ON VEGETABLE GARDENING. 197 



of a prosperous and happy people. It has been well 

 observed, by a popular writer on gardening, who has 

 perhaps done more than any other individual of our 

 own times for the advancement of horticultural ob- 

 jects, that Louis XIV, who set the fashion of orna- 

 mental gardening, not only in France, but in Europe, 

 * never, in all probability, added a foot of ground to 

 the garden of a single cottager, or placed an addi- 

 tional cabbage or potato on his table.'* 



When a country is depopulated by despotism or 

 civil war, each producing insecurity of property, gar- 

 dening makes little progress ; but when comforts 

 become diffused by profitable industry, and a middle- 

 class is created, the advantages of horticulture are 

 very generally spread. Harrison has a passage in 

 his ' Description of England,' which is particularly 

 illustrative of this principle: 'Such herbes, fruits, 

 and roots also, as grow yeerlie out of the ground 

 of seed, have been verie plentiful in this land in 

 the time of the First Edward and after his daies; 

 but in processe of time they grew also to be 

 neglected, so that from Henrie the Fourth, till the 

 latter end of Henrie the Seventh, and beginning of 

 Henrie the Eighth, there was little or no use of them 

 in England, but they remained either unknowne, or 

 supposed as food more meet for hogs and savage 

 beasts to feed upon than mankind: whereas in my 

 time their use is not onelie resumed among the poore 

 commons, I meane of melons, pompions, gourds, 

 cucumbers, radishes, skirrets, parsneps, carrets, cab- 

 bages, navews, turnips, and all k inds of salad herbs; 

 but also fed upon daintie dishes at the tables of deli- 

 cate merchants, gentlemen, and the nobilitie, who 

 make their provision yearlie fo:r new seeds out of 

 strange countries, from whenc;e they have them 

 aboundantlie.' 



* Loudon'a Encyclopaedia of Gardening, p. 112. 

 VOL. XV. 17* 



