AUGUST 147 



bage, because they call the month of February " Sprout- 

 caie " ; but long after their days the cultivation of gardens 

 was little attended to. The religious, 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 priories. The barons neglected every pursuit that 

 did not lead to war or tend to the pleasure of the chase.' 



It seems to me from this exceedingly probable that 

 gardens declined very much in England after the Refor- 

 mation, and no doubt the eating of vegetables, like the 

 eating of fish, may have been considered Popish. Even 

 in my childhood I can remember that salad was rarely 

 seen at any but the tables of the very wealthy, who had 

 foreign cooks, and then it was covered with a rich cream 

 sauce, full of mustard, which was supposed to make it 

 digestible. This superstition of the day was pointedly 

 brought forward in some letters I found of my grand- 

 mother's to my father at Oxford, strongly recommending 

 him to take mustard-seeds before his meals as very 

 helpful to digestion. 



I am far from suggesting that the Reformation had, 

 on the whole, an injurious effect on England, but 

 indirectly in many ways it seems to have led to curious 

 and even pernicious results. Among the most peculiar 

 of these was the increase of piracy in Elizabeth's reign. 

 The following account, given in Froude's ' English Seamen 

 in the Sixteenth Century,' will explain what I mean : ' In 

 harbour there were still a score of large ships, but they 

 were dismantled and rotting ; of artillery fit for sea work 

 there was none. The men were not to be had, and, as 

 Sir William Cecil said, to fit out ships without men was 

 to set armour on stakes on the seashore. The mariners 

 of England were otherwise engaged and in a way that 

 did not please Cecil. He was the ablest Minister that 



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