e, or of Parkinson, have their espaliers,--their plums, their
pears,[5] and their grapes. These last are rare, however, (Parkinson
says sour, too,) and bear a great price in the London market. One or two
horticulturists of extraordinary enterprise have built greenhouses,
warmed, Evelyn says, "in a most ingenious way, by passing a brick flue
underneath the beds."

The lesser country-gentlemen, who have no establishments in town, rarely
venture up, for fear of the footpads on the heath, and the insolence of
the black-guard Cockneys. Their wives are staid dames, learned at the
brew-tub and in the buttery,--but not speaking French, nor wearing hoops
or patches. A great many of the older exotic plants have become
domesticated; and the goodwife has a flaming parterre at her door,--but
not valued one half so much as her bed of marjoram and thyme. She may
read King James's Bible, or, if a Non-Conformist, Baxter's "Saint's
Rest"; while the husband regales himself with a thumb-worn copy of "Sir
Fopling Flutter," or, if he live well into the closing years of the
century, with De Foe's "True-born Englishman."

Poetic feeling was more lacking in the country-life than in the
illustrative literature of the century. To say nothing of Milton's
brilliant little poems, "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," which flash all
over with the dews, there are the charming "Characters" of Sir Thomas
Overbury, and the graceful discourse of Sir William Temple. The poet
Drummond wrought a music out of the woods and waters which lingers
alluringly even now around the delightful cliffs and valleys of
Hawthornden. John Dryden, though a thorough cit, and a man who would
have preferred his arm-chair at Will's Coffee-House to Chatsworth and
the fee of all its lands, has yet touched most tenderly the "daisies
white" and the spring, in his "Flower and the Leaf."

But we skip a score of the poets, and bring our wet day to a close with
the naming of two honored pastorals. The first, in sober prose, is
nothing more nor less than Walton's "Angler." Its homeliness, its calm,
sweet pictures of fields and brooks, its dainty perfume of flowers, its
delicate shadowing-forth of the Christian sentiment which lived by old
English firesides, its simple, artless songs, (not always of the highest
style, but of a hearty naturalness that is infinitely better,)--these
make the "Angler" a book that stands among the thumb-worn. There is good
marrowy English in it; I know very few f