or a Thames water-man. How many thousand householders about this
city have a "bit of glass" devoted to geraniums and fuchsias and the
like! They started with more ambitious views, but successive
disappointments have taught modesty, if not despair. The poor man now
contents himself with anything that will keep tolerably green and show
some spindling flower. The fact is, that hardy plants under glass
demand skilful treatment--all their surroundings are unnatural, and with
insect pest on one hand, mildew on the other, an amateur stands betwixt
the devil and the deep sea. Under those circumstances common plants
become really capricious--that is, being ruled by no principles easy to
grasp and immutable in operation, their discomfort shows itself in
perplexing forms. But such species of orchids as a poor man would think
of growing are incapable of pranks. For one shilling he can buy a manual
which will teach him what these species are, and most of the things
necessary for him to understand besides. An expenditure of five pounds
will set him up for life and beyond--since orchids are immortal. Nothing
else is needed save intelligence.

Not even heat, since his collection will be "cool" naturally; if frost
be excluded, that is enough. I should not have ventured to say this some
few years ago--before, in fact, I had visited St. Albans. But in the
cool house of that palace of enchantment with which Mr. Sander has
adorned the antique borough, before the heating arrangements were quite
complete though the shelves were occupied, often the glass would fall
very low into the thirties. I could never learn distinctly that mischief
followed, though Mr. Godseff did not like it at all. One who beheld the
sight when those fields of Odontoglossum burst into bloom might well
entertain a doubt whether improvement was possible. There is nothing to
approach it in this lower world. I cannot forbear to indicate one
picture in the grand gallery. Fancy a corridor four hundred feet long,
six wide, roofed with square baskets hanging from the glass as close as
they will fit. Suspend to each of these--how many hundreds or thousands
has never been computed--one or more garlands of snowy flowers, a
thicket overhead such as one might behold in a tropic forest, with
myriads of white butterflies clustering amongst the vines. But
imagination cannot bear mortal man thus far. "Upon the banks of
Paradise" those "twa clerks" may have seen the like; yet, had they do