XXXV 



ducive to health, by means of the irresistible tempta- 

 tion which it offers to early rising ; it tends to turn 

 the minds of youth from amusements and attachments 

 of a frivolous or vicious nature ; it is a taste which is 

 indulged at home; it tends to make home pleasant, 

 and to endear us to the spot on which it is our lot to 

 live." When Mr. Johnson forcibly paints the allure- 

 ments to a love for this art, when concluding his en- 

 ergetic volume on gardening, by quoting from So- 

 crates, that "it is the source of health, strength, 

 plenty, riches, and of a thousand sober delights and 

 honest pleasures." And from Lord Verulam, that 

 amid its scenes and pursuits, " life flows pure, and the 

 heart more calmly beats." And when M. le V. H. de 

 Thury, president de la Societe d'Horticulture de 

 Paris, in his Discours d'Installation says : " Dans tons 

 les temps et dans tous les pays, les hommes les plus 

 celebres, les plus grands capitaines, les princes, et les 

 rois, se sont livres avec delices, et souvent avec pas- 

 sion, a la culture des plantes et des jardins." And 

 among other instances he cites " Descartes, qui se 

 livrait avec une egale ardeur a la science des astres et 

 a la culture des fleurs de son jardin, et qui souvent, la 

 nuit, quittait ses observations celestes pour etudier le 

 somrneil et la floraison de ses plantes avant le lever 

 du soliel."* Petrarch, too, who has enchanted every 



* Monsieur Thomas, in his eulogy of Descartes says, it should 

 have been pronounced at the foot of Newton's statue : or rather, 

 Newton himself should have been his panegyrist. Of this eulogy, 

 Voltaire, in a most handsome letter to Mons. Thomas, thus speaks : 

 " votre ouvrage m'enchante d ; un bout a 1'autre, et Je vais le relire 



