My bookseller, aware that I had some copies remaining, came to beg one for a customer of his, who was extremely anxious to get it; and he named Mademoiselle Amelia Belmont. I actually blushed with pleasure; to conceal my embarrassment, I laughingly inquired, what could a girl of her age want with so serious a work? ‘To read it, sir, doubtless;’ replied the bookseller; ‘Mademoiselle Amelia does not resemble the generality of young ladies; she prefers useful to amusing books.’ He then mentioned the names of several that he had lately sent to her; and gave me a high opinion of her taste. ‘From her impatience for your book,’ added he, ‘I can answer for it, that it will be perused with great pleasure; more than ten messages have been sent; at last I promised it for to-morrow, and I beg of you to enable me to keep my word.’ I thrilled with joy, as I gave him the volumes, at the idea that Amelia would read my sentiments, and that she would learn to know me. “October arrived, and with it my fifty vases of rose-trees; for which of course, they made me pay what they chose;--and I was as delighted to count them in my room, as a miser would his sacks of gold. They all looked rather languishing, but then it was because they had not yet reconciled themselves to the new earth. I read all that was ever written on the culture of roses, with much more attention than I had formerly read my old philosophers; and I ended as wise as I began. I perceived that this science, like all others has no fixed rules, and that each vaunts his system, and believes it the best. One of my gardener authors would have the rose-trees as much as possible in the open air; another recommended their being kept close shut up; one ordered constant watering; another absolutely forbade it. ‘It is thus with the education of man,’ said I, closing the volumes in vexation. ‘Always in extremes--let us try the medium between these opposite opinions.’ “I established a good thermometer in my room; and, according to its indications, I put them outside the windows or took them in; you may guess that fifty vases, to which I gave this exercise three or four times a-day, according to the variations of the atmosphere, did not leave me much idle time; and this was the occupation of a professor of philosophy! Ah! well might they have taken his chair from him, and sent him back to school, a thousand times more childish than the youngest of those pupils to whom I hurried over the customary routine of philosophical lessons: my whole mind was fixed on Amelia and my rose trees.