70 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
gentleman. And the world is very forgiving on this 
matter—its sympathies are with a gardener. 
Here it is that a striking social and political feature 
arises out of gardening—that is, the levelling nature 
of it as a pursuit. In the presence of things for which 
men's sympathies are mutual, they forget distinctions 
of birth, and rank, and condition, and measure each 
other's worth only by their several degrees of skill; 
so that if Hodge adorns his fence with a new rose of 
his own raising, my Lord will drop all superfluous dig¬ 
nities, and discuss its merits with him as a neighbour and 
a friend. This genuine feeling of manly regard, mea¬ 
sured by worth only, ought to rob rivalry of every 
bitterness, and make even professional competitors glad 
of each other's successes; that it does not do so is to be 
charged against the fickleness of human sympathies, and 
the natural sordidness of man's heart; for gardening in 
itself suggests the purest ethics. 
It would, indeed, be a folly to say that bitterness never 
did creep into the minds of rival florists, but it is the 
exception, not the rule, for every grower knows that what 
one does, another can do, and to acknowledge merit is 
to pay homage to intellect, and patience, and vigilance, 
and instead of hating the man for his success, we learn 
to emulate his virtues; so that rivalry in gardening is a 
school of practical morals, in which the pupils increase 
in excellence as they make progress in the successful 
prosecution of their favourite art. 
This truly fraternal feeling, to which every petty pride 
yields up the ghost, manifests itself in a thousand pleas¬ 
ing ways, which prove that gardening, whether followed 
