Matthew and Andrew Shore are as unlike as two brothers well can be in all but their strong manly affection for each other, and go on together all the better for their dissimilarity of taste and character. Andrew is a bluff frank merry Benedict, blest in a comely bustling wife, and five rosy children; somewhat too loud and boisterous in his welcomings, which come upon one like a storm, but delightful in his old-fashioned hospitality and his hearty good-humour; for the rest, a good master, a steady friend, a jovial neighbour, and the best farmer and most sagacious dealer to be found in the country side. He must be a knowing hand who takes in Andrew Shore. He is a bold rider too, when the fox-hounds happen to come irresistibly near; and is famous for his breed of cocking spaniels, and for constantly winning the yeomanry cup at the B. coursing meeting. Such is our good neighbour Farmer Shore.

His wife is not a little like her husband; a laughing, bustling, good-humoured woman, famous for the rearing of turkeys and fattening of calves, ruling the servants and children within doors, with as absolute a discretion as that with which he sways the out-door sceptre, and complaining occasionally of the power she likes so well, and which, with an ingratitude not uncommon in such cases, she is pleased to call trouble. In spite of these complaints, however, she is one of the happiest women in the parish, being amongst the very few who are neither troubled by poverty or finery-the twin pests of the age and country. Her expenses are those of her grandmother's days; she has fourteen-shilling hyson, and double-refined sugar for any friend who may drop in to tea, and a handsome silk gown to wear to Church on Sundays. An annual jaunt to Ascot is all her dissipation, and a taxed cart her sole equipage. Well may Mrs. Shore be a happy woman.

The only spot about the place sacred from her authority, is that which I am come to visit, the garden; my friend Matthew's territory, in which he spends all his days, and half his nights, and which, in spite of his strong fraternal affection, he certainly loves better than brother or sister, nephew or niece, friend or comrade; better in short than he loves any thing else under the sun.

Matthew is an old bachelor of fifty-five, or thereaway, with a quick eye, a ruddy cheek, a delightful benevolence of countenance, a soft voice and a gentle manner. He is just what he seems, the kindest, the most generous, and the best-natured creature under the sun, the universal friend and refuge of servants, children, paupers, and delinquents of all descriptions, who fly to him for assistance and protection in every emergency, and would I certainly stun him with their clamorous importunity, if he were not already as deaf as a post.

Matthew is one of the very few deaf people worth talking to. He is what is becoming scarcer every day, a florist of the first order, and of the old school, not exactly of Mr. Evelyn's time, for in the gardening of that period, although greens were, flowers were not, but of thirty or forty years back, the reign of pinks, tulips, auriculas, and ranunculuses, when the time and skill of the gardener were devoted to produce, in the highest imaginable perfection, a variety of two or three favoured tribes. The whole of this large garden, for the potatoes and cabbages have been forced to retreat to a nook in the orchard, dug up in their behoof;-the whole ample garden is laid out in long beds, like those in a nursery ground, filled with these precious flowers, of the rarest sorts and in the highest culture; and as I have arrived in the midst of the hyacinth, auricula, and anemone season, with the tulips just opening, I may consider myself in great luck to see what is called in gardening language, "so grand a show." It is worth something too, to see Matthew's delight, half compounded of vanity and kindness, as he shows them, mixed with courteous cffers of seedlings and offsets, and biographical notices of the more curious flowers; "How the stock of this plant came from that noted florist, Tom Bonham, the B. taylor, commonly called tippling Tom, who once refused fifty guineas for three auriculas! and how this tulip was filched" (Matthew tells this in a particularly low and confidential tone) "from a worthy merchant of Rotterdam, by an honest skipper of his acquaintance, who abstracted the root, but left five pounds in the place of it, and afterwards made over the bargain for a couple of pounds more, just to pay him for the grievous bodily fear which he had undergone between the time of this adventure, for there was no telling how the Burgomaster might relish the bargain, and his embarkation in the good schooner, the Race-horse of Liverpool.'

Perhaps the tulips, especially this pet root, are on the whole Matthew's favourites; but he is a great man at pink shows and melon feasts; and his carnations, particularly those of a sort called "the Mount Etna," which seldom comes to good in other hands, as regularly win the plate as Andrew's greyhounds. It is quite edifying to hear him run over the bead-roll of pink names, from Cleopatra to the Glory of New York. The last-mentioned flowers are precisely my object to-day; for I am come to beg some of his old plants, to the great endangerment of my character as a woman of taste, I having, sooth to say, no judgment in pinks, except preferring those which are full of bloom, in which quality these old roots, which he was about to fling

* See note at the end of the sketch for a most curious account of the gardens round London in 1691.

away, and which he is giving me with a civil reluctance to put any thing so worthless into my garden, greatly excel the young plants of which he is so proud.

Notwithstanding his love for his own names, some of which are fantastical enough, Matthew wages fierce war against the cramp appellations, whether of geraniums or of other plants, introduced latterly, and indeed against all new flowers of every sort whatsoever, comprehending them all under the general denomination of trash. He contrives to get the best and the rarest, notwithstanding, and to make them blow better than any body, and I would lay a wager-Ay, I am right! the rogue! the rogue! What is that in the window but the cactus speciosissimus, most splendid of flowers, with its large ruby cup and its ivory tassels? It is not in bloom yet, but it is showing strong and coming fast. And is not that fellow the scarlet potentilla? And that the last fuchsia? And is there such a plant in the county as that newest of all the new camelias? Ah the rogue! the rogue! He to abuse my geraniums, and call me new-fangled, with four plants in his windows that might challenge the horticultural! And when I laugh at him about it, he'll pretend not to hear, and follow the example of that other great deaf artist

"Who shifted his trumpet and only took snuff." Ah the rogue! the rogue! To think that fickleness should be so engrafted in man's nature, that even Matthew Shore is not able to resist the contagion, but must fall a flirting with cactusses and camelias - let the pinks and tulips look to it! The rogue! the rogue! If the fickleness of man were my first thought, the desire to see the camelia nearer was the second; and Mrs. Shore appearing in the porch with her clean white apron and her pleasant smile, I followed her through a large, lightsome, brick apartment, the common room of the family, where the ample hearth, the great chairs in the chimney-corner, defended from draughts by green stuff curtains, the massive oak tables, the tall japanned clock, and the huge dresser laden with pewter dishes as bright as silver, gave token of rustic comfort and opulence. Ornaments were not wanting. The dresser was also adorned with the remains of a long-preserved set of tea-china, of a light rambling pattern, consisting of five cups and seven saucers, a tea-pot, neatly mended, a pitcher-like cream jug, cracked down the middle, and a sugar bason wanting a handle; with sundry odd plates, delf, blue, and white, brown-edged, and green-edged, scalloped and plain; and last and choicest with a grand collection of mugs-always the favourite object of housewifely vanity in every rank of rural life, from Mrs. Shore of LantonFarm, down to her maid Debby. This collection was of a particularly ambitious nature. It filled a row and a half of the long dresser,

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graduated according to size, like books in a library, the gallons ranking as folios, the halfpints ranging as duodecimos. Their number made me involuntarily repeat to myself two lines from Anstey's inimitable Pleader's Guide, meant to ridicule the fictions of the law, but here turned into a literal truth: « First count's for that with divers jugs,

To wit, twelve pots, twelve cups, twelve mugs;" but these jugs were evidently not meant to be profaned by the "certain vulgar drink called toddy," or any other drink. Half a dozen plain white ones, rather out of condition, which stood on a side-table, were clearly the drudges, the working mugs of the family. The ornamental species, the drone mugs hung on nails by their handles, and were of every variety of shape, colour, and pattern. Some of the larger ones were adorned with portraits in medallion-Mr. Wilberforce, Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, and Charles Fox. Some were gay with flowers not very like nature. Some had landscapes in red, and one a group of figures in yellow. Others again, and these were chiefly the blues, had patterns of all sorts of intricacy and involution without any visible meaning. Some had borders of many colours; and some, which looked too genteel for their company, had white cameos relieved on a brown ground. Those drinking vessels were full of the antique elegance and grace. I stood admiring them when Mrs. Shore called me into the parlour, where the plant I wished to see was placed.

The parlour -Oh, how incomparably inferior to the kitchen!-was a little low, square, dark box, into which we were shut by a door, painted black, dimly lighted by a casement window, quite filled by the superb camelia, and rendered even more gloomy by a dark paper of reds and greens, with an orange border. A piece of furniture called a beaufette, open and displaying a collection of glassware, almost equal to the pewter for age and brightness, to the mugs for variety, and to the china for joinery, a shining round mahogany table, and six hair-bottomed chairs, really seemed to crowd the little apartment; but it was impossible to look at any thing except the splendid plant, with its dark shining leaves, and the pure, yet majestic blossoms reposing on the deep verdure, as a pearly coronet on the glossy locks of some young beauty. Ah! no wonder that the pinks are a little out of favour, or that Matthew stands smiling there in utter oblivion of striped tulip or streaked carnation! such a plant as this would be an excuse for forgetting the whole vegetable creation, and my good friend Matthew (who always contrives to hear the civil things one says of his flowers, however low one may speak, and who is perfectly satisfied by my admiration on the present occasion) has just made me almost as happy as himself, by pro

mising to rear me one of the same sort, after a method of his own discovering, which he assures me brings them to perfection twice as fast as the dawdling modes of the new school. Nothing like an old gardener after all! above all if he be as kind, as enthusiastic, and as clever, as Matthew Shore.

NOTE-The exceedingly rude state of horticultural science in England at a time when the sister art of domestic Architecture was perhaps more flourishing than at any period of our history, cannot be better illustrated than by the following curious and authentic paper, read in 1794 to the Antiquarian Society, and subsequently printed, one can hardly call it published, in the twelfth volume of the "Archæologia," where it has lain most honourably buried amongst "Essays on the Venta Icenorum," and "Letters on the Pusey Horn," for these thirty years. (N. B. The copy of that venerable quarto in which I discovered it was still uncut.) I insert it here because I think my readers will be as much amused as I have been at the odd notions of gardening entertained by our ancestors, especially by the green-houses built in the shade, and the rabbit warren in the midst of the flower gardens. What would the Horticultural Society say to such doings?

"A short account of several gardens near London, with remarks on some particulars wherein they excel or are deficient, upon a view of them in December, 1691. Communicated to the Society by the Rev. Dr. Hamilton, Vice President, from an original MS. in his possession.

"1. Hampton Court Garden is a large plot, environed with an iron palisade round about next the Park, laid all in walks, grass-plots and borders. Next to the house, some flat and broad beds are set with narrow rows of dwarf box, in figures like lace patterns. In one of the lesser gardens is a large greenhouse divided into several rooms, and all of them with stoves under them, and fire to keep a perpetual heat. In these there are no orange, or lemon trees, or myrtles, or any greens, but such tender foreign ones as need continual warmth..

"2. Kensington gardens are not great nor abounding with fine plants. The orange, lemon, myrtles, and what other trees they had there in summer, were all removed to Mr. Loudon's and Mr. Wise's green-house at Brompton Park, a little mile from them. But the walks and grass laid very fine, and they were digging up a plot of four or five acres to enlarge their garden. 3. The Queen Dowager's garden at Hammersmith has a good green-house, with a high erected front to the south whence the roof falls backward. The house is well stored with greens of common kinds; but the queen not being for curious plants or flowers, they want of the most curious sorts of greens, and in the garden there is little of value but wall trees; though the gardener there. Monsieur Hermon Van Guine, is a man of great skill and industry, having raised great numbers of orange and lemon trees by inoculation, with myrtles, Roman bayes, and other greens of pretty shapes, which he has to dispose of.

4. Beddington garden, at present in the hands of the Duke of Norfolk, but belonging to the family of Carew, has in it the best orangery in England. The orange and lemon trees there grow in the ground, and have done so near one hundred years, as the gardener, an aged man, said he believed. There are a great number of them, the house wherein they are being above two hundred feet long; they are most of them thirteen feet high and very full of fruit, the gar| dener not having taken off so many flowers this last summer as usually others do. He said he gathered off them at least ten thousand oranges this last year. The heir of the family being but about five years of age, the trustees take care of the orangery, and this

year they built a new house over them. There are some myrtles growing among them, but they look not well for want of trimming. The rest of the garden is all out of order, the orangery being the gardener's chief care; but it is capable of being made one of the best gardens in England, the soil being very agreeable, and a clear silver stream running through it.

5. Chelsea Physic Garden has great variety of plants both in and out of greenhouses. Their perennial green hedges and rows of different coloured herbs are very pretty, and so are their banks set with shades of herbs in the Irish-stitch way, but many plants of the garden were not in so good order as might be expected, and as would have been answerable to other things in it. After I had been there I heard that Mr. Watts the keeper of it was blamed for his neglect, and that he would be removed.

"6. My Lord Ranelagh's garden being but lately made, the plants are but small, but the plats, borders, and walks, are curiously kept and elegantly designed, having the advantage of opening into Chelsea College walks. The kitchen garden there lies very fine, with walks and seats, one of which being large and covered was then under the hands of a curious painter. The house is very fine within, all the rooms being wainscoted with Norway oak, and all the chimneys adorned with carving, as in the council chamber in Chelsea College.

"7. Arlington Garden being now in the hands of my Lord of Devonshire, is a fair plat, with good walks both airy and shady. There are six of the greatest earthern pots that are any where else, being at least two feet over within the edge, but they stand abroad, and have nothing in them but the tree holy-oke, an indifferent plant which grows well enough in the ground. Their green-house is very well and their green-yard excels; but their greens were not so bright and clean as farther off in the country, as if they suf fered something from the smutty air of the town.

"8. My Lord Fauconberg's Garden at Sutton Court has several pleasant walks and apartments in it; but the upper garden next the house is too irregular and the bowling-green too little to be commended. The green-house is very well made, but ill set. It is divided into three rooms, and very well furnished with good greens; but it is so placed that the sun shines not on the plants in winter when they most need its beams, the dwelling-house standing betwixt the sun and it. The maze or wilderness there, is very pretty, being set all with greens, with a cypress arbour in the middle supported with a well-wrought timber frame; of late it grows thin at the bottom by their let ting the fir-trees grow without their reach unclipped. The enclosure, wired in for white pheasants and partridges, is a fine apartment, especially in summer when the bones of Italian bayes are set out, and the timber walk with vines on the side is very fine when the blew pots are on the pedestals on the top of it, and so is the first pond with the greens at the head of it.

9. Sir William Temple being lately gone to live at his house in Farnham, his garden and green-house at West Sheen, where he has lived of late years, are not so well kept as they have been; many of his orange-trees and other greens being given to Sir John Temple his brother at East Sheen, and other gentlemen; but his greens that are remaining (being as good a stock as most green-houses have) are very fresh and thriving, the room they stand in suiting well with them, and being well contrived, if it be no defect in it that the floor is a foot at least within the ground, as is also the floor of the dwelling-house. He had attempted to have orange-trees to grow in the ground (as at Beddington), and for that purpose had enclosed a square of ten feet wide, with a low brick wall, and sheltered them with wood, but they would not do. His orange-trees, in summer, stand not in any particular square or enclosure, under some shelter, as most others do, but are disposed on pedestals of Portland

ble for nothing but his green-house, which he has had for many years. His orange, lemon, and myrtle trees, are as full and furnished as any in cases. He has a myrtle cut in shape of a chain, that is at least six feet high from the case, but the lower part is thin of leaves. The rest of the garden is very ordinary, and on the outside of his garden he has a warren, which makes the ground about his seat lie rudely, and sometimes the coneys work under the wall into the garden. 22. Mr. Richardson at East Barnet has a pretty garden with fine walks and good flowers; but the garden not being walled about, they have less summer fruit, yet are therefore the more industrious in managing the peach and apricot dwarf standards, which, they say, supply them plentifully with very good fruit. There is a good fish-pond in the middle of it, from which a broad gravel-walk leads to the highway, where a fair pair of broad gates, with a narrower on either side, open at the top to look through small bars, well wrought and well painted, are a great ornament to the garden. They have orange and lemon trees, but the wife and son being the managers of the garden (the husband being gouty and not minding it) they cannot prevail for a house for them other than a barn end.

"23. Captain Foster's Garden at Lambeth has many curiosities in it. His green-house is full of fresh and flourishing plants, and before it is the finest striped holly hedge that perhaps is in England. He has many myrtles, not the greatest but of the most fanciful shapes that are any where else. He has a frame walk of timber covered with vines, which with others running on most of his walls without prejudice to his lower trees, yield him a deal of wine. Of flowers he has a good choice, and his Virginia and other birds in a great variety, with his glass hive, add much to the pleasure of his garden.

"24. Monsieur Anthony Vesprit has a little garden of very choice things. His green-house has no great variety of plants, but what he has are of the best sort, and very well ordered. His oranges and lemons (fruit and tree) are extraordinary fair, and for lenticuses and Roman bayes he has choice above others.

25. Ricketts at Hoxton, has a large ground, and abundantly stocked with all manner of flowers, fruit trees and other garden plants, with lime trees which are now much planted; and for a sale garden, he has a very good green-house and well filled with fresh

greens, besides which he has another room filled with greens in pots. He has a greater stock of Assyrian thyme than any body else, for besides many pots of it, he has beds abroad with plenty of roots which they cover with mats and straw in winter. He sells his things with the dearest, and not taking due care to have his plants prove well, he is supposed to have lost much custom.

26. Pearson has not near so large a ground as Ricketts (on whom he almost joins.) and therefore has not so many trees, but of flowers he has great choice, and of anemones he avers that he has the best about London, and sells them only to gentlemen. He has no green-house, yet has abundance of myrtle and striped philaneas, with oranges and other greens, which he keeps safe enough under sheds, sunk a foot within ground, and covered with straw. He has abundance of cypresses, which at three feet high, he sells for fourpence a piece to those who take any number. He is moderate in his prices, and accounted very honest in his dealings, which gets him much chapmanry.

27. Darby at Hoxton has but a little garden, but is master of several curious greens, that other sale gardeners want, and which he saves from cold and winter weather, in green-houses of his own making. His fritalaria crassa (a green) had a flower on it, of the breadth of a half-crown, like an embroidered star of several colours; I saw not the like any where, no, not at Dr. Uvedale's, though he has the same plant. He raises many striped hollies by inoculation, though Captain Foster grafts them as we do apple trees. He is very curious in propagating greens, but is dear with them. He has a folio paper book in which he has pasted the leaves and flowers of almost all manner of plants, which make a pretty show, and are more instructive than any cuts in herbals.

28. Clements at Mile-End has no bigger a garden than Darby, but has more greens, yet not of such curious sorts. He keeps them in a green-house made with a light charge. He has vines in many places, round old trees, which they wind about. He made wine this year of his white muscadine and white frontiniac, better I thought than any French white wine. He keeps a shop of seeds, and plants in pots next the street. J. GIBSON."

Jan. 26, 1691.

Archeologia, vol. xii. page 181.