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    at the back of a little mud cottage ; ' and talked of birds , and migrations through Holland into Italy , and Romulus and Remus , and the rookery , and ' Evenings at home / until they got back to tea .

    Next they attended to the flower-garden . ' As the weather was still mild and open , they sowed sweet-peas , lupins , candytuft , lark-spurs , ( bless their sweet names , and sweeter selves , ) Virginia stock , mignionette , major convolvulus , minor convolvulus , and other annuals . ' These are the annuals for our eyes . Not Colburn , Longman , nor Ackerman , will ever match them for either poetry or picture . It must be a delicious feeling to be accessory to their production . But gardening , as well as bookselling , is commonly only an art , and too often sinks down into merely a trade . Adam Stock is trained to better things ; and all his digging and pruning , and taking the suckers from the shrubs , and earthing up the auriculas , are delightful , because they are done in love , and for the sake of the beauty which is thus generated and cherished . While dressing the strawberry bed , Adam observed a bee bustling about in the cup of a crocus ; apropos to which are four sweet pages about . bees and their sayings and doings , for they seem , at least , to talk by signs . Afterwards we have a walk to the mill ,

    through the fields where men are ploughing , sowing , and harrowing ; whereupon Mr . Stock moralizes upon the less harrowing appearance of the fields than it would be were the labourers transformed into soldiers , and the occupation of preparing food into that of destroying life . There is a tail to this moral which we do not exactly like ; a coat-tail , for it relates to dress .

    ' Adam said *• he should like to have such fine dresses as the soldier , and be able to buy them like the ploughman . > J " Well , " said his father , 11 is very natural that you , who are but a little boy , should like those fine gay clothes , for the soldiers themselves like them very much . You have only to be diligent and honest , and you will be able to purchase for yourself much handsomer clothes than a soldier ' s ; and you will be a great deal more respected and beloved by good men /''—p . 32 .

    The love offine gay clothes has not much that is ' natural' in it . Nor is the desire of them an expedient means for stimulating " exertion . Nor do the diligence and honesty , which are put forth

    for the purpose of becoming able to purchase them , deserve the respect and love of good men . The appetite for finery is engendered of ignorance and vanity , and no community deserves to be called thoroughly civilized until it is entirely exploded . The desire for a showy and costly appearance , whether it be simply a craving for attention to the individual , or a manifesto of his wealth tnul station , is one of the remains of barbarism amongst us . Gentleman or lady wearing expensive or fashionable clothes for fcuch purposes , is but a variation of the advertisement vehicle , which one sometimes sees a poor donkey dragging about the

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    Adam the Gardener . 143

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  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 143, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/59/