an awful and sudden affliction-a case of apoplexy-a wife and seven small children."

"But," I observed, "there are some tall and some short columns."

"Well, you see," said he, "that's all according to age. We break 'em off short for old 'uns, and it stands to reason, when it's a youngish one, we give him more shaft."

"The candle of life is blown out early in some cases; in others, it is burnt to the socket," I suggested.

Exactly, sir," he said, "now you have hit it."

"Nevertheless," I replied, "I have not exactly made up my mind about the column. Can you show me any other designs?"

"Yes, certainly, sir." With that he led the way again to the office, and placed before me a large book of "patterns." "We do a great deal in that way," he said, displaying a design with which my reader is probably familiar. It was an urn, after the old tea-urn pattern, half enveloped in a tablecloth overshadowed by a weepingwillow and an exceedingly limp-looking lady, who leaned her forehead against the urn, evidently suffering from a sick-headache.

"No," I said, "I think I have seen that design before."

Perhaps so," he replied; "but really there are so many persons die that we can't have something new every time."

"What is this?" I inquired. It was an hour-glass and a skull overgrown by a bramble.

"Oh, that is for the country trade," he said, hastily

turning over the leaf; "we don't do anything in that way among genteel people. This is the snapped lily-pattern, but that won't do for the father of a family; and here is the dove-design, a pretty thing enough. We do a good many of them among the Evangelicals of Clapham."

A rather plump-looking bird, making a book-marker of his beak, was directing attention to a passage in an open volume.

"But,” said I, “have you no ornamental crosses ?”

"No," said he; "you must go to Paddington for them sort of things. Lord bless your soul, we should ruin our trade if we was to deal with such Puseyite things."

"I never knew before," said I, "that sectarianism thus pursued us even to our tombstones.”

The art of design, it is quite clear, had not yet penetrated to the workshop of the marble-mason, so I was content to select some simple little design, and leave my friend to a resumption of the elaboration of the angel's nose, in which occupation I had disturbed him.

ORCHARDS IN CHEAPSIDE.

AND why not? We stall-feed milch cows in upper stories of London houses, bring deep-sea fishes and zoophytes under inspection in our drawing-rooms, and grow choice ferns in domestic glass-cases, and we contend it is quite as easy to pick our own fruit from our own trees in the centre of the city as from the south-peach wall of some snug country house. Our reader, of course, is incredulous, but we mean what we say, and hope, before we have done, to convince him that we speak the words of truth and soberness. The cultivation of fruit-trees in pots in hot-houses has long been practised by nurserymen in this country, in the same manner as grapes are cultivated; this process is necessarily expensive, and entails the necessity of employing highly-skilled gardeners. Mr. Rivers, of Sawbridgeworth, in Hertfordshire, was the first, however, we believe, who proposed to simplify the growing of rare fruits-such as the peach, nectarine, and apricot-so as to render their culture within the means and knowledge of persons of very moderate incomes. To grow peaches at the cost of two shillings a-piece has never been a difficulty; to grow them at one penny a-piece is a triumph, and that he has taught us all to do. In this

country the production of the rare stone-fruits out of doors has always been a lottery. We rejoice greatly at seeing our walls one sheet of blossom in early spring; and then comes a day of wet and a nipping frost, as in this very year, and all our hopes are blighted. To afford protection during the few trying weeks of March and April, and to produce a temperature like the dry yet varying atmosphere of the East, the natural home of our finest wall-fruit, without delivering us into the hands of the professed gardener with his stoves, hot pits, boilers, and other horticultural luxuries, which the rich only can afford-was the desideratum, and that Mr. Rivers has accomplished with what he terms, his "orchard-houses."

These are not the elaborate pieces of carpentery work we meet with in great gardens, but glass-houses, constructed so simply that any person of an ingenious turn may construct them for himself; they are nothing more, in fact, than low wooden-sided houses, with a glass-roof. As there is no window-framing, planing, mortising, or rebating required, the cost is very inconsiderable. A span-roofed orchard-house, thirty feet long by fourteen feet wide, with a height to the ridge in the middle of eight feet, sloping down to four feet on either side, can be constructed by any carpenter for £27. 10s.; smaller leanto houses for very considerably less: estimates for which our more curious reader, who may feel inclined to make an experiment in home fruit-growing, will find carefully set forth in Mr. Rivers's original little work, "The Orchard-House," published by Longman. One of these houses gives the fruit-grower an atmosphere as nearly as possible resembling the native one of the peach, nectarine,

and apricot. The glass affords abundance of light through its ample panes, and its protection gives a dry atmosphere, in which the fruit is sure to set and come to maturity; whilst the vigour of the tree is insured by the wide openings or shutters in the opposite side walls, which admit a constant and abundant current of air through the house when it is thought desirable to do so. The atmosphere produced, beds are made, composed of loam and manure, on either side of the sunken central pathway, not for our orchard to grow in but upon. And here begins the singularity of this new method of culture. Any one who has grown fruit-trees must be aware that their roots are great travellers: they penetrate under the garden-wall, crop up in the gravel path, and penetrate into the old drains; they seek their food, in fact, as the cow does in the meadow, moving from place to place, and, like the cow, they, to a certain extent, exhaust themselves in so doing. Under such circumstances, artificial aid is of little avail, you cannot give nourishment to roots that have run you don't know where; but you can confine the roots and stall-feed them, as we do animals, with a certainty of producing the effect we desire, and this we accomplish by putting our orchards into pots.

But Pomona has still an infinity to learn. It clearly will not do to allow our fruit-trees to fling about their arms as they do in a wild state; in the orchard-house we have to economize room; there must not be an inch of useless wood. A little time since, small standard trees, about four feet high, were thought to be the best form for the orchard-house, but Mr. Rivers has come to the conclusion that most light and heat is gained by training his

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