258 ON RURAL EMBELLISHMENT. 



As to the effect of planting and gardening, upon the 

 body and mind of those who engage in these pursuits, we 

 offer the following remarks from Loudon's ' Suburban 

 Gardener,' and we recommend them to the special notice 

 of all gentlemen who are troubled with dyspeptic or hypo- 

 chondriac affections. 



" There is," says an author, " a great deal of enjoy- 

 ment to be derived, from performing the different opera- 

 tions of gardening, independently of the health resulting 

 from this kind of exercise. To labor for the sake of ar- 

 riving at a result, and to be successful in attaining it, are, 

 as cause and effect, attended by a certain degree of satis- 

 faction to the mind, however simple or rude the labor 

 may be, and however unimportant the result obtained. 

 To be convinced of this, we have only to imagine our- 

 selves employed in any labor from which no result en- 

 sues, but that of fatiguing the body, or wearying the mind; 

 the turning of a wheel, for example, that is connected 

 with no machinery ; or, if connected, effects no useful 

 purpose ; the carrying a weight from one point to anoth- 

 er and back again ; or the taking a walk without any ob- 

 ject in view, but the negative one of preserving health. 

 Thus it is not only a condition of our nature, that in or- 

 der to secure health we must labor ; but we must also 

 labor in such a way as to produce something useful or 

 agreeable. Now of the different kinds of useful things 

 produced by labor, those things surely which are living 

 beings, and which grow and undergo changes before our 

 eyes, must be more productive of enjoyment than such 

 as are mere brute matter — the kind of labor and other 

 circumstances being the same. Hence, a man who plants 

 a tree, a hedge, or sows a grass-plot in his garden, lays a 

 more certain foundation for enjoyment, than he who 

 builds a wall, or lays down a gravel walk ; and hence the 

 enjoyment of a citizen, whose recreation, at his suburban 

 residence, consists in working in his garden, must be 

 higher in the scale, than that of him who amuses himself 

 in the plot around his house, with shooting at a mark, or 

 playing at bowls." 



A strong illustration of this truth lately came within our 



