"_heavy_," and much less is it _unwholesome_, when he who uses it rises early, never swallows strong drink, and never _stuffs_ himself with flesh of any kind. Many and many a day I scarcely taste of meat, and then chiefly at _breakfast_, and that, too, at an early hour. Milk is the natural food of _young people_; if it be too rich, _skim_ it again and again till it be not too rich. This is an evil easily cured. If you have now to _begin_ with a family of children, they may not like it at first. But _persevere_; and the parent who does not do this, having the means in his hands, shamefully neglects his duty. A son who prefers a "devil" and a glass of grog to a hunch of bread and a bowl of cold milk, I regard as a pest; and for this pest the father has to thank himself. 137. Before I dismiss this article, let me offer an observation or two to those persons who live in the vicinity of towns, or in towns, and who, though they have _large gardens_, have "_no land to keep a cow_," a circumstance which they "_exceedingly regret_." I have, I dare say, witnessed this case at least a thousand times. Now, how much garden ground does it require to supply even a large family with _garden vegetables_? The market gardeners round the metropolis of this wen-headed country; round this Wen of all wens;[8] round this prodigious and monstrous collection of human beings; these market gardeners have about _three hundred thousand families to supply with vegetables_, and these they supply well too, and with summer fruits into the bargain. Now, if it demanded _ten rods to a family_, the whole would demand, all but a fraction, _nineteen thousand acres of garden ground_. We have only to cast our eyes over what there is to know that there is not a _fourth_ of that quantity. A _square mile_ contains, leaving out parts of a hundred, 700 acres of land; and 19,000 acres occupy more than _twenty-two square miles_. Are there twenty-two square miles covered with the Wen's market gardens? The very question is absurd. The whole of the market gardens from Brompton to Hammersmith, extending to Battersea Rise on the one side, and to the Bayswater road on the other side, and leaving out loads, lanes, nurseries; pastures, corn-fields, and pleasure-grounds, do not, in my opinion, cover _one square mile_. To the north and south of the Wen there is very little in the way of market garden; and if, on both sides of the Thames, to the eastward of the Wen, there be _three square miles_ actually covered with market gardens, that is the full extent. How, then, could the Wen be supplied, if it required _ten rods_ to each family? To be sure, potatoes, carrots, and turnips, and especially the first of these, are brought, for the use of the Wen, from a great distance, in many cases. But, so they are for the use of the persons I am speaking of; for a gentleman thinks no more of raising a large quantity of these things in his _garden_, than he thinks of _raising wheat there_. How is it, then,