214 0)1 Fruit-Critics. 



ment which belong to such a story as Miss Evans's " Romola," the bulk of the 

 reading public is not won into either purchase or applause. The truth is, 

 that all the finer tastes, whether in art, letters, or pomology, demand a very 

 considerable culture for their establishment ; more cultivation and more 

 leisure for its attainment than the majority of either readers or fruit-lovers 

 possess. Education is, indeed, doing very much every year to supply this 

 culture ; but when popular education shall have done its best, whether as 

 regards books or fruits, there will remain a wide gap between the apprecia- 

 tive perceptions of those who devote themselves to special culture and 

 those of the multitude. You or I may enjoy a good glass of any sound 

 wine of Medoc, whereas the old connoisseur will smack his lips only over 

 Lafitte or Chateau Margaux ; yet it will never do for this latter to say that 

 we, therefore, have a corrupt or vitiated taste. 



I, by no means, would declare against the good services of those po- 

 mologists who are the most difficult critics of flavor : they are indeed the 

 obstetricians and the monthly nurses of the vegetable world, — presiding 

 at the birth of new products, and tending them with rare care through a 

 helpless infancy, and (it must be said), like most officials of their class, 

 showing exaggerated favor always to the latest born. Let them not become 

 irascible if outsiders sometimes set aside their decisions, and cleave with 

 tenderness to some of the elder-born among vegetable triumphs. 



I know it will be said by the advanced fruit-growers, that the taste of the 

 multitude must be educated up to their level, and that it is quite as easy 

 to grow a fine-flavored fruit as one badly flavored. With due respect, 

 however, I shall venture to except to both propositions. 



The common taste cannot be educated up to the level of that which is 

 established by years of special study and culture. The bulk of people 

 have corn and axes to grind, and children to feed, and pleas to make, and 

 sermons to preach, which will not admit of this special culture. I am 

 not sure that a severely critical taste, either in fruit-flavor or intellectual 

 products, would be desirable, if it could be secured. Critics are most ex- 

 cellent people in their place ; but fill the world with them, and what a 

 contentious, backbiting world it would become ! 



I think we may bless God that there is, and ever must be, a large appe- 

 tite for common things ; a public maw, which says grace, and falls to 



