AUTUMN. 115 



flower-beds and grass usurped the room once devoted to 

 the kitchen garden, the fruit and vegetables were shoved 

 aside, and the place, half-grudgingly, left for them, is shady 

 enough to break a gardener's heart. I suspect, however, 

 that this superseding of our fruits and flowers is felt to be 

 a mistake, by our young friends especially. What delight 

 it used to be, in one's own youthful days, to have unre- 

 strained access to an old-fashioned garden, whose wealth of 

 gooseberries, currants, and raspberries seemed inexhaustible, 

 and from whence many a basket of peas, artichokes, or 

 cauliflower was sent to those "in city pent." True, the 

 borders contained little beside the damask and cabbage 

 roses, except sweetwilliams, gardeners'-garters, blue-bottles, 

 and balm ; but in those days one would not have given a 

 green-gascon or honey-blob gooseberry-bush, laden with its 

 sweet fruit, for all the gladioli or verbenas that now^ aftbrd so 

 much pleasure. That garden, with its broad grass walks, 

 its holly hedges, its luxuriant crops, is now^ no more ; its 

 site is covered wdth trim villas, each with its carefully-kept 

 garden plot, and the owners are, no doubt, happy in this 

 more circumscribed sphere ; but those who knew the 

 garden, and its kind owners, may be excused a sigh for the 

 past, and will wonder whether there can be any such enjoy- 

 ment to the young within iron rails, and among gravel walks, 

 and formal borders, as there was once on the same sj^ot, 

 when we crossed and recrossed the borders at will, and 

 might climb the old mossy pear-trees, and gather what we 

 liked, when we liked, and as much as we liked. 



So far as even the jjleasures of the garden are concerned, 



