44 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER, 
January 18,1894. 
honaa laden with ! Is not that shop too in the form of roots or 
cuttings parcelled up, and some scraps, mayhap, fixed in the lining 
of your hat, yes, and some fresh ideas in the head under the hat? 
So, judging by myself as the ordinary type of gardener to be met 
with in these islands, I conclude that our shop is fixed as firmly on 
oar backs as the house on a snail; to remove either would entail a 
catastrophe. 
Many employers do give every facility for these mutual visits. 
Yet are there a few places in which from the time you enter till 
the time you leave a sense of dread prevails, and you are ready to 
run for the nearest ambush in the form of shrub or tree at the 
ominous words, “ some of the family.” This is a mistake, to 
obviate which it would be better for master and man to have a 
proper understanding as to whether his gardening friends might be 
visible, and I think there are but few owners who would deny the 
privilege if the matter was rightly placed before them. 
Some of us can say we get too many holidays, unless they be in 
the form of those gaps in our lives coming between two situations. 
These I dismiss, for there is no pleasure in contemplating them, but 
the amount of pleasure in the pleasant ones is not, happily, in ratio 
to the time they occupy. Many of us do perhaps feel a little 
envious of the few so happily placed as to be able to make annual 
peregrinations lasting days, and in some cases weeks ; but again, 
with a little philosophising we may be able to draw around our¬ 
selves curtains of comfort, and with heart and mind fixed in the 
endless variety of our work learn to look upon our lives as one 
long holiday. Some can do this, and I do not know that these 
happily placed men are to be much envied, if we consider the 
amount of labour and fatigue they face on their holidays, rushing 
off at express speed to the uttermost ends of the kingdom to judge 
at some show, to find themselves again judged by experts ; to go 
down to the sea in ships ; to be severely shaken on Irish jaunting 
cars for twenty-five miles at a stretch. No, we will not envy them ; 
we will honour them for the sacrifice. I have given you at starting 
my ideal of a gardener’s holiday ; these latter, enviable ones, 
we, I think, enjoy better through the notes and jottings over the 
pipe of peace at home, and here we can, at a small outlay, visit 
torrid and frigid zones, visit Borneo, “the gardens of the sun,” in 
the company of a scientist, traveller, and, last not least, a gardener ; 
and what we miss in these imaginary travels we must, for com¬ 
pensation, think of the dangers we escape—incurred by these 
earnest men in fighting extremes of climate. 
We, too, can gather the ripe fruit of experience, of the clear 
head, the warm heart, through the medium of a facile pen as 
(exemplified in the New Year’s address of “ D., Deal," as well as the 
pleasure—a pleasure qualified by his opening remarks that a 
younger voice and hand might be preferable, and to which there 
<;an be but one answer. No ! emphatically no ! The green fruit 
may piomise well, but give us the ripe fruit that we know is so 
good. May it yet for years to come be the premier dish served up 
to us in the New Year’s number of the Journal (the holiday 
number may I call it ?) to serve as an excuse for my erratic pen, 
seemingly gone a little way from the text, but easy, I think, to 
connect the pleasures of our brief holidays with those of knowledge 
and wisdom. 
“ Whose ways are ways of pleasantness, 
, . And all her paths are peace.” 
—E. K. 
HALF HOURS WITH GREAT AUTHORS. 
The Twin Aspects of Culture. 
The temptation to indulge in a lay sermon, directed, of 
course, against somebody else, is one that, at some time or other, 
assails nearly all of us. There occur such reprehensible instances 
of moral obliquity, that it seems nothing short of a duty to 
fulminate against them, albeit the denouncer would often be better 
employed in a little wholesome self-condemnation. 
Now, in this and any other communication of a like nature 
which may follow it, if haply it should be found worthy of type, 
it would ill become me, for reasons drawn from reflections on the 
truth of my last sentence, to fall into the temptation foreshadowed 
by the first. What I wish to do is to call attention to the points 
of some of our best writers, outside the narrow trammels of the 
formal review, and to deduce from them some lessons which may 
be of value from a gardening point of view, without an excess of 
redundant and pedantic moralising. 
I should commence with a sad platitude if I were to say that 
even the specialist is benefited by general reading, and yet it would 
not be an entire waste of words to enter a mild protest against the 
strong tendency which affects most persons who are pursuing any 
particular course of study to read and think in one groove ; and 
this protest I think the more pardonable, inasmuch as its effects 
would be in the direction of breaking down narrow conceptions 
and opening up broader and wider views—not only of things in 
general, but even, and also, of the special subject which is being 
followed up. Thus the military pupil studying gunnery is not 
confined to the mastery of the methods of ramming in charges, but 
is directed through a course of study, which embraces the principles 
of manufacture, combustion, vacuum and wind resistance, and 
many other points which are a sealed book to the ignorant artillery¬ 
man, but a necessary part of the mental equipment of his officer. 
The same principle holds good in the more peaceful art of 
gardening. Would we be as the rank and file, then let us be 
content with practising the rapid spreading of manure. Would we be 
as the masters of the profession, then let us go beyond the mere 
muscle work, and learn what the manure is, what its constituents 
are, the different crops to which the different kinds can be best 
applied, and the reasons why they are benefited by i*". It is satis¬ 
factory to observe that on the whole there is a far more pronounced 
desire for advanced information on the part of the rank and file 
of gardening than of gunnery, and it is mainly for this reason 
that I am hopeful that a casual chat about books and what their 
writers tell us may find an occasional welcome. 
In response to the oft-repeated and sometimes almost despairing 
question, “What shall I read?” I have wondered if it would be 
thought a mere idle conceit to suggest that all good writing, no 
matter what its subject, must of necessity be helpful to every 
student. To give an instance, it is hardly likely that many young 
gardeners would turn to the criticisms of Carlyle on German 
literature for any help to them in their special line of work, and 
undoubtedly if their search were in the direction of ascertaining 
the constituents of a Parsnip or the elements of a heap of stable 
manure they would look in vain. But on the higher ground of 
ethics, on the noblest aspects of knowledge, on the question of the 
perception of high principles in respect to beauty and conduct, on 
the intellectual grasp of motives, as well as the physical capacity 
for action—on these and many other grounds the Chelsea sage may 
be looked up to as a wise and eloquent master. 
At the outset I must confess my inability to copy the methods 
of the fashionable reviewer by laying bare the inner lives of my 
authors. Not, perhaps, that my knowledge of Carlyle was less 
than theirs of the various great men with whom they deal. When 
a small boy in a Chelsea nursery years ago, I more than once had 
the privilege of staring in awe at the wonderful old man before 
whom the finest intellects of the past few decades have humbly 
bowed, and on one occasion I even picked up his umbrella. He 
lived in a row of old-fashioned houses near the river, and his 
rugged features were as familiar to the ’bus conductors in the 
neighbourhood as those of the Personally Criticised are to the 
Personal Critic. But let his writings satisfy us. Carlyle has 
spoken strongly on the necessity for thoroughness on the part 
of the students, else may the master be misconceived. Do not, he 
says in effect, be hasty in condemning that which is not easy 
to understand, but try as hard to grasp the writer’s meaning as the 
latter has done to express it. 
“ The reader must faithfully and toilsomely co-operate with him [the 
writer] if any fruit is to come of their mutual endeavours. Should the 
former take up his ground too early, and affirm to himself that now he 
has seized what he has not seized; that this and nothing else is the 
thing aimed at by his teacher, the consequences are plain enough- 
disunion, darkness and contradiction between the two.” 
Might not this be taken as the basis and foundation of all 
study? Would not every student, whether of gardening or any 
other subject, act wisely by laying these words to heart ? 
My title this week is “ The Twin Aspects of Culture,” and my 
point is that it should be clearly recognised that there are two, the 
one differing widely from the other, yet capable of uniting with it 
to form a fruitful and harmonious whole. I need not stop for a 
moment to dwell on what may be called the Practical Aspect of 
Culture, the manual work, for it and its importance are clearly 
seen and widely recognised ; but as to the intellectual or spiritual 
side it may be well to pause. Do any of us feel tempted to say 
that such and such a thing is beyond our capacity, that we are 
incapable of improving ourselves ? Let us take heart of grace 
from Carlyle’s eloquent words ; — 
“The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was 
created capable of being; expand, if possible, into his full growth; 
resisting all impediments, casting off all foreign, especially all noxious 
adhesions, and show himself at length in his own shape and stature, be 
these what they may.” 
Perish all thoughts of remaining in the mental darkness which 
is so common, because so easy. Bouse yourself ! says the philosopher; 
work, study, be no longer the mere clod, the spoke in the wheel, 
1 but expand, develop every latent capability, and so attain to the 
