Epicurus, that connoisseur[921] in the enjoyments of a life of ease, was the first to lay out a garden at Athens;[922] up to his time it had never been thought of, to dwell in the country in the middle of the town. At Rome, on the other hand, the garden[923] constituted of itself the poor man’s field, and it was from the garden that the lower classes procured their daily food—an aliment how guiltlessly obtained! But still, it is a great deal better, no doubt,[924] to dive into the abysses of the deep, and to seek each kind of oyster at the risk and peril of shipwreck, to go searching for birds beyond the river Phasis[925] even, which, protected as they are by the terrors invented by fable,[926] are only rendered all the more precious thereby—to go searching for others, again, in Numidia,[927] and the very sepulchres of Æthiopia,[928] or else to be battling with wild beasts, and to get eaten one’s self while trying to take a prey which another person is to eat! And yet, by Hercules! how little do the productions of the garden cost us in comparison with these! How more than sufficient for every wish and for every want!—were it not, indeed, that here, as in every thing else, turn which way we will, we find the same grounds for our wrath and indignation. We really might be content to allow of fruits being grown of the most exquisite quality, remarkable, some of them for their flavour, some for their size, some, again, for the monstrosities of their growth, morsels all of them forbidden to the poor![929] We might allow of wines being kept till they are mellowed with age, or enfeebled by being passed through[930] cloth strainers, of men, too, however prolonged their lives, never drinking any but a wine that is still older than themselves! We might allow of luxury devising how best to extract the very aroma, as it were, and marrow[931] only from grain; of people, too, living upon nothing but the choicest productions of the confectioner, and upon pastes fashioned in fantastic shapes: of one kind of bread being prepared for the rich, and another for the multitude; of the yearly produce of the field being classified in a descending scale, till it reaches the humble means of the very lowest classes—but do we not find that these refined distinctions have been extended to the very herbs even, and that riches have contrived to establish points of dissimilarity in articles of food which ordinarily sell for a single copper coin?[932]