VIII APOLOGIA PRO BAMBUSIS MEIS 197 
Greek poets, still there are not many countries where Nature 
has not dedicated some favoured school to teach man the 
same object lesson, if he would only profit by it. And yet 
there are still men whose ambition it seems to be that their 
Neptune shall throw up a spout of water a yard higher than 
somebody else’s Triton, and who would fain, according to the 
measure of their means, ape the extravagant vulgarities of 
Versailles or Sydenham. ‘They forget that these masses of 
stone abominations, though they may be triumphs of 
engineering skill, are no more gardening than are the 
fortifications of Vauban, and that the highest art being the 
concealment of art, that man is the greatest gardener who 
shall, on however humble a scale, have successfully imitated 
the master touch of Nature. In the garden of Eden there 
were no flower-beds, and the fairest and most bewitching 
scenes of this earth are those in which we can picture to 
ourselves Adam and Eve, before sin and carpet-bedding had 
been invented, wandering hand in hand, happy and contented 
with the mere sense of life and beauty and love, surrounded 
by the bountiful profusion of Nature, and soothed by the 
rushing music of sweet waters. Such a spot I can yet see 
in my mind’s eye far away on an island of the Malay 
Archipelago,—a lovely vision of a crystal clear pool, fed by 
the glistening jewels of an overhanging cascade, sheltered 
from the heat of noon by a network of Palms and Bamboos, 
and strange vegetation draped with giant climbers. Birds, 
and butterflies as big as birds, of every dazzling colour of the 
rainbow, flit from bough to bough. The air is heavy with 
the scent of spices; Orchids and mysteriously-shaped flowers 
peep out as surprises amid the giant foliage; while great 
