fall in the dark. He was, however, an inveterate tea-drinker; and there
was another aromatic herb (I write this with my pipe in my mouth) of
which he was, up to the very last, a most ardent consumer.

In the year 1766 was published for the first time a posthumous
work by John Locke, the great philosopher and the good Christian,
entitled, "Observations upon the Growth and Culture of Vines and
Olives,"--written, very likely, after his return from France, down in
his pleasant Essex home, at the seat of Sir Francis Masham. I should
love to give the reader a sample of the way in which the author of "An
Essay concerning Human Understanding" wrote regarding horticultural
matters. But, after some persistent search and inquiry, I have not been
able to see or even to hear of a copy of the book.[C] No one can doubt
but there is wisdom in it. "I believe you think me," he writes in a
private letter to a friend, "too proud to undertake anything wherein I
should acquit myself but unworthily." This is a sort of pride--not very
common in our day--which does _not_ go before a fall.

I name a poet next,--not because a great poet, for he was not, nor yet
because he wrote "The English Garden,"[D] for there is sweeter
garden-perfume in many another poem of the day that does not pique our
curiosity by its title. But the Reverend William Mason, if not among the
foremost of poets, was a man of most kindly and liberal sympathies. He
was a devoted Whig, at a time when Whiggism meant friendship for the
American Colonists; and the open expression of this friendship cost him
his place as a Royal Chaplain. I will remember this longer than I
remember his "English Garden,"--longer than I remember his best couplet
of verse:--

"While through the west, where sinks the crimson day,