47 



Let evergreens the turfy tomb adorn, 

 And roseate dews (the glory of the morn) 

 My carpet deck; then let my soul possess 

 The happier scenes of an eternal bliss. 



He asks " What solid pleasure is there not to be found in 

 gardening? Its pursuit is easy, quiet, and such as put nei- 

 ther the body nor mind into those violent agitations, or 

 precipitate and imminent dangers that many other exercises 

 (in themselves very warrantable) do. The end of this is 

 health, peace, and plenty, and the happy prospect of feli- 

 cities more durable than any thing in these sublunary re- 

 gions, and to which this is (next to the duties of religion) 

 the surest path." His attachment to some of our own poets, 

 and to the classic authors of antiquity, discovers itself in 

 many of his pages ; and his devout turn of mind strongly 

 shines throughout. His allusion to Homer, in vol. iii. page 7, 

 sufficiently shews how ardently this industrious servant, this 

 barrow wheeler, must have searched the great writers of 

 ancient times, to discover their attachment to rural nature, 

 and to gardens. His candid and submissive mind thus 

 speaks: "If we would, therefore, arrive at any greater 

 perfection than we are in gardening, we must cashiere that 

 mathematical stiffness in our gardens, and imitate nature 

 more; how that is to be done, will appear in the following 

 chapters, which though they may not be, as new designs 

 scarce ever are, the most perfect, it will at least excite some 

 after-master to take pen and pencil in hand, and finish what 

 is here thus imperfectly begun, and this is my comfort, that 

 I shall envy no man that does it. I have, God be praised, 

 learned to admire, and not envy every one that outgoes me: 

 and this will, I hope, go a great way in making me easy and 

 happy under the pressures of a very narrow fortune, and 

 amidst the ruffles of an ill-natured world. I have tasted too 

 severely of the lashes of man, to take any great satisfaction 



