a curious old garden. In the preface he
says, "not to mention the profit to a family, nothing conduces more to a
man's health, especially to one that lives a sedentary life. If these
observations and experiments I have made in gardening, be of use to any
by drawing him to a way of diversion that will preserve his health, and
perhaps put him upon a meditation on the great works of the creation,
let him give the Creator the praise." He also published "The Gentleman
Gardener Instructed;" eighth edition, 12mo. 1769.

DAVID STEVENSON, in 1746, published in 12mo. The Gentleman Gardener
Instructed. Is this the same book as the above?

STEPHEN SWITZER, of whose private history so very little is known, but
whose works shew him to have been an honest, unassuming, humane,
religious, most industrious, and ingenious man. We only know that he had
a garden on Milbank, and another _near_ Vauxhall; and that he died, I
believe, about 1745. He dates his Letter on the Cythesis, from New
Palace Yard, 1730. He was a native of _Hampshire_; for in his Fruit
Gardener, speaking of walnut-trees, he says, "The best I ever saw are
those that grow upon chalk. Such are those that grow about _Ewell_, near
_Epsom_, and in many places of my own native county of _Hampshire_,
there being one cut down some few years ago in the Park belonging to the
Right Honourable the Lady _Russell_, at _Stratton_, that did spread, at
least, fifty yards diameter." He acknowledges, without murmuring, his
meanness of fortune, and his having industriously submitted "to the
meanest labours of the scythe, spade, and wheel-barrow." He became,
however, eminent in his day, and added much to the beauty and
magnificence of the gardens of many of our chief nobility and gentry. He
wrote a history of the art he so loved, and therefore his classic
History of Gardening, prefixed to his Ichnographia Rustica, merits the
perusal of every one attached to gardens; and paints in strong colours
his own devotion to that art; and which he thus concludes:--"In short,
next to the more immediate duties of religion, 'tis in the innocency of
these employs, thus doing, thus planting, dressing, and busying
themselves, that all wise and intelligent persons would be found, when
Death, the king of terrors, shall close their eyes, and they themselves
be obliged to bid an eternal farewell to these and all other sublunary
pleasures;" and he who was thus fond of breathing the sweet and fragrant
air of g