WHEN a man goes into a country without understanding its language - merely as a traveller - he is likely to comprehend little of the real character of that country; when he settles in it, and persists in not understanding its language, manners, or customs - and stubbornly adheres to his own, there is little probability of his ever being a contented or successful citizen. In such a country as this, its very spirit of liberty and progress, its freedom from old prejudices, and the boundless life and energy that make the pulses of its true citizens - either native or adopted - beat with health and exultation, only serve to vex and chafe that alien in a strange land, who vainly tries to live in the new world, with all his old-world prejudices and customs.

We are led into this train of reflection by being constantly reminded, as we are in our various journeyings through the country, of the heavy impediment existing - the lion lying in the path of our progress in horticulture, all over the country, in the circumstance that our practical gardening is almost entirely in the hands of foreign gar-d men. The statistics of the gardening class, if carefully collected, would, we imagine, show that not three per cent of all the working gardeners in the United States, arc either native or naturalised citizens. They are, for the most part, natives of Ireland, with a few Scotchmen, and a still smaller proportion of English and Germans.

We suppose we have had as much to do, for the last sixteen or eighteen years, with the employment of gardeners, as almost any person in America, and we never remember an instance of an American offering himself as a professional gardener. Our own rural workmen confine themselves wholly to the farm, knowing nothing, or next to nothing, of the more refined and careful operations of the garden. We may, therefore, thank foreigners for nearly all the gardening skill that we have in the country, and we are by no means inclined to underrate the value of their labors. Among them there are, as we well know, many most excellent men, who deserve the highest commendations for skill, taste, and adaptation - though, on the other hand, there are a great many who have been gardeners, (if we may trust their word for it,) to the Duke of------, and the Marquis of------, but who would make us pity his grace or his lordship, if we could believe he ever depended on Paddy for any other exotios than potatoes and cabbages.

But taking it for granted that our gardeners are wholly foreigners, sad mostly British, they all have the disadvantage of coming to us, even the best educated of them, with their practice wholly founded upon a climate the very apposite to ours. Finding how little the "natives" know of their favorite art, and being, therefore, by no means disposed to take advice of them, or unlearn any of their old-world knowledge here, are they not, as a class, placed very much in the condition of the aliens in a for eign country, we have just alluded to, who refuse, for the most part, either to learn its language, or adapt themselves to the institutions of that country? We think so; for in fact, no two languages can be more different than the gardening tongues of England and America. The ugly words of English gardening, are damp, wet, want of sunshine, canker. Our bugbears are drouth, hot sunshine, great stimulus to growth, and blights and diseases resulting from sudden checks. An English gardener, therefore, is very naturally taught, as soon as he can lisp, to avoid cool and damp aspects, to nestle like a lizard, on the sunny side of south walls, to be perpetually guarding the roots of plants against wet, and continually opening the heads of his trees and shrubs, by thinning out the branches, to let the light in.

He raises even his flower beds, to shed off the too abundant rain; trains his fruit trees upon trellises, to expose every leaf to the sunshine, and is continually endeavoring to extract "sunshine from cucumbers," in a climate where nothing grows golden and ripe without coaxing nature's smiles under glass houses!

For theorists, who know little of human nature, it is easy to answer - "well, when British gardeners come to a climate totally different from their own - where sunshine is so plenty that they can raise melons and peaches as eaeily as they once did cauliflowers and gooseberries - why, they will open their eyes to such glaring facts, and alter their practice accordingly." Very good reasoning, indeed. But anybody who knows the effect of habit and education on character, knows that it is as difficult for an Irishman to make due allowance for American sunshine and heat, as for a German to forget sour-krout, or a Yankee to feel an instinctive reverence for royalty. There is a whole lifetime of education, national habit, daily practice, to overcome, and reason seldom has complete sway over the minds of men rather in the habit of practicing a system, than referring to principles, in their every day labors.

Rapid as the progress of horticulture is at the present time in the United States, there can be no doubt that it is immensely retarded by this disadvantage, that all our gardeners have been educated in the school of British horticulture. It is their misfortune, since they have the constant obstacle to contend with, of not understanding the necessities of our climate, and therefore endeavoring to carry out a practice admirably well suited where they learned it - but most ill suited to the country where they are to practice it. It is our misfortune, because we suffer doubly by their mistakes - first, in the needless money they spend in their failures - and second, in the discouragement they throw upon the growing taste for gardening among us. A gentleman who is himself ignorant of gardening, establishes himself at a country seat. He engages the best gardener he can find. The latter fails in one half that he attempts, and the proprietor, knowing nothing of the reason of the failures, attributes to the difficulties of the thing itself, what should be attributed to the want of knowledge, or experience of the soil and climate, in the gardener.