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porch of the peasant, came originally from North America ; while 

 the lavender which the farmer's wife deposits among her snow-white 

 napery in the household linen- chest, is a native of the south of Europe. 

 So, too, are the rosemary, the mignonette, the lily, and the pink. 

 English shrubberies are indebted to Hungary for the " golden tresses " 

 of the laburnum, to Portugal for the laurel, to Italy for the bay tree, 

 and to the Levant for the weeping willow. The common daffodil, 

 " that comes before the swallows' dare," is of Italian lineage, the wild 

 foxglove is a denizen of the Canary Isles, and the passion-flower, with 

 its sacred symbols, is a native of South America. In fact, if you 

 were to strip our English flower gardens, green lanes, woods, and 

 meadows of their exotic decorations, you would rob them of half their 

 beauty, and English descriptive poetry of half its charm. To the best 

 of my belief, England does not possess so much as one indigenous veget- 

 able ; and, until the time of the Tudors, what little garden stuff her scor- 

 butic population, did consume was imported from the Netherlands. You 

 may remember that Shakspeare makes Sir Andrew Aguecheek account 

 for the dulness of his mind by observing, " I am a great eater of beef, 

 and I believe that does harm to my wit ;" and, in the absence of any 

 succulent vegetables, his excessive consumption of animal food is not 

 at all surprising. Nor, considering their very restricted range of diet, 

 can we feel much surprise at Queen Elizabeth's robust maids of 

 honour making such heavy meals of bread, beef, and beer, as they are 

 reported to have done. About this time, however, it seems to have 

 occurred to our beef-eating, beer-bemused, and slow-witted fore-fathers, 

 that it would be cheaper to import garden seeds than vegetables, and 

 more wholesome to eat newly-cut cabbages, than to feed upon such 

 half-rotten garbage as was brought over from Holland, in the holds 

 of broad-bottomed and slow-sailing luggers ; and having once opened 

 their minds to this conviction, they began to cast their eyes over the 

 four quarters of the world in search of vegetables. So, in course of 

 time, they procured brocoli, beans, and cauliflowers from Greece ; peas 

 from Spain ; carrots and celery from Flanders ; asparagus and kidney 

 beans from Asia ; lettuce, artichokes, and cabbage from Holland ; 

 parsley from Egypt ; and potatoes from South America ; and thence- 

 forth the kitchen garden formed as indispensable an appurtenance to 

 the mansion and the manor-house as the pleasaunce, the buttery-hatch, 

 or the bowling-green. Of indigenous fruits, also, Old England was 

 lamentably destitute. All she could boast of was a few crude berries, 

 growing wild upon brambles ; for I am doubtful whether even the 

 crab was native to her soil. Most of the fruits which now flourish 

 in her gardens, hot-houses, and orchards (none of which fruits, by the 

 way, are said, upon the authority of Mr. Hawthorne, to be compar- 

 able in flavour with an American turnip), were introduced between 

 the years 1520 and 1600. Italy sent her the mulberry • Syria the 

 apple and the plum ; Portugal the grape ; Persia the nectarine and 

 peach ; Flanders the gooseberry, the finer descriptions of cherry, and 

 the strawberry ; Greece the currant and the apricot ; Austria the 



