24 
THE FLORIST. 
able in pippins from a decaying and exhausted Apple-tree. As for 
lecturing you upon the culture of a garden, or haranguing you scien¬ 
tifically at all, I should no more think of it than of seeking horticul¬ 
tural information for myself in the books of those who wrote a century 
ago of the subject; and I have no shame in the conviction, that some 
to whom I now speak, beginning at a point where I have all but 
stopped, and having opportunities and resources, developed since my 
manhood waned, know more about gardening than I do. It is sufficient 
for me to have been in my day with the foremost, and to have fought 
my way to many victories. But were I to “ shoulder my crutch 
and show how fields were won ” to you of this generation, to you who 
have such an improved artillery as leads one to expect that England 
will soon be able to pepper her enemies, however distant, from bat¬ 
teries fixed upon her shores, to you who are blessed with a thousand 
facilities, unknown to your ancestors, of smashing and ripping up 
your fellow-creatures—how would you forbear to smile? No; as 
old Mr. Whippy, the huntsman, or rather the ex-huntsman, for he 
has been, as you know, a pensioner for years of my noble master’s, 
trots after the hounds on his pony through the gaps and the gates, which 
he once despised, so must I now be content to look on from afar, 
travelling easily by quiet lanes and by-ways, and leaving the bravery 
and the honours of the chase to you. 
So I will tell you, if you please, a simple story, a mere inci¬ 
dent, in fact, which occurred many years ago in the family I serve, 
but which made at the time a great excitement among us, and may 
still I hope prove interesting to you. 
Through the solemn avenue of cedars, which leads to our Mauso¬ 
leum, I have followed three Dukes to the grave. The second of 
these at one period of his life was most austere and haughty. I may 
speak of his faults, although he is dead, because he lived to hate them, 
and to cast them from him; and I have no hesitation in enlarging 
upon them, as the circumstances of my story prompt. Well, then, 
he was just the proudest, coldest, most disagreeable Duke that ever 
stalked (“ stalk, to walk with high and superb steps,” says Dr. 
Johnson) over the earth. It was a positive insult to the English lan¬ 
guage to call such an ungracious ungentleman “ your Grace.” We 
gardeners used to declare that the thermometers fell twenty degrees, 
whenever he walked through the houses, and that the water froze in 
the tanks and cisterns. We were prepared to affirm that when he put 
on his coronet, the strawberry leaves turned into ice-plants. Indeed, 
we all of us found a relief and comfort in this harmless kind of ridicule, 
just as schoolboys most delight to mimic the master, who rules the 
most unkindly over them. It was a natural and pleasant rebound 
from the constraint and awful abasement to which his presence re¬ 
duced us; and as for the propriety of our conduct, why if men in 
high places are not high-minded, as they ought to be, and, for the 
most part, are, they only become the more conspicuously assailable, 
and the homage which is offered to them is as unreal and worthless, 
as the sham silver and the sham gold which the Chinese offer to their 
gods. So the Duke played at being an Idol, and we performed the 
