Book I. 



BRITISH GARDENS. 



104S 



7407. Amateurs (lovers of gardening). These promote the art by the applause they 

 bestow on its productions, of which, to a certain extent, they become purchasers. 



7408. Connoisseurs (critical or skilful lovers of gardening). Tliese promote the art in 

 the same way as the amateur ; but much more powerfully, in proportion as approbation, 

 founded on knowledge, is valued before that which arises chiefly from spontaneous affec- 

 tion. By the purchase of books, engravings, and drawings, from wliich, in great part, 

 this species of patrons acquire their knowledge, they may be said to be eminent en- 

 couragers of counsellor-gardeners. 



7409. Em2)loyers of gardeners, whether of the serving, tradesman, or counsellor classes, 

 are obvious and undoubted patrons of the art. 



7410. Occupiers of gardens of necessity employ both serving and tradesmen gardeners, 

 and when they are amateurs or connoisseurs, are often great encouragers of the art ; for 

 every one is not so fortunate as to rank among the 



7411. Projmetors of gardens, v^ho are the most eminent of all patrons, promoting 

 every department of the art, and employing serving, tradesmen, and artist gardeners. A 

 man whose garden is his own for ever, or for a considerable length of time, whether that 

 garden be surrounded by a fence of a few hundred feet, or a park- wall of ten or twelve 

 miles, will always be effecting some change in arrangement, or in culture, favorable to 

 trade and to artists. " I pity that man," says Pope, " who has completed every thing 

 in his garden." " Apr^s mes enfans et deux ou trois femmes que j'aime, ou crois aimer 

 a la folic, mes jardins sont ce qui me fait le plus de plaisir au monde ; il y en a pea 

 d'aussi beaux." (Memoires et Lettres du Prince de Ligne, torn. i. 117.) 



Chap. IL 



Of the diff'erent Kinds of Gardens in Britain, relatively to the different Classes of Society, and 

 the different Species of Gardeners. 



7412. In order to form an estimate of the importance of gardening to a people, and 

 of the duties of gardeners in filling different situations, it is not only necessary to notice 

 the diffei-ent species of gardeners to which it has given rise, but also the different lands cf 

 gardens ; the classes of society which enjoy them ; and ilie species of operators and patrons who 

 cultivate atid encourage them. In this view, gardeners may be arranged as private, com- 

 mercial, or public establishments. 



Sect. I. Private British Gardens. 



7413. Of private British gardens, the most numerous class of gardens, and those the 

 most regularly distributed over the British isles, are those of the country laborer, or what 

 are usually denominated cottage-gardens. Next to his cottage, the laborer finds his 

 garden the most useful and agreeable object, by supplying a part of his food, affording an 

 agreeable source of recreation, and presenting an opportunity of displaying his taste in 

 its cultivation. To the laborer who has no cottage or garden, human life presents no 

 hopes ; his future extends only to a few days; he has no consolation but in the contem- 

 plation of fixed wages, which the most fatiguing exertions can in no degree increase, and 

 of which, in the case of illness, he has only the amount of a week to interpose between 

 the absolute want of lodging and food. But the laborer who rents a cottage and garden 

 is secure at all events of a roof to cover him ; he can multiply his pleasures and pains by 

 the addition of a M'ife and children ; and he knows that he can live for a certain time on 

 the produce of his garden. By these hopes he is consoled. Besides, he has that most 

 desirable object, something that he can call his own ; and is thus enabled to participate 

 in the feelings which belong to the love of property and progeny — feelings often, indeed, 

 mixed with pain, but which nevertheless, have been an object of ambition from the earliest 

 ages of the world. 



7414. Cottage-gardens, in a moral and political point of view, are of obvious importance ; 

 attaching the cottager to his home and to his country, by inducing sober, industrious, and , 

 domestic habits ; and by creating that feeling of independence which is the best security 

 against pauperism. 



7415. The extent of the garden of a laborer ought never to be such as to interfere with his employment 

 as a laborer ; unless it is sufficiently so to enable him to dispose of part of the produce in the manner of 

 a market-gardener; or to keep a cow and dispose of her produce. But as it will rarely happen that in 

 cither case he can compete in the market with the regular market-gardener or farmer, the m.ost useful 

 extent of garden is that which shall occupy his own leisure hours in the operations of digging and plant. 

 insr, and those of his wife and children in hoeing, weeding, and watering. Tliis will generally, as already 

 stated (7296.), be something between one eighth, and three sixteenths of an acre, including the space on 

 which the cottage stands. 



741G. The vegetables which may be most profitably cultivated by the occupants of this description are, 

 cabbages of the early heading sorts, hardy borecoles, as the German greens, early potatoes, parsneps, tur- 



3X2 



