2S- Condition of the Agricultural Labourer, vnth 
We can hardly over-estimate the importance of a garden to a 
labourer's famil}'. It not only adds to their physical enjoyments, 
by enabling them to have many little comforts which they would 
otherwise not possess, but it likewise operates beneficially in a 
moral sense, by daily presenting to the eye objects interesting 
alike to parents and to children — objects on which they have 
planned and thought and worked together, which they can call 
their own, and in which they can therefore each and all feel a 
pleasure and a pride. The labourer will look forward to return- 
ing after his daily toil, and joining his family in ornamenting 
and improving his garden, in calculating upon its future crops, 
or rejoicing in its present produce. His cottage and his garden 
will be associated in the labourer's mind with his wife and his 
children, the whole constituting a little world within which his 
dearest affections are centred. 
Without a garden, the cottage with its confined limits must 
always be inconvenient, and comparatively cramped and void of 
comfort. There is no out-of-door object for the labourer and 
his children to occupy themselves upon in common. They would 
be driven into the streets or lanes, and he, too probably, would 
seek refuge in the alehouse. But if a garden be attached, the 
cottage will then appear, and in fact almost become, more roomy, 
as it certainly will be more cheerful. The children may be 
turned into the garden, where they will find occupation and 
amusement, and at the same time gain health and strength. 
There too they will learn a taste for flowers, and in teaching 
the young people to plant and train and cultivate them, the 
parents will derive pleasure whilst imparting instruction ; and 
the knowledge and the habits thus acquired will remain with the 
children in after-life, and exercise an ameliorating influence upon 
their character and pursuits. 
The size and situation of the garden must of course depend 
very much upon local circumstances. It ought not, however, in 
any case to be so large as to interfere with the labourer's regular 
occupation, or withdraw him from his every-day pursuits; and 
from a quarter to half an acre, according to circumstances, would, 
I think, generally be sufficient. Wherever practicable, the garden 
should certainly adjoin the cottage, to which it might be rendered 
ornamental by planting shrubs and flowers, thus imparting a 
cheerful appearance to the labourer's home, and giving it attrac- 
tions and occupations for his intervals of leisure, which would 
be a means of keeping him from idle associates, and from falling 
into dissipated or vicious habits. 
If it be found impracticable to have the garden immediately 
adjoining the cottage, in such case it ought to be as near to it as 
