46 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



and from prescriptions for which you have no use, or 

 which, being worse than useless, prove false, by 

 having no adaptation to your climate. It is simply 

 the purpose of this little manual, to suit the medium 

 climate of North Britain, including a goodly portion 

 of the south ; to consult the economy of ministers ; to 

 make every manse garden a model of neatness and 

 fertility ; to give shelter and seclusion to the medi- 

 tative walk of the pastor, and plenty of pot-herbs, 

 fruits, and flowers, to his tasteful and thrifty wife. 

 But the secret must be out, that to these ends it is 

 nearly indispensable that the minister should be his 

 own gardener, wholly as to knowledge, and partially 

 as to work. 



Now the book will not do without the bite ; but how 

 to get at hand or heel to infuse a little of the mania, is 

 the ticklish question. In order that you may let me 

 come at all near you, it is probable that you should 

 like first to be informed as to the nature of the bite, 

 the intensity of the virus, and its effects on the sys- 

 tem. It would be unreasonable not to satisfy an in- 

 quiry so natural in the circumstances of the case ; 

 and I can assure you that you need be under no 

 serious apprehensions. You may experience a little 

 uneasiness at the first, from a powerful excitement of 

 the nervous system; but the uneasiness is occasioned 

 rather by the novelty of the movement from a state 

 of comparative rest than from the motion itself. In 

 this respect it resembles the law of projectiles. There 

 is first a considerable disturbance produced amongst 

 the sleeping particles in overcoming their vis-inertias; 

 but when once impelled, they find the motion so 

 agreeable, that were it not for obstacles they would 



