, to cease for a while a well-nigh 

 hopeless struggle for a perfect unity of opinion, form, and faith, to contemplate 

 the infinite and harmonious variety which pervades creation, and reflect, at the 

 same time, what an abatement of utility and enjoyment it would have been, had 

 God comprehended all this infinite diversity in one, and made all animals of one 

 form, all vegetables of the same kind, and all flowers of the same color and fra 

 grance. Though I was far from being willing to censure this venerable man for 

 anxiously and devoutly turning to the east, when he recited the articles of his 

 creed, if he deemed it important so to do, I could not help thinking that he must 

 sometimes turn his face to the west, to offer his evening sacrifice, when, standing 

 upon the threshold of his door, he saw before him the wide-spread ocean glitter 

 ing with matchless splendor, and the setting sun bathing in a flood of glory, and 

 throwing his slanting beams over, a landscape as diversified and as beautiful as, 

 within my observation, the pencil of nature has delineated. 



