II. ENCLOSING, LAYING OUT. 



of nature, and of all the hoar of antiquity, made it very 

 little better than the vulgar box of a cockney. 



15. I must be excused for breaking out into these 

 complaints. It was the spot where I first began to learn 

 to work, or, rather, where I first began to eat fine fruit, 

 in a garden ; and, though I have now seen and observed 

 upon as many fine gardens as any man in England,J[ have 

 never seen a garden equal to that of WAVERLEY. Ten 

 families, large as they might be, including troops of 

 servants (who are no churls in this way), could not have 

 consumed the fruit produced in that garden. The 

 peaches, nectarines, apricots, fine plurns, never failed ; 

 and, if the workmen had not lent a hand, a fourth part of 

 the produce never could have been got rid of. SIR 

 ROBERT RICH built another kitchen- garden, and did not 

 spare expense ; but he stuck the walls up in a field, un- 

 sheltered by hills and trees ; and though it was twice the 

 size of the monks' garden, I dare say it has never yielded 

 a tenth part of the produce. 



16. It is not every where that spots like this are to be 

 found ; and we must take the best that we can get, never 

 forgetting, however, that it is most miserable taste to 

 seek to poke away the kitchen-garden, in order to get it 

 out of sight. If well managed, nothing is more beautiful 

 than the kitchen -garden : the earliest blossoms come there : 

 we shall in vain seek for flowering shrubs in March, and 

 early in April, to equal the peaches, nectarines, apricots, 

 and plums ; late in April, we shall find nothing to 

 equal the pear and the cherry j and, in May, the dwarf, or 



