experiment. The other two he brought back
unsold.

This is as much as I can tell the reader
about vegetables, on my walk from the
station to Mr. Trench's house. Mr. Trench
(whose modesty prefers that pseudonym, and
who would not be made famous on any account)
is quite a model market-gardener. There are
members of his profession who have nothing
to tell about it, except that it is a ruinous
business, to which they have moodily resigned
themselves with the determination of losing
their capital, and bringing themselves and
families to the workhouse. Some of them
have been pursuing this reckless course all
their lives, and are bringing up their sons to
achieve the work of destruction. They are
philanthropically. anxious not to tell the world
anything about it. Perhaps they are right
and dread competition. A recital of the
sufferings and privations of Robinson Crusoe
has induced many a boy to go to sea. Who
knows what might be the result of the most
faithful picture of their laborious life, and
continual losses? My market-gardener,
however, is not one of these; he knows how to
manage things well enough to get a
comfortable income out of his capital and
industry; and he does not think of making a
secret that a comfortable income is to be
made by such means. The table in Mr.
Trench's cool and shady sitting-room is
bestrown with letters and papers; books lie about
there everywhere; and portraits ornament
the walls, as well as one or two testimonials
from certain societies, framed and glazed. A
fresh smell of mould and flowers comes
through the window from the greenhouse,
and lingers in the room, Cowper might have
written his Task here; and I, who am by no
means poetical, feel as if I could sit down in
that worn arm-chair, and while the linnet in
his cage at the window chirps and pecks and
drops his seed-husks on the floor, could indite
something to my mistress' eyebrow, above
that mediocrity which the gods abhor.

Mr. Trench offers to walk with me through
his hundred acres of ground, warning me not
to expect to find anything very exciting in
market-gardening. I reply, that I am not in
search of excitement; but only desirous of
seeing with my own eyes something of the
routine of those operations, of whose magical
results I have heard so often. My modest
friend is as anxious to repudiate the employment
of magic as if King James were still
upon the throne, and Matthew Hopkins a
neighbour of his; and further reminds me,
that only a very small part of that routine
can be seen at one time, and that to understand
market-gardening it would be necessary
to remain there a whole year, going progressively
through the Gardener's Calendar. All
these objections (which I listen to as I would
to the good housewife's depreciation of her
own Christmas pudding), being got over we
go into a field of cabbages, through the green-
house again, and across a clean yard paved
with pebbles, where men are stacking
cabbages in a waggon, apparently with the
ambition of the builders of Babel; and
through a row of sheds, where men and
women are washing and tying vegetables in
bundles.

"Nothing very remarkable in a field of
cabbages," says my conductor.

"Very large and healthy-looking." I note
the blue bloom upon them, and the glistening
drops of dew collected in the wrinkles of their
leaves.

"Of course," replies my conductor. "Before
this ground was planted, you see, every bit
was dug up two spades deep. We never
have a plough here. Then it was thoroughly
manured a good horseload to every thirty
square feet of ground."

"Rather expensive."

"Why, we put as much as twelve pounds'
worth of manure to a single acre. Supposing
my land could be all clear, and I wanted to
plant the whole of it with cabbages, I must
pay twelve hundred pounds down for manure
to begin with; without considering the cost
of digging, and attending to the crop till it
comes to maturity, gathering, taking to
market, &c."

"And rent," I suggest.

"Nine pounds a year for every acre," says
my friend, "besides ten shillings for tithes,
which the Church is none the better for."

"How many of these plants are produced
on an acre of ground?"

"Nothing easier than to calculate. You
see they are all at exactly equal distances.
The plants are twenty inches apart, and the
rows eighteen inches. That's the distance they
grow best at." My conductor takes out a
rule and proves the correctness of this to a
nicety, which convinces me that there is no
slovenliness in his ground. "That'll give,"
he continues—with a promptitude which
makes me suspect that he must have been
once a calculating boy—"that'll give seventeen
thousand cabbages to an acre. I could
grow near upon a couple of millions at once,
if I chose."

I indulge involuntarily in Dominic
Sampson's favourite exclamation; and ask, "What
those women yonder are raking about for?"

"Hoeing out the weeds. Every weed or
blade of grass that could steal a grain of
nourishment from the ground is cut down as
fast as it appears: our plan is to keep all
employed, ground, men, and horses. This
piece of ground, for example, we shall begin
to plant again the moment a portion of it
is cleared."

"What will be the next crop?"

"I don't know. Whatever is ready for
planting."

"But," I ask, "what is that 'succession ot
crops' which I have always believed so necessary,
unless you follow the old plan of letting
the land lie fallow? What is the 'four-course