wicker ark. How greedily she bites at a
floral bait! Were she a fine fat turbot, I
should know how to catch her. But she
shall not have the next lot, the shark! She
entombs flowers in her maid's vast basket as
fast as a milch-cow swallows blades of grass.
This lovely crimson double primrose shall be
mine, for the monstrously extravagant price
of twenty-live centimes, without haggling.
Match that in Covent Garden, for twopence-
halfpenny, if you can! Our vessels are laden,
we can stow no more on board with safety.
For eightpence halfpenny, English money, I
am possessed of a nice little basket-full of
flowers, each with its roots so workmanly
packed in a ball of earth, that they will
travel from the Place Jean Bart to mademoiselle's
parterre, without being aware of the
change, unless you are so indiscreet as to tell
them of it.

To discover in part whence all this
horticultural abundance comes, we will quietly
follow that fat old woman, who is going home
from market on donkey-back with her
empty butter-box behind her sheep's-fleece
saddle. Immediately on leaving the gates of
Dunkerque, by crossing a bridge to the left,
we are in Rosendaël. It is not a dale, but a
sandy flat. A few roses may be found
by-and-by, but far more vulgar vegetables pre-
dominate. You enter a series of kitchen
gardens, in which the art is carried to the
utmost, with the least possible artificial aid.
No cloches, or bell-glasses, are visible. The
neighbouring sea prevents extreme severity
of frost; and melons, and such like Indians
on short furlough, are not taken in and done
for here. In almost every garden, the
indispensable fixture is a tank of brick for liquid
manure. This ambrosial soup (which scatters
o'er the daël anything but rosy odours) is
brought from the town in long locomotive-
like barrels on wheels, drawn by pairs or
leashes of such handsome grey horses, that,
after seeing them, no lady need feel offended
at being called a Flanders mare by sneering
royalty. Liquid manure is the grand secret,
the powder of projection in Flemish gardening;
it converts sand into gold. If personally-
untidy Hervey had travelled in Flanders, he
would have been caught and washed clean
for the sake of the excellent fertiliser, the
fluid result of his ablutions.

High culture and well-contrived shelter
have converted a sandbank into a wilderness
of esculents; there are forests of asparagus
(as yet in its early drumstick phase), and
prairies of salading. The hedges are kept
beautifully clean at foot by digging, not hoeing, the
earth on each side of their roots. The
berceaux, or arbours composed entirely of fruit-
trees, would give our country gardeners some
trouble to prune them into shape. The difficulty
is here got over by a double ladder, like
the letter A without the cross-stroke. The
sandy soil is warm and dry, and therefore
early. Superabundant moisture soon filters
away, and is let off at the first ebb-tide into
the Furnes canal. Long rows of short stunted
poIlard willows serve for boundaries, and
afford protection, by acting as the columns to
which are attached fragile walls of reed,
straw, and even of asparagus halm. Within
the inclosures, by a cunning device, the
stronger things are made to shelter and
nurse the weaker. Rows of low apple-trees,
with a rank-and-file underwood of currant
and gooseberry bushes — the latter now and
then so tall and luxuriant as to acquire the
character of weeping gooseberries — temper
the wind to the tender seedlings. In the area
of these fruit-encircled squares, not a weed is
to be seen, if you would give a five-franc
piece for it. Horticultural cleanliness is
exhibited in Flemish perfection. Amidst a
tribe consisting of gardeners only, it becomes
a social, quite as much as an individual duty.
The thistle, which scatters its down-winged
seeds undisturbed, inflicts a greater amount
of harm on the community at large, than on
the sluggard who harbours it. I do believe
that, in Rosendaël, the apparition of a good
large tuft of groundsel run to seed in the
midst of any vegetable crop — supposing such
an enormity possible — would cause its
proprietor to be charivari'd as a public nuisance
by his disgusted neighbours. On the same
principle, poultry are tabooed. Not a solitary
cock and hen did I see in all Rosendaël,
though I heard plenty of nightingales. As
the ancients sacrificed goats to Bacchus,
because they devour vines so greedily as to put
an effectual stopper on wine-growing, so the
Rosendaëlers feel it a matter of duty to
immolate cocks and hens, even cochin-chinas,
before the altar of the garden god. Some.
tradition of the tulip mania may be current
amongst them; but they are still in incredulous
ignorance of the fact that an egg, in
England, will sell for as much as a pullet in
France. A few snarling, yapping dogs, of
only moderate size and savageness, are
regarded as more profitable live stock to keep.

A striking feature of Rosendaël, common
to all good kitchen gardens, is the close and
hard-pressed succession of crops. Little
cabbages and cauliflowers of progressive ages,
pricked out for gradual transplantation;
forward lettuces quincunxed amongst backward
greens; radishes broadcast amongst straight
rows of over-year's onions; little lettuces,
loosely broadcast amongst platoons of
summer cabbages; double stocks, and other
popular flowers, grown on a large scale as
crops; carrots intended to produce seed this
summer, planted amongst autumn-sown
onions that are meant to be drawn green;
spinach sown amongst autumn-planted
cabbages; continuous thickets of leeks, like
bamboo jungles in miniature, whose standing-
place, as fast as they quit it, is occupied by
another generation of greens; — these are a
few of the ways and means by which the
Rosendaëlers pay their rent.