188 ANNUAL REPORT. 



The Englishman loves beef, and my lord Bishop of Ely doubtless 

 had 'Maud and beeves" and "kept a farm and carters," and possibly 

 he owned a trout stream or a salmon river on his estate. Why did 

 not Gloster make some pleasant allusion to the savory round at 

 the country dinner at Holbern, or recall some spart in angling? 

 It would have been quite as easy. Ah, but he was among the epi- 

 cures of the court that day. The times were grave. The highest 

 stroke alone could kindle their imagination and shift their atten- 

 tion from him a moment while he collected himself for his coming 

 tiger-spring out of the jungle of his difficulties: 



" I saw good strawberries in your garden there; 

 I do beseech you send for some of them." 



This was the master touch of magic. The court, the crown, the 

 recent death of King Edward, the coronation of the prince, were 

 all forgotten. The scene before them had faded, and their minds 

 were fixed upon that rural, peaceful, happy scene where grew 

 "good strawberries;" and they were ''his pipe to play what stop he 

 pleased." Even the wily Buckingham is the first to stalk towards 

 the trap that sets for all who are or may be in Gloster's way, and 

 which is to spring upon him soon, though he run from it, as one 

 of the victims next in the order of death. Who could not be di- 

 verted from the grave aifairs of state by the introduction of such a 

 theme? Who would suspect the motive of Grloster behind the 

 devilish ingenuity of such a suggestion at such a time for such a 

 purpose? 



" Come into the garden, Maud." 



English poetry, from Chaucer and Spenser to Tennyson, blooms 

 in the garden. Shakespeare is full of it, and we turn to him once 

 more. The orchard, the tree garden, the flower garden, is the 

 scene of choicest hospitality, of the finest love passages, the droll- 

 est fun, and, in one case, of the darkest tragedy — a brother's 

 murder. 



" Now," says Justice Shallow, in Henry the Fourth, proud of 

 his own handiwork among the apple trees, " Kow you shall see 

 mine orchard, where in an arbor we will eat a last year's pippin 

 of my own graffing with a disk of caraways and so forth." And 

 in the " Merry Wives of Windsor," Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh 

 parson, hastens to reach the last course of the dinner, " for there's 

 pippins and cheese to come." 



Where in the drama is there a finer scene than the festival 

 of the sheep shearers in the "Winter's Tale," when Perdita, " the 



