III. 



AND GREEN-HOUSES. 





tending that the planting of the garden took place before 

 the sewing of the fig-leaves together ; and the latter con- 

 tending, that there was no gardening at all till Adam was 

 expelled, and compelled to work j but, that the sewing 

 was a real and bona fide act of tailoring. This, to be sure, 

 is vulgar and grovelling work j but, who can blame such 

 persons when they have LORD BACON to furnish them with 

 a precedent ? I like, a great deal better than these 

 writers, SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, who, while he was a man 

 of the soundest judgment, employed in some of the 

 greatest concerns of his country, so ardently and yet so 

 rationally and unaffectedly praises the pursuits of gar- 

 dening, in which he delighted from his youth to his old 

 age 5 and of his taste in which he gave such delightful 

 proofs in those gardens and grounds at Moor Park in 

 Surrey, beneath the turf of one spot of which he caused, 

 by his will, his heart to be buried, and which spot, toge- 

 ther with all the rest of the beautiful arrangement, has 

 been torn about and disfigured within the last fifty years 

 by a succession of wine- merchants, spirit-merchants, 

 West Indians, and God knows what besides : I like a 

 great deal better the sentiments of this really wise and 

 excellent man ; but I look still further as to effects. 

 There must be amusements in every family. Children 

 observe and follow their parents in almost every thing. 

 How much better, during a long and dreary winter, for 

 daughters, and even sons, to assist, or attend, their 

 mother, in a green-house, than to be seated with her at 

 cards, or, in the blubberings over a stupid novel, or at 

 any other amusement that can possibly be conceived ! 

 How much more innocent, more pleasant, more free 

 from temptation to evil, this amusement, than any other ! 



