that it is bad; the same of paper. Weak
plants, or such as require a humid
atmosphere, are sent away covered with bell-
glasses held down tight by a sort of improvised
network. The pots are then set close
together on an elastic cushion of moss at the
bottom of the basket, plenty of the same
being thrust between them, to avoid any
jarring and quarrelling along the road. The
despatch of parcels of plants may vary a
little with the season; but, on the whole, it
continues steadily all the year round. Summer
is the time when things are sent to northern
countries, for the reason that it is the only
possible time. The North Pole is not a
kindly neighbour to, nor a hospitable
receiver of, hothouse plants during the winter
months.

The amount of material thus annually
consumed in the mere act of consignment, is
considerable. Thus; some three hundred
pounds of string take their departure; labels
ad infinitum; sticks, in bundles, which could
they hold together, would be stronger than
the most Æsopian father could desire.
Formerly, an immense number of newspapers
were used as packing-paper. It will not do
to apply them to the purposenow; because
the custom-house officials of certain governments
would tear up suspected journals,
leaving the poor plants all cold and naked,
for fear their wrappers should smuggle in any
treasonable matter offensive to the state.
Some five thousand bundles of moss are
yearly consumed, each weighing about twenty
pounds. This moss is beaten with sticks, like
the wool for mattrasses, to make it soft and
to get rid of impurities. The operation is
rather offensive,down-stairs; so V. H. intends
kicking up a dust in the attic, whence the
prepared article can be shot down through a
square wooden tube, to the feet of the nurses
who are putting pot-plants to bed.

Of the government horticultural school,
the museum, the library, and the printing-
office of coloured lithography, there is no
time, now, to say a word. Without them, it
will be believed, the head of the house has
quite enough to manage. Four thousand
three hundred and fifty-nine business letters
were received in the course of the year 'fifty-
five: every letter is registered. All letters
sent out are first copied by a press. One
hundred men and boys are employed on the
Flore des Serres, and fifty persons in the
horticultural department. If we did not
know what an amount of work some people
can and will get through with, we might say
that such an intricate concern was enough to
worry a man to death. One mode of facilitating
business is a code of coloured signals,
to be hung up on pins at the window of the
office, past which runs the principal thoroughfare
of the garden. One signal announces
that the chief is visible, and may be spoken
with by whoever wants; another, that the
head of the hothouses is required; another,
that the foreman of the propagators has a
communication awaiting his attendance;
another, that something is not quite right,
and that the gendarmes must be summoned
with all expedition. With all these details
to regulate, arrangements are still made for
the polite reception of visitors. At the front
gate is affixed a board, on which is legibly
inscribed, "Price of entrance, a franc each
person. The entire amount of the price of
entrance will be deducted from any
purchases which the visitors may make." That
is, a party of six ladies and gentlemen -- for
I will suppose that nursemaids and riotous
children with hoops and balls will be sent to
take their walks elsewhere—may enjoy a
delightful and instructive visit for the reasonable
charge of six francs; and, at the end of
it, they may carry home with them half-a-
dozen pretty plants, or more, for nothing.
Who can complain of such a tax as this,
imposed entirely to effect the exclusion of
troublesome and objectless idlers? English
nurserymen are only too well acquainted
with the genus, which seems to have been
created by Providence for the final cause of
exercising their patience.

At the gate, I will bid good bye to V. H.
for the present, impressed with the idea that
I have taken leave of a man of ability, of
clear and sound judgment, and with his
heart, as we say, in the right place.

MARRIAGE GAOLERS.

GAOLERS are of various kinds. There are
gaolers of criminal prisons—men of square
heads and powerful shoulders, who carry
colossal keys in their mighty hands, and look
as if they lived over a gunpowder train with
the match burning, and they knew it:
gaolers of financial prisons, jovial and lynx-
eyed, who pry sharply into feminine pockets
and baskets, and direct trembling women
to the six-in-ten and eight-in-four they
came to see: gaolers of political prisons—
of an apocryphal order these in England
—whose romantic daughters file off chains at
dead of night, drug guards with brandy and
laudanum—a fine thing in cholera times—
and, with a tear and a blessing, and lots of
money stolen from the till, set the captive
hero free to the infinite disgrace of their
gaoler relative: and there are gaolers
parochial and gaolers lunatic—nautical gaolers
and scholastic gaolers; but the worst gaoler
of all is the marital gaoler, as constituted
by the laws of our illogical merrie old
England.

An absolute lord is this marital gaoler.
He holds the person, property, and reputation
of his conjugal prisoner in as fast a gaol
as ever was built of granite and iron.
Society and law are the materials, unsubstantial
enough, out of which he has built his
house of duresse; but in those airy cells lie
more broken hearts than ever the sternest