Now this admits of proof. For, let me ask, where do you find the best part of a lettuce?—not in the outside leaves. Which are the choice parts of celery?—of course, the white shoots in the middle. Why, sir? Because light has never come to them. They become white and luxurious by tying up, by earthing up, by any contrivance which has kept the sun at bay. It is the same with man: while we obstruct the light by putting brick and board where glass suggests itself, and mock the light by picturing impracticable windows on our outside walls—so that our houses stare about like blind men with glass eyes—while this is done, we sit at home and blanch, we become in our dim apartments pale and delicate, we grow to look refined, as gentlemen and ladies ought to look. Let the sanitary doctor, at whose head we have thrown lettuces, go to the botanist and ask him, How, is this? Let him come back and tell us, Oh, gentlemen, in these vegetables the natural juices are not formed when you exclude the light. The natural juices in the lettuce or in celery are flavored much more strongly than our tastes would relish, and therefore we induce in these plants an imperfect development, in order to make them eatable. Very well. The natural juices in a man are stronger than good taste can tolerate. Man requires horticulture to be fit to come to table. To rear the finer sorts of human kind, one great operation necessary is to banish light as much as possible. Ladies know that. To keep their faces pale, they pull the blinds down in their drawing-rooms, they put a vail between their countenances and the sun when they go out, and carry, like good soldiers, a great shield on high, by name a Parasol, to ward his darts off. They know better than to let the old god kiss them into color, as he does the peaches. They choose to remain green fruit: and we all know that to be a delicacy.