58 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



parcel of nails. Love to the work is all that is 

 wanted : get the liking and the turn will come of 

 course. The work too will certainly prosper and 

 please every eye : the lines that you write upon the 

 wall will be full of flowers and sweetness, vastly 

 popular, and condemned by no critic. Thrice happy 

 state to do according to your liking, and what you 

 like to do so well that none may grumble ! and I 

 cannot but wish, for the sake of certain brothers, that 

 they would contract the above predilection with its 

 consequent art, were it only to keep them from the 

 liking of that for which they have really no turn. 

 What boon to set them to the inscription of rich 

 and beautiful lines of fruit upon their garden walls, 

 instead of lines of fruitless trash upon waste paper 

 to take them from the smoky midnight lamp, by 

 which they vainly court Apollo, and place them in 

 the literal light of the sun to give them free move- 

 ment of every limb, and a happy face, open and joyous 

 amidst the blossoming tree, and the bees singing at 

 their own work beside them; instead of the knit brow 

 and hard sitting at the loom, weaving a bad web for 

 which there is no market, and grinning over broken 

 threads, and ends of threads, which will not meet. 

 Dare rather to be successfully wise. You are satis- 

 fied that there needs no mechanical turn to fasten a 

 branch as it was ; and as to all other directions for 

 the training of trees you shall quickly see them com- 

 prised in a very narrow compass. 



For apples and pears, set one shoot in the centre 

 of the tree, straight up; and on each side, lay one 

 horizontal, nine inches from the ground, or the same 

 distance from the branches underneath, cutting oft' 



