' May 29.] THE COTTAGE GARDENER. m 
WEEKLY CALENDAR. 
M 
D 
W 
D 
MAY 29 —JUNE 4, 1851. 
Weather 
Barometer. 
near London in 1850, 
Thermo, Wind. Rain in In. 
i - 1 
Sun 
Rises. 
Sun 
Sets. 
Moon 
R. & S. 
Moon’s 
Age. 
Clock 
bef. Sun. 
Day of 
Year 
29 
Th 
Asc.HolyTii. K. Cha.11. best. 1660. 
30.208—30.165 
75—46 
W 
53 a. 3 
1 a. 8 
3 37 
28 
3 
59 
149 
30 
F 
Uaspberry flowers. 
30.183—30.076 
77—53 
s.w. 
— I 
52 
2 
sets. 
© 
3 
51 
150 
31 
S 
Figwort flowers. 
29.999 — 29.970 
79-45 
s.w. 
— 
52 
3 
8 a41 
1 
3 
43 
151 
I 
Sun 
Sunday after Ascension. 
30.088 — 30.040 
78—48 
s.w. 
— 
51 
4 
9 a 15 
2 
2 
34 
152 
2 
M 
Rose-Chaffer seen. 
30.162—30.076 
75—47 
w. 
— 
50 
5 
10 41 
3 
2 
25 
153 
3 
To 
(Argus Butterfly seen. 
30.222—30.117 
75—51 
E. 
49 
6 
11 30 
4 
2 
16 
154 
4|W 
(Bee Orchis flowers. 
30.101 —29.939 
81—57 
W. 
— 
49 
7 
morn. 
5 
2 
6 
155 
That the Publisher’s Catalogue is a faithful guide to direct us to the 
; prevailing taste for literature, is easily demonstrable by a few facts. 
; Who ever sees a Poem now-a-days in that Catalogue ? and is not the 
reason palpable—that people have become less fond of the pleasures of 
I the imagination ? There is no doubt about it. We have become more 
| practical—more anxious to ask the “ why and the wherefore,’’ and to 
i find the “because ” of all that is going on around us, and within us, in 
1 every day life. Hence, Trnvels, Biographies, Science made popular, the 
arts of life, and the lore which maketh wise for eternity, fill the volumes 
which now crowd from the press. This demonstrates the prevailing taste, 
and if we look back into the earliest age of our printed literature, and 
I find even there a book occasionally dropping forth in the panoply of its 
black-lettered type, and rudely illuminated initial letters, we may accept 
it as a sure proof that there were readers for such a work, for the Pyn- 
' sents, and Berthelets, and Wynkyn de Wodes of those times, were as 
shrewd as the Murrays, Longmans, Knights, and Orrs of modern days, in 
detecting “ whither blows the favouring gale.” Now, the very first work 
on the cultivation of the soil, published in English, that we ever saw, is 
entitled “The Book of Husbandry, very profitable and necessary for all 
persons,” and the date was 1532, or 1534, we do not remember which. 
We have not that volume now to refer to, but we have open before us 
another edition, with this title page: 
fSEfye jflcmr Runfoj of $}u$&antrry of .'fttiljcrfmt. 
By John Roberts. London. 1598. 
“ Better is he that laboureth and aboundeth in all things, than he that 
boasteth himself and wanteth bread.”— Ecclesiasticus x. 27 . 
Now, if any pilgrim loves, as we do, to visit the quiet nooks of our 
land, where rest the ashes of those who have done good service in those 
fields unstained except by ink, let him take up his staff, and journey 
down to Norbury, in Derbyshire. In the nave of its church rests the 
j writer of that book; a book, as Fuller prophecied, that would endure 
[ when the author’s blue gravestone ceased to recall his memory. On that 
marble slab, engraved on brass plates, are the full-length effigies of Sir 
Anthony Fitzhekbetit, and his lady. The robe around him, and the 
paper roll he grasps, tell of his judicial station and literary toils, but the 
inscription is nearly effaced, and only now lives entire in this record of 
the Heralds. 
“ Of your charitie praye for the souls of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, 
knyght, one of the King’s Justices of his Common Bench, and some- 
tyme Lord and Patron of this towne, and Dorothy , his wife, daughter of 
Sir Henry Willoughby, knyght, &c. Which Anthony deceased 27 May, 
1538.” 
Sir Anthony is believed to have descended from that family of Her¬ 
berts, which, ennobled in many of its branches, included among its 
coronets those of Pembroke and Huntingdon; but if the blood of the 
Herberts did not flow in his veins, still he was of gentle lineage, and the 
Fitzherberts had been Lords of Norbury ever since the year 1125, and he 
1 was born there, in the family mansion, during the reign of Henry the 
7th. Like other younger sons in those days of entailed broad acres, and 
j small incomes in broad gold pieces, he was designed to be the maker of 
his own fortunes by brain labour. The law was assigned to him as his 
profession, and he grappled with it as one resolved to subdue it to his 
urpose. In 1511, he was admitted to the dignity of a Serjeant; in 1516 
e was knighted ; in the year following he became the King’s Serjeant; 
and in 1519, he published his Grand, Abridgement of the law, which needs 
no other praise than that it is highly commended by the greatest of legal 
authorities, Sir Edward Coke. Nor was this his only professional pub¬ 
lication, for long after he had become a Judge of the Common Pleas, in 
1523, and long after he had become possessor of the Norbury estates, on 
the death of his elder brother, he continued to prepare those legal col¬ 
lections of authorities, such as the Natura Brevium, See., works which 
have had for their commentators, Sir Matthew Hale, and other more 
modern legal luminaries. He became a judge whilst Wolsey presided 
over the Chancery, and endeavoured to elevate his own court by the de¬ 
pression of those of the Common law. Shelton, his contemporary 
satirist, says— 
Judges of the king’s laws, 
He counts them fools and daws— 
That all our learned men 
Dare not set their pen 
To plead a true trial 
Within Westminster Hall. 
But it is told to the honour of Sir Anthony, that superior to the Cardinal 
Chancellor in every mental gift, and sustained by his wealth and high 
connections, he unflinchingly opposed the attempted encroachments, and 
he lived to see the presumptuous priest hurled from his pride of place, 
surviving his overthrow eight years. Yet, Sir Anthony had a deep con¬ 
viction of the rights of the national church, and, however he might con¬ 
demn its errors, would in no way consent to the spoliation which had 
begun as he lingered on his death bed. At that solemn time he called 
his children around him, and exacted from each a promise that they would 
in no way participate in that spoliation,—a promise which they rigidly 
fulfilled. 
His Book of Husbandry , we have seen, was published about six years 
before his death, and of it he says :—“ I will not absolutely say it is the i 
best way, and will serve best in all places, but I say it is the best way j 
that ever I could prove by experience, the which have been an house¬ 
holder this forty years and more.” And during that householding time, 
he addressed himself to the fulfilment of its duties with the same energy, 
and the same systematic effort to master its details, as had characterized 
him in the pursuit of the less alluring study of the law. He was no pro¬ 
crastinator—no truster to uncertain memory—but what he did he did 
sedulously, and what he resolved to have done, at the very moment of the 
resolve was jotted down in his tablets. “ I will desire the thrift-expecting 
man to rise early in the morning, according to the old saying—To rise 
early maketh a man holy, healthy, and wealthy,” to go over his farm 
“and principally about tbe hedges,” and to have a pair of tablets on which 
to note what requires attention. “This I used to do ten or twelve years 
and more, and this let him that is enamoured of thrift, use daily to woo 
her withal. And if the thrift-coveting person cannot write, then let him 
nick the defaults upon a stick, and shew them (tell them) to his Bailiff! ” 
So anxious was he that forgetfulness should have no excuse, that he gives 
what he terms—“An excellent rude lesson in rude rhyme for a under¬ 
serving man to say every time when he taketh horse, for his remem¬ 
brance, not to forget any implement behind him. 
“ Purse, dagger, cloak, nightcap, kercheffe, shoeing horn, budget, 
and shoone (shoes), 
Spear, mail, hood, halter, saddle-cloth, spurs, hat, and thy 
horse-comb : 
Bow, arrows, sword, buckler, horn, leash, gloves, string, and 
thy braser : 
Pen, paper, ink, parchment, red wax, punisse and books do thou 
remember. 
Pen-knife, comb, thimble, needle, thread and point, least that 
perchance thy girth break : 
Bodkin, knife, rubber, give thy horse meat, 
See he be shod well, make merry, sing if thou can, 
And take heed to thy needments, that thou lose none.” 
The spirit of his excellent little volume may be correctly estimated 
from this portion of its preface :—“ Unto the season-observing hus¬ 
bandmen, the great eternal Maker of all what ere was made, both or¬ 
dained and allotted two wives, the one of them for the comfort of his in¬ 
tellectual and divine part, the other for the nourishment and preserving 
of his mortal dust-metamorphosed body—To wit, woman the soul’s 
joy, and earth the body’s nurse.” “ Since then thou art in such large 
chains bound unto the earth’s bridal, close not the closets of thine eyes 
with sloth, keep measure, not extending to riot, and tby riches will in¬ 
crease, as numbers flow in the fire-inflamed brain of the divinest poet. 
The true handmaid of virtue is labour, and the only foe to them idle¬ 
ness.” 
“ There is a seed that is called discretion, if a husbandman have of 
that seed, and mingle it amongst his other corn, they will grow doubtless 
much the better, for that seed will tell him how many casts of corn every 
land ought to have.” In the practical portion amid much that is good, 
there is also not a little that is error; thus, speaking of bees, he says :— 
“ There is a bee called a drone, and she is greater than another bee, and 
will eat the honey, and gather nothing, and therefore they would be 
killed; and it is a saying that she hath lost her sting, and therefore she 
will not labour as the others do.” In the practices of gardening, he | 
chiefly touches upon crown and whip grafting and budding, which he 
calls “ grafting by leaf,” but he says he could write much more on gar- i 
dening, its profits and pleasures, solely referring, however, to kitchen- ! 
gardening, “ But,” he adds, “ I refer the reader to any of the many books 
of gardening which will shew him enough for that purpose.” Now, if any | 
such existed, they have been devoured by time, for no such works are j 
known to us, except the comparatively useless ones that have descended , 
to us from the Romans. In Poultry-keeping, in the assignment of their 
respective duties to the various servants of the household, and in his 
particulars of the “ Wive’s Housewifery,” he is very comprehensive, and I 
at this distance, as amusing as comprehensive, because unfolding to us ■ 
the domestic economy of the olden time. Nor can we fail to observe that I 
Tusser, who had reached manhood when the Book of Husbandry was I 
published, is indebted to it for many of his “ Five hundred points.” 
We have before us another of Sir Anthony’s books, entitled Surveyinge, 
Anno Domini 1567 . But it relates chiefly to the rights of tenancy, and 
forms of delivering possession, although there are some chapters shewing 
“ How a man should butte and bounde the land,” and “ How to amende 
medowes, &c.” 
Meteorology of the Week.— At Chiswick from observations ! 
during the last twenty-four years, the average highest and lowest tem¬ 
perature of these days are 69 . 8 °, and 46.6°, respectively. The greatest 
heat observed during the time was 90°, and the lowest cold 35°; 107 days 
were fine, and on 61 rain fell. 
No. CXNXIX., Vol. YI. 
