urt, Ph[oe]be said
to me, "A'n't you glad that poor people can have such pleasures?" I told
her it doubled my gratification to witness the enjoyment, and to trace
the hand which conferred it; for she had owned it was _their_ work. "We
have always," replied Ph[oe]be, "a particular satisfaction in observing
a neat little flower-garden about a cottage, because it holds out a
comfortable indication that the inhabitants are free from absolute want,
before they think of these little embellishments."

"It looks, also," said Miss Stanley, "as if the woman, instead of
spending her few leisure moments in gadding abroad, employed them in
adorning her little habitation, in order to make it more attractive to
her husband. And we know more than one instance in this village in which
the man has been led to give up the public-house, by the innocent
ambition of improving on her labors."

I asked her what first inspired her with such fondness for gardening,
and how she had acquired so much skill and taste in this elegant art?
She blushed and said she was afraid I should think her romantic, if
she were to confess that she had caught both the taste and the passion,
as far as she possessed either, from an early and intimate acquaintance
with the Paradise Lost, of which she considered the beautiful
descriptions of scenery and plantations as the best precepts for
landscape gardening. "Milton," she said, "both excited the taste and
supplied the rules. He taught the art and inspired the love of it." From
the gardens of Paradise the transition was easy and natural. On my
asking her opinion of this portrait, as drawn by Milton, she replied,
"That she considered Eve, in her state of innocence, as the most
beautiful model of the delicacy, propriety, grace, and elegance of the
female character which any poet ever exhibited. Even after her fall,"
added she, "there is something wonderfully touching in her remorse, and
affecting in her contrition."

"We are probably," replied I, "more deeply affected with the beautifully
contrite expressions of repentance in our first parents, from being so
deeply involved in the consequences of the offense which occasioned it."

"And yet," replied she, "I am a little affronted with the poet, that
while, with a noble justness, he represents Adam's grief at his
expulsion, as chiefly arising from his being banished from the presence
of his Maker, the sorrows of Eve seem too much to arise from being
banished from her