THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 7 



hold, and which makes so greatly for the charm of 

 rural England. The newcomers, frugal -minded, 

 and accustomed to supply their simple wants at 

 home by the labour of their hands, and to live mainly 

 upon the produce of their narrow patches of garden 

 ground, were not slow to discover that, in their 

 adopted country, they could add considerably to 

 their resources byicultivating coleworts and carrots, 

 which, with peas and celery, met with a ready sale. 

 Wherever they settled — in the Cinque Ports, in 

 the Eastern counties, on the outskirts of London 

 at Wandsworth or Battersea, in Manchester and 

 Macclesfield, the spade and the hoe, no less than 

 the shuttle and the loom, were necessities of daily 

 existence to these luckless but undaunted emigrants. 

 Thus they set the tune to which, in course of time, 

 lazier feet began to dance the measure. By slow 

 degrees, English craftsmen and cottars, taking 

 heart, began to find out that they, too, might add 

 to the comforts of home, and to the pence in the 

 ill -filled pouch, by following the lead of the 

 strangers. But the Flemish were florists no less 

 than growers of dainty comestibles ; and it is more 

 than probable that flowers, appealing strongly to 

 national sentiment, became the true incentive to 

 the revival of gardening in provincial towns and 



