Beyond these occasions, his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness of possession than actual enjoyment of it.

When he drives you down to dinner on a week-day, he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain; but when the cloth is removed, and he has drank three or four glasses of his favourite port, he orders the French windows of his dining-room (which of course look into the garden) to be opened, and throwing a silk handkerchief over his head, and leaning back in his arm-chair, descants at considerable length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining it.

This is to impress you--who are a young friend of the family--with a due sense of the excellence of the garden, and the wealth of its owner; and when he has exhausted the subject, he goes to sleep.
There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden.

An individual of this class, resides some short distance from town--say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back garden.

He and his wife--who is as clean and compact a little body as himself--have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business twenty years ago.