steuart's planter's guide. 



245 



moval as they were in December ; they have now, 

 however, recovered their vigour, shaken off their 

 parasites, and have produced good loads of fruit. 



We may be thought fastidious in our tastes, and 

 extravagant in om* wishes, but we desire and ex- 

 pect more of om' country gentlemen than to be mere 

 idlers, or worse than idlers, — practisers of the Allan- 

 ton system. When they tm*n their attention to fo- 

 restry, we would have them to sow, or to plant from 

 the nursery, and not to disturb and torture the fine 

 growing timber which their fathers had located, and 

 which generally suffers irreparable injury from re- 

 moval, — a system to which Sir Henry Steuart is so 

 absurdly attached, as to recommend its practice, al- 

 though only to turn the lee side of the tree round 

 to the wind in the same spot. Nor have we much 

 sympathy with Sir Walter Scott's taste for home- 

 keeping squires, — those Shallows and Slenders with 

 whom our great dramatist has made himself so mer- 

 ry. We would have our landed gentlemen to know 

 that they are the countrymen, — many of them, per- 

 haps, of the blood of the Raleighs, the Drakes, and 

 the Ansons. Let them, like our Wellington, our 

 Nelson, our Cochrane, Wilson, Miller, and many 

 others, continue to set before the world some little 

 assurance of British manhood. Let them, like our 



