70 HORTICULTURE. 



on with, as a set of ungenial and obstinate compounds, which re- 

 fused to co-operate in her sweet designs, and could not be made to 

 answer in the working, depend upon it, she would take pity on our 

 incapability and bad humors, and conveniently quash us in some 

 dismal, sullen winter's day, just at the natural dying of the year, 

 most likely in November ; for Christmas is a sort of spring itself 

 a winter flowering. We care nothing for arguments about storms, 

 earthquakes, or other apparently unseasonable interruptions of our 

 pleasures. We imitate, in that respect, the magnanimous indiffer- 

 ence, or what appears to be such, of the great mother herself, know- 

 ing that she means us the best in the gross ; and also that we may 

 all get our remedies for these evils in time, if we will only co-operate. 

 People in South America, for instance, may learn from experience, 

 and build so as to make a comparative nothing of those rockings of 

 the ground. It is of the gross itself that we speak ; and sure we 

 are, that with an eye to that, Nature does not feel as Pope ventures 

 to say she does, or sees ' with equal eye ' 



Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, 



And now a bubble burst, and now a world.' 



" He may have flattered himself that he should think it a fine 

 thing for his little poetship to sit upon a star, and look grand in his 

 own eyes, from an eye so very dispassionate ; but Nature, who is the 

 author of passion, and joy, and sorrow, does not look upon animate 

 and inanimate, depend upon it, with the same want of sympathy. 

 * A world ' full of hopes, and loves, and endeavors, and of her own 

 life and loveliness, is a far greater thing in her eyes, rest assured, than 

 a * bubble ;' and, a fortiori, many worlds, or a * system, 7 far greater 

 than the ' atom,' talked of with so much complacency by this di- 

 vine little whipper-snapper. Ergo, the moment the kind mother 

 gives promise of a renewed year, with these green and budding sig- 

 nals, be certain she is not going to falsify them ; and that being sure 

 of April, we are sure as far as November. As for an existence any 

 further, that, we conceive, depends somewhat upon how we behave 

 ourselves ; and therefore we would exhort everybody to do their best 

 for the earth, and all that is upon it, in order that it and they may 

 be thought worth continuance. 



