13 



though it be wholly neglected — though its walls be 

 in ruins, covered with stone-crop, and wall-flower, 

 and its area produce but the rankest weeds, — there 

 are still the remains of the aged fruit-trees, the ven- 

 erable pears, the delicate little apples, and the lus- 

 cious black-cherries. The chesnuts and the walnuts 

 may have yielded to the axe, and the vines and the 

 fig-trees died away ; — but sometimes the mulberry is 

 left, and the strawberry and the raspberry still strug- 

 gle among the ruins." 



The author of Waverly is allowed to be a faithful 

 painter of the manners of the times, and of the scenes 

 he represents in his novels ; and he tells us, that an 

 old Monk, to beguile a tedious hour which the im- 

 patient Quentin Durward was obliged to wait at the 

 palace of the Bishop of Liege, before he could be 

 admitted to an audience, led him through the garden, 

 where he was entertained with an enumeration of 

 the plants, herbs, and shrubs pointed out to him by 

 his venerable conductor, — of which, "some were re- 

 markable for the delicacy and brilliancy of their flow- 

 ers, — some were choice, because of prime use in med- 

 icine, — others more choice, for yielding a rare flavor 

 to pottage, — and others choicest of all — because they 

 possessed no merit whatever, but their extreme 

 scarcity." 



In comparatively modern times, according to Hum- 

 boldt, the Jesuits, in an incredibly short period, 

 spread the knowledge and the enjoyment of all our 

 common culinary vegetables from one end of the 

 American continent to the other, and from the shore 



