dens at a cheap rate. They all say that they could purchase their vegetables in the market for the amount of their rental and incidental expenses; but then, they get the health and the enjoyment, and their fruit and vegetables they get so fresh.

There are, according to a personal examination made by myself, now, upwards of 5000 of these gardens, containing, as single gardens, 400 square yards each, the general scale of a garden; though a good many are held as double, and even treble gardens. These let at from a half-penny to three half-pence per yard; but averaged at three farthings, make a rental of 11. 5s. per garden, or a total of 62507. Five thousand gardens of 400 yards each of clear garden ground, independent of fences and roads, give 413 acres and about a rood. Now, if we add one-fifth for fences and roads, the total quantity of land occupied is 496 acres, or we may say, in round numbers, 500 acres. Here then, 500 acres, which, at fifty shillings an acre-a good rent for ordinary purposes, would yield a rent of 12507.; yield, by being converted into gardens, a rent of 62507., or a clear profit of 50007.

Thus, it is evident, that any persons willing to promote the taste for gardening in the neighbourhood of towns, might double, in many instances, the ordinary rent of the land, and yet let it in gardens at half the price of these Nottingham ones. Even where land in the vicinity of a large town is very highly rented, a half-penny a yard, and ten gardens to the acre, fences and roads included, would produce 87. 6s. 8d. per acre; no contemptible sum; to say nothing of the real kindness of the accommodation, and the health, pleasure, and pure taste communicated to their fellow men.

Whilst, against the increased risk of loss, and the increased trouble of the collection of rent, are to be set the value of the garden stock, fruit-trees, shrubs, and flower-roots, and the summer-houses, which enhance the value to the next tenant.

Here I close this chapter, and this department of my work,—the habits and amusements of the people. It is a subject to which I attach no common importance. The people make the majority of our race; and if they are all equally the objects of that divine care which created them, they must be equally the objects of our truest sympathies. This has not hitherto been sufficiently considered: but every day that consideration must be forced more and more upon us; and we shall be made to feel that no philosophy is good which does not include the poor in its theory; no religion is sound, which does not recognize their kinship; no legislation is wise which does not operate for their physical and intellectual benefit; and no country can be said to be truly prosperous, where the multitude is not respectable, enlightened, moral, and happy.

Let us all endeavour to hasten this period, as a living proof that Christianity is really preached to the poor; and that our knowledge has produced the most felicitous of its genuine fruits, in peopling this great nation with a race such as no nation has yet possessed; such as may eat,

Well earned, the bread of service, yet may have

A mounting spirit;-one that entertains

Scorn of base action, deed dishonorable,
Or aught unseemly.

Charles Lamb.

312

CHAPTER XIII.

SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY.

Sonst stuerzte sich der Himmels-Liebe Kuss
Auf mich herab, in ernster Sabbathstille ;

Da klang so ahndungsvoll des Glockentones Fuelle,
Und ein Gebet war bruenstiger Genuss :

Ein unbegreiflich holdes Sehnen

Trieb mich durch Wald und Wiesen hinzugehn,
Und unter tausend heissen Thraenen,

Fuehlt' ich mir eine Welt entstehn.

Faust.

In other days, the kiss of heavenly love descended upon me in the solemn stillness of the sabbath; then the full-toned bell sounded so fraught with mystic meaning, and a prayer was vivid enjoyment. A longing, inconceivably sweet, drove me forth to wander over wood and plain, and amid a thousand burning tears, I felt a world rise up Hayward's Translation.

to me.

GOETHE, in his Faust, has given a very lively description of a German multitude bursting out of the city to enjoy an Easter Sunday;-mechanics, students, citizens' daughters, servant girls, townsmen, beggars, old women, ready to tell fortunes, soldiers, and amongst the rest, his hero Faust, and his friend Wagner, proceeding to enjoy a country walk. They reach a rising

ground; and Faust says-"Turn and look back from this rising ground upon the town. From forth the gloomy portal presses a motley crowd. Every one suns himself delightedly to-day. They celebrate the rising of the LORD, for they themselves have arisen: from the dark rooms of mean houses; from the bondage of mechanical drudgery; from the confinement of gables and roofs; from the stifling narrowness of streets; from the venerable gloom of churches-are they raised up to the open light of day. But look! look! how quickly the mass is scattering itself through the gardens and fields; how the river, broad and long, tosses many a merry bark upon its surface; and how this last wherry, overladen almost to sinking, moves off. Even from the farthest paths of the mountain, gay-coloured dresses glance upon us. I hear already the bustle of the village. This is the true heaven of the multitude; big and little are huzzaing joyously. Here I am a man-here I may be one."

Making allowance for the difference of national manners, this might serve for a picture of Sunday in the neighbourhood of a large town in England. Human nature is the same everywhere. The girls are looking out for sweethearts; and both mechanics and students are seeking after the best beer and the prettiest girl:

Ein starkes Bier, ein beitzender Toback,

Und eine Magd im Putz dass ist nun mein Geschmack.

"Strong beer, stinging tobacco, and a girl all in her best, that is the taste for me," cries one: and so it is here and everywhere. See how the multitudes of our large manufacturing towns, and of London spend

their Sundays. They pour out into the country in all directions, but it is not to enjoy the country only. They do enjoy the country; but it is because it heightens their wild delight in smoking, drinking, and flirtation. Who does not know what innumerable haunts there are within five, ten, or even twenty miles round London, to which these classes repair on Sundays: tea-houses and tea-gardens, country inns, hedge-alehouses, all the old and noted places where good beer and tobacco, merry company, and noisy politics are to be found? Norwood, Greenwich, Richmond, Hampton-Court, Windsor, the Nore, HerneBay, Gravesend, Margate; and those old-fashioned places of resort that Hone gives you glimpses of; such as Copenhagen-House, the Sluice-House, Canonbury, etc.—what swarming votaries have they all.* And what an immensity of new regions will the railroads that are now beginning to stretch their lines from the metropolis in different directions, lay openterræ incognitæ, as it were, to the millions that in the

The following calculation, made on Whit-Monday 1835, may give some idea of the number of similar pleasure-seekers on a fine summer Sunday. On Monday, between eight in the morning and nine at night, 191 steam-vessels passed through the Pool to and from Margate, Herne-Bay, Sheerness, Southend, the Nore, Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich, including several on their way to and from Scotland, Ireland, and the continent. Each vessel averaged, at least, 500 persons. The above calculation was made by Mr. Brown, a boat builder in Wapping, who, with his servants, watched them all day. But many passed after nine, swelling the number to upwards of 200; so that more than 100,000 persons must have been afloat in the steamers on Monday, exclusive of the passengers in small boats. Several steam-vessels carried 800 and 900 souls each to the Nore and back. One steam-vessel brought back from Greenwich 1000 persons, another 1300, and a third was actually crowded with 1500 passengers.