ntenanced the popular
clamour, and crushed the rising enterprise of De Serres. The monarch was
wiser than the minister. The book had made sufficient noise to reach the
ear of Henry IV.; who desired the author to draw up a memoir on the
subject, from which the king was induced to plant mulberry-trees in all
the royal gardens; and having imported the eggs of silk-worms from
Spain, this patriotic monarch gave up his orangeries, which he
considered but as his private gratification, for that leaf which,
converted into silk, became a part of the national wealth. It is to De
Serres, who introduced the plantations of mulberry-trees, that the
commerce of France owes one of her staple commodities; and although the
patriot encountered the hostility of the prime minister, and the hasty
prejudices of the populace in his own day, yet his name at this moment
is fresh in the hearts of his fellow-citizens; for I have just received
a medal, the gift of a literary friend from Paris, which bears his
portrait, with the reverse, "_Societe de Agriculture du Departement de
la Seine_." It was struck in 1807. The same honour is the right of
Evelyn from the British nation.

There was a period when the spirit of plantation was prevalent in this
kingdom; it probably originated from the ravages of the soldiery during
the civil wars. A man, whose retired modesty has perhaps obscured his
claims on our regard, the intimate friend of the great spirits of that
age, by birth a Pole, but whose mother had probably been an
Englishwoman, Samuel Hartlib, to whom Milton addressed his tract on
education, published every manuscript he collected on the subjects of
horticulture and agriculture. The public good he effected attracted the
notice of Cromwell, who rewarded him with a pension, which after the
restoration of Charles II. was suffered to lapse, and Hartlib died in
utter neglect and poverty. One of his tracts is "A design for plenty by
an universal planting of fruit-trees." The project consisted in
inclosing the waste lands and commons, and appointing officers, whom he
calls fruiterers, or wood-wards, to see the plantations were duly
attended to. The writer of this project observes on fruits, that it is a
sort of provisions so natural to the taste, that the poor man and even
the child will prefer it before better food, "as the story goeth," which
he has preserved in these ancient and simple lines:--

The poor man's child invited was to dine,
With f