OFFICE AND REMUNERATION OF GARDENERS. 
11 
nature; and these are numerous and varied, and in many cases 
complicated and obscure. 
Therefore, the gardener must qualify himself for the duties of 
this higher and more important office. In the first place, the 
gardener ought to know something of Latin and Greek,—not that 
this will enable him to grow any plant one jot the better ; but he 
wants it to “breach” the Babel of the names. The lady’s maid 
may also plead that she has to “ par-lies-woo a-bitbut English- 
French will do for this, and it may be picked up anywhere. 
In the second place, the gardener should be thoroughly ac¬ 
quainted with the nature and habits of plants, the best modes of 
treating them, the nature of soils, and their effects upon vegeta¬ 
tion, the application of humidity, heat, and light, and the manage¬ 
ment of shelter and exposure. This is a long catalogue ; most of 
the subjects in it are difficult, and there is no royal road to them. 
The gardener must therefore be an observer, and must have been 
so before he was fit for entering on the duties of his office ; and 
this requires time, and a library—an expense which has never to be 
borne by any mere menial. Besides, if the garden is any thing 
beyond that of the most ordinary tradesman, there will every year 
be something new and requiring new treatment, so that the gar¬ 
dener must continue his study and expense, otherwise he can 
neither do justice to his master nor work with satisfaction to him¬ 
self ; and a man who feels that he is so trammelled up as to be 
unable to do right, is apt, on that very account, to go the more 
wrong. 
Considering all that has been said, and much more might have 
been said with equal truth, we think we have made it as palpable 
to reason as any thing can be, that the wages of the gardener 
should be higher than those of any other man connected with the 
domestic establishment. But the fact, we fear, is exactly the 
reverse ; and the gardener’s wages are not only lower than those 
of any other man on the establishment, but less than a man can 
earn by breaking stones on the highways. Is it not monstrous 
injustice, that a mere butler or footman should get twice or thrice, 
or a cook ten times as much as a gardener ! Such, however—to 
the shame of somebody, is the fact; and we shall, in a future 
paper, take some notice of the causes, the consequences, and the 
probable remedy. 
