The enjoyments to be derived from a country residence depend principally on a knowledge of the resources which a garden, however small, is capable of affording. The benefits experienced by breathing air unconfined by close streets of houses, and uncontaminated by the smoke of chimneys; the cheerful aspect of vegetation; the singing of birds in their season; and the enlivening effect of finding ourselves unpent-up by buildings, and in comparatively unlimited space, are felt by most people: but these enjoyments are greatly increased by the possession of a garden, in which the progress of vegetation can be watched from day to day; and in which the taste and fancy can be exercised by continually forming new and beautiful scenes.

Before proceeding to the garden itself, we shall endeavour to excite some interest in its favour, and to show the solid advantages which may be derived from a country residence; though on both these topics we shall bestow very few words.

There is a great deal of enjoyment to be derived from performing the different operations of gardening, independently altogether of the health resulting from this kind of exercise. To labour for the sake of arriving at a result, and to be successful in attaining it, are, as cause and effect, attended by a certain degree of satisfaction to the mind, however simple or rude the labour may be, and however unimportant the result obtained. To be convinced of this, we have only to imagine ourselves employed in any labour from which no result ensues, but that of fatiguing the body, or wearying the mind: the turning of a wheel, for example, that is Connected with no machinery, or, if connected, effects no useful purpose; the carrying of a weight from one point to another and back again; or the taking of a walk without any object in view, but the negative one of preserving health. Thus, it is not only a condition of our nature, that, in order to secure health and cheerfulness, we must labour; but we must also labour in such a way as to produce something useful or agreeable.

Now, of the different kinds of useful things produced by labour, those things, surely, which are living beings, and which grow and undergo changes before our eyes, must be more productive of enjoyment than such as are mere brute matter; the kind of labour, and other circumstances being the same. Hence, a man who plants a hedge, or sows a grass-plot in his garden, lays a more certain foundation for enjoyment, than he who builds a wall or lays down a gravel walk; and, hence, the enjoyment of a citizen whose recreation, at his suburban residence, consists in working in his garden must be higher in the scale than that of the man who amuses himself, in the plot round his house, with shooting at a mark or playing at bowls.

To dig, to hoe, and to rake, are not operations requiring much skill; and the amateur gardener will, perhaps, chiefly value them for their use in preparing for crops, or in encouraging the growth of crops already coming forward: but the operations of pruning and training trees, when well performed, are not only interesting to the operator at the time, but the plants so pruned or trained afford him pleasure every time he sees them afterwards throughout the season, till the period returns when they must be pruned and trained again. The operation of striking plants from cuttings is performed in a variety of ways, according to the nature of the plants; and may truly be called one of intense interest, both in its performance, and in the expectation of its results. By the great majority of amateur gardeners, cuttings are made and planted at random; and their failure or success is, in consequence, a matter of chance: but a very little scientific light thrown on the subject leads to rules for operating, which will turn chance into certainty in almost every case that can occur to ordinary practitioners; and, consequently, will greatly enhance the pleasure of performing the operation, from the consciousness that the labour bestowed will not be thrown away.

We need not here refer to the operations of grafting, layering, or sowing seeds; nor need we mention innumerable other operations which require to be performed in the course of the year, even in the very smallest garden; but we must be allowed to notice the watering of plants, which all persons can enjoy from the earliest infancy upwards. What pleasure have not children in applying their little green watering-pans to plants in pots, or pouring water in at the roots of favourite flowers in borders? And what can be more rational than the satisfaction which the grown up amateur, or master of the house, enjoys, when he returns from the city to his garden in the summer evenings, and applies the syringe to his wall trees, with refreshing enjoyment to himself and the plants, and to the delight of his children, who may be watching his operations? What can be more refreshing than, in a warm summer's evening, to hear, while sitting in a cool parlour, with the windows open, or in a summer-house, the showering of water by the syringe upon the leaves of the vines or fig trees trained under the adjoining veranda, or upon the orange trees and camellias, or other exotic shrubs, planted in the conservatory connected with it? What more delightful than to see the master or the mistress of a small garden or pleasure-ground, with all the boys and girls, the maids, and, in short, all the strength of the house, carrying pots and pails of water to different parts of the garden; and to see the refreshment produced to the soil and plants by the application of the watering-pan and the syringe?

Even the search after insects is a great enjoyment in a garden; and, in fact; opens up an entirely new field of exertion and interest to those who have not before made minute observations in this department of nature. Fifty years ago, the subject of destroying insects was scarcely considered as belonging to gardening; and their eggs, which now every young gardener recognises, in winter glued in rings to the branches of his fruit trees, or in spring deposited oil the back of bis gooseberry leaves, passed unheeded through their different stages of development; and the ravages the larva? committed on crops were considered as inevitable blights, produced by the atmosphere. In the present day, so much of the beauty and the value of the products of all gardens is known to depend on subduing insects; that a knowledge of the subject is considered essential to every gardener: but it is more especially necessary that the possessor of a small garden should know how to keep insects in subjection; both because he is frequently his own gardener, and because insects are more abundant in such gardens than in those of a larger size, which are generally situated farther in the country, sometimes front the comparatively Weak and crowded state of the plants, and, in other instances, from the absence of those natural enemies of insects, the small birds.