TYPES OF GARDENERS. 



IT has been said to me, " Your love of a garden makes 

 you think all gardeners perfect. The sight of a baize 

 apron through your rose-coloured spectacles is far 

 more beautiful than the velvets of Genoa or Lyons' 

 costliest silk." But I disclaim any such infatuation ; 

 I believe that the gardener has, from his vocation, 

 special advantages to make him genial, intelligent, 

 and high-minded, if he will avail himself of them. 

 That vocation is the oldest, the happiest, the most 

 honourable of all. I was reading the other day in 

 " The English Gardener," a treatise by William 

 Cobbett, late M.P. for Oldham, "of the dispute 

 between the gardeners and the tailors as to the 

 antiquity of their respective callings, the former 

 maintaining that the planting of the garden took 

 place before the sewing of the fig leaves together, and 

 the latter contending that there was no gardening at 

 all till Adam was driven out and compelled to work, 

 but that the sewing was a real and bond fide act of 

 tailoring ; " and I was surprised that such a writer on 

 such a subject did not dispose of the question by 



