OFFICE AND REMUNERATION OF GARDENERS. 
7 
possessed more, nor was it ever so rapidly on the increase. But 
the drama has now no attraction for it, except in the case of some 
“ stricken” enthusiast; and to hear him ranting in high heroics 
to St. Giles’s and the saloons, puts one, not unpleasingly, in mind 
of the poet in Peregrine Pickle, cooking a dinner “ after the man¬ 
ner of the ancients ” for the refection of modern gourmis. 
It has fared much the same with the other matters which are 
intended, or supposed to find, occupation for the idle mind, and 
relaxation for the busy. They who now write to amuse the mul¬ 
titude, seek to do it by delineating the lowest characters, and 
dwelling upon the plague-spots of common society; and the 
“fashionable ephemera” have no charms except for such as are 
parties in the heartless intrigues of the gay, or longing to become 
so. No doubt the coarseness of the Smolletts and Fieldings has 
gone—as well as the nature and truth. This is a change certainly; 
but it is not an improvement: the poison has gone inward :— 
it was in the expression, it is now in the idea—where it is far 
more insidious and dangerous than it was when applied only 
externally. 
But notwithstanding that these matters have ceased to have any 
attraction for people of purity and refinement, the mind must still 
have its relaxation, just as the body must have its rest. Whether 
the active occupation is business, or study, or public or domestic 
management, the mind cannot be always occupied with it, other¬ 
wise the performance would soon deteriorate, or the mind would be 
speedily worn out; and this would take place sooner in propor¬ 
tion as the occupation had more of routine and uniformity. In 
such cases the pleasures of the table are a dangerous relief, and 
the displays and courtesies of society at best but a doubtful one. 
They have this further in them : they require health, which they 
have no tendency to preserve ; and they are incompatible with 
that solitude which, at due times, and not indulged in to excess, 
is the luxury of the enlightened mind—the state in which one 
enjoys that kingdom which is in one’s self, and cannot be invaded 
by the world. 
This relaxation, so necessary and profitable for all, is most 
essential to females who are so situated as not to require the 
labour of their hands, or the thought of providing for themselves 
or others ; and if such females have not some simple and con¬ 
stantly accessible source of intellectual occupation, they are in 
