have been poring over my book, musicians,
measuring with deliberate malignity some
twenty paces from my ears, have often blown
the brains nearly out of my head; yet here,
under the trees and autumn sky with the
sea breeze upon my cheeks, I can receive
even you into my large heart and enjoy the
produce of your windy industry. My large
heart has also room for admiration of these
fresh-complexioned daughters of Rye. For
the first time in my existence I enjoy the
contemplation of Rye faces. I enjoy this double-
distilled essence of all maidenly gentility,
which looks so comical with limp hair and a
curly lip; this fine mass of blue satin. I
should like to see this resplendency feeding
pigs on a washing day in her print dress,
with her sleeves tucked up; her elbows
kissed by the suds. She looks contemptuously
at my nankeen and pumps as I sit quietly
upon a bench by which she floats. She leans
upon the arm of a decided agriculturist,
whose pigs she will feed hereafter when
they are a happy couple. They are not
a happy couple now; for I can see that
the young lady is flirting.—Here, in the wake
of a portentous portly gentleman, come two
buttercups of daughters. There is a bluebell
with a bended head. Poor blossom!
born in vain among the dairies; smell of
cows will never cure her; only death can
ever dim the fatal lustre that is in her
eye. The throng increases—reverend gentlemen,
country gentlemen, bankers, tradesmen,
millers; all with wives and daughters.
Outside there hang the lookers-on. They are
receiving with great joy notes to an incredible
amount scattered recklessly among them by
the band. I cease to share this joy. I plunge
into the tent.

A writing on the wall, which spreads over
its whole surface, traced in the divine
material of leaves and flowers, faces me as I
enter. "The Earth," it says, "is the Lord's,
and the fulness thereof." So my eye falls
from this upon the fruits and flowers which
surround me, formed in quaint patterns and
wreaths, while human holiday faces shine
among them, each hung with its own wreath
of smiles. This is the thing I came to see, or
at least part of it. In this first tent, the
fruits and flowers are exhibited by gentlemen
and ladies for subscribers' prizes, which are
simply cards; cottagers receive cards of the
same kind with money. There are more
devices on the walls tastefully and laboriously
executed: there are Cupids in baskets: there
are temples built of flowers. There is also a
colossal pair of scales made with plants,
having in one scale an admirably disposed
group of real vegetables, and in the other
scale a group of flowers and fruit; the
turnips and carrots being represented—with
a due regard to the moral of a cottage
garden-show—as outweighing the nectarines
and roses. Much time and thought must
have been spent upon this, as upon many
other of the contributions of subscribers.
Well done; I understand this and I like it.
I have nobody to talk to, but I think to
myself very much as follows:—

This rustic Horticultural Society is
established to promote habits of industry, economy,
and management among the labouring
cottagers. It offers—together with a card of
honour that may be suspended from the
cottage wall—prizes of money for the best
specimens of the most useful vegetables:—
for the best sent from each parish, and for the
best produced in the whole district. It offers
similar prizes for the best specimens of less
important vegetables, of useful fruits, of
inexpensive cottage garden flowers, and of
bees'-wax and honey. Such Societies are
common in this country, and their shows,
when they are well managed, form wholesome
incidents in English rural life; they are
among the pleasant, peaceful features of this
autumn season. I have visited such gatherings
before, but have not always come away
from them exactly satisfied. Money prizes
are acceptable enough by the competitors,
considering the rate of income among rustic
labourers. In this instance—as is usual and
right—the cottage competition is confined to
men holding not more than a quarter of an
acre of ground; agricultural labourers,
mechanics, and others in trade—not being
master-men—whose weekly wages do not
exceed an average of seventeen and sixpence.
The danger in all these cases is the adoption
of a wrong tone by the gentry who undertake
to patronise the cottage horticulturists. What
I like about these laborious inscriptions done
in leaves and grasses, and these floral temples,
scales, and basketed Cupids, is the plain fact
which they reveal to the cottagers, that it is
not they only who have looked forward to the
show-day, but that the ladies and gentlemen
have plunged into its fascinations with as true
a good will as themselves: that they also have
spent their wits on the production of a
something that shall win applause and be a credit
to the exhibition. What I like in this Society
is, that the rich and poor co-operate in
exhibiting; all equally desirous to obtain the
card of honour, common to all classes. The
money prize with which the card of the
cottager alone is gilded or silvered, may be
given in this way with a good grace, and
need not take the form of supercilious
encouragement.

In this tent there is a table spread with
produce that has been sent in by servants of
the South-Eastern railway, residing on that
portion of the railway which is contained in
the Rye district. The South-Eastern Railway
Company deserves credit for its little vote of
a few guineas for the maintenance of efficiency
on such a branch line as horticulture. To
promote a taste for flower-pots in its servants
is to keep within moderate bounds a taste for
pots of beer, and it moreover testifies a
kindliness which excites to faithful service, when