Mr. Corbett has just published a useful little volume, entitled the
_English Gardener_, which is, perhaps, one of the most practical
books ever printed. At present we must confine our extracts to a few
useful passages; but we purpose a more extended notice of this very
interesting volume.

_Laying out Gardens._

In the work of laying-out, great care ought to be taken with regard to
straightness and distances, and particularly as to the squareness of every
part. To make lines perpendicular, and perfectly so, is, indeed, no
difficult matter when one knows how to do it; but one must know how to do
it, before one can do it at all. If the _gardener_ understand this
much of geometry, he will do it without any difficulty; but if he only
pretend to understand the matter, and begin to walk backward and forward,
stretching out lines and cocking his eye, make no bones with him; send for
a bricklayer, and see the stumps driven into the ground yourself. The four
outside lines being laid down with perfect truth, it must be a bungling
fellow indeed that cannot do the rest; but if they be only a little
_askew_, you have a botch in your eye for the rest of your life, and
a botch of your own making too. Gardeners seldom want for confidence in
their own abilities; but this affair of raising perpendiculars upon a
given line is a thing settled in a moment: you have nothing to do but to
say to the gardener, "Come, let us see how you do it." He has but one way
in which he can do it; and, if he do not immediately begin to work in that
way, pack him off to get a bricklayer, even a botch in which trade will
perform the work to the truth of a hair.