146 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



before it starts a new development. Just now even the 

 enthusiastic and the young are trying to live in the past 

 a whole generation conservative in its youth. I suppose 

 it is all right, but it seems to lack the generous impulses 

 of the generation nourished on the teachings of Mill and 

 Bright. How true it is that Liberalism is not a principle, 

 but an attitude of mind ! And the old Greek pattern will 

 start its long line forward again some day. 



Now that hope is over for me, the old times, with 

 heir edifying lessons, interest me most ; and so I try to 

 understand the evolution of the present as taught through 

 knowledge of the past, rather than breathlessly to grasp 

 the future. My mother was so kind and sensible with 

 me. So many parents are apt to be irritated by 

 daughters who bound forward in life as children pick 

 flowers in a field, always thinking there are many more 

 and much finer ones just a little further on. 



Though it is now little over a hundred years since 

 Gilbert White died, his pictures of the change within his 

 memory in the general condition of the poor, and of the 

 improvement in agriculture, gardens and health, seem 

 most strange. Leprosy still existed in Selborne, though 

 it was much on the decline. He attributes this partly to 

 improved food and partly to wearing clean linen instead 

 of dirty woollen garments. As to the produce of a 

 garden, he adds, ' Every middle-aged person of observa- 

 tion may perceive, within his own memory, both in town 

 and country, how vastly the consumption of vegetables 

 is increased. Green stalls in cities now support multi- 

 tudes in a comfortable state, while gardeners get 

 fortunes. Potatoes have prevailed in this district, by 

 means of premiums, within these twenty years only, and 

 are much esteemed here now by the poor, who would 

 scarce have ventured to taste them in the last reign. 



' Our Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of Cab- 



