MARKET GARDENS 75 



scrul)l)y heath, and the troopers of King James the 

 Second, sent here to overawe London, lay encamped, 

 there stretch nowadays the broad market gardens, 

 where in spring-time the yellow daffodils, and in 

 early summer the wallflowers, are grown by the 

 acre for Covent Garden and the delight of Londoners. 

 Orchards and vast fields of vegetables take up almost 

 all the rest of the reclaimed waste, and if the country 

 for many miles be indeed as flat as, or flatter than, your 

 hand, and with never a tree but the scrago-y hedo-erow 

 elms that grow here in such fantastic shapes, why 

 amends are made in the scent of the blossoms, the 

 bounteous promise of nature, and in the free and 

 open air that resounds with the gladsome shrilling 

 of the lark. 



These market o-ardens that surround London have 

 an interest all their own. Such scenes as that of 

 Millet's 'Angelus' — the rough toil, that is to say, 

 without the devotion — are the commonplaces of these 

 Avide fields, stretching away, level, to the horizon. 

 All day long the men, women, and children are 

 working, according to the season, in the damp, heavy 

 €lay, or in the sun-baked rows of growing produce, 

 digging, hoeing, sowing, weeding, or gathering the 

 cabbages, potatoes, peas, lettuces, and beans that go 

 to furnish the myriad tables of the ' Wen of wens,' as 

 Oobbett savagely calls London. He thought very 

 little of Hounslow Heath, which he describes as " a 

 sample of all that is bad in soil and villainous in 

 look. Yet,' he says, writing in 1825, ' all this is now 

 enclosed, and what they call " cultivated." ' 



What they call cultivated ! That is indeed 



