But I should perhaps find it a hard matter to
persuade my old farmer to my views between
here and Basingstoke; and already I have
arrived at the neat little Elizabethan station
whose name corresponds to the place on my
ticket, where I dismount, wishing the French
lady a good voyage. I notice again the
carriage full of convicts, still very cheerful,
and given to play practical jokes on each
other, in spite of their overseers. Most of
them are gnawing hunks of dry bread with
an appetite this fresh morning which quite
defeats the objects of prison fare. Their
attempt to give a cheer on leaving the station
is suppressed; and the engine pants away,
leaving me on the platform of the little
Elizabethan station, the only passenger who has
alighted there, with a whole ticket-collector
to myself.

There are plenty of writers who will prove
that kitchen-gardening is the very noblest
occupation of man. They will demonstrate
(like Mr. Comte, the French philosopher)
that the History of Civilisation has just five
phases, of which gardening is the culmination
and climax. They do not care a radish about
the ancient prejudice which associated philosophy
with cold water and a diet of roots.
They will draw you a dreary picture of the
original man, compelled to depend for existence
upon the spontaneous productions of
uncultivated wilds, and unable to obtain from
a whole acre of ground more than enough for
a single meal. The savage, the shepherd, the
ploughman, the trader, and the spade-man, or
market gardener, symbolise, according to
them, the successive epochs of human
progress. They can show the intimate connection
between kitchen gardens and free institutions;
between wholesome vegetables and
good Government; and will pooh-pooh—
perhaps very justly—all the so-called glories
of Louis Quatorze, because "he never placed
a single additional cabbage or potatoe upon
the tables of his subjects." While other men
do nothing but grumble at their trades or
professions, the gardener is generally
enthusiastic for his. What luxuriant phrases have
I been reading about scarlet runners! what
weighty arguments about carrots and turnips!
what gushes of eloquence in favour of
vegetable marrows! I should find it a hard matter
to name from memory a score of different kinds
of vegetables which appear on an English
dinner-table; yet how many volumes, pamphlets,
and tracts have, to my knowledge, been
written, besides weekly and monthly
magazines, to whom these few vegetables alone
furnish an endless theme. The ordinary
reader would scarcely believe how chatty a
writer may be upon rhubarb; or what pleasant
anecdotes may be told about asparagus.

The bare mention of a kitchen garden will
suffice to one enthusiastic writer for an allusion
to the wars of the Red and White Roses.
In the mind of another, potherbs are
associated with all the glories of Oriental fiction;
for did not the renowned Caliph Haroun Al
Raschid teach his trusty and well-beloved
brother, the Emperor Charlemagne (to whom
he was personally known, and was perhaps
no more a hero than King George the Third
to his valet-de-chambre), the value of potherbs
generally, and how to cultivate them? Turnips
suggest Charles Townshend, King George the
First's foreign secretary, called Turnip Townshend
by the foolish wits about Court, because
he noted the mode of cultivating that vegetable
in Hanover, when attending the king on an
excursion thither, and afterwards induced his
countrymen to adopt it. The annual value
of the turnips chiefly grown on stony lands or
on lands exhausted by previous crops in
England, which but for Townshend's efforts
would have lain fallow, or remained totally
uncultivated, is now estimated at fourteen
millions sterling. Surely here was a
benefactor to the human race, whose monument
history has raised, by calling him "Turnip
Townshend."

It is worth remarking that very few of those
vegetables which are now so common among
us are natives of these isles. The potatoe—
still a valuable servant, though much broken
up in constitution of late years—comes, as
every one knows, from America. The common
pea is supposed to be only strictly at home
in Syria. Beans are from Egypt or Persia.
Onions, in all their varieties, are also from the
East. Even the leek the Welchman has no
right to stick in his hat as a national emblem;
the same being a native of Switzerland. The
Cos lettuce ought to be a native of the island
of Cos. Cauliflowers and garden cress are
from Cyprus; spinach from Western Asia;
endive from Japan; radishes from China;
rhubarb from Tartary; artichokes from the
shores of the Mediterranean. Jerusalem
artichokes are not from Jerusalem, but from
South America, the word Jerusalem being a
mere corruption arising from an accidental
resemblance in sound between that word and
their Spanish name. Turnips and carrots are
found wild here; but experiments have
proved that cultivation could not have
converted the native variety into that which we
are accustomed to eat. The Flemish refugees
in Queen Elizabeth's time brought the carrot
with them, and planted it first at Sandwich.
The turnip probably found its way hither by
the same means. There is a tombstone to be
seen still, I believe, in the churchyard of
Wimbourne St. Giles', in Dorsetshire, erected to the
introducer of cabbages, with a presentation
of a cabbage carved in stone at the foot.
Potatoes are for ever associated with Sir Walter
Raleigh, since whose time they have achieved
their extraordinary revolution in the kitchen
garden. Mr. Myatt, of Deptford, who first
cultivated rhubarb for the market is, I
think, still living. Only forty years ago he
first sent five bunches of this vegetable to
the Borough Market; of which he prevailed
upon some one to purchase three by way of