les, _June 7_.

"This letter comes to you from my orangery, which I intend to
reform as much as I can, according to your ingenious model, and
shall only beg of you to communicate to me your secret of
preserving grass-plots in a covered room;[317] for in the climate
where my country-seat lies, they require rain and dews as well as
sun and fresh air, and cannot live upon such fine food as your
'sifted weather.' I must likewise desire you to write over your
greenhouse the following motto:

"_Hic ver perpetuum, atque alienis mensibus aestas._

instead of your

"_O! qui me gelidis sub montibus Haemi
Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!_[318]

which, under favour, is the panting of one in summer after cool
shades, and not of one in winter after a summer-house. The rest of
your plan is very beautiful; and that your friend who has so well
described it may enjoy it many winters, is the hearty wish of

"His and your Unknown," &c.

This oversight of a grass-plot in my friend's greenhouse, puts me in
mind of a like inconsistency in a celebrated picture, where Moses is
represented as striking a rock, and the Children of Israel quenching
their thirst at the waters that flow from it, and run through a
beautiful landscape of groves and meadows, which could not flourish in a
place where water was to have been found only by a miracle.

The next letter comes to me from a Kentish yeoman, who is very angry
with me for my advice to parents, occasioned by the amours of Sylvia and
Philander, as related in my paper, No. 185:

"SQUIRE BICKERSTAFF,

"I don't know by what chance one of your _Tatlers_ is got into my
family, and has almost turned the brains of my eldest daughter
Winifred, who has been so undutiful as to fall in love of her own
head, and tells me a foolish heathen story that she has read in
your paper to persuade me to give my consent. I am too wise to let
children have their own wills in a business like marriage. It is a
matter in which neither I myself, nor any of my kindred, were ever
humoured. My wife and I never pretended to love one another like
your Sylvias and Philanders; and yet if you saw our fireside, you
would be satisfied we are not always a-squabbling. For my part, I
think that where man and woman come together b