the Windsor bean-and admire, with me, how appositely the fair rotund form of its contents represents the honest British plumpness of the gracious potentate whose residence has furnished its title-while the clustering manner in which they hang from their luxuriant branches adumbrates the numerousness and concord of his royal offspring. But see where on this side spires the Coss, and on that spreads the brown Dutch, lettuces-plants that instruct us by their very nothingness! Those very leaves, that in the natural state are considered but as provender for the swine, O how sweetly, how gratefully do they salute the palate, when aided by the delicious provocatives of the cruet-stand!

"Let us hence collect the emptiness and unserviceableness of man in his natural state, and the high things of which he is capable, when heightened by the precious sauce of education. And let the mystic artichoke, which once more arrests my attention, read us a lecture on human life: may I not be indulged in the pleasing, even the fanciful supposition, that the leaves with which it is so munificently arrayed, may have been designed as emblems of the years through which we pass in our human pilgrimage, which, as each is exhausted, gradually unfold to us the choke of mortal miseries-those miseries, like that choke, covered over with a flimsy coating of comfort, which, moreover, we ever burn our fingers in endeavouring to obtain; till, at length arrived at the bottom, or death, our difficulties are at an end, and our sweets begin?

But what ambiguous root is here, whose flavour contradicts to our palates the report made by its form to our eyes?-The turnip-radish! O let it warn us against the wily foe, that cheats our credulous eyes with the smooth turnip of tenderness,

while inwardly he bites us with the sharp radish of rancour. Nor let yon hypocritical onion less admonish us of the insidious wretch, that can force tears from our eyes at one moment, and at the next annoy us with the foul breath of defamation; and, to render his machinations still more fatal, can lay us asleep while they are working. And see too, how those callous cucumbers, though ripened and fostered beneath the genial glass of protection, shall return the benefactions of their patron with coldness at least, if not with bitterness.

“And as at the moral uses of these vegetable riches, so let us admire at the contrivance which has accommodated each with its appropriate form and structure, which it could not exchange but with disadvantage. How should we smile to see the cumbrous cauliflower hanging, like an infant with a dropsied head, from the slim spires of the asparagus! or the diminutive pea, which we now behold so artfully emboxed in its commodious mansion, loosely scattered like the potatoe beneath the earth, while the hours of the impatient cook would pass in the tedious toil of separating the little balls from the clods amidst which they would be lost! and, in return, the rugged and hardy potatoe, transplanted from its subterraneous abode into the slender and silken shell which we now see so aptly tenanted by the miniature globes of the pea! What room should we find for extolling the artifice of creation, if the artichoke, of which we have already admired the progressive conformation, should exhibit its parts in an inverted series? if the moist and marrowy bottom were taken from its needful asylum in the inmost recesses of the plant, and laid bare to the beating hail and blowing blasts, while the tough and sturdy leaves should be translated from their present character

istical exposure, to an useless security within? In all these cases, would not the transposition equally offend the eye of a spectator, and the interests of each individual product?

"Thus rich, thus copious, does the page of horticulture appear, even in the feeble epitome of it which is here exhibited. Ah! would we but study it as it deserves! would we but resort as eagerly to its more refined and symbolical, as we do to its grosser though not more substantial advantages, we should find it speak a language of reason and religion, that would set all the subtleties of logic and all the systems of ethics at defiance. With such a clue to guide us through the labyrinths of life, no process would occur in the cultivation of our beds, which would not give a lesson to our consciences, while it provided a meal for our tables. We should not then water a plant, without dropping, at least from our mind's eyes, the fostering tears of transport over our growing virtues, or of repentance over our transgressions. We should not rake the stones or root the weeds from our foul ground, without at the same time raking out the foul passions with which our hearts are choked and over-run-or roll the gravel of our walks, without adverting at the same time to the rising turbulence of our desires, which need to be pressed down by the roller of reflection. Above all, we should not fail to impress on our hearts the fragility and transitoriness of all sublunary things, when we consider how soon the luxuries of the garden fade away, and elude the most confident hopes of hunger.

"O let the ambitious man learn to despise the ladder on which he stands, while he considers that yon towering artichoke shall shortly wither on its stem, or be scalded in the pot! Ŏ let the lover

withdraw his adoration from Chloe's eyes, when he sees the blushing apple of love droop and shrivel in the odious embraces of time, and the amorous pea torn from its darling stick, and sacrificed to the voracity of man! O let the epicure renounce his delicacies, while he reflects that, like yon cauliflower, he shall soon administer to the gluttony of the worm! and the fop his essences, while he faints at the fumes from those corrupted beans, so late the pride of vegetable fragrance!-In a word, let all the hunters after worldly delights resign their ardour for them, as they contemplate that period when kings and cabbages, popes and peas, sages and sallads, beauties and brocoli, artichokes and archbishops, lords and leeks, princes and parsnips, tyrants and turnips, cucumbers and conquerors, shall lie in one promiscuous heap of sapless putrefaction!"

I do seriously apprehend that these false models have been so successful in corrupting the taste of the public, that it may be necessary to apprise some few of my readers, that what they have been reading is really not sublime.

No 65. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10.

Πανία εν μεταβολη.

All things are in a constant flux.

ALTHOUGH I really believe that the reverses of fortune and the revolutions of matter have been felt in less proportion by me and my race than by the generality of the world, yet I must own that no sentiment is so frequently in my mind as that which is inspired by a view of the transitoriness of our natures, and the perishable allotment of every thing that appertains to man. I was grey-headed at twenty-five, and grey-headed I remain: and my mother assures me, that forty years have made but little alteration in my face or figure. But, in the mean time, what a wreck have I beheld of things around me! How many have been swept away, and how many have been led forwards by the hand of Time! How many have again succeeded and departed, and carried away with them all memory of their existence! How often have I marked the early promise of manhood bloom, ripen, wither, and drop off! How often have I seen the throne of beauty disputed, till both competitors have lost their claims! And what a list of queens in the empire of love have these forty years afforded! In the midst of such caducity, one almost wonders that man should be merry; but one wonders more that he should be sad; and, most of all, that he should be ambitious;