THE JOY OP A GAllDEtf, 
79 
cabbages dressed up in their hearty green, like files of 
riflemen, full of strength, and suggestive of knife-arid-fork 
battles before good fires, when the beef will have its right 
flavour, because honourably accompanied ? Peep into 
the shed or store-loft of the good gardener, and see the 
rosy-cheeked and russet apples stored away all shining 
with ripeness, and beating the sweetest flower-bed in 
their perfume; the onions drying ready for the very 
goose that is waddling yonder; the potatoes swelling 
their sacks tight, every tuber of them ready to transform 
itself into a snow-ball; all reminding you of baked and 
roasted delicacies, that butter and pepper are to make 
additionally savoury on winter nights, or that at Christmas 
—the grand feast of the year—are to proclaim gardening 
to be the homeliest, the prettiest, and the most profitable 
of arts. Then, in early summer, what among gardening 
scenes more attractive than the rows of peas laden with 
snowy blossoms, like clouds of butterflies, or trying to 
topple their stakes over with their weight of plump pods, 
that make your mouth water as you involuntarily conjure 
up the smell of the mint that goes before them to the 
table, and the mingling of the green marrowy smoking 
things, with the brown gravy, that compels you to 
chuckle “ delicious l” as the palate revels in their flavour ! 
See there, the pretty lettuces in their clean drills, so 
delicately green and vigorous; see the tender spring 
onions, silvery at the root, and ready for pulling; the 
coral radishes; the cheerful small salads that seem to 
grow as you look at them, all of them hurrying towards 
the salad-bowl, crisp, and cool, and relishing, and ready 
to enchant the appetite on the very first warm day that 
