726 Retrospective Criticism. 



labourer's cottage would be much preferable, with a sign over the door of 

 " small beer at a penny per pint sold here :" next mile, good porter at 2d. 

 per pint ; and a third, British wine at 4rf. per pint, &c. Further on there 

 might be fruit and other eatables sold. Each house might also have the 

 picture of some famous wine-bibber, gluttonous man, or friend of publicans, 

 porter swiller, or small beer drinker, over the door. And, dear Sir, I should 

 have liked much to have been with you at Totes ; but how could you be 

 so wicked as to encourage the monkey to break the Sabbath day ? I almost 

 think I see the hearty old dame in the midst of her half-year's wash. - If 

 such were the custom in England, we could submit to the miseries of the 

 washing day better than we do generally. And the garden — oh Sir, the 

 garden is beautiful. I wonder what he of the Bear and Spear would have 

 thought or said about it. 



And now, Sir, for Miss Variegata ; she hits my opinion to nothing. A mu- 

 seum should be kept in a room in the parish workhouse, and the garden 

 attached to the house, and kept in repair by the paupers and invalids, under 

 a scientific and amateur governor. 1 think a public orangery would be no 

 great speculation in England: there are plenty of club-rooms, smoking- 

 rooms, reading-rooms, &c., established in large towns, which may be decked 

 out with oranges, myrtles, or geraniums, &c , at the pleasure of the landlord. 

 Mr. Joseph Thompson's observations are very good, and I hope will lead to 

 some further enquiries respecting the physiology of plants ; but he is evi- 

 dently on the wrong side of the question. There is clearly an ascending 

 as well as a descending sap in every vegetable, not to speak of the bleeding 

 of late cut vines. How comes it that a plant that is dying for want of 

 water, immediately pricks up its leaves as soon as water is applied to its 

 roots. If the branches, fronds, buds, and leaves are caterers for the roots, 

 instead of the roots being caterers for the branches, how come some oaks, 

 at seven years old, with a head like a besom and a root like a carrot, to be 

 only a yard high, and an inch in diameter in the stem ? Such oaks I always 

 cut off bv the surface. Mr. Mitchel may have his caterers and me mine, 

 and see whether he will cater roots as soon as 1 will cater branches. Mr. 

 Thompson is like a young surgeon ; he has observed veins in the human 

 body, but his pocket microscope has not been sufficient to detect the arte- 

 ries. Robert Byers, Esq., may heat his houses with hot water, or hot steam, 

 or hot air, if he chooses ; but I shall never like any thing so well as hot 

 bricks. I wish I had a hot-house adjoining his, with only a wall betwixt us : 

 should he build his furnace and boiler on my side, I venture to say that I 

 could grow as many pines and grapes with his waste or overplus heat as he 

 could with his hot water ; and the cost of his apparatus would build me an 

 excellent Dutch pit. A friend of mine has a range of houses built to be 

 heated by steam, at a vast expense. The family are gone abroad for a few 

 years, and he rents the gardens till their return. He tells me that he could 

 not be troubled with the steam, but built a fire flue in it. His houses this 

 moment are full of pines well swelled off, most of them from 4 to 7 lbs. 

 weight (not Providences). I think it would do T. A. Knight, Esq., good to 

 see them ; and the gardener would be as glad to show them, and sell them 

 too, if Mr. Knight wished to treat his friends with good pines. The gardener 

 wants customers, as 



" He dwells unnoticed and alone. 

 Beside the springs of Dove ; 

 A lad whom there are none to praise, 

 And very few to love." 



He need not be ashamed of his name ; it is Mr. George Lennox, gardener 

 to Jesse Watts Russell, Esq., Hum Hall, near Ashborne, Derbyshire. Mr. 

 Lennox has grown the Providence pine to above IS^lbs. avoirdupois. It is 

 a pity that Mr. Knight should think that such pines arc not worth growing 



